The artist Sung Hwan Kim, who grew up in Korea, developed a multimedia form of storytelling: a juxtaposition of languages, cultures, genres, genders, and generations. Sung collaborates with the New York musician dogr to compose a dense interweaving of voices and instruments.
Featuring: Sung Hwan Kim, dogr, Byungjun Kwon
Realization: Sung Hwan Kim and David Michael DiGregorio
Production: BR 2010
The genesis of the work
"I imagined a room that is set up like a box and from which a pulsating story emanates." - Korean-born artist Sung Hwan Kim developed his "In the room series" as a form of storytelling that brings together film, video, concert, sketching and writing to explore how storytelling is transformed by the juxtaposition of different languages, cultures, genres, genders and generations. Typical of Sung's work is to combine different artistic genres and media - especially video and performance art - while performing every step of the creation of a work himself: as director, editor, performer, composer, narrator and poet. In collaboration with the musician dogr alias David Michael DiGregorio, who also works in New York, Sung composes a dense network of layered voices with various effects and instruments such as ocarina, sampler, kazoo, guitar or Korean cymbals: vocal harmonies interweave with the narrative and allow the singer to become a character in the story and the story in turn to become music.
"In the room series" does not tell a linear, coherent story, but is structured as a dream-like movement with different perspectives through a constantly changing room. For this, Sung collected scenes, material and stories from his immediate surroundings and combined these divergent materials into a film, on the basis of which he created the radio play: "I started thinking about the permanent inhabitants of rooms. 'In the Room series' focuses on prisoners (the tortured), an actress on standby for her secret lover, a dog, a radio presenter, a traveler in a city and so on as inhabitants of the room (and as those who create the vibrations of the hidden boxes). I knew that male humpback whales in a population sing the same song during the breeding season - but that it changes with each song through imitation and improvisation. I also imagined the performances and stories within the performances as different versions of variations. Simple phenomena are no more exciting than they actually are, but through exaggeration, omission, emphasis, rhythm, the nature of the voice and the use of time, they become fairytales, myths, magic, lies, propaganda, history or sometimes: facts."
The Authors
Sung Hwan Kim, born in 1975 in Seoul, Korea, currently resides and works in Amsterdam and New York. He initially studied architecture at Seoul National University in Korea from 1995 to 1996 before moving to the United States. He earned his Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Art from Williams College in Williamstown in 2000, and completed his Master's degree in Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, USA, in 2003. Additionally, he studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine, and was a fellow at the Rijksakademie voor beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam from 2004 to 2005.
In New York, he is primarily active as a musical performer and video artist, often collaborating with the musician dogr, also known as David Michael DiGregorio, who also resides in New York. His first radio play, "One from In the Room," is part of the "in the room series," created in collaboration with dogr. He has received multiple awards. Sung Hwan Kim has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions as well as international festivals.
David Michael DiGregorio (dogr), born in 1979 in Boston, USA, currently lives and works as a musician in New York. He studied film and electroacoustic music at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, earning his Bachelor of Arts in Visual and Environmental Studies in 2001. In 2002, he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine. In 2007, he graduated from the DasArts Art Academy in Amsterdam.
During his time in Europe, he had several residencies at STEIM in Amsterdam. The musician dogr comes from a background in 16mm film and is influenced by the American structuralists of the 1970s. This, along with influences from Baroque music, gospel choirs, Korean and American folk music, and electroacoustic music, inspired him to create constructed sonic spaces through overlapping voices and melodramatic storytelling. His songs tell stories of people and their great passions that spread across bridges, cityscapes, and open lands, of men turning into monsters, of spaces revealing something about their inhabitants, of animal imaginations, of aging cities, and the hidden voices of our animal ancestors.
Dogr has collaborated with visual artists such as Sung Hwan Kim and Jewyo Rhii. His CD "In Korean Wilds and Villages" was released in 2009 by Sonig Records in Cologne, which he produced with Andi Toma from Mouse on Mars. "One from In the Room: dog I knew", produced with Sung Hwan Kim, was broadcasted by Bayerischer Rundfunk and released by Intermedium Records.
