Eidolon
(2014)

With this film, TK Kim closes the cycle opened with "Chair de Peau". In this film, Valentin Tszin eulogizes the raw forces born of the very materiality of being, echoing the femininity and mysticism of Flavia Ghisalberti. In contrast to the logic of evolution and the journey through cathartic, redemptive pain, here it's a question of retaining the suffering and blinding confusion of an overflow of masculinity, of a body seemingly cut off from its soul, going round in circles in an almost infernal cycle where reason and conscience gradually disintegrate, leaving only the self-destructive instincts of the beast stalked by its own ghosts. Yes, something has gone wrong, or perhaps a little too wrong, to such an extent that the physical being follows in its erratic march the spirit in its wandering, lost in an atemporal loop endlessly repeating itself, whose downfall could be nothing more than the mummification of the soul nourished by and leading to the zombification of the body. Here, we might see the consequences of the ultimate denaturation of the individual, whether pushed into it or by himself, oscillating between the instinct to (over)live and the instinct to die, no longer knowing which way to turn. "Eidolon" could thus be seen as the alpha and omega of "Flesh of Skin", its original fall as its consequence, the reasons for rebirth and the stigma of destruction. In this way, TK Kim seems to be playing with us, as with herself, by plunging us into a simulacrum of oppositions, while so much allows us to consider it as a hidden S.T.E.P. 4, whose codes and secret we must unearth for ourselves, its author (herself) blurring the tracks and leading us on our own journey to finally find this ultimate key. And it's this very specificity that amply justifies the special place given to "Eidolon", so central is it to TK Kim's thinking, mutated for the occasion into a quasi-oniric Ariadne. So, if "Chair de Peau" finds its completeness with "Eidolon", "Eidolon" finds its depth with "Chair de Peau", the whole picture drawing us into an evocation, a research, even a little idea on these mysteries of individualities and own aspirations confronted with the globalizing and dehumanized logics of the (post-)modern world that TK Kim depicts for us, giving a contemporary depth to the subject, where each being seems to have no choice but to determine his or her own path in the face of radicalities that risk dragging him or her further and further away from him or herself, while at the same time drawing on the most ancient archetypes of our collective unconscious, from the myth of the fallen angels to the birth of Man.