Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader
Classified Digits, 2016
Single channel video, 5 min 28 sec
Edition 3 of 3, 2AP
Courtesy of the Artist, François Ghebaly, Los Angeles and White Space, Beijing.

For the past decade, Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader have been collaborating on artworks that call attention to the subtleties, oddities, and pitfalls of language and communication. In a 2020 interview, Kim noted that as an artist she often needed to couch unfunny emotions in humor if she wanted to ensure that her message made a lasting impact on her audience. “I am worried about the future of my community,” she explained, “so I became more and more explicit with my rage and exhaustion. Soft approaches often don’t work, and I want to make something that stays in the back of people’s heads. Humor is a tool I use to engage people faster in person, and I see that it shows up in my practice.”
(DKS)

Cited:
Parkes, Isabel, “ASL IRL: Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader Interviewed by Isabel Parkes,” November 27, 2020, BOMB Magazine, bombmagazine.org

About the Work
In this collaborative video made with the conceptual artist Thomas Mader, Christine Sun Kim utilizes the unique grammatical structure of American Sign Language to represent complicated social interactions. In ASL, a raised index finger can stand for a person (and multiple fingers for a group), which, in combination with the intricacies of facial expression, can efficiently convey complex situations such as tripping while trying to avoid an ex, Skyping with a spotty internet connection, and judging another person’s groceries in the checkout line. The video humorously pairs Mader’s gestures with Kim’s facial expression, emphasizing the basis of cooperation on which all communication is built.