The first collection of the Korean-French artist's writings, interviews and essays on her work.
Since the 1970s, pioneering artist Soun-Gui Kim has drawn inspiration from Eastern and Western philosophical traditions in developing a playful and enigmatic aesthetic. This landmark trilingual publication of 672 pages, collects for the first time selected writings by and about the artist, including essays long and short, interviews, fragments, photographs, and privately circulated pronouncements, including exchanges Soun-Gui Kim has had with her contemporaries. Follow Soun-Gui Kim as she engages her interlocutors—including philosophers
Jacques Derrida and
Jean-Luc Nancy, artist
Nam June Paik, and scholars Jean-Pierre Cometti and Wan-Kyong Song, among others—in conversation about art and creativity, silence and chance, and the role of technology in contemporary life.
Born 1946 in Buyeo (Korea), Soun-Gui Kim lives and works in France since 1971, and exhibits internationally. She approaches the arts through Eastern philosophies, such as that of Tchuang-Tseu, and combines meditative stance with Western philosophical interrogation, around one main question: how does silence and resistance arrive?
Soun-Gui Kim graduated from the Department of Art at Seoul National University in 1971, with an interest in the deconstruction of painting and large-scale performances and video works in public space. In 1974, she accepted a professorship at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Marseille. In 1982, Soun-Gui Kim's travels to various countries around the world led to her intensive engagement with the culture and art of the East and West. While in New York, she associated with renowned video artists such as
Nam June Paik, Ko Nakajima, Ira Schneider, and Frank Gillette.
With her deepening interest in video and multimedia, she organized
Video & Multimedia: Soun-Gui Kim and her invitees (1986), with the participation of Nam June Paik,
John Cage and others. Since the late 1980s, issues related to the spread of global capitalism and structural changes in society caused by the internet have become particularly important for her. Her art projects also frequently combine poetry, philosophy, art, and technology.
