Soomin Jeong
Watching the time-based media arts means you must spend your time with the artwork. Yet, it differs from watching a film in a theatre. Exhibition spaces are full of distractions, and you are free to stop watching or continue as you wish. This means there are countless moments where you might lose your way in the middle of experiencing the work.
Now I propose a guide on how to enjoy Ayoung Kim’s Dancer in the Mirror Field, which will be showcased at Powerhouse Parramatta next year. This guide is not a typical review but an experimental preview - a message sent to future audiences. It will be a guide to lose rather than to find the way.
more details about Dancing in the mirror field (2025)
Motion Capture behind the scenes. Dancer in the Mirror Field, 2025. Ayoung Kim. Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Ayoung Kim is an established multidisciplinary artist and a recipient of both the Ars Electronica Golden Nica Award and the LG Guggenheim Award. Dancer in the Mirror Field is a commissioned project by M+ and Powerhouse, currently displayed on the M+ Facade before its journey to Parramatta. This work continues Kim’s profound speculative fiction film series, Delivery Dancer, which she has been developing since 2022.
This series blends cinematic storytelling, animation, video game technology, generative AI, app interfaces and poetry. The universe of Delivery Dancer began with Delivery Dancer’s Sphere (2022), set in a world built around a delivery app of the same name. The protagonist, Ernest Mo (an anagram of “Monster”), is a ride from the company Delivery Dancer who encounters her identical self, En Storm (an anagram of “Monster”), through a theory of possible worlds. We never know what they are delivering across cities - perhaps time, or some invisible value. The riders keep falling into leaked circuits within the app’s system, where they meet their identical selves and experience antagonism, affection, and compassion. It also suggests a queer narrative between multiple female protagonists.
Building upon this universe, Dancer in the Mirror Field introduces three identical protagonists from parallel worlds, competing and fighting in 20th-century Asian shopping malls. Within this mall complex, the work presents a competition called Dancer of the Year, organised by Delivery Dancer company, taking place across an imagination of cityscapes inspired by Hong Kong. Kim’s work critiques the speed, competitiveness, and efficiency of modern society through an Asian futurism that resists techno-futurist perspectives, where “Asian” is often seen as merely objectified or inferior.
Honestly, it’s impossible to analyse this artwork - perhaps another version of myself has already seen it in other possible worlds. In this one, I can only fall into the fragmented circuits of imagination while attempting to write a review - an impossible task. I confess this writing is just based on flowing internet sources from Powerhouse, M+ and Ayoung Kim’s website.
As an experimental preview – not a promotion - what can I challenge here? Kim’s Delivery Dancer’s Sphere (2022) presents infinite layers of circuits where riders race to fulfill anonymous orders. The name “Delivery Dancer” becomes clear - their circuits resemble the orbits of dancers. It reflects our life: endlessly running toward something we long for. If we are also within such circuits, building layers through time, what kind of dances are we inscribing? Like Ernest Mo, who falls into fissures in the circuit, what if we too could lose our way and encounter the unexpected? - to love and hate.
This is a preview letter sent to future audiences of next year. Even if you read this, unless you travel to Hong Kong in the meantime, you may not yet meet this work in person. I long for this guide to reach you across the circuits of life you will transcribe over the year, through numberless fissures. Even if it has been modified, distorted, entirely challenged by something through those glitches – it’s fine. That’s exactly what I am expecting.
Guide no.1 #history_or_story
Ayoung Kim builds a world within her artwork using historical collections digitised by M+ and Powerhouse Museum. What does it mean to digitise a physical collection into virtual space? Does it still function as history, or as a version of the future that will never exist in reality? What is history? Kim suggests that history is also kind of fiction because it involves the labour of remembering. Is Kim’s reconstructed virtual world also part of this labour or remembrance? And what about our own labour in watching it? Are we, too, trapped in the circuits of making histories? Our desire to remember things forever is realised through digitising physical collections; however, digital data is fragile and easily becomes obsolete. How can we sustain our desire within the circuit between the digital and the physical? Or are we constantly falling into the leaks between the two?
Guide no. 2 #love_or_hate
In Kim’s work, the protagonists must fight each other to win the title Dancer of the Year. What are we fighting for? What are we reaching for? In Ayoung Kim’s previous Delivery Dancers series, the protagonist Ernst Mo (an anagram of “Monster”) encounters another version of themselves – another name formed from the same anagram. If we defined one circuit as our life and world, how many parallel circuits could exist? Do you believe the world we live in is the real reality? What if it is a cluster of hidden, leaking points? What if other versions of ourselves – whose names are anagrams of our own – are racing against us? Would you be able to love them or hate them?
Guide no. 3 #orientalism_or_asian_futurism
What kind of future can you imagine? What futures have you imagined so far? Who leads the future in your imagination? Among countless possibilities, have you ever leapt into a different dimension of imagination, beyond the dominant circuits? Kim envisions a world of Asian Futurism, beyond techno-orientalism – which often marginalises Asian culture as mere background or exotic curiosity. What was your first impression of the world Kim has built? If it feels difficult to distinguish between techno-orientalism and Asian Futurism, what aspects make you feel that way and what could be Kim’s invisible strategies in making you question it?
Ayoung Kim builds a world within her artwork using historical collections digitised by M+ and Powerhouse Museum. What does it mean to digitise a physical collection into virtual space? Does it still function as history, or as a version of the future that will never exist in reality? What is history? Kim suggests that history is also kind of fiction because it involves the labour of remembering. Is Kim’s reconstructed virtual world also part of this labour or remembrance? And what about our own labour in watching it? Are we, too, trapped in the circuits of making histories? Our desire to remember things forever is realised through digitising physical collections; however, digital data is fragile and easily becomes obsolete. How can we sustain our desire within the circuit between the digital and the physical? Or are we constantly falling into the leaks between the two?
Guide no. 2 #love_or_hate
In Kim’s work, the protagonists must fight each other to win the title Dancer of the Year. What are we fighting for? What are we reaching for? In Ayoung Kim’s previous Delivery Dancers series, the protagonist Ernst Mo (an anagram of “Monster”) encounters another version of themselves – another name formed from the same anagram. If we defined one circuit as our life and world, how many parallel circuits could exist? Do you believe the world we live in is the real reality? What if it is a cluster of hidden, leaking points? What if other versions of ourselves – whose names are anagrams of our own – are racing against us? Would you be able to love them or hate them?
Guide no. 3 #orientalism_or_asian_futurism
What kind of future can you imagine? What futures have you imagined so far? Who leads the future in your imagination? Among countless possibilities, have you ever leapt into a different dimension of imagination, beyond the dominant circuits? Kim envisions a world of Asian Futurism, beyond techno-orientalism – which often marginalises Asian culture as mere background or exotic curiosity. What was your first impression of the world Kim has built? If it feels difficult to distinguish between techno-orientalism and Asian Futurism, what aspects make you feel that way and what could be Kim’s invisible strategies in making you question it?
I wish this guide could drift into the circuit of your life next year to surface dimly in your mind, even if everything now feels shrouded in fog. Life has always been like that: racing along multiple tangled circuits, only to encounter something from the past at an unexpected moment.
Dancer in the Mirror Field, 2025. Ayoung Kim. Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Flying images : Digitised collection of Powerhouse museum 1) Toy racing car from Japan 2)Toy clown on motorcycle 3) Sundial