What is Alice’s Fate?
(2024-2025)
In collaboration with Scarlett Kim & Jenny JY Kim
2024-2025
Multi-channel desktop performance
Funding has been made possible by The Puffin Foundation
If Alice’s Fate (2024-2025) is the digital glossary for the expansion of Ryu’s research into Alice Hyun (1903-1956?), the first Korean American born in Hawaii and the first Korean American to gain US citizenship through birth, What is Alice’s Fate? (2025) is the acknowledgement of the futility of knowing the fate of Alice Hyun. Even with the historical traces that Alice has left behind in her family archives, military documents, and immigration records, there are many questions unanswered in her life. What is Alice’s Fate? (2025) does not try to answer any of these questions but becomes a starting point for contemporary Korean diasporic femme artists to translate Alice Hyun’s life and archive into inspiration for the socio-politics of the present.
What is Alice’s Fate? (2025) is video and performance collaboration between director & artist Scarlett Kim; producer & translator Jenny JY Kim; and C. Ryu. Ryu invited the artists to read Jung Byung-Joon’s biography of Alice Hyun, and over a span of months, the three creatives engaged in conversation around translation and visibility, investigating how being seen can often transmute into a trap, living in a world so dedicated to monetizing and consuming identity.
What is Alice’s Fate? (2025) is a multi-channel desktop performance where the three scholars engage in rhizomatic conversation around Alice while following internet worm holes | rabbit holes around Hyun including Alice Hyun articles written in English and Korean, Alice in Wonderland inspired music videos, mudang (shaman) Instagram reels, conversations with AI as Alice Hyun, and pulling oracle cards channeling the spirit of Hyun.
The timer in the desktop performance video was set to 31 minutes, a nod to the March 1st Movement in 1919 during the Japanese Occupation era of Korea, which radicalized and politicized Alice Hyun and continues to inspire diaspora members across the world today.
-
Jenny (Jon Young) Kim is currently based in Seoul, South Korea. After graduating from Princeton University with a degree in Comparative Literature, she worked as a theatrical producer, lighting and sound designer, translator in various capacities including Apple TV+’s Dr. Brain as the writer’s room translator, and exhibition research assistant for the 2022 V&A exhibit Hallyu! The Korean Wave. Jenny strives to highlight stories of displacement and cultural interaction and is currently working on a script about Korean women studying abroad in the early 20th century.
김전영은 2020년에 프린스턴 대학교에서 비교문학과 전공, 연극, 뮤지컬, 동아시아학 부전공으로 졸업한 후, 현재까지 20개 넘는 공연에 조명, 음향, 무대 디자이너로 참여했으며, 대학 졸업 작품으로는 김은성 작, 정다영 역의 현대극 <목란언니> 영어 초연의 프로듀싱, 무대·조명 디자인과 드라마투르그 역할을 맡았다. 그 외, 애플TV 한국 첫 오리지널 ‘닥터 브레인’의 작가방 번역가를 비롯하여 번역가로도 활동했으며 영국 빅토리아 앤 앨버트 박물관의 2022 한류! 더 코리안 웨이브 전시의 큐레이션팀으로 참여했다.
-
Scarlett Kim is a creative producer, director and artist innovating the intersection of live performance and immersive technology.
A polymath, Scarlett creates participatory experiences that reimagine liveness, embodiment, and agency—drawing upon theatre, XR, game and ritual. An international arts leader, Scarlettchampions artists across sectors and disciplines, powered by subversive artistic vision and entrepreneurial strategy.Currently: Scarlett is Co-Founder/Executive Creative Producer of Center for Unclassifiable Technologies & Experiences (C.U.T.E.); Head of Innovation with Culture House Immersive; Fellow in Royal Shakespeare Company’s inaugural Interdisciplinary Fellowship cohort; Visiting Artist with Stanford Arts; and Co-Founder of Independent XR Distribution Coalition in partnership with MIT Open Doc Lab.
Recently: Scarlett co-founded/produced Worlds in Play (ASU MIX Center); produced the 10th anniversary edition of Live Arts Exchange [LAX] Festival (Los Angeles Performance Practice) with partners including REDCAT, MOCA, and LA Dance Project; collaborated with Chloé Zhao and Book of Shadows; and participated in the 2024 Disney Live Entertainment: Creative Intensive.
Previously, as Director of Innovation & Strategy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Scarlett led the transmedia department of the largest repertory theater in the US. Scarlett co-founded and served as Artistic Director of The Mortuary, performance laboratory for unclassifiable experiments. At CultureHub, global art and technology community founded by La MaMa and SeoulArts, Scarlett oversaw artistic programming of the LA studio.
Other highlights of Scarlett’s 10+ year journey as an artist and arts leader include collaborations with REDCAT, East West Players, Prague Quadrennial, Z Space, Korea Foundation, Creative Australia, Chilean National Council of Culture & Arts, Thomas Mann House/Goethe-Institut, and BOLD Theater Women’s Leadership Circle.
Scarlett’s innovation leadership has been featured at cross-industry platforms including The Immersive Immersive (Keynote Speaker, 2023), LDI (Co-host, XLIVE), SXSW, SIGGRAPH, AWE, USITT, The Immersive Experience Institute.
MFA, Directing, CalArts. BA, Theatre & Performance Studies and Visual Arts, University of Chicago.