Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader share a righteous wit, a sense of humour through which they elucidate their critiques of the world. There are many things wrong with the world, and, for them, it is the humour in it all which allows us to communicate with one another about this state of injustice. Truly multidisciplinary in approach, their individual and shared practices join the modalities of high art and popular address in works which have travelled globally, including a presently ongoing solo exhibition of Kim’s at the Whitney, Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night, and a joint show of their work at The Wellcome Collection, 1880 THAT: Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader.
Kim often works serially, and in her first career survey to date All Day All Night, full collections are brought together. Her show spans several floors and includes a significant staircase installation, A String of Echo Traps, which brings to a new format a previously shown video work considering the social claustrophobia of oppression and exclusion many deaf people experience. Degrees of Deaf Rage was shown in 2019 Whitney Biennial and occupies a central part of All Day All Night. In these works, Kim contemplates the various antagonists she has experienced as a Deaf person, from personal to political and social to institutional. A particularly known known work in the set, Degrees of My Deaf Rage in the Art World namedrops left and right. Some are specific citations with unexplained causes “Rijksmuseum Front Desk Manager” and “Bard MFA”, and others less targeted descriptions of unjust situations — “Curators who think it’s fair to split my salary fee with an interpreter”.
In her introductory video for the exhibition, she discusses her fear of being misunderstood. In this, she works through forms which immediately declare their meaning: infographics, diagrams, didactic visual metaphors abound. For Kim, direct communication and art walk hand in hand. In the best of her work, there are multiple access points, all of which feel robust. One can imagine a small child being walking mesmerised by her site-specific musical staff painting (a side note: Kim has collaborated with her daughter on work before, this playfulness is embedded in her practice). Across the Whitney show, I saw strangers making conversation over her direct addresses, particularly a piece which asks viewers to consider how they hold debt; though this may not be the most resonant work for our aforementioned preschool art aficionado.
Thomas Mader is a conceptual multimedia artist who often works with historically laden iconography. In one series, he is interested in how the Pink Panther character has been lifted from a liminal opening sequence from the famous caper film and transposed onto the biceps and calves of neo-Nazis. His writing about his work has the precision of a theorist, but in his own words, a primary goal of his practice is to promote “textual and pictorial literacy [with the] belief that an understanding of communicative processes can be helpful in better situating the simplification of complex issues with which we are confronted daily.” In other words, that his art may inspire and teach a lucid critical thinking which may offer a path through our meme culture. To this end, both Mader and Kim have coopted the signs and symbols of our hyperpaced digital culture and imbued them with an artist’s touch a theoretician’s edge. To them, if we look a bit more closely, and perhaps with a touch of their sensitive humour, it may all go from feeling overpoweringly manipulative to funny, ridiculous, outrageous, and delightful.
For many artists, the material they discuss and the worlds they occupy and support are disparate. I am always curious as to how artists who engage in institutional critique approach collaboration with those same institutions. The Whitney has a rich history of expanding the canon of art history, but is also grounded in a history and funding structure which often draws vital protest. Kim began her career as an educator at the Whitney Museum, where she introduced a Deaf led tour programme, Whitney Signs, which still runs monthly programming. For her, working with institutions often requires that she and her collaborators push so that the same things she critiques in her work are not replicated in the spaces showing her work. When I asked about how museums may make their programming truly inclusive for everyone, she said succinctly, “A good first step would be to not dismiss this goal as impossible right away.”
I often find that in New York’s museums, people are more eager to be in a room with art than to engage with it. There is something about Kim’s work — its playfulness, its pure rage, its invitation to consider one’s own experiences, and its sheer exuberance — that seems to break down the social friction usually present in these spaces. I have been talking about her show with people since I saw it, and each time seem to discover a twist or turn I had missed at first glance. More than anything, I have been left more attentive to the world as it exists and more curious about a world that could be. METAL speaks to both artists of 1880 THAT: Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader.
Please introduce yourselves and your work. What inspires you?
We are Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, two Berlin-based artists who are interested in the power dynamics between different languages and we really enjoy playing with words. Our inspiration comes from many different places, but if we are being honest, it’s mostly memes.
How did you find a mode of art making that was able to achieve both your creative and political objectives in a field that often prioritises one over the other?
Sometimes our pieces lean more one way, sometimes more the other way, but really the longer you work on a specific topic, the more you’ll find that those two things will overlap. We are also trying to have fun with what we do and hopefully that translates in the end. John Waters famously says: “All humour is political.” That seems like a good guideline for us.
Christine, Tell me about the form of an infographic. How does it fit into your artistic grammar?
Infographics can be used without relying on a specific language. They can transcend cultures and languages by communicating clear ideas without any text. For example, when you see a pie chart, you instantly recognise that it’s about proportions or relations. I find this fundamentally similar to the way signs use spatial shapes to convey meaning.
How do you each use iteration in your work?
Thomas: I love using iteration in word image combination because it often teases out just how truly random some of the descriptors we use are. Other times it shows a whole surprising lineage of how we got from a word in one language to an entirely customised meaning of a similar looking word in a different language.
Christine: Iteration is like an adaptation of an idea. You adapt the idea depending on the medium. Sometimes, I adapt it and combine it with other ideas.
How do you approach working with different mediums? Do you find that each material has its own language, or does your artistic grammar remain consistent across different mediums?
We often start a new project the wrong way around. We start out enamoured with a certain sign or expression and then think about which material would lend itself the most to what we are trying to say. We have some frames that have worked well for us over time, like 24h-formats or simple camera set-ups, and these often help incorporate newer materials.
Following up with this, tell me about the exchange of ideation and creation in your collaborative work. How do you play to each other’s experiences and strengths.
A lot of our early pieces are about Christine introducing Thomas to American Sign Language (ASL), Deaf culture and Deaf expression. So, you can clearly see one person doing it really well and the other one doing it not so well. This contrast helped to make the pieces more interesting and it is never going to go away entirely. In later pieces we think about language more broadly. Before studying art, Tom studied literature. Christine thinks about language mostly in spatial terms. We usually find a balance that makes us both happy.
Do you feel a gulf between your practices and your personal lives? Or are they mutually constitutive.
Similar to what you had asked about creative and political objectives, we never set out to create a collaborative practice that was closely related to our personal lives. But the more you build a life together the more different questions overlap and end up becoming raw materials for art making.
Christine, you discuss how you must trust an interpreter to translate your language for hearing audience members or interlocutors who don’t know ASL. Has this influenced how you work with curators who translate and contextualise your art for different audiences and contexts?
Let’s use interpret instead of “translate” when it comes to interpreters working with me. Translating is an entirely different process — it just requires more time, better context, and accuracy. I’ve learned that curators who have taken at least one ASL class or are currently taking lessons tend to communicate my ideas more effectively. But that isn’t always the case.
You both critique the nature of collections and the institutional history of museums. What would it mean for art institutions to invite everyone into their programming?
A good first step would be to not dismiss this goal as impossible right away. A second step: Let’s see some money.
You have discussed the life and soul crushing weight of the American debt economy. So many artists I know have flocked to NYC and LA in hopes of making it, and as a result have found that they must make decisions that violate their values, dreams, and needs. You also discuss the practical and political value of social currency. How do you see social currency as a tool for resistance and survival in these economies? Do you think there are ways artists can reclaim agency within these systems, or is compromise inevitable?
Since I haven’t lived in the US for a number of years now this question has become harder for me to answer. I don’t know what is applicable or effective anymore. But what I do know for sure is that we need to stick with our community and offer as much support as we can.
In your video for Pop-Up Magazine, Artist Christine Sun Kim Rewrites Closed Captions, you discuss what sound is made of and use the phrase sound of shampoo scent. As a filmmaker, it made me realise how uncritical and unconsidered my own approach to sound and its descriptions has been — perhaps even unpoetic. Do you think creativity is essential to accessibility?
Christine: Yes and no. Accessibility should be present at all times. I would rather get all the information first. Secondly, once we are past the point of having to “prove accessibility,” we can become poetic. Accessibility needs to come first, before creativity. So many video artists play with captions by using various illegible fonts, and frankly, it’s annoying, self-congratulatory, and still inaccessible.
At the same time as video has become ubiquitous in our lives, captioning, translation, and editing have begun to be handed over to AI models. What is lost when these tasks are automated?
Christine: I love that we are using AI effectively, but there is a question of taste and how one’s voice or aesthetic can easily be eroded by AI. AI still needs more direction, and I’m a huge believer in making things as efficient as possible. That’s where AI comes in for me.
Thomas: Christine likes to watch scary movies, but not by herself. Often times the subtitling related to what sort of mood is created by the soundtrack is really subpar and basic, something like “dramatic music increases”. This means the vibe interpretation is getting outsourced to me. So, I for one, am looking forward to super detailed AI generated subtitles.
Thomas, how has this changed your approach to pop culture icons?
AI hasn’t changed my approach to pop culture icons (yet). So far it mostly made storyboarding a whole lot easier.
Are there any materials or formats with which you are eager to work?
Thomas: I really love soft sculpture and textile works. I need to get back into it and I hope that we’ll be able to find more uses for it in our collaborative practice as well.
Christine: Ceramic! I am working on a new ceramic project with a friend’s help. My new sound installation will debut at my solo show at François Ghebaly Gallery in May.
Tell me about the Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf. What were the effects of these policy decisions? How do you approach this in 1880 THAT?
As soon as people implemented a “no sign language” policy, a great number of Deaf employees lost their jobs at Deaf schools. The ripples of that decision can still be seen today. It led to a decline in Deaf leadership within educational institutions, erosion of our Deaf culture, severe language deprivation, and greater stigma surrounding our deafness.
How does play feature into your practice?
Our collaborative practice feels more playful than our individual practices. It’s a place where we can try out things and be more silly. We didn’t become artists just to be serious all the time. It hopefully also helps to engage an audience that might not be super familiar with the things we are interested in.
