Do you often incorporate family stories in your work?

I did in a roundabout way in this piece, Distance, but generally using stories has not been a practice in my work. With Distance, I was interested in the gap between generations and between cultures, especially those of immigrant families, using language as the measure. In a sense, Distance's vocabulary is comprised of the mistranslations from one generation to another, and from one culture to another: my mother's Korean and my English. The resulting translation isn't gibberish or frustrated stutters from constant misunderstandings, but a play within the two languages as we talk about everyday issues and about living in the United States. This isn't crafted dialogue as it sounds it was recorded within an hour's time and generally is something common among immigrant families in countries where one's "first" language concedes rank (in varying degrees) to the "second" language. Often times, my mother speaks in Korean and I answer back in English.

How did the idea for your piece for Finding Family Stories begin?

I liked fortune cookie "fortunes" because they were so optimistic and confident. "Bad fortunes" were merely funny so I liked the idea of amassing a fortune of fortunes, an inevitably empty fortune of empty words. In contrast to this "emptiness," there is a secondary text within the "fortunes" that point again to translation: my reversal of these optimistic, confident wishes into applications in everyday life. For example, a fortune reading "There will always be delightful mysteries in your life" would become "Throw out stuff hidden in closets" or "The best laid plans. . . ." But they would be combined together so that these "translations" wouldn't be neatly matched with their originating fortunes, thus creating a mix of optimistic "affirmations" with practical reminders of daily functions.

By choosing to portray family stories in your work, you bring something private to the public. What do you hope to achieve?

I think with this piece I'm actually showing something "public" (to the public) in guise of "private." In the videotape, what I find most interesting is the way things are communicated. I'm not referring to "body language" or grammar, but to other telling things that become as important as the information being conveyed: the switching of language, the avoidance of questions, the repetition of answers. All of these contribute to a dialogue, the understanding of a point, a telling of a (family) story. In a sense this piece is about the "finding" or "telling" as much as the stories found. There is a sense of intimacy in the work because a central image is a medium-shot of a dialogue between two people in profile. This "private" image takes the distinctions between public vs. private, language vs. communication, and confuses the borders between them making them ambivalent and at the same time informing both.

Soo Jin Kim is interested in the sense of dislocation and loss associated with, on the one hand, nomadic cultural identities; and on the other, translation, while working beyond the lament (nostalgia for homeland, secure genre boundaries). Kim received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in the school of Art, Critical Writing, and Film/Video. She has exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Oakland Museum of Art, the Temporary Contemporary, Arliington Museum of Art, Contemporary Arts Forum, the California Museum of Photography, American Cinemateque, and other sites. She has beem published in Art and Design, London, Framework, Los Angeles, and has edited an anthology of criticism, fiction, and poetry entitled, Things That Quicken the Heart.