Yoon Hee Kim has
worked with the processes inherent in translation and in
transcription; initially through assemblages and installations, and
later video, her practice closely examines the way in which such
processes, whether through human error, inadequate or
incompatible registers, ultimately alters meanings, in the course of
which creating meanings anew.
Some of these works bring to mind that of American Artist Susan Hiller, and in particular Hiller’s work The Last Silent Movie from
2007. This consisted of a collection of recordings of extinct
or near-extinct languages. Some had no translation, so although an audio
recording was intact, there was nobody left alive to interpret it. The
work also featured graphic representations of the speakers’ audio
oscillation.
In those works featuring such mapping, the transcription of poetic
metre into graph form takes a reductionist approach – the breaking down
of a poetic expression into flat, abstracted component parts like these
in turn points up their essential inadequacy as representations;
the yawning conceptual space between the map and the terrain it depicts.
Kim’s early works followed quite formal patterns; small assemblages
of office equipment and other found detritus, delicately worked
aquatints and drawings on wood. Yet even within these earlier works
there was an evident interest in the unreliability and unsatisfactory
nature of narratives; a collection of paperbacks made to interleaf,
frustrations relieved through making a punch-bag from books.
This emphasis on narrative shortfall was taken a step further with
the transcription of a holepunched tape fed through a music box
(emulating the principle behind a pianola, an early technology for
recording music). When we are presented with these works certain themes
recur; the imperfection and unreliability of recording systems, the way
that such devices recognise only one facet or other of what is being
recorded.
In Seeing Competition, participants from diverse cultural
backgrounds are asked to copy the words they are shown for just a single
minute. Having the feel of a scientific test in cognitive skills, it
also has comical overtones arising from the clumsy and inexpert
responses of the participants, and their embarrassed giggles. The result
doesn’t so much evoke thoughts of miscommunication though; this is more
an examination of how signs change and evolve, shifting meaning through
their imperfect transmission.
Text by Matthew Crookes