Lifting Barbells

Kim Heecheon’s Lifting Barbells is a response to his father’s fatal bicycle accident on a street in Seoul, South Korea. Kim traces data collected on his father’s smart watch to reconstruct his last moments. Then, through letters to his girlfriend and images of Seoul, the artist narrates the complexity he faces—navigating the difficulty of his loss, being disaffected by society’s failures, and weighing the impact of technology on his daily life. Lifting Barbells is Kim’s first video in a trilogy that questions new technology and arbitrary distinctions between the “real” and “virtual” worlds we inhabit.