Ho Bin Kim ’19
Writer and Visual Artist
Hometown: Grew up in Japan, Korea, and the US
Major: Global China Studies, Minors: Computer Science and Finance
From studying Global China Studies and minoring in Computer Science and Finance as an undergraduate to becoming a writer and visual artist, Ho Bin Kim’s creative journey took off while a student at NYU Shanghai. Kim has six manuscripts under his belt, both fiction and non-fiction, and is represented by a British literary agent. Kim is also exploring other creative mediums, including visual and performance art installations. Last year he joined G.MAP Korea’s Media Arts Program as Artist-in-Residence and this year he is in Shanghai for the Swatch Art Peace Hotel Artist Residency.
Kim at an exhibition of his work at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai
What type of writing do you do?
Some are very autobiographical, such as me writing about writing. So it's very much in the style of postmodern writing. Some other works are set in a fictional town with fictional characters. But overall, my novels are a little bit philosophical and ask questions like, what is the meaning behind life? What's the purpose of us working so hard to achieve something that we know that we'll never get? That's the definition of absurdism, which is in the branch of essentialism. So absurdism is basically us striving for a dream that we know we will never reach – kind of like a myth of Sisyphus – that you keep rolling the stone up on the mountain, even though we know that the rock is going to fall anyway.
Was it easy to become a writer and get signed with a literary agent?
I had been reading a lot throughout my whole life ever since I was little, but I never thought that I could become a writer because growing up, I never read books by authors who looked like me. They were all traditionally white male authors that are currently living or were very old or had already passed away.
But I had been writing on my personal blog for a couple of years in high school and in the height of college. During my time at NYU Shanghai, I was sending my manuscript to literary agencies, but I got rejected left and right. Then, one day I got an email back from one of the agencies that was way out of my league and had signed with a lot of authors that I really looked up to. So the fact that this agent took a couple of seconds to read my manuscript assured me that maybe my writing is not as bad as I thought. I didn’t get signed right away. It took a year to go back and forth. I had to rewrite my manuscript, and then one day, they said, “let's have a call.” And I've been signed with them ever since.
Kim presenting at the Xian Jiaotong Liverpool University in Suzhou for a Student Government Conference with other Chinese university student government leaders in 2017
Studying Global China Studies, Finance, and Computer Science doesn’t seem like a straight trajectory to a career in writing. How did your time at NYU Shanghai influence your writing career?
All the faculty members I had, as well as my peer classmates, everyone played a key role. Steve Jobs said it well: “You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” But when I was studying at NYU Shanghai, I didn't really know at the time how everything I experienced would influence me to become a writer.
Kim performing as an Orientation Ambassador during Orientation Week in 2016
What has your career in writing taught you?
Writing can be quite a scary thing, because although I write every day and there's an excitement to writing every day, there's some sort of fear, too, because I am not sure where I’m going to go with that. I think the best writing is honest writing. If you want to do honest writing, you have to dig deeper into your consciousness. You have to open doors that you don't want to open. It's scary to open that door and keep asking some questions to yourself. Sometimes you're going to find out something, some piece of information, which may contradict everything you’ve believed in so far. And sometimes, that new piece of information can make you feel like everything that defines you is gone. So then, you have to start fresh. Writing is constantly digging deeper and pushing boundaries and limits.
What advice would you give to your younger self or NYU Shanghai students who want to pursue a creative career?
"Try everything, don't be afraid of failure.” I think it's a fear that stops us from knowing what we want to do and what we don't want to do, right? You only get to really know more about yourself by getting lost. It's also a contradiction, right? In order to find yourself, you first need to get lost. You have to give yourself a chance to fail because it's only in a bubble like college that it's okay for you to try many things and fail. But once you graduate, there's so many more societal expectations that you have to abide by. And it's much harder to go against the current, although you still can. So don't be afraid of trying new things, because there are so many things that we don't know, and we don't know what we don't like unless we try all these different things.
What’s next?
I see myself continuing to engage in artist residency programs around the world while writing, exhibiting, and just living life. Youth is a privilege I will not let go to waste; therefore, I will take advantage of all the merits it provides such as being healthy to travel and work without needing too much to sustain life.
As an artist who heavily depends on artist residencies and grants to make a living, I have no idea where I will be even next year. But at this stage in life, I would be more afraid if I could clearly see the path I’m walking on and the destination I’m heading to. I hope that in the distant future, I will continue to write and create what I want, where I want, and when I want.