(11/29/2013) Creative Colloquium Blog
An evening featuring a three-part performance of three Korean artists. Based on the announcement, the overall program of the evening was directed by Hangjun Lee, an experimental film maker.
In the first part, a performance piece for an actor and a projector was shown. The actor was film critic Yoo Un-seoung: He read a text composed of quotations of other texts, related to the medium of film itself, while the projector showing an empty white screen was being manipulated by Hangjun Lee. This piece was good in setting the atmosphere and making everyone attentive and listening.
In part two, Hangjun Lee and Hankil Ryu played together: Hangjun Lee used film projectors to create sound, while Hankil Ryu used his enhanced typewriter. In this section, I was mostly curious about Hankil Ryu’s typewriter performance, because that has become quite well known in certain experimental music circles. Unfortunately in the duo with Hangjun Lee, whose sounds were quite loud (amplified), the nuances of Hankil Ryu’s typewriter performance did not have enough space to unfold. The beauty of the typewriter performance are the different levels of sound produced – the not so loud clicking of the keys on one side, and the amplified reaction of the connected drum apparatus on the other side. In the noise produced by Hangjun Lee, these subtle differences got completely lost.
In the third part of the performance, Hangjun Lee and Hankil Ryu supposedly exchanged positions – now Hangjun Lee became the central actor, and Hankil Ryu supported him. Hangjun Lee’s pulling of magnetic tapes through film projectors now could unfold in its whole breadth – a both sonically and visually spectacular performance. Hankil Ryu left his typewriter and moved over to his computer, simply providing a quasi-rhytmic electronic background to Hangjun Lee’s performance. I enjoyed this section as it allowed to fully understand Hangjun Lee’s intentions. The electronic background provided by Hankil Ryu was almost superfluous.
Overall, it was a great evening. I would wish for at least a short Hankil Ryu solo performance to make it even better, but even as it was each performer added something special to it – a great combination of talents.