Performance and Virtual reality (VR) Working Group (2022-2024)
In 2022, I co-founded and co-organized the inaugural Performance and Virtual Reality (VR) Working Group at the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) with Dr. Katherine Mezur (UC Berkley). Prof. Laura Hyunjhee Kim (UT Dallas) and Prof. Walter Byongsok Chon (Ithaca College) joined us as co-conveners in 2023 and 2024, respectively. We curated the working group as a laboratory to foster discussions about virtual/ immersive technologies, theatre, and performance. We sought experimental and daring research and practices from scholar-artists delving into the potential of VR as well as the possibilities of theatrical and performative interventions into current VR discourses. The group will be an ongoing and sustainable platform for idea sharing with the goal of producing an edited volume or online journal on the theme of performance and VR. As reflected in the theme of each year, we are interested in exploring the intersection of VR and the concept of the “wild”—”Wild Sensorium” (2022), “Wild Hope” (2023), and “Wild Times and Wilderness” (2024).
Virtual Wilderness: Immersive Performances and Technologies in Wild Times (2024) – Seattle, USA | Virtual Session: In our 3rd year of Performance and Virtual Reality (VR) Working Session, we invite you to think with us about VR and immersive technologies and their (im)possible connections to wilderness. How can wilderness challenge virtual worlding? Is there a VR wilderness? Wilderness often conjures inhospitable, dangerous, even mystical terrains of wild human and non-human living things. It also symbolizes uncharted territories: unexploited, timeless, awe-inspiring. However, wilderness is as much about external landscapes as it is about the unexplored territories of our collective and individual consciousness. We invite you to experiment with virtual reality and wilderness across all these messy layers of meaning and beyond. Further, we envision VR and immersive technology as a type of wilderness in itself, a potential realm of danger, harm, and overwhelm. For the complete rationale, please visit: https://www.astr.org/page/24_working_sessions#vws06
VR’s Wild Hope (2023) – Rhode Island, USA | Virtual Session: Wild is a collective interaction with possibilities anchored and unanchored. It takes us to imaginaries that disconnect with real, live, and presence, a different unknown. What does “VR’s wild” do to hope? What does hope/lessness demand of VR? How do simulated realities, even if bound to an individual’s experience within the confines of the virtual, provoke empathy and human and non-human connections? For the complete rationale, please visit: https://www.astr.org/page/23_working_sessions#ws27
Catastrophe’s Bodies and Wild Sensorium (2022) – New Orleans, USA: The inaugural Performance and VR Working Group will explore different arenas of VR as technological and artistic medium and examine how VR allows us to rethink the paradigms of here/there, self/others, and physical/virtual bodies through distant and intimate encounters with catastrophes. How does VR crack our corporeal “hearts” and shatter sense-making into inexhaustible layers of wild sensations? How does the virtual materialize experience? If catastrophe performs undoing and disordering, does VR have the potential to transform us into “wild things” (Jack Halberstam)? How do artists and creators employ VR systems to reimagine, rebuild, and rethink possible worlds in the aftermath/futures of disasters, like the pandemic, climate disasters, terror attacks, and wars? For the complete rationale, please visit: https://www.astr.org/page/22_WorkingSessions#ip5
Screening Performance, Performing Screens (2019)
I was a co-organizer of the Doctoral Theatre Students’ Association (DTSA)‘s annual conference “Screening Performance, Performing Screens” with my colleagues at The Graduate Center, CUNY. The conference was a forum to reflect on the many collisions of theatre, performance, film, and other audiovisual media in scholarly, artistic, pedagogical, or performance-as-research works that engage with and challenge meanings of “screens“. The conference invited participants to think with the word “screen” both as noun and verb with three main questions:
- How can historical conceptualizations of screens help us broaden the concept beyond the context of new media and interactive technologies?
- How has engagement with and on screens expanded or reshaped production and distribution of art and knowledge?
- In what ways have reception(s), spectatorship(s), and the discourses of marginalization been molded by screens?
The conference featured papers, presentations, performances, and other forms of knowledge production by emerging scholars across the US (and beyond), with a keynote speech by Professor Sarah Bay-Cheng (USA) at the James Gallery, an evening performance by Edda Sickinger (Germany) at Segal Theatre in New York City, and all-day screenings. Check the conference archive page to access the full program, information about the participants, and more. Also, check Howlround Theatre Commons.
About the DTSA: Doctoral Theatre Students’ Association (DTSA) is the recognized program student association for the Ph.D. Program in Theatre and Performance at the Graduate Center, CUNY. We are one of the largest graduate programs with a student body of diverse interests and backgrounds, and support each other on research, pedagogy, and artistic endeavors.
Kyueun Kim 