Kim Heecheon explores worlds that remain undefined in reality through his video works. By using cutting-edge technology itself to express the ironies that individuals face in a technologically advanced environment, his work has garnered significant attention, particularly for its exploration of contemporary human life and forms of existence. His sixth solo exhibition titled <Studies> is currently being held at the Atelier Hermès, following his acquisition of the 20th Hermès Foundation Missulsang award. This new work, which faithfully follows the grammar of horror films, is set against the backdrop of a high school wrestling team. Through its setting in which students mysteriously disappear despite technological advances as well as the sensory disconnect and confusion caused by a teacher struggling with depression and attempting to erase his own existence, the work raises questions about the possibility of complete disappearance and captures an existential crisis. I met Kim at the wrestling gym which served as the starting point for the work.
After winning the 20th Hermès Foundation Missulsang, you visited Paris at the invitation of the Foundation D’entreprise Hermès. How did that experience influence this work?
Initially, I wanted to see the fashion shows. Paris Fashion Week draws a huge crowd, and influencers post tons of content. I thought that seeing it in person might naturally connect to my artistic interests. However, I found the museums I visited between the fashion shows to be more impressive. At the Musée Rodin, I viewed a special exhibition of sculptor Antony Gormley as well as Rodin’s permanent exhibition, and I found their study models particularly interesting because the study models revealed more about the artists’ thoughts and processes in completing their work. When I was studying architecture at university, I made a lot of study models as well. In architecture, we discover issues through site research and then propose various game-like solutions, thinking, “It would be more interesting if the city operated this way.” And based on those proposals, we create shapes. I remember that this study process was more enjoyable than the actual work. At the museum, I thought, “Would it be more fun if I could approach art the same way?” That thought led me to consider “study” as a theme for my work.
Through your new work, <Studies>, you introduced a work taking the form of a drama film for the first time.
I thought that to truly “study,” I needed to try something I hadn’t done before, in terms of form. I usually start by thinking that I need to see certain situations or images with my own eyes, and then I take a camera or phone and go out to film it, which helps me concretize the work. For example, <Deep in the Forking Tanks> (2019) started with the idea that I had to try underwater photography like divers. If I don’t actually try shooting, I’m limited to the images I’ve created in my mind. When the given time isn’t infinite and a deadline approaches, I sometimes change direction and dive deep into a subject instead of covering more ground. But for this work, I wanted to take the opposite approach. I thought that a drama film form would be the best way to achieve that.
<Studies> is a horror film that follows the inner turmoil of Chanjong, a high school wrestling coach who has decided to take his own life, as his wrestling team students start disappearing one by one. How did you come up with the idea of an opponent vanishing during a wrestling match?
I once asked ChatGPT to write five horror movie scenarios related to wrestling, and one of the ideas involved players disappearing. Although the ideas were largely conventional, this one made me think about what happens to the remaining opponents when other players disappear. Nowadays there’s a lot of talk about young people avoiding challenges and giving up easily, so I wondered what would happen if a student who’d been on the path of an elite athlete suddenly started to give up during a match. But as an adult, the idea of assuming that high school students would give up matches like that felt a bit uncomfortable. I thought, “Why should I create an image suggesting they would give up when it’s not something that’s actually happening?” While discussing this with fellow artists, someone mentioned a real-life incident where something similar happened. During the KBS National Athletics Meeting in 2020, in the high school girls’ 1,600-meter relay final, one athlete was so far ahead that the rest of the competitors withdrew from the race, and her team ran alone. To be precise, only two out of the five original teams actually competed, and the other team gave up in less than a minute, despite at first thinking they could at least secure second place. This means that the first-place runners completed the race alone. This story struck me as both absurd and strange. There were comments saying that this incident occurred because the athletes misunderstood track and field as a competitive sport when it is actually a sport that measures personal records—a competition against oneself. However, wrestling is indeed a competitive sport. Thus, I thought it would be interesting to apply the concept of players disappearing, particularly not by their choice but due to some mystery, to wrestling students. I wanted to focus on what happens to the remaining people, though I’m not sure I fully developed that in the narrative.
You’ve mentioned that with the ability to concretely visualize images, it’s harder for horror films to be as terrifying as they once were. It seems like you must have put a lot of thought into how to visually represent what is felt as the disappearance, shadows, or sometimes the outline of the missing in the film.
Surprisingly that wasn’t a difficult process because I didn’t define exactly what it was. I aimed to give just enough hints using the visual clichés of horror films. It’s something that’s essential but not necessarily frightening just because it’s there. The students have disappeared, and the mother of one of the students comes to the coach, Chanjong, saying that her son’s opponents have disappeared and now her son is gone too. But the coach doesn’t know who this missing student is or if the student even exists, and he continues to feel like he’s seeing this student. In fact, however, the other students are the ones who have disappeared. I wanted the overall atmosphere of the film and the fact that the students disappeared to be what was truly frightening.
The protagonist is haunted by auditory hallucinations, which continually provoke the audience. In some scenes, sound is heard without any accompanying visuals. While listening to the sound with my eyes closed in such scenes, I felt like I was disappearing and being drawn toward it for an instant. That experience made me even more aware of my presence here, heightening my sense of being in the moment.
There are differences in scale and budget, and art and film operate in fundamentally different ways; therefore, I approached this project with diverse compositions from the beginning. I wondered, “If horror films don’t work as well in environments where things are highly visualized, what if I make things extremely invisible?” For example, there’s a sound of the coach suffering that’s very faintly layered in the background. So-called highlight scenes appear first through sound, and they repeat; I wanted the character to be aware of this repetition and feel fear because of it. When the audience also notices this repetition, they will anticipate that the sounds they heard will eventually be visualized. Through this device, I aimed to spark the audience’s curiosity about what the visualizations would look like, creating a time lag between the scenes. However, I reduced these scenes quite a bit because they started to feel somewhat childish. Still, most horror films start with sound—when you hear a “thud,” you wonder what it is, and that’s how it begins. I wanted to maximize that idea where, after a barrage of sounds, the character slowly uncovers their sources. Since the audience can also experience this through sound, it can become a shared experience.
The statement “If my voice comes first, I hear it as myself” seems to originate from this concept.
Yes, I found this idea fascinating. When you hear a sound in a hallway, you have to follow it to find out exactly where it’s coming from and what it is. But just because you follow it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll hear the sound again. If you don’t know the source of a sound, the sense of fear lingers. I thought that the sound comes first, and, once you identify its source, it can disappear. As the character states, things that can’t be explained in their life are hard to make disappear. But if someone who wants to disappear and is gradually erasing large parts of their life—thinking that many things around them will eventually disappear—hears such sounds, and if that person doesn’t want to identify their sources, then they could meet with a real dilemma.
In the film, there’s a striking scene where not just bodies disappear, but where a wrestler continues to wrestle with only his head remaining. The body often represents a space where one is forced to confront the reality that “I cannot escape myself.” What aspect of the body intrigues you in your work?
Lately, I’ve lost a lot of interest in myself. The technological environment now handles so much for me, and it’s incredibly compelling. I used to enjoy “digging” for music, but now I hardly know what that means anymore. I used to have a strong desire to find and listen to things that others didn’t know about, but these days it feels like everything is out in the open. Technology has built a very safe perimeter around my life. As a result, I no longer really know what I like. I think I just like what Spotify recommends to me now [laughs]. I still get recommendations from friends with good taste, though. I feel like I know myself completely, but saying that I know myself well feels really arrogant and dangerous, doesn’t it? How can anyone truly know themselves? It feels more accurate to say that I’ve been convinced of the version of myself that technology has identified. The same goes for time. In the past, my memories were abstract and sometimes inaccurate, but now every moment is captured in photos, and Google Maps even tells me where I’ve been. I’ve lost the desire to reorganize my memories, and it feels like the future will be shaped by the data I’m currently inputting. The only thing that seems not to be confined to these situations is the physical body. Maybe it’s because I’m extremely uncoordinated, but when I’m trying to do a certain movement that someone tells me to perform, I often hear that I’m not doing it correctly, and then I have no idea what my body is actually doing. Reflecting on this made me curious about how elite athletes, who are constantly reviewing their bodies for their sports, experience this. That’s why I’ve done several works related to the body. One example is the VR project titled Ghost (2021), which focused on powerlifters. Typically when someone works out, they look in the mirror, which makes them comfortable. However, the angle of their head changes because they’re looking at the mirror, which can lead to poor posture. To avoid this, athletes often find a specific angle where they can observe their posture correctly, film it from that angle, review it, and then film it again in an iterative process. That’s why there are often no mirrors in spaces where heavy lifting is done. I was interested in how the experience of seeing one’s body on video differs from the actual sensation of one’s body. More specifically, I’ve been focusing on the importance of the hands.
Why the hands?
Hands are involved in so much of what we do. Last year, I participated in an exhibition titled Game Society, and, as part of my research, I read Heidi Rae Cooley’s paper “It’s All about the Fit” (2004). The paper suggests that, while taking out a phone is often a habit, sometimes we do it because of the feeling of something fitting perfectly in our hands. It argues that when we manipulate our phones, we may be doing so because the devices make us interact with them through our hands. I also read an essay written by artist Kang Jungsuck, which mentioned that all apps are designed to make us input something. Phones need input to shape our lives. Sometimes I find myself opening an app without even realizing it, only to put my phone away because there’s nothing to do. During those moments, it feels like the device created a “fit” that tangibly connects my hand to the machine, almost as if it called me to interact with it. These ideas made me more interested in hands.
You mentioned that you came to use wrestling as a subject naturally because you practice it yourself.
I’ve always wanted to learn Olympic sports because I think that they have long-established systems to explore. I once took up judo because I liked the blue uniform, and later a friend of mine mentioned he was learning wrestling, so I decided to join him. Wrestling is a sport where you wear simple athletic gear that Americans might typically wear instead of a uniform like judo, but the wrestling shoes caught my eye—they’re beautiful, kind of like boots but shorter than boxing shoes. I wanted to buy wrestling shoes, so I thought, “This makes sense; let’s do this sport.”
That’s a good reason. I heard you shot a lot of scenes that didn’t make the final cut. Was there a particular scene you struggled with whether to include or not?
There’s a scene where the actor Lee Chanjong, who plays the coach, is sitting in the referee’s seat in front of a wrestling mat, leaning his head back as if he’s resting. In the scene, his long hair and shining face make him look beautiful, albeit a bit ghostly, while on the mat one student is desperately trying to defeat his opponent. I really wanted to make good use of this scene, but I couldn’t find the right place for it, so it ended up being cut. That’s something I regret.
What criteria do you follow when editing and arranging your work?
I usually start with the first scene and the title. Once I create and place the title, it begins to feel like a completed work, giving me the energy to keep going. However, this time, the first scene was hard to figure out, which was really frustrating. I even started shooting from the middle of the work, instead of the first scene. Normally, I arrange the scenes to some extent and edit them based on the rhythm of the visuals, but this time I had to prioritize conveying the narrative, which made it challenging. I roughly arranged the scenes so that the story could be followed and then went back to add details in between. In drama films, each scene needs to convey information, and structuring it that way was more challenging than I expected. I had to shoot each shot from beginning to end and then connect them, which made the filming process take a lot longer than anticipated. Some scenes that I thought would be quick took several hours to shoot. It was fun trying a new method, but it wasn’t exactly efficient.
Your usual work tends to dismantle existing orders, whereas film follows long-established conventions. Therefore, I imagine it must have been challenging for you to adhere to those rules. Is that why you said almost everything was a failure?
[Laughs.] I didn’t even realize that’s how it would be…. It was tough. I kind of expected things not to go as planned, though.
Have you ever thought about whether there’s a direction your work naturally gravitates toward, regardless of your intentions or methods?
I generally try to avoid heading toward a predetermined outcome. There was a time when I seriously worried about people not understanding my work. I thought, “Is this meaningful if others don’t understand my work? I’m talking about the technological environment, but some people seem not to be as interested in it as I am.” However, contrary to these worries, my work often received favorable reviews—sometimes even more than I expected. There must have been something interesting about it. But the interpretations and critiques often missed the point of what I was trying to convey. I struggled with how to overcome that. Over time, the things I tried to communicate through my work actually began to manifest in society, making some of my work easier for people to understand. In this regard, I think my works are attempts to explain things that haven’t yet been fully identified—whether in terms of content, form, or method. This seems to be the only consistent direction in my work.
In my view, when a work is interpreted differently from the artist’s original intention it can open up new possibilities for the piece, and the creator might find such situations intriguing.
As everyone says, I also think that once a piece of work is released, it’s no longer solely mine. Of course it can be interpreted differently, but when people seem to completely misunderstand the work it can be frustrating because I feel it’s my fault for not delivering the meaning clearly enough through the work. This leads me to think, “Maybe I’m not good at explaining the technological environment in a new society, but rather just creating interesting work. That’s a talent and a good thing in its own right, but, if that’s the case, should I focus more on amplifying that? But actually, I don’t want to do that. Then what should I do?” What I want to do is to create work that allows people to indirectly experience or contemplate things that have no names because there aren’t words for them, and thus it makes me sad when people try to interpret my work based on something that they have already read elsewhere. People often mention “virtual” versus “real” to explain my works, but I believe I’ve been creating pieces that can’t be explained solely through that lens since 2018. Honestly, I feel like I only understand about 60 percent of what I’m creating; the rest happens without me fully realizing it. Looking back later and realizing, “Wow, that was really good” or “That was a bit childish,” are part of the joy of being a creator.
