Hermaphroditus’ Protrusion Mythology - Dreaming Club

Dreaming Club, directed by Dabal Kim, re-interprets traditional Korean clothes in a modern way by dismantling the frame of these clothes, applying unique formativeness, and modifying dichotomized compositions to represent an androgynous image of the main characters who appear on stage in this play. This performance raises questions about the original form of human beings and introduces a transcendent, integrated, alternative, and mythological space whose starting and ending points converge and who is not subordinate to anything, like the eternity symbol. It interprets the mythology of Hermaphroditus, which embodies the concept of androgyny, based on the language of time, location, identity, and the body. By disbanding dichotomous norms and investigating gender and identity from an integrated approach, it shows a narrative performance by performers mingling with art, clothes, and sculptures, reflecting the following themes: a bird that drinks tears; female warriors-a feast of flowers & female warriors wearing the mask of God ; a march of female warriors; the Four Heavenly Kings of Dreaming Club; Salmacis – the protrusion mythology; the warrior goddess; Dreaming Club – the stuffed flower; Dreaming Club – the goddess of masque; and the mask of God.
The mask of God was used to analyze mythology rooted in the relationships between the gods of the beginning and people from an archaeological perspective, and to examine the origins of life associated with thoughts on mythology. It is the most essential formative art concept for maximizing the influence of the theatrical elements installed by Kim.
The formative art based on the theme of the march of female warriors has a composition connected with The Splendid March, a painting created by Kim, and symbolizes an ecological world that endlessly performs escape, connection, division, and generation through thoughts and actions.

  • Dabal Kim
    Director
  • Dabal Kim
    Writer
  • Dabal Kim
    Producer
  • Gyeong-hwa Hong
    Key Cast
  • Ga-hyeon Kim
    Key Cast
  • Chae-min Kim
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    10 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    May 28, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    60,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Korea, Republic of
  • Country of Filming:
    Korea, Republic of
  • Language:
    Armenian
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital 4K
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Culturetank T1
    Seoul
    Korea, Republic of
    November 4, 2022
    Korean artists premiere
    official Selection
Director Biography - Dabal Kim

Dabal Kim
b. 1975
Pratt Institute, Communication Design M.S. New York

Current Profession: Visual artist
Visiting professor of painting at Yongin University

Dabal is an artist who was born and is currently based in Korea. After graduating from the Pratt Institute (M.S.), New York, Dabal participated in various art residency programs and projects worldwide including the United States, China, India, Mongolia, Costa Rica, Germany, Austria, Australia, Spain, Morocco and Norway. She has been active in art activities by planning workshops and art projects in various media such as painting, photography, motion graphic, performance, fashion, and installation.

Dabal has been actively engaged in art activities by planning art projects and desert projects. She was selected as the global eye project START.art platform by PCA and Saatchi Gallery in the UK in 2021, in addition to the selection of excellent exhibitions by Arts Council Korea in 2022,

In 2005, she published the book "Dreamtime Story; Tracing" and selected as Siggraph animation film U.S.A. in 2005. She has held 18 solo exhibitions including the Savina Museum of Contemporary Art (2019), SOMA Museum of Art Drawing Center (2012), Space-can Foundation (Beijing 798, 2012), POSCO Art Museum (2010).

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Director Statement

Dabal Kim's works feature a variety of genres and materials, but the artist herself takes her place as the main axis. There are very few works that reveal the artist's face itself, but many icons are an extension of the ego. In this respect, they fall under self-portrait. Even the landscape is no exception. Drawings, photos, videos, and objects containing landscapes leave traces of the artist in various ways. If the expansion of the subject becomes severe, it becomes fragmented and dismantled, but it is tied together through a dense form. This is a characteristic of the artist. Dabal Kim's representative form is thought to be drawing. Drawing based on surrealistic free association is transformed into animation, and installation. Drawing takes its place as a work within a work and often becomes another place of creation. The drawing by Dabal Kim is a process for creation and variation rather than an exact reproduction of something. This is related to subjectivity in the process. The recent exhibition at the Oil Tank Culture Park puts gender identity on the stage of experimentation on the boundaries of the subject. Strange costumes that imply male/female bisexual mythology are also often worn by the artist. The self-portrait mixed with various images of animals and plants, including red stockings and shoes known as the artist's trademark, asks about the boundaries of the subject.
In Dabal Kim's work, it is the numerous others that achieve the identity. For example, nature, animals and plants, monsters, ruins such as deserts or historic sites, and unknown old objects may at first glance seem like a collection of miscellaneous images without any unity, but all of them can be said to be various images of others outside the subject. The artist expresses herself loosely and freely while making a rhizomatic connection with them. This method is implemented by referring to shamanism, animism, mythology and religion as well as art history through the artist's various cultural experiences. Through this, Dabal Kim expresses not the dogmatic subject typical of modern times, but the mutual subject that is open like a festival through dialogic imagination. Purity is nothing but the ideology of modernism. Dabal Kim actively utilizes modern means such as photography and video, but the ultimate vision is toward the pre-modern or post-modern. Quasi-archaeological images emphasized in the history of disconnection are the inner landscape of the artist and form a unique aura. The world of an artist named Dabal Kim shows that modernism is overcome through embodied language, not through any creed or ideology.