Mourning Heat(열곡(熱哭))(2024)  


Performative installation, Dimentions variable, 20-30mins
Ceramic, Nichrome, Copper, Cables, Metal, Power Controller, Mourners


Exhibition at TINC (This Is Not a Church), Seoul (kr), Photo by Chul Lim Choi



   The project “Mourning heat (열곡(熱哭))” is a performative installation attempting to explore the left-behind, the departed, and the in-between through the medium of heat. Through the medium of heat, this project aims to reinterpret the behavior of mourning through rising heat and the fading of warmth.






   At the core of the project is the “mourning device,” which creates thermoacoustic sound via the expansion, contraction, and flow of air caused by heat. The subtle vibration and strong volume of the sound is controlled by mourning performers. Each performer begins by finding their own sound of mourning, which gradually builds into a collective resonance. The heat, which rises through the ceramic tubes held by the performers, amplifies these sounds, creating a moment of relief and connection. This sound serves as a metaphor for sending someone off into the sky, invoking the image of farewell in many mourning traditions.

   These days, the process of mourning is often condensed, leaving little time for people to fully express their grief. Mourning Heat invites participants to experience a prolonged moment of mourning, one that transcends linguistic empathy and offers solace through sound, heat, and resonance.








Choreography : Mourn alone - Mourn together through  heat
   
Mourning (crying) is a condensed form of expression. When complex emotions are released before they can be organized into language, crying can be a powerful means of communication that creates emotional intimacy and a call for help - even towards strangers. It is also interlaced to the birth and death of life. The first cry at birth, as a form of breathing, signals the healthy birth of a new life, and at the moment of death, crying is also an expression of grief.

Crying is a condensed form of emotion. Heat, too, is a condensed energy. In this project, the two intertwine, each causing the other.

Exhibitions/Performances:
<Kikk festival>
Hospice d’Harscamp
Namur(be)
2024

2024 서로 엮는 <북촌의 날>
북촌문화센터
Seoul(kr)
2024

아르코 다원예술청년도약지원사업:꼬리를 삼키는 연습
TINC(This is not a church)
Seoul(kr)
2024

<What will be there at the end>
Auditorium, HfK Bremen
Bremen(de)
2024

Credits:
Produced with a grant by Arko
(Art Council Korea)

Co-curated by Hyoga Park

Video by Deok Man Kim

Performers in the documentation by
Young Lim, Danbi Yoon, Hyein Jeon

Coordination by
Shawn Pak Hin Tang, Daniel Vadasz

Technical Advice by Daniel Vadasz

With the support of Digital Media Bremen Master Program and professors




Exhibition at Bukchon Cultural Centre
Seoul (kr)


    When the performance begins, the coils of the chilled and lifeless mourning devices start to glow. The ceramic tubes direct the flow of the vibrant energy of heat while performers utilize the mechanism to produce sound. In exploring the heating elements, the performer can practice mourning through heat while finding the element that resonates best with their tube. Once all the performers have found proper heating elements and sounds, the performance ends with all three performers resonating with each other.
The air in the resonating mourning device eventually cools and disperses into the surroundings as a stream of heat. Although the heat will cool, like a physical body that eventually remains cold, it will not disappear, but will exist in an invisible form, permeating the surroundings again as energy and warmth, a metaphor for presence.


Resonance of Heat - Thermoacoustic
   Heat is oscillating, relative, flowing, and in a continuous state of exchange and circulation. This exchange tries to find a balance of energy and approach zero, but it is constantly overflowing, falling short, and repeating itself in an infinite interaction. Within this circular interaction, there is no hierarchy in heat, and it is impossible to define what is hotter or colder.

   A performer (a living person) intervenes in this heat to give it flow. While there are various affective experiments in art, this project attempts to explore the balanced cyclical relationship between life, matter, human, and non-human through the thermo-acoustic crying caused by the flow of heat, as well as the act of performers who are finding a delicate point of balance where sound is produced.

   The technique used in this work is related to thermoacoustics, which is the principle that when vibrant heat is directed by a tube, it causes a resonance within the tube. It has been observed for centuries by glass blowers and studied by the physicist Pieter Rijke. When a heating device within a tube produces heat, the air around it is energized, eventually causing the air inside a tube to oscillate. This expanding and shrinking air becomes regularized and transformed into a sound that we can hear. Different sizes and lengths of tubes are used to create this flow, resulting in different sounds. The air rising along the tube has the property of falling back down as it cools. This property of heat is used as an important conceptual and physical medium in this work, demonstrating the relative and cyclical nature of heat, which is also a metaphor for many funerary rituals and the metaphor of sending someone to sky.



Special thanks to
Young Hee Sung
Qianxun Chen
Valentina Gaete
Victor Artiga Rodriguez
Milton Raggi
Alevtina Senik
Ute Alexandra Fischer
Nicola Essig
Karl Robert Strecker
Nicolas-Friederich Hohlt

This project is an extension of "A Chair for Co-responding (2022)," a chair that produces body heat from Digital Media Bremen, and "Flowing Bodies Do Not Decay (2023)," which is an extension of my last solo exhibition supported by the Seoul Arts Foundation. It was awarded a grant by Arko(Art Council Korea) in 2024.

Documentation : Digital Media Bremen (English)
Foreword : “울음을 삼키는 방법” - 박효가 (한국어)
Critic : “존재, 그 의미의 의미” - 장진택 (한국어)
Review : “고요의 소산(疏散)을 소리내어 마주하기” - 이우솔 (한국어)
Review : “꼬리를 삼키는 연습 : Mourning Heat 리뷰” - 이상현 (한국어)
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