Ep3: Reality Sandwich: Memories of a Brush

Title: Ep.3 Reality Sandwich: Memories of a Brush (2024)
Runtime: 13:00
Director: Ho Bin Kim
Starring: Juan Olivares
Music: Kimchi Cowboys


Synopsis

Reality Sandwich is an ongoing, place-responsive, subaltern video series that unfolds through performative encounters with artists across diverse geographies. Inspired by absurdist gestures and relational practices, each episode begins with a single question—“What does a Reality Sandwich mean to you?”—and evolves through unscripted, daylong collaborations with local practitioners. Filmed in cities such as New York, Gwangju, Shanghai, Bacolod, Seoul, Rotterdam, Jogja, Kawasaki, and Riyadh the series resists conventional documentary structure, favoring instead a poetics of slowness, improvisation, and affective entanglement.

While both attending the Swatch Art Peace Hotel artist residency in Shanghai, novelist and filmmaker Ho Bin Kim collaborates with painter Juan Olivares to create a performance video exploring Juan's interpretation of a "Reality Sandwich”: Memories of a Brush. 

In the video, Ho Bin and Juan are seen at a restaurant eating noodles. Ho Bin asks Juan what a "Reality Sandwich" is. Juan responds by taking him to an art supply store where he often shops, and they obtain a rope. They return to their hotel, where a brush Juan recently used appears to try escaping the building on its own. Juan catches the brush, ties the rope to its end, and drags it along the streets of Shanghai by attaching the other end of the rope to his waist. The performance concludes with Juan releasing the brush by attaching it to the back of a car.