Songs From Knee To Chin-A
Project by Sora Kim is
a prologue to the special exhibition that will celebrate the 30th anniversary
of the MMCA Gwacheon as well as a sound performance project by Sora Kim that is
being held for the first time in the newly refurbished Gallery 1 space of the
museum. Eight musicians who are active both at home and abroad take part as
collaborators in this exhibition where the space consists of only non-material
"sound" and visual images are excluded. The participating musicians
are Byungki Hwang, Taehwan Kang, Soojung Kae, Minhee Park, Junseok Bang,
Kyungho Sohn, Taehyun Choi, and Alfred Harth. This exhibition enables viewers
to feel waves and stream of sounds as they flow from ten speakers and spread
throughout the empty space of the venue with every fiber of their being,
opening up a new dimension of experience and thought on sound, body, and space.
Sora Kim (1965~) is one of
the representative Korean conceptual artists who has been making forays into
open interpretations of humans and surroundings through video, sound,
installation and performance based on entering into a relationship and the
process of communication. Kim has composed that
also acts as a sort of guideline for the eight musicians’
performances. Kim has asked them to make “songs that
enter through the knees and leave through the chin,”
entailing sound that passes through the body without any plan or purpose. To
the artist, sound consists of air, the atmosphere, and the universe which
passes through his or her body, and making a sound is not only a cosmic event
but also a spiritual realm one can reach in an extremely physical manner.
The eight musicians have
sought after the sound of existence through their different performances using
the gayageum, saxophone, piano, jeongga, electric guitar, drums,
and electronic music in response to Kim’s score. The eight original sounds produced in this manner were then
combined into a single piece by music director Younggyu Jang through his
post-production work. A sound work created through this complex production
process (text score to sound performance to post production) is thought of as
an interesting outcome of collective creation through a collaboration system
between a contemporary artist and musicians.
In this exhibition viewers
are able to experience space in a new way through the medium of invisible
sounds in a venue where all free standing walls have been removed. At times
viewers may have a tactile or physical perception of a resonating sound while
at others mixed sounds, moving beyond their aural experience. Kim pursues the
possibility of various changes and open interpretations through freely crossing
nonverbal sounds in lieu of any logical continuity. For this reason viewers are
able to generate their own narratives in this space of sound.