Lifting Barbells

2015 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
21:22 minute

Lifting Barbells is a video by Kim Heecheon that narrates his letters in Spanish to his girlfriend in Argentina, discussing his feelings after his father died in a bicycling accident. Using the data recorded on his father’s smartwatch, Kim’s video traces digital footage of his father’s route on Google Maps, the location of the accident, and his cardiographic data as he was dying. The video contrasts Kim’s emotional letters with the clinicality of the quantitative data recordings. This work is indicative of the ontological condition that reality exists on screens in the form of digitized information, while what we experience emotionally and affectively does not necessarily guarantee any reality. Kim’s video communicates the uncertainty, pressure, and confusion emerging from such a stark juxtaposition of life and death, the real and the artificial.

Kim Heecheon’s complex video installations are deeply rooted in his experiences, opening possibilities for a dual visual discourse that combines personal feelings, informed by his immediate surroundings, in a digitized global environment. His narratives often entangle with GPS, augmented reality, virtual reality, or face swap technology, as his artworks investigate contemporary epistemological questions such as the role and influence of screens socially, culturally, and globally. By observing global shifts in technological development and then building narratives around these shifts, Kim’s work accounts for how technological interfaces influence our ever-changing realities.

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