The First Korean Winner of the Golden Nica Award, Ayoung Kim’s Monograph “Ayoung Kim: Synthetic Storyteller” Has Been Published
Ayoung Kim: Synthetic Storyteller, the first and most comprehensive monograph encompassing the artist’s practice over the past 17 years, has been published.
Visual and media artist Ayoung Kim was awarded the Golden Nica Award, Prix Ars Electronica last year as the first Korean artist. Kim weaves reality anew through a tapestry of hybrid narratives while integrating geopolitics, mythology, technology and futuristic iconography in her work. The outcomes of synthesized narratives result in far-reaching speculation, establishing connections between biopolitics and border controls, the memories of stones and virtual memories, and ancestral origins and imminent futures in the forms of video, moving image, virtual reality (VR), game simulation, sonic fiction, diagrams and texts.
As the hitherto most extensive introduction to the artist’s work, this monograph presents a selection of artworks produced between 2007 and 2022 through still images and installation views together with several critical voices. It includes Ayoung Kim’s text and scripts from various projects which are the foundation of her work, an interview with curator Hyunjoo Byeon, accompanied by analytical essay contributions from Nanna Heidenreich, Chien-Hung Huang, Jinshil Lee, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein and Wonhwa Yoon.
Ayoung Kim: Synthetic Storyteller is designed with a reversed composition so that the Korean and English texts can function individually as stand-alone publications. Fragments of images and text are placed in the text as if they were ‘glitches’, giving the reader the experience of following a speculative narrative while reading the book and seeing Kim’s work as if they were reflecting on reality. This publication, reproducing the artist’s artistic practice in a publication format, will hopefully serve as a comprehensive guide to understanding and appreciating Kim’s work of ‘synthetic’ storytelling as a ‘synthetic’ storyteller.
Ayoung Kim: Synthetic Storyteller was published in January 2024 by The Floorplan, an independent Korean publisher, with the support of the 2023 ARKO Selection Visual Art. It is currently available at The Book Society, Aladdin, Yes24, MMCA Art Book Shop, and The Reference, Seoul Museum of Art, priced at KRW 38,000.
Table of Contents
- Interview with Ayoung Kim
- The Labyrinth of the Free World – Wonhwa Yoon
- The nth Possible World of Speculative Feminism – Porosity Valley – Jinshil Lee
- In Search of Petra Genetrix – Ayoung Kim
- Delivery Dancer’s Sphere: A Many-Worlds Pandemic Fiction – Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
- Technès Politics in Porous-Ecosystem – Chien-Hung Huang
- Techno-Orientalism: Beyond an Asia of Fascination, Fear, and Phobia – Ayoung Kim
- Intersecting Narratives. Thinking with Ayoung Kim’s work – Nanna Heidenreich
- Biographies
- List of Artworks
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