빙빙: Being Being

빙빙: Being Being: 氷 is a multimedia performance project in collaboration with TOPOS, a South Korean media production company, collective A, a dance company, WYSIWYG Studios, a South Korean media art studio, and Suk-Jun Kim, a sound artist. Funded by Korea Content Content Agency, 빙빙: Being Being: 氷 was premiered on November 24-25, 2022 at Stage 66, Seoul, South Korea. Suk-Jun Kim composed a third-order ambisonic composition for the 22-minute long performance, which combines anamorphic multidimensional display with live dance performance. The subsequent version of the performance (titled VORTEX) was also exhibited at True Digital Park in Taipei, Thailand, as part of "THE GATE IMMERSIVE THEATER" exhibition, between December 15, 2022 and March 15, 2023. [More performances have been made, I think, which I will provide when I find more about them…]
On the outset, the project is a play on layers of homophones – that is, words in one language sounding the same but pointing to different meaning in other languages, and more interestingly, this link between these homophonic words somehow reveals something about the materiality and ontology of a thing. The Korean word 빙빙 describes a circling, spinning or meandering pattern of someone or something or a state of someone who feels dizzy. Its pronunciation is very close to the word Being Being in English. Furthermore, 빙 taken as the pronunciation of a Chinese character is 氷, which means an ice.
In the development stage of the project, Kim worked closely with Collective A and WYSIWYG to focus on two key elements that the project aimed to explore: first, the project examines the cross-modal and transversal materiality of water from its liquidity to vapor or to ice; and second, as it follows such a flow of the materialistic transition of water, it aims to question its ontology and our epistemological vertigo as we experience it.