In Six Types of Waiting in Berlin, Christine Sun Kim’s drawings provide a fascinating constellation of cultural and sensorial experiences with time. Originally from the United States, the artist shares her account of how time (and waiting) is measured differently according to the cities in which she has lived, with each place having its own advantages and drawbacks. While each environment in which one must tediously wait—an immigration office, the health insurance office, the doctor’s office, the bank, an art supplies shop, and the grocery store—is familiar, the subtext of the drawings is how the artist’s relationship with time is also measured by her style of communication. Kim uses American Sign Language and asks questions in a written form using an iPhone on a daily basis as she goes about her chores. “Crip time” is thus also punctuated by the pauses in writing/scrawling questions, in reading, and the creativity involved in ad-lib responding between deaf and non-deaf sensorial modalities.
Six Types of Waiting in Berlin, 2017
Christine Sun Kim was born in California in 1980 and is now based in Berlin. Kim has built an acclaimed practice around sound, its visual representations and its circulation as social currency. Kim uses performance, video, drawing, writing, and technology to reflect on her experiences as part of the Deaf community and to comment on the social and political operations of sound. A keen observer of language, Kim employs American Sign Language, music notation, televisual captioning, and other systems of visual communication in a wide-ranging practice that address the intricacies of social exchange and the power of representation with illuminating wit and candor.
Amanda Cachia (www.amandacachia.com) is an independent curator and critic from Sydney, Australia. She received her PhD in art history, theory and criticism from the University of California San Diego in 2017. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art; curatorial studies and activism; exhibition design and access; decolonizing the museum; and the politics of disability in visual culture. Cachia has curated approximately forty exhibitions, many of which contain social justice themes and content, including Performing Crip Time: Bodies in Deliberate Motion (2014).
Christine Sun Kim, Amanda Cachia; Six Types of Waiting in Berlin, 2017. South Atlantic Quarterly 1 April 2021; 120 (2): 279–283. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-8915980
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