“MeMe – I see. Ah!” is about the moment in which ANYthing becomes SOMEthing and again something ELSE. When do we think as spectators that we understood something (I see. Ah!)? When does this kind of understanding manifests itself in a fixed notion, a clichéd image of the (yet still unknown) Other and its “traditional” performing arts? When does our gaze even claim the seen as general knowledge about the Other (Asia!)? What kind of gap exists between the seen (I see. Ah!) and the claimed (Asia!)?

This stream of questions came up when Hyunsin, initially trained in Western Contemporary Dance and Theatre, started to learn Traditional Korean Dance, a dance form which builds a different body on stage than its Western Counterpart, familiar to her. However, Traditional Korean Dance is still similar in the aspect of constructing a specific type of homogeneous body through yearlong training. In “MeMe – I see. Ah!” Hyunsin trains in different movement techniques and embodies “specific, physical features” from Asia. When does a movement arrive in an image we think we know and when comes the fleeting moment when it escapes into something uncategorizable, a heterogeneous mutant from its initial image?

Olivia Hyunsin Kim works as a choreographer and performer in Berlin. She studied Choreography at Falmouth University (Dartington College of Arts) and the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies Gießen/HfMDK Frankfurt. Her interest lies in memory and its influence in identity construction. She likes to play within the realm of the visible/invisible and reality/fiction. Her latest production “she came, she saw, she said: meme”, the first part of the MeMe Series, had its premiere at Tanztage Berlin 2016 in Sophiensæle.