Asia
Wong Kit Yi
A River in the Freezer
2017
A River in the Freezer, 2017 (Still)
Artist Wong Kit Yi’s A River in the Freezer combines directed and found footage to meditate upon glacial memory, cryogenics, and frozen fiction. She synthesizes disparate subjects—ranging from Longyearbyen, Norway (a town where no one is allowed to die), the fair-haired manga character Cygnus Hyoga, 19th-century global trading in ice, and color wavelength theory, among others—within a karaoke-inspired sing-along format.
Wong Kit Yi's conceptual and performance-based work animates human interactions by measuring, locating, and quantifying the intangible. Her work lies at the intersection of playful speculation and research. In her signature karaoke-lecture-performances and video work, she moves fluidly between the voices of academia, memoir, philosophy, and pop song, aggregating content from her research. She probes questions about the parameters of time, context, and the dysfunctional relationship between science and what is often classified as pseudoscience.