‹Off Tours› is a series that relocates the experience of group tours, where you get on a bus, visit local monuments and cultures and meet other tourists, to the form of website tour. Its first work ‹Off Tours I› was presented in 2022 at Ob/Scene Festival. This year, ‹Off Tours II: Toward the Light and the Village Beyond› takes ‘internet community’ as the place for travel.
In this trip, the tourists would spend 9 nights on the website. They drop by one internet community each night to explore the culture that has originated from it. The work is not simply tourism of internet communities but a trip to trace the overall evolutionary process of these cultures, how a community space is created on the internet and thinking generated, which comes to influence the reality. What we confront in this trip is how we, as the Indian intellectual Pankaj Mishra describes, are “involved in everyday violence and plunder occurring in all forms and deeply indifferent and insensitive to the tragic sufferings” in this age of anger.
Concept·Direction: Kim Jisun
Research: Kim Jisun, Kang Yoonzee
Unity Development: Kwon Ojun
Technical Direction: Kim Jimmy
Tour Program Execution: Kang Yoonzee
English Translation: Kang Yoonzin
Performance Documentation Video: Something New Studio
Supported by Seoul Metropolitan City, Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture & Institute for Culture and Arts, Seoul National University
Set-up Assistants: Kim Yeonsu, Seo Jiyeon, Won Jisu, Choi Eonyeong
Kim Jisun has been developing an open form of performative projects, which raises an objection to institutionalized actions or designated spaces in the global environment. From subtle interventions in politically symbolic ocassions such as election campaigns of Seoul mayoral candidates, G20 Summit and Gwanghwamun Square, to serious contemplation on the (im)possibility of revolution in the virtual space of computer games, she moves between reality and imagination, creating works where sarcastic play and critical acuteness unstabilize each other. While boldly embracing new technologies including robotics and AI as well as internet and games, she doesn’t recycle them as materials for a spectacle but rather creates a critical distance towards system, offering sharp insight on the conditions of digital culture. She builds an original artistic world that is not captured by existing genres and forms.