Kyueun Kim

My research explores global Asian performance, contemporary art, and Asian spirituality, with a focus on digital methodologies. I examine how emerging technologies—particularly VR and immersive media—redefine embodied experience in theatre and performance and reshape approaches to performance historiography. My current research unfolds across three main strands: a) a monograph on technology, spirituality, and embodiment in contemporary Asian performance; b) an edited volume on archipelagic inter-Asian theatre histories and digital methods; and c) a collaborative and practice-led research into immersive media and cultural heritage. While contemporary performance remains a key anchor, my work increasingly moves toward historical performance networks, as well as forward into designing methodologies for future performance archives. As I pursue this direction, I ask: How might theatre and performance theory and practice, alongside Asian cultural frameworks, shape how we understand and engage emerging technologies, historical memory, and the future of archives?

Recent Publication:  “VR’s Wild Hope?: The Asian Century and VR Art” (Verge: Studies in Global Asias, University of Minnesota Press, Fall 2025).

In-Progress (2025-2026):

• Article, “Choreographies of Confinement: A Conversation wit Ho Tzu Nyen on VR, the Kyoto School, and the Ethics of Voice” (TDR: The Drama Review)
• Article, “Dancing with the Ghosts of Butoh: Speculative Replaying in Choy Ka Fai’s UnBearable Darkness” (Performance Research)
• Book Chapter, “Void Theatres of Virtual Reality: Embodied Disjunction and Perceptual Thresholds in Seo Hyun-suk’s X (Indifferent Spectacle)” (Mediated Horizons: Technology in East Asian Theatre and Performance, University of Michigan Press)

→ View my CV here for a full overview of my publication record and upcoming work.

Collaborative Projects

I also engage in projects that foreground collaboration as a long-form practice of shared thinking, making, and learning. Many of these are academic-creative in nature: co-curated working groups, artist interview series, and performance-centered curatorial collaborations. I am particularly drawn to projects that invite continued return, rethinking, and refinement over time. These collaborations reflect my commitment to research that fosters cross-cultural dialogue, embraces interdisciplinary exchanges, and cultivates new modes of cultural and scholarly exchange across theatre, performance, media, and Asian studies.

Inter-View: Dialogues on Sensing the Virtual Reality

[Left] Photo with Ho Tzu Nyen at the artist’s studio in Singapore [Right] Virtual selfie with Hayoun Kwon as 3D avatars in a VR gallery 

VR often promises to offer a unique and individualized experience, similar to immersive theatre. To move beyond this frame, I am conducting interviews with artists to gain an intersubjective understanding of VR performance. Here, the inter-view is a methodology to “see between” and “see each other” across layers of experience both in physical and virtual realms. As I navigate the evolving VR technology and its possibilities (and limitations) in performance, I propose these interviews as duets in academic discourse.

I conducted an interview with South Korean artist Kwon Hayoun in a virtual museum I created using a social VR platform. Meeting as virtual avatars, we discussed topics related to what I call VR dramaturgy, from designing physical and virtual spaces, understanding technical affordances and limitations of VR technology, to choreographing movements for both performers and audience especially in the context of Kwon’s participatory VR performance, XXth Attempt Towards the Potential of Magic. The full interview is published in Critical Stages (December 2024).

The second interview is with Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen. We discuss the dramaturgy of ghostly voices in his participatory VR work Voice of Void, as well as VR as a medium to address complex histories and unresolved tensions in Asia. The full interview, titled “Choreographies of Confinement,” will be published in TDR: The Drama Review.

Performance & VR Research Group

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). We are joined in subsequent years by Prof. Laura Hyunjhee Kim (UT Dallas) in 2023, Prof. Walter Byongsok Chon (Ithaca College) in 2024, and Prof. Peter Eckersall (The Graduate Center, CUNY) in 2025 as co-conveners. 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 functions as an ongoing, sustainable platform for critical exchange and is developing an edited volume or special journal issue on performance and virtual reality. As reflected in the theme of each year, we are interested in exploring the intersection of VR, performance, and the concept of the “wild.” Expand the details below for each year’s conference themes and include a brief summary of the corresponding calls for papers.

Degenerative Times and Generative Places (2025) – Denver | Virtual Session

In times of crisis, can virtual reality (VR) and immersive media navigate the terrains of trauma, history, and collective memory? There is a need to critique the market-driven, “sleek” fantasy of VR. Our group will rethink VR technology through multiple modalities that address the complexities of times and places, inviting capacious frameworks from diverse fields such as religion, healthcare, migration studies, militarism, and beyond. Among the questions we will field together are: What are generative elements in VR, how do they emerge, and what processes shape their development? What elements are refused, left behind, or allowed to decay in the process of creation? How might these acts of degeneration inform or critique the generative processes they accompany? Rather than viewing generative and degenerative as opposing dichotomies, we invite research into how generation and degeneration might coexist and shape each other. Participants may approach VR through a critique of the industry and technology; historical and philosophical perspectives on “virtual reality”; or a specific VR case study ranging from video games and music videos to dance, media art, medical applications, pornography, pedagogy, and religious practices.

Curating Cross Cultural Dialogues on Queerness, Spirituality, and Contemporary Art

I am a curator of a Collaborative Artistic Research Project supported by the Canada-Korea Connections Fund the Canada Council for the Arts, with [M] Dudeck (Canada | Italy) and Dew Kim (South Korea). We have also been selected for the Canada-Korea Co-Creation Fund 2024. Both [M] Dudeck and Dew Kim’s visual art and performance practices revolve around the themes of queerness, spirituality, and religion. We explore the convergence of queer spiritual practices in the age of advanced technology, as well as a cross-cultural discussion on cultural negotiations involved in queering artistic practices. As a collective, we forge our path, crafting narratives and frameworks vibrant with techno-mediatic contemporaneity, yet always oriented towards a more equitable, and joyful future. As part of the project, [M] Dudeck visited Seoul for two weeks in Fall 2023, and the three of us engaged in a series of tours, dialogues, and meetings with cultural producers in Korea.

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