Porosity Valley 2: Tricksters’ Plot (2019)

Porosity Valley 2:Tricksters’ Plot is a speculative fiction that revolves around the recent arrival of Yemeni refugees in Korea. The event has evoked a nationwide anti-Islamic sentiment and xenophobia, which portray migrants as sorts of malware or viruses that threaten the immune system (this could also be considered a “pure blood mythology”). All of a sudden they have become fictitious.This piece expands upon the previous work through a fictionalized depiction of the migration of the mineral/data cluster known as Petra Genetrix. Juxtaposing refugee migration with data migration, both of which characterize migration in the 21st century, the work creates an imaginary space-time by interrogating the “ways of existence” and the “ways of representation” of the Yemeni refugees who recently arrived in South Korea.

Ayoung Kim (South Korea) is a visual artist and filmmaker. Kim adopts the devices of speculative storytelling to evoke unfamiliar forms of reading, listening and thinking about the conditions of the world by focusing on unlikely encounters of ideas. Her projects take the forms of video, sonic fiction, VR, text, performance and game simulation and are presented as exhibitions, performances and publications. Kim exhibited and screened at Venice Biennale (2015); Palais de Tokyo (2016); Korea Artist Prize (2019); Sharjah Film Platform (2019, 2020); Berlinale (2020); Asian Art Biennial (2021); Videobrasil (2021) and Sharjah Biennial (2023).