Classified Digits
GOETHE-INSTITUT X SOMERSET HOUSE STUDIOS RESIDENCY 2023

Classified Digits sees Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader translate a series of day-to-day social encounters into American Sign Language. By using the arm game, a popular kids game in the US, they explore the pitfalls of miscommunication. They each enact just one part of the conversation, with Kim using non-manual signs to give inflection and context to Mader’s manual signs. The artists introduce an avatar, represented by the index finger, into a series of increasingly awkward and often ridiculous situations. 

The video work Classified Digits (5:27 minutes, single-channel video, no audio) is being shown in the Goethe-Institut's library until 20 May 2023, Christine Sun Kim's exhibtion Edges of Sign Language is on view at Gallery 31, Somerset House until 21 May 2023.
 

Since 2013, Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader have collaborated on a shared practice addressing the complexities of communication in a variety of formats. Their projects include recording an overnight shipment from Berlin to New York (Recording Contract, 2013), compiling 24 hours of invited contributors’ studio time (Busy Day, 2014), using the arm game, a combination of body and face, in order to describe a series of awkward social situations (Classified Digits, 2016), and animating signs that show the power of decision-making (Palm Reader, 2020). Selected group exhibitions include: Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo; Galerie Crone, Vienna; Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne; Times Art Center, Berlin; Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2018 they had their first solo exhibition at Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York.

Christine Sun Kim was born in Orange County, USA, in 1980 and lives in Berlin. She uses the medium of sound in performance and drawing to investigate her relationship with spoken languages and the aural environment.

Thomas Mader was born in the South of Germany in 1984 and lives in Berlin. He is a research based artist who works with themes related to national identity, storytelling and communication.