Behind the Scenes Installation of A String of Echo Traps

Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night is now open! In works full of sharp wit and incisive commentary, Christine Sun Kim (b. 1980, Orange County, California) engages sound and the complexities of communication in its various modes. Using musical notation, infographics, and language—both in her native American Sign Language (ASL) and written English—she has produced drawings, videos, sculptures, and installations that often explore non-auditory, political dimensions of sound. In many works, Kim draws directly on the spatial dynamism of ASL, translating it into graphic form. By emphasizing images, the body, and physical space, she upends the societal assumption that spoken languages are superior to those that are signed. 

This exhibition surveys Kim’s entire artistic output to date and features works ranging from early 2010s performance documentation to her recent site-responsive mural, Ghost(ed) Notes (2024), re-created across multiple walls on the eighth floor. Inspired by similarly named works made throughout her career, the exhibition’s title, All Day All Night, points to the vitality Kim brings to her artmaking; she is relentlessly experimental, productive, and dedicated to sharing her Deaf lived experiences with others. 

Christine Sun Kim’s collaborator on this work, A String of Echo Traps, Matt Karmil, wrote a sound description for this composition. The sound is based around noise and some harmonically pleasing content, the far away stars are represented by crackles which have a very quick delay / reverb applied to them, giving a feeling of being in a tube. Each echo from the stars is articulated with a pluck / strike which also echoes, when the stars fill the screen the intensity of the sounds in terms of brightness and volume increases until it is all white and white noise accompanies it. There is a low rumble and crackle present when there are only small stars on the screen - these are both pushed out the way and fading when the screen turns white. '

This exhibition is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. The organizing curators are Jennie Goldstein, Jennifer Rubio Associate Curator of the Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art; Pavel Pyś, Curator of Visual Arts and Collections Strategy, Walker Art Center; and Tom Finkelpearl, independent curator; with Rose Pallone, Curatorial Assistant, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Brandon Eng, Curatorial Assistant, Walker Art Center.