Author Information
Issei Wake, Wenzhou Business College, ChinaSooyeon Kim, Wenzhou Business College, China
Abstract
This paper investigates how Korean artist Sooyeon Kim's multimedia practice reveals new modalities of environmental memory formation through material agency and heterochronic temporalities. By analyzing Kim's distinctive techniques—enamel layering, extinct wood printing, and botanical preservation installations—we demonstrate how organic and mineral materials function as active co-agents in memory inscription, challenging anthropocentric approaches to remembrance and historical understanding. Drawing on material ecocriticism and affect theory, we theorize “heterochronic assemblages” as artistic configurations where biological, geological, and human temporalities converge through material processes. Kim's use of Jeju Island botanical specimens, mineral pigments, and chemical solutions creates what we term “botanical memory assemblages”—complex networks that enable more-than-human forms of environmental remembrance. Through collaborative methodology integrating close material analysis with embodied critic-artist encounters, we reveal how Kim's works generate affective, atmospheric responses that exceed purely aesthetic categories. Our findings contribute to memory studies by demonstrating how materiality mediates historical experience across multiple temporal scales, particularly relevant for addressing environmental crisis in the Anthropocene. Kim's practice illustrates how artistic materials—from enamel's geological histories to wood's organic temporalities—participate in memory's construction and transmission. This study advocates for expanded, collaborative research paradigms in environmental humanities that attend to material and non-human agency in cultural memory formation, offering new methodological approaches for interdisciplinary scholarship addressing ecological and temporal multiplicity.
Paper Information
Conference: ACAH2025Stream: Arts - Arts Theory and Criticism
This paper is part of the ACAH2025 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Wake I., & Kim S. (2025) Material Witnesses: Environmental Memory and Nonhuman Agency in the Works of Sooyeon Kim ISSN: 2186-229X – The Asian Conference on Arts & Humanities 2025 Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 341-357) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-229X.2025.27
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-229X.2025.27
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