Metaphysics of Sound

It is in the spirit of an experience and experiment that Hang Jun Lee's «The Cracked Share» must be viewed. Seized in moments of visual detachment during periods of emotional contact, these images are oxidized residues of fixed light and chemical elements of transformed from living organisms. No plastic expression can ever be more than a residue of the experience and yet, the residue is the recognition of the experience, loss permeates the work and yet somehow the experience endures, recalling the event more or less clearly, like the undisturbed ashes of an object consumed by flames. The recognition of this object, so little representative and so fragile, speaks to us of this artist's isolation. «The Cracked Share» is quite wonderfully dense and visceral in nature ...

“A powerful flicker film made from 35mm images of fashionable hats and hair.” (Pip Chodorov)

Abstract Audiovisual Piece

A short film by Lee Hangjun

Phantom vertiginous audiovisual performance work addresses the Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion (1948), one of South Korea’s dark historical traumas whose immediate aftermath (the number of casualties overall is estimated to reach 10,000) and long-term repercussions in effectively establishing the ‘red scare’ or anti-communism proved vital, or rather, lethal to many lives as well as the egalitarian imaginary in post-war South Korea. The fact that the portrait photographs in the film are not those of actual victims but of people taken later in the same area –which Lee got hold of from a local photo studio– further complicates the question of “recognition”. One is thus tempted to suggest that Phantom paradoxically serves to forget these faces, along with the historical trauma of the massacre, in seeking to remember them. (Yung-Bin Kwak, Fireworks and Massacre in Grey (Spasmodic) Room)

Film Walk is perhaps the one plus ultra of this branch of projection performance, treating the projector literally as an instrument. In this work, which has varied in form across several years,Lee threads 16mm film through only the sound head of a projector tuned on its side, bypassing the projector’s gate. This film is double-perf, meaning a second row of sprocket holes runs along the side of the strip where that soundtrack would normally be. As these pass over the sound head, they produce an electronic purr, or, when amplified enough, an unpleasant metallic grinding comparable to the sound of a buzz saw. Lee pulls the film through the projector by hand, yanking it roughly through the sound head. The variations in speed that result from Lee’s manual movement of the filmstrip cause abrupt changes in the frequency and timbre of the sprocket sound. (Jonathan Walley, Cinema Expanded)

Why Does the Wind Blow has been reconstituted from instructional 16mm films collected by the director from film archives. It presents a sensational experience through the juxtaposition of visualized movement of physical objects and the cinematic creation of time.

PERFORMANCE VERSION 16mm multi-projection performance, “After Psycho Shower”, which deconstructs the famous shower-murder scene from Hitchcock’s “Psycho”, frame by frame, and concludes in melting and burning of film itself after the obsessive repetition of it, aiming at renewal of the cultural memory of this well-known images into audio-visual ‘experience’. The soundtrack of this expanded ‘horror’ cinema performance consists of noise music, which unconsciously ambushes the audience. “After Psycho Shower” is the piece that (dis)unites the relation between sound and image in horror cinema, previously severed by digitalization of the both, in an indeterminate and contingent way of improvised audio-visual performance.

SCREENING VERSION 16mm triple projection, “After Psycho Shower”, which deconstructs the famous shower-murder scene from Hitchcock’s “Psycho”, frame by frame, and concludes in melting and burning of film itself after the obsessive repetition of it, aiming at renewal of the cultural memory of this well-known images into audio-visual ‘experience’. The soundtrack of this expanded ‘horror’ cinema performance consists of noise music, which unconsciously ambushes the audience. “After Psycho Shower” is the piece that (dis)unites the relation between sound and image in horror cinema, previously severed by digitalization of the both, in an indeterminate and contingent way of improvised audio-visual performance.

Nebula Rising is a gorgeous transformation of the emulsion of film into expressionistic abstraction what Hangjun Lee calls “a pursuit of the science of dust”.

Throughout the history of cinema, we always see the countdown leader and hear the beep sound just before the start of a film. In this 16mm multi-projection performance, we hear sound and emotional residues from narrative cinema such as laughters, clapping, and cheering. The projectors become the protagonists in this performance, facing the audience.