Sound In A Vacuum

November 12, 2011 3:51 AM

Christine Sun Kim is a performance artist working in the realm of sound. She makes beautiful messes. She's also deaf. Todd Selby is a photographer. He's made a film about her.

More on Christine.
More on Todd.
Another short film of Christine's work and a bit about her favorite snacks.

posted by artof.mulata (8 comments total)

This one's for all the noisemakers and lovers of experimental sound.
posted by artof.mulata at 3:52 AM on November 12, 2011

Thank you so much for the post, artof.mulata . I am an instant Christine Sun Kim fan. She's wonderful, and I hope she's enormously successful in her sonic endeavors.

I personally think it was ill-advised of the filmmaker to use a score. It undercut the power of the presentation, IMO. There should have been no music save for Christine Sun Kim's music. And that goes double for the closing song. Yecch.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:30 AM on November 12, 2011 [5 favorites]

One other filmmaker criticism: Christine didn't lock her apartment door when she left. Hello? NYC? Unthinkable. That's a detail that should not have gone unnoticed!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:32 AM on November 12, 2011

I noticed the door and the end score as well.
posted by nathancaswell at 5:19 AM on November 12, 2011

Lots of doors in the world lock automatically when they're closed. It's easy to get locked out taking out the trash in your PJs.

And more to the point, this is good, thank you.
posted by cilantro at 5:34 AM on November 12, 2011

Lots of doors in the world lock automatically when they're closed.

Yeah. Never seen one of those in the kind of tenement-style building Christine Sun Kim lives in in NYC, though. And I was in and out of a lot of those kinds of apartments during my 11 years in NYC. Hers might be different*, though.

*highly doubtful
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:35 AM on November 12, 2011

Todd Selby is a photographer. He's made a film about her. He's also blind.

Forgive me for feeling punchy so early in the morning, but I was sorry not to see this at the end.

Then again, I lived in a third-floor walk -up in Clinton Hill (Bed-Sty to you!) Brooklyn for three years, and for a significant time the lock on our door was broken and the slumlord couldn't be bothered to fix it and we were never robbed.

And Christine Sun Kim rocks.
posted by emhutchinson at 9:15 AM on November 12, 2011

I briefly met Christine Sun Kim earlier this year. My friend and classmate at RPI was working on a vibrotactile interface for music presentation and invited CK to participate in a performance with Pauline Oliveros's improv ensemble. One part of her performance had her screaming into a microphone on stage, running the signal through a delay into a room backstage. She would run off the stage and receive the signal through a tactile driver and then repeat the process from there back to the stage. For another piece, she stood on a vibrating platform which was hooked up to a performer's synthesizer, feeling the vibration through her feet and dancing in response. It was all pretty intense, and I loved it. She was great, I'm glad to see such a beautiful profile of her.
posted by maximum sensing at 12:08 PM on November 12, 2011 [1 favorite]