Soeine Bac
21/10/23 – 10/11/23
Παραστατικές Τέχνες
Τίτλος πρότζεκτ: “No Man’s Land: Songs of Absence”
Καναδάς
Περιγραφή του έργου:
The term “no man’s land” became historically significant in the First World War, when it referred to an unoccupied area between opposing armies. Interpreting the phrase ‘no man’s land’ in a metaphorical sense, I imagine a place where humans stand in their pur-est existence as animals striving to survive.
‘Songs of Absence’ is the first segment of my performance series ‘No Man’s Land’, which is based on this premise. It is based on the character Lavinia in Shakespeare’s ‘Titus An-dronicus’. Lavinia is the daughter of Titus, a general in the Roman army who is engaged in a cycle of revenge. ‘Songs of Absence’ is developed from the scene in which Lavinia has been raped, her tongue and hands were cut off by the assailants, and she is then hung from a dead tree trunk. She is stripped of her most fundamental human abilities to communicate. Yet, as she is physically pared down, her narrative and thematic im-portance escalates.
This seemingly paradoxical power of Lavinia’s silence heightens the sense of hearing. The primordial energy of the silence fills the absence of sound, like that of a wordless animal in no man’s land.
Ανοιχτή παρουσίαση: Κυριακή 05 Νοεμβρίου 2023
20:30, Ελεύθερη Είσοδος
Improvisation in the Void (movement workshop)
Κυριακή 22 Οκτωβρίου 2023, 11:30-13:30
Ελεύθερη Συμμετοχή
Sound of Listening (sound/movement workshop)
Σάββατο 04 Νοεμβρίου 2023, 17:30-19:30
Ελεύθερη Συμμετοχή
Soeine Bac
Soeine Bac is a Korean-born immigrant to Canada. She studied studied visual art, media art, and dance in Canada, and continued this study in the UK, focusing on intuitive intention in art. She surveyed unintentional forces that drive the artist to create artwork with a specific trajectory. To further study this improvisational intention, she turned to East Asian philosophy, which emphasizes removing one’s intentional mind to discover – instead of decide – choices in practicing life, and to unify mind and body.
Although she has been influenced by Western cultures, she pursues the natural world of matter in finding her sense of self, trying to maintain a holistic perspective beyond all her cultural backgrounds. Improvisation then became her method for art and for life. She regards art as a form of living, not merely as an institutional discipline; she aims to create a kind of art that is consistent with the way we experience the world.
The initiation of this process started when she directly encountered the ancient East Asian idea of Wu (doing without intention) behind ‘Nature art’ during her artist’s residency at YATOO in 2015. The art form had been developed by some local Korean artists in reaction against the domination of Western culture after the Korean war. While its Western parallels, such as Land art or Earth art, employ nature to fulfil the artist’s visions, the artists of Nature art allow themselves to be transformed in encounters with nature, while minimizing human intentions and thus interruptions. She took this state that requires the absence of human intention as the base of her practice of improvisation.
Since then, she has been studying Zen Buddhist yoga and drumming for meditation, and Aikido in order to better understand the state of Wu for improvisation. Along these lines, she has been researching intuitive consciousness in improvisation, and instant composition of movement.
Her work is often site-specific, and she pursues an aesthetic of the ordinary, seeking the spiritual aspect of art and how it is revealed in life.
Ανατροφοδότηση
My name is Soeine Bac. I am a performance artist from Canada. I did a 3-week residency at the Akropoditi dance centre from 22 October to 10 November 2023. I had been conceiving my performance project No Man’s Land for a while, but I had not been able to realize it. Fortunately, I was able to create the first part of this serial work, Songs of Absence, during the residency. I will need to develop it further. Nonetheless, I am thankful that I could start this project. I took advantage of the privilege of using Akropoditi’s wonderful studio. After my presentation of the work in progress, I received helpful feedback from the audience. I appreciate the generous hospitality of the organiser and staff of the centre. They did their best to make me feel comfortable and to accommodate my needs. In addition, I greatly enjoyed the interaction I had with the community members. Their curiosity toward me and their warm welcome made my visit to the island much more valuable.
Φωτογραφίες: Άννα Πιτσικάλη
