Outputs
Hee Ju Im

As a finishing instance to her residency at ´ace, Hee Ju Im opened to the public her sound installation Outputs. The sound installations are a combination of found-objects that can be easily found inside and outside the ´ace workshop and its studio, motors and modules that enable movements. Cupboard cases that would have been used to store papers, leftover tapes, press tables for printing, racks for storing prints, toys for children, and machines collide to create an environment in which two ears are “blocked.”

Musicologist Kim Kyung-hwa wrote about the artist’s attitude and method of approaching noise and sound in an article for the exhibition Ssang Cha Ssang Jo: “She adheres to the sound of noise, which is the sound of unpleasant, loud, nerve-racking, confusion-causing, and therefore excluded and alienated. Noise, which everyone is uncomfortable with, is the driving force of creation for the artist and the power to shine on the one’s inside. At the boundary of sound, the alienating aspect of noise becomes a powerful tool for her to say something. Noise, which the artist has observed, is an abjective existence.”

This sound installation was created by modifying and reconstructing Outputs (2022) of the Ssang Cha Ssang Jo (Block to Reveal): The Dream of Rainbow, a project that considers listening to loud and intrusive sounds as auditory masochism. It means that a being that is constantly heard but overlooked, a being that is everywhere but not revealed, a being that everyone is uncomfortable, a being that cannot define boundaries, or a being that blurs boundaries, and thus a being of “otherisation” thrown out of boundaries. Rather, noise rejects identification and subverts order and system, or the power to operate it.

Together with Hee Ju Im, her Korean colleague Heesoo Agnes Kim opened her exhibition, and we also hosted the work of our residents Michael Sell (USA), Alex Karolyi (Canada) and Marcela Caballero (Argentina).