Focused on a small square area near a weather station in Seoul (KR), a sensor detects how much snow has fallen 36 times per minute. But what will this device be recording during all the months when there is no change of snowfall? Kyulim Kim (1993) is interested in moments precisely like this, when certain locations are temporarily lacking purpose, i.e. moments when the sensor continues to observe while the object of interest is absent. These are ‘empty’ locations where nothing seems to be happening — ‘negative spaces’, if you will. Through her audiovisual installations, Kim reveals how spaces like this become ‘fluid’ when the attention is shifted from the purpose of a location to the location itself. She thus makes the variable nature of the function or definition of the space visible. The installation Dear Snow (2023) consists of two video screens, both showing images of an almost desperate search for an (absent) subject: snow. To Kim this is a way of expressing her interest in visualizing moving matter that — albeit invisible — remains connected to a specific location, such as snow in the vicinity of a snow sensor.
Text: Milo Vermeire
Translation from Dutch to English: Marie Louise Schoondergang