AYOUNG KIM

Ayoung Kim is a genre-pushing artist whose work spans video, performance and installation. Grounding her practice in Korean history, philosophical enquiry, classical physical and the new geopolitics of Asia, Kim combines this research with elements of speculative fiction, cyberfeminism, and video game design to craft multidimensional, fluid narratives that both mirror and distort how we experience the present moment.

Delivery Dancer’s Sphere, 2022, was developed during the COVID-19 pandemic when Kim was confined to Korea. The video centres on two female delivery drivers, Ernst Mo and En Storm, cleverly named anagrams of ‘Monster’, who work for the ‘Delivery Dancer’ platform in a futurist Seoul. The protagonist, Ernst Mo, is a top-level ‘Dancer’ who elegantly navigates the labyrinthine streets of this shimmering city on her motorcycle at the speed of light. Throughout her deliveries, she repeatedly encounters her alter ego, En Storm, whose presence delays the completion of each job until the system of optimisation itself begins to crack and potentially collapse.

By blending 3D animation with live-action footage, Kim creates a hyperreality that stimulates our imagination and prompts us to question the ‘truths’ of this world. In doing so, she offers possibilities for deconstructing narratives predicated on self-optimisation. While encouraging people to speculatively move beyond the human toward an embrace of multiple possible worlds and the many perspectives they embody.

Delivery Dancer’s Sphere was awarded the Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica 2023 in the ‘New Animation’ category.