Please note: there is a strict seating policy for this performance. Latecomers will not be admitted under any circumstances. The duration of the performance is sixty minutes. There will be no intermission.

Directed by Sung Hwan Kim
With dogr and Byungjun Kwon

The performance at the New Museum is a variation of Sung Hwan Kim’s In the room 3 (dog I knew) with new sets and props. The performance opens with an excerpt from Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry and proceeds in a roundabout way to tell a story about being inside the very shape of this circuitous path.

Sung Hwan Kim’s “In the room” series is told through text, film/video, and music (in collaboration with dogr, a.k.a David Michael DiGregorio). The music itself is made with layered voice, ocarina, delay, a sampling keyboard, harmonica, kazoo, pump organ, guitar, mallets, stretched membranous materials, jae-gum (Korean cymbals), and pang-eul (Korean bells). Thickly layered vocal harmonies interweave themselves with other parts of the narrative; a vocalist might turn into a character in the storytelling process, just as the story might turn into music.

In the Sung Hwan Kim’s own words:

“I thought of a room as a box, from which a story vibrates, and I began to think about the constant occupants of rooms. ‘In the room’ series focused on captives (the tortured), an actress on stand-by for her secret lover, a dog, a radio host, a traveler in a city, and so forth as the room occupants (and vibrators of the hidden boxes). I knew that male humpback whales of one population in a breeding season sing the same song, but each time this song is sung, it varies through imitation and improvisation. I thought of both performances and stories within those performances as versions of variations. Plain phenomena are no more exciting than they are, but they are often told otherwise (through exaggeration, deletion, intonation, rhythm, texture of voice, and usage of timbre) as fairy tales, myths, magic, lies, propaganda, history, or sometimes, fact. Summer Days in Keijo, Dog video, and From the Commanding Heights... spun off from this series. Most of the songs from the ‘In the room’ series are published separately as dogr's album, In Korean Wilds and Villages. In this form, I recognize that the authorship of these stories is conferred to another medium, another language, another culture, and another man.”

Please note: there is an additional performance of Sung Hwan Kim’s One from In the Room on November 19 at 7:00 PM.

This production is commissioned by Hyunjin Kim, and supported by Arts Council Korea (ARKO) and Korean Cultural Service, New York.

Sung Hwan Kim grew up in Korea and is currently based in New York. Previously, he lived and worked in the Netherlands over a period of four years, during which time he served as a fellow at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten. In the Netherlands and Korea, he developed the “In the room” series—which comprises film, video, concert, drawing, and writing—in both private and public spaces. The series explores how one form of storytelling can be transformed into another by juxtaposing the different languages of cultures, genres, genders, and generations.

Variations of the “In the room” series have been exhibited or performed around the world at places including STEIM, Amsterdam; De Appel, Amsterdam; Project Arts Centre, Dublin; Kunst-Werke, Berlin; Wilkinson Gallery, London; and Witte de With, Rotterdam. In 2007 he was awarded the 2nd prize of the Prix de Rome from the Netherlands and the Korean award Hermes Korea Missulsang (Hermes Korea Prize for Contemporary Art). Parallel to his performance at the New Museum, Sung Hwan Kim exhibits other parts of the “In the room” series at MIT List Visual Arts Center and Montehermoso, Spain. He is currently preparing an exhibition at Haus der Kunst, Munich. This exhibition will be accompanied by a new audio book from “In the room” series, with dogr, released by Intermedium Records in 2010.

dogr (David Michael DiGregorio) is a musician currently based in New York. He has a background in 16mm filmmaking, informed by US structuralists from the 1970s. This interest, combined with influences from baroque, choral gospel, pop, Korean and American folk, and electro-acoustic music, inspire him to create tectonic space through layering voice and melismatic storytelling. His songs tell stories of people and their great loves sprawling out over bridges, cityscapes, and farmlands; men turning to monsters; rooms that speak people’s thoughts; beast-vision; aged cities; and haunted voices of our animal progenitors. His recent album, In Korean Wilds and Villages (2009), can be heard on Sonig Records, Köln. Recent performances include Vox Populi, Philadelphia, 2009; Gallery TPW/Images Festival, Toronto, 2009; Établissement d'en face projects, Brussel, 2009; Insa Art Space, Seoul, 2007; Gallery 27, Uiwang, Korea, 2007; De Appel, Amsterdam, 2007; STEIM, Amsterdam, 2006; BAK, Utrecht, 2006. http://www.dogr.org

Byungjun Kwon started his musical career in the early ’90s in Seoul, Korea as a singer/songwriter and has released seven albums ranging from alternative rock to minimal house. He creates music for records, soundtracks, fashion collections, contemporary dance, theater plays, and interdisciplinary events, for which he develops his own musical instruments and performance tools. He currently lives and works in Amsterdam. http://byungjun.pe.kr/xe/