In her performance and social-investigative practice, Grace Euna Kim engages as a performance and visual artist, choreographer, theorist, pedagogue, and researcher. In dialogue with psychoanalytic, phenomenological, and critical-theoretical perspectives, her performances are crafted as site-specific immersive encounters that de- and re-construct social imaginaries, together with the people themselves. The body and consciousness are unpacked as sites of resistance and worldmaking, through which to question, decode, and reinvent the "theatre" of the audience inside out, and thereby work through embedded social and political issues.
Euna has conceived experimental performance encounters in diverse contexts and scales - from citywide interventions, to cultural and educational institutions, to the intimacy of a private home. Her longterm psycho-phenomenological research “Acid Bodies” deploys immersive methods as a means to probe symbolic violence; the implicit modes by which ideologies are negotiated, embodied, and normalised; and the politics of perception in relation to desire, power, consensus, and conflict. In this sense she uses immersive performance as the “stage” for various performative, participatory, and pedagogic research-based formats, which, through different aesthetic approaches and entry points, invite people to radically rethink community and one’s own accountability as a social and political body.
During her performances cameras are generally prohibited, with a few exceptions depending on the site/public context. The experience is documented when and however possible through hidden cameras, texts (written afterward by audience/participants), and sound. Therefore the image quality and scope varies, since the priority is to protect as much as possible the intimacy of the immersive experience. As the work deals with the unknown and anticipation as political materials, and in some cases to protect the privacy of participants, public documents are very limited. If you are interested in the private archives, please email Euna at the address below.
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Contact: graceeunakim[at]gmail.com
All Images (c) Grace Euna Kim