About

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Starting December 1st, 2021, haegeum performer/composer Jeonghyeon Joo presents new work under the theme of The Art of Bowing every month until June 2022. Featured works include her solo compositions and collaborative works with composers, performers, and filmmakers based in Los Angeles and Seoul. Each of the six chapters will consist of an audiovisual piece, performance recording, or writing.

The Art of Bowing explores aesthetics and the world beyond the action of bowing, questioning what is beyond the body, sound, and movement of herself and her instrument. It first draws the aesthetic meaning of the bowing itself by putting a microscopic lens to the physicality of the haegeum and the performing body. It then captures the moment of connection and disconnection between them and expands its perspective to the environment and socio-cultural context surrounding the haegeum and body.

The Art of Bowing is made possible through the generous support from the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture.

Deepest thanks to dear collaborators; Sam Wells, Max Harper, Tim Feeney, Sangbin Patrick Rhie, Ulrich Krieger, and Yoona Kim. 

해금을 연주하며 가지게 된 질문을 비전통적인 음색과 형식으로 풀어내고 있는 해금연주가ᐧ작곡가 주정현의 신작 The Art of Bowing 시리즈가 2021년 12월부터 2022년 5월까지 매월 한 편씩 이곳에 최초 공개된다. 총 여섯 편의 프로젝트는 오디오비주얼 작업물 또는 연주 기록물, 음원, 작업 노트 등의 형태로 선보여질 예정이며, 주정현의 작품과 작곡가 Sam Wells, 이상빈, Ulrich Krieger, 타악기 연주가 Tim Feeney, 아쟁 연주가 김유나, 실험영상예술가 Max Harper 등과 협업하여 만든 작품으로 구성된다.

The Art of Bowing은 2020년 작품 연습-EXERCISE 의 연속 선상에서 해금을 연주(bowing)하는 행위와 그 너머의 지점을 탐구하는 작업이다. 연주자 자신을 비롯하여 해금을 둘러싼 환경과 사회적 배경, 악기를 연주하는 신체 내ᐧ외부를 현미경으로 들여다보듯 파헤치고, 각 지점이 만나고 연결되며 갈라지고 관계하는 순간을 소리와 이미지로 포착한다. 또한 육체적 에너지를 소모하여 말총을 줄에 마찰시켜 소리를 발생시키는 ‘활질’은 그 자체로 어떤 미학적 의미를 지니는지, 제2의 신체인 악기는 연주자의 신체와 어떤 순간에 연결되고 분리되는지 들여다본다.

The Art of Bowing은 서울문화재단 문래예술공장 음악ᐧ사운드아트분야 특화사업의 지원으로 제작되었다.

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Sam Wells is a Los Angeles-based trumpeter, composer, and improvisor who creates evocative and narrative multimedia performances.
Sam has performed throughout North America and Europe, as well as in China. He is a recipient of a 2016 Jerome Fund for New Music award, and his work, stringstrung, is the winner of the 2016 Miami International Guitar Festival Composition Competition. He has performed electroacoustic works for trumpet and presented his own music at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, Chosen Vale International Trumpet Seminar, Electronic Music Midwest, Electroacoustic Barn Dance, NYCEMF, N_SEME, and SEAMUS festivals. Sam and his music have also been featured by the Kansas City Electronic Music and Arts Alliance (KcEMA) and Fulcrum Point Discoveries. He has also been a guest artist/composer at universities throughout North America.

Sam is a member of Arcus Collective, Kludge, and SPLICE Ensemble. Sam has performed with Contemporaneous, Metropolis Ensemble, TILT Brass, the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, and the Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra. Samhas recorded on the Scarp Records, New Amsterdam/Nonesuch, New Focus Records, SEAMUS, and Ravello Recordings labels.

Sam is a DMA Candidate in the Performer-Composer program at the California Institute of the Arts. He has degrees in both performance and composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and graduate degrees in Trumpet Performance and Computer Music Composition at Indiana University. He is on faculty at SPLICE Institute, Molloy College, Temple University, and the California Institute of the Arts.

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Tim Feeney performs, composes, and improvises sounds in and for forests and grain silos, investigating unstable sound and duration. He appears in bookstores and basements with Sarah Hennies and Greg Stuart as the trio Meridian; in galleries and libraries with Vic Rawlings and Annie Lewandowski; in tunnels and train stops with Cody Putman and Cassia Streb as the trio Tasting Menu; in living rooms and warehouses with Clay Chaplin and Davy Sumner; in colleges and museums with Andrew Raffo Dewar, Holland Hopson, and Jane Cassidy; on recordings for Weighter, Intakt, Black Truffle, Rhizome.s, Caduc, Full Spectrum, Sedimental, and Marginal Frequency; and in the occasional festival or concert hall with Anthony Braxton and Ingrid Laubrock. He is a faculty member in percussion, improvisation, composition, and experimental sound practices at the California Institute of the Arts.

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I make musical stuff, currently studying computer music theory at the Graduate School of Korea National University of Arts.

My music has been "rarely" performed in South Korea and the United States. I have been interested in different sound materials’ characteristics, aura, and quality and trying to integrate them into the new systems and rules I create, usually derived from events or phenomena around me.      

I am an enthusiastic advocate of electr(on)ic instruments such as electric guitar or self-made synths. Another big interest of mine is DSP with pre-recorded audio samples. I enjoy making ambient sounds and often pay attention to other well-known composers’ music to quote their musical fragments.      

I think composing and performing music is a social activity. I concentrate on the social aspect of sonic events and try to highlight the social, cultural, political significance of music, sometimes twisting them to make humorous situations derived from musical materials’ extra-musical aura.      

I sometimes work as an audio programmer using purr data mainly (w/ MAX and Supercollider as supplements). I am now seeking paid work or a job... I need money to buy some bitcoin these days. In the meantime, I usually crawl into my bed and worry about my future. – Patrick Sangbin Rhie

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Max Harper (b. 1992) is an image maker from Los Angeles. His work is focused on death, labor, and the expenditure of one’s own body through art practice.

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Alex Buck (b. 1980) is a composer-performer based in California praised for his “sophistication and originality in his aesthetic goals” (Flo Menezes). His electronic pieces are “masterfully arranged” (Raul da Gama). He “knows how to fill a frame perfectly” (Betzy Bromberg), creating “a sonic world that both grips and invites, impossible to resist” (Vicki Ray). Buck belongs to a select group of musicians with their work acknowledged by his peers from both electroacoustic music and jazz realms. Originally from São Paulo (BR), Alex is considered one of the most innovative Brazilian drummers ofhis generation, with a unique approach towards the instrument.

As a composer, he has specialized in acousmatic music creation, and his pieces have been the recipient of significant international prizes and nominations, including the first prize on Prix Métamorphoses (BE 2020); first prize on MusicWorks Magazine Electronic Music Composition Contest (CA 2019); the first prize on Musica Nova Electroacoustic Music Competition (CR - 2019); finalist on Prix Russolo (IT - 2021), Prix Métamorphoses (BE - 2018), festival Matera/Intermedia (IT - 2018 and 2021), Exhibitronic Festival (FR - 2017), and MusiLab International Festival (FR & MX - 2016).

Alex is also a dedicative educator. He has taught at renowned institutions such as the EMESP Tom Jobim (BR), Colégio Oswald de Andrade (BR), and, more recently, at the California Institute of the Arts (USA) where he is currently a DMA Lecturer in the Performer-Composer program. He received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electroacoustic composition from UNESP (BR), where he studied with his mentor, composer Flo Menezes.


 

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Kyle Bates is a West Coast based audiovisual artist, musician, and writer. He actively creates and performs in the project Drowse and has produced a range of releases for The Flenser, Whited Sepulchre Records, The Native Sound, Glowing Window Recordings, Apneic Void, and Television. His video work has been described as “incredibly lush and dreamy,” while his audio work has been referred to as “the aural equivalent of blood rushing back to a sleeping limb.” Bates is focused on exploring sound in tangible spaces, the bipolar experience, and making personal internal worlds public through sonic metaphor and autofiction techniques; he is influenced by Roland Barthes’s practice of reading the self as text. He plays with themes of memory, shame, detachment, sleep, fear, and human connection. His practice has included sound and text based performance art, installations, film and video game scores, and various writings. Bates has presented and performed work at festivals, spaces, and galleries in Spain, Iceland, Mexico, Japan, and across the United States. He holds an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College and is currently pursuing a DMA at California Institute of the Arts.

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GIAHN is an interdisciplinary artist based in LA and South Korea.