The Lives of Deltas x Overexposed Residency: Minji Kim

Minji Kim, also known as Unknown Kim, is a researcher and sound artist based in The Hague and Seoul. She is a founder of the eco-acoustic sound artist initiative Acoustic Territories and a member of the artist duo Qoo-Teq. Kim’s practice investigates the relationship between human-designed infrastructure and coastal spaces, asking how sound and music might contribute to a better ecological environment.

From 20 April to 20 May 2023, Kim will expand her research into ecological sound as part of the Lives of Deltas, a collaborative study programme between Utrecht University’s Centre for Global Challenges and the University of Hong Kong. During this time she will develop a research log of the course’s findings, and work on creative projects alongside researchers and MA students in Utrecht. Together they will discuss texts, present their artistic practice and join in conversations on the central ecological and infrastructural themes explored within the study programme (land, water, waste, work, city, technology, senses, ….). Her own creative project in the context of the residency takes inspiration from the Zand Motor, an experimental anti-erosion pump-dredging system built on the southern coast of The Netherlands. Kim will develop a site-specific instrument in response to the Zand Motor’s mechanisms, creating a medium that can reveal the acoustic quality of these coastal infrastructures in real-time.
The Lives of Deltas x Overexposed is a residency programme structured around the theme of Pollution/Pollination. The programme considers the rich array of life roaming the coastlines and deltas. At the delta, the power of industrialisation, digitalisation, food precarity, sea level rise, volatile weather conditions and other consequences of global warming, can be felt like nowhere else. Formed by an array of powers (geological, meteorological, humanistic), these ‘critical zones’ – as Bruno Latour would call them – reveal differences, but also unexpected similarities.
The artist will participate in The Lives of Deltas study programme at the Utrecht University – in seminars, where they will discuss (academic) texts; present their artistic practice to attending students, tutors and scientists; and join in conversations on the central ecological and infrastructural themes explored within the programme, “Nature-scapes: Technology and life in the Netherlands”. The artist-in-residence is expected to keep a weekly ‘research log’, documenting the programme in a medium of their choosing. The results of this log will appear in the periodic magazine Ecoes and feature in Sonic Acts’ media channels.