Ayoung Kim's 'Dancer In The Mirror Field' Commissioned by M+ and Powerhouse

Dancer in the Mirror Field, commissioned by M+ and Powerhouse, will premiere on M+’s iconic Facade overlooking Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour in October before its showcase at Powerhouse Parramatta next year. The work continues Kim's ongoing engagement with narrative world-building and speculative futures, expanding her richly layered digital universe, now rendered at an impressive scale on one of the largest media facades in the world.

For this commission, M+ and Powerhouse have digitised objects from their collections to appear in the work not simply as artefacts, but as portals and protagonists. Reimagined through Kim’s lens, these objects open up new ways of engaging with the collections: boundaries between fiction, urban space, past and present.

Inspired in part by the choreography of classic Hong Kong action movies like Jackie Chan’s Police Story, as well as Peter Chung’s cult sci-fi 90s anime series Æon Flux, Dancer in the Mirror Field is the latest in the Delivery Dancer universe.

The film follows three versions of the protagonist Ernst Mo (an anagram for monster). Drivers for the Delivery Dancer platform, the three versions find themselves summoned to a colossal mall complex, where they race through the imagined Hong-Kong inspired cityscape to compete for the title of Dancer of the Year.

Dancer in the Mirror Field blends speculative fiction with rigorous research, mythology, and cues from video games and cinema. Using techniques such as CGI, game engines, motion capture and AI imagery, it explore themes of geopolitics, labour, memory and the entanglements of technology.

Building on the narrative and visual complexity of previous instalments within the Delivery Dancer universe, this commission continues Ayoung Kim’s nuanced investigations into navigation systems and optimisation technologies — first conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the precarity of gig workers could no longer be ignored.

Like its predecessors, Dancer in the Mirror Field examines the cultural fixation on efficiency and the demands placed on bodies within technological and economic systems.

In Dancer in the Mirror Field, the Ernst Mos step into a dreamlike and anachronistic world where past and future blur. The first scene sees them enter an arena inspired by 20th-century Asian shopping centres, Baroque cathedrals and fantasy realms, moving under the watchful eyes of four mythic guardians – the Azure Dragon, Black Turtle, White Tiger, and Vermilion Bird – and in the shadows of toy cars and bikes from the Powerhouse Collection, suspended overhead.

One of the largest objects that has been digitised and folded into the world of the film is ‘The Maiden of Abundance’, a large-scale glass mosaic by Public Art Squad, leaders in Australia’s community mural movement in the early 1970s.

Led by David Humphries, the mosaic was originally commissioned for Sydney’s Skygarden shopping mall in the CBD and features intricate glasswork – produced in both Venice and Melbourne – across the floor, archways and atrium centrepiece. The figure of the maiden pouring water, inspired by the Greek goddess Circe, a skilled sorceress, continues Kim’s ongoing explorations into classic lore as a key component of her practice.

Currently on display at Powerhouse Castle Hill and standing almost 10 metres tall, ‘The Maiden of Abundance’ was documented by the digitisation team using a combination of cameras and post-production techniques. The mosaic is so large that the documentation required a scissor lift to ensure a seamless integration across the five floors of the virtual world.

The digitisation process for smaller objects utilised various methods, including scanning the selected objects with a handheld 3D-scanner. In essence, a series of images were taken from 360 degrees to generate a detailed point cloud. These were then placed around the world of Dancer in the Mirror Field, preserving texture and depth while maintaining an uncanny, ethereal quality.

Some of the most intricate objects used in the film include a brass sundial from 1744 and a steam hammer clock from the 1860s. Timepieces are a recurring theme in the Delivery Dancer universe, symbolising time as the currency of the neoliberal capitalist era.

These historical artifacts and emblems of industrialisation are seamlessly integrated into the virtual world alongside contemporary technologies of control and governance, such as smart beacons and GPS trackers.

Dancer in the Mirror Field also features a range of 2D objects from the collection: a series of mass-produced posters and flyers with references to commercial products. Many of the included posters are drawn from the 1990s, and originally were designed to promote dance parties in Sydney, Australia. Showcasing a range of graphic styles, these visual materials were used to create a futuristic space that looks backwards and forwards at the very same time.

Another key object from the Collection used in the film is a colourful concept board for a wall of death, a motorcycle stunt, with artwork created by the Australian design firm Althouse & Geiger. Produced some time in the 1920s, the object has come to life through the animation process, transcending time and genre.

This sense of collapsing time is central to Dancer in the Mirror Field. Like many of Kim’s other works, the film is inspired by the sci-fi genre, weaving together imagined and real worlds — this time drawing from museum collections and urban landscapes. By incorporating digitised objects from the M+ and Powerhouse collections, the work recontextualises the past rather than merely reproducing it — looking backward and forward at the same time.