SPACE December 2022 (No. 661)
Kim Joon, Field Notes: Memories of Mountain, Mixed media, 73x73x165cm. 2018 / Image courtesy of SONGEUN Art and Cultural Foundation and the Artist
The Grand Winner of the 18th SongEun ArtAward Kim Joon’s solo exhibition ‘Tempest’ was held at SONGEUN (covered in SPACE No. 650) from Oct. 25. Tempest is a kind of wiretapping technology that steals information through electromagnetic waves. Kim Joon’s soundscape work, including his work Tempest (2022), reveals signal systems that are inaudible to the human ear and environmental sounds that can only be heard unless we are willing to look beyond our audible range. Pendulate Pieces (2022) presents sound and image collected by the artist at a geological park in Gangwon-do. The invisible movement of the earth was expressed with sound. Between vibrating images that suggest the source of the sound and trembling speakers suspended from the structure, the audience becomes an explorer of the earth’s history. While the sounds detected by Tempest are real, but its eyes are turned to an unrecognisable world. When the visitor’s electronic device is connected to a special device, the stimulation of the electromagnetic field that is converted into sound resonates throughout the room. This is the moment that we realise that we are completely surrounded by signals in our daily lives. In The Lost Time, The Remaining Space (2022), the various sounds collected by the artist over the past 10 years from Nanjido in 1996 to Pyeongchang, Gangwon-do, resonate and collide. Like a journal hidden deep in a drawer, the stored voices come alive and talk to each other. Sound, the artist says, is fascinating because it is a ‘medium that transcends spatiality’ that reveals ‘historicity that is not visible’. The reason why Kim Joon paid so much attention to the sound is probably because of the time and place inscribed on it. In his journals, sounds become things heard, seen, captured and remembered. The exhibition runs until Dec. 3.
Kim Joon, The Lost Time, The Remaining Space, Mixed media, Variable dimensions, 2022