The atmosphere of the Luth Concert Hall before Christine Sun Kim’s Deaf/Death was lively in ways new to me. It was quieter than any pre-show environment I’ve been in, usually filled with the quiet murmur of a crowd, occasional bursts of laughter, or an orchestra tuning up. The room was warm, not because of those familiar-to-me sounds, but in the expressions and laughter of audience members. These were peppered throughout the conversations in American Sign Language, the primary mode of communication in the theater. Members of the Worcester community and Holy Cross’ Deaf Studies program were gathered together, and even small interactions between ushers or requests to scooch down took place by signing. As a hearing person with limited knowledge of ASL, I simply sat back and watched. Yet the experience was like trying to eavesdrop in a new country– rather than picking up full conversations, I chose to observe and listen, not fully understanding what was happening around me.
Christine Sun Kim, a Korean-American artist, performer, and activist, works with an ASL interpreter who translates Kim’s presentation for the hearing audience. She quips during the presentation that Deaf people tend to be blunt, due to the structure of sign language, and her humor is infused throughout the presentation. She commands the concert hall. There is a delay in the room of laughter, of nods, beginning with those who understand ASL, as the hearing audience catches up with the interpreter. But the entire audience’s energy remains high from the moment she walks onstage.
She begins with a thesis: oral language is social currency in an ableist hearing society. It would seem that the proliferation of text in digital media would begin to close the gap, both through accessibility measures, and because digital media relies more heavily on text. Through a slideshow populated by pictures, videos, screenshots, and news articles, Kim builds a body of evidence. Oral language invades the digital world, particularly in the realm of autocorrect. Kim flips through various examples of the word “deaf” autocorrected to “death” or “dead.” Autocorrect is phonetically-based, already keeping hearing people at the front of mind. Technologies respond to potential typos by mimicking how hearing people attempt to spell words by sounding them out. The letters F and D are also next to each other on QWERTY keyboards, and clumsy fingers are not out of the question. But even speech-to-text technology corrects deaf to death. Digital text, technology that seeks accessibility, cannot conceive of discussions of deafness.
Rather than relying only on technology and spoken words, Kim’s work demonstrates that meaning can be communicated through symbols. Her mural in the window of the Cantor Art Gallery, Mind Touch Touch Touch, represents the repeated movement of a hand signing the ASL word for obsess. ASL makes etymology physical, often combining words to create deeper meaning. The sign for obsess combines the signs for mind and touch, moving one’s right middle finger from their temple down to the back of their left hand, and moving the hands in a bobbing motion. Kim’s mural represents this bobbing, or the motion from head to hand, in three black arcs on a white background. In the vast expanses of heavily-marked black drawing, white text reads touch. In the white gaps, black text reads mind. Like Deaf/Death, this mural finds a new way to symbolize the larger theme of obsession through its reference to signing. Kim often works with larger themes across several works until she feels she has said all there is to say on a topic. In an interview with The Amp in 2025, she noted that her series represent various answers to a single question. She explains, “For me, it’s very hard to feel like there’s only one answer to a question. That’s shown in my practice as well. I have one idea, one question, and then I have all these answers. All these answers create the serialization.”[1] In her time at Holy Cross, these questions have circled not just the experience of deafness, but wondering how the hearing world imposes meaning onto deaf experiences. Who holds the power to tell stories, and who has had that power stripped away from them?
The death of deafness isn’t just present in technology, Kim explains in her performance. She presents various examples across film and television of Deaf characters being killed off, often due to their deafness. Deaf people are victims, or occasionally obstacles. In Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 adaptation of Dune, the protagonists Paul and his mother Jessica have the ability to control others’ actions with a powerful voice. When they are trapped on a ship, a character they attempt to control appears impervious to the voice— the implication is that he is Deaf. They must work around this “obstacle” to meet their goal and escape. Beyond victims and obstacles, Deaf people might also use their deafness as an advantage in film, as in the Quiet Place franchise. Regardless of a character’s role, Kim notes that deafness often accompanies fear in the media. It is either something to fear, or something that fears. She signs, throughout the show, dead.
In our ableist society, Deaf people do have something to fear. Kim referenced the death of Cody Downey, a Deaf man in Kentucky who was shot by police earlier this year for not following instructions that he could not hear.[2] Beyond this literal death due to deafness, a cultural threat looms.
Accessible technology surely adapts the world around us to the needs of disabled people. Closed captions and ASL instruction in school are good for the Deaf community, but Kim includes a caveat. In the age of artificial intelligence, as the capability of technologies booms, it’s important to make sure they focus on visibility, not erasure. Accessible tech is good, Kim agrees, “but it sometimes gives hearing people an excuse to not think about us.” In a conversation after the show, Holy Cross Deaf Studies student Annie expands this point: a major component of Deaf advocacy focuses on policies and bills that are written by the people they affect. This thinking can and should apply to private companies.
There is a fine line between accessibility, accommodations, and extinction. While Kim notes onstage that she is not optimistic about what the state of the Deaf community will be in one hundred years, I sit up straight in my chair. Annie later elaborates for me. Accessible technology and inclusive education adapt a hearing society towards Deaf people. Medical intervention, such as eardrum reconstruction and in-utero genetic modification, adapt Deaf people to a hearing society and can veer into eugenics. A social approach to Deafness and disability, rather than a medical one, understands that people are only deemed disabled in inaccessible worlds. As Kim explained at the start of her show, oral language is social currency in our society. Deviation from this norm is what labels Deaf people as disabled, as other. The inability for supposedly accessible technologies to accept, or even expect, deafness as part of a larger society, signals a troubling future.
Kim does not present a perfect solution. It will require more minds, more collaboration. But her mural in the window of the Cantor shines a light of possibility. Communication can do more, can look like more than it does now. I continue to watch the audience members around me sign as we all file out of the theater. I understand little, but the expressive faces and charismatic storytelling around me are as warm as any hum of noise.
Endnotes
[1] Valentino, Samantha and Jordan Gardner. “Deaf man shot, killed by police couldn’t hear officers’ commands, family says.” WSHV 3. Gray Local Media, January 16th, 2026. https://www.whsv.com/2026/01/17/deaf-man-shot-killed-by-police-couldnt-hear-officers-commands-family-says/
[2] SeoHyung, Diana. “Christine Sun Kim on Motherhood, Rage, and the Future.” The Amp. Asian American Arts Alliance, April 8th, 2025. https://www.aaartsalliance.org/magazine/stories/interview-w-christine-sun-kim