Ayoung Kim: Delivery Dancer's Sphere
Seoul becomes a labyrinth of regenerating delivery routes in this enigmatic video work, where drivers pursue endless work controlled by a master algorithm.
Ernst Mo (an anagram of ‘Monster’) is a female delivery rider who works for Delivery Dancer, a fictional delivery platform in Seoul, South Korea. In this work, the Dancers (drivers) pursue never-ending delivery work under the control of a master algorithm called Dancemaster.
Continually pushed to optimise and complete deliveries at an ever-increasing rate, Ghost Dancers, the most advanced drivers, take unknown routes around the city to meet the demands of their workload.
They move beyond usual possibilities of space and time, travelling in ways that are not physically possible. On these deliveries, Ernst Mo’s path keeps crossing with another mysterious rider who challenges her ideas of time and labour, prompting her to question if another reality is possible.
Delivery Dancer’s Sphere explores alienation and the gamification of work through the gig economy and platform labour (work facilitated through apps and websites), which both exploded during the pandemic in South Korea.
In a society obsessed with productivity and the optimisation of labour, time and the body, Kim’s work asks what might happen when these things begin to unravel, and whether we can imagine a world beyond it.
Ayoung Kim is a Seoul-based artist who works with video, virtual reality, sound and text. Her work has been exhibited around the world, including at Tate Modern, the 56th Venice Biennale and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.
Creative Intelligence is commissioned and produced by the Southbank Centre. Curated with PACT – Planetary Art Culture Technology.
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