[Yes my weeping
frame!]
About “yes my weeping frame!” via NPR
Piano drifts, lifts and flutters like leaves wet from spring rain — the notes float, but carry the weight of water. Musical figures feel familiar, but are never quite the same as they shift within the instrument's creaking wood and through the room's resonant body.
OHYUNG is better known as a producer of hyperactive hip-hop and pop music, but on a new double cassette, imagine naked!, plays with shapes of ambient sound. No two tracks explore the same mode, but there is a tether of tenderness throughout. The wandering, minimalist piano piece "yes my weeping frame!" carries a Harold Budd-like movement — romantic, bleary-eyed, a bit mournful — but always, always moving with a gentleness so desperately needed in a harsh world. The music video, featuring the dancers Kyoko Takenaka and Marie Lloyd Paspe in a single-take improvisation, reflects the same. This is music that caresses the corners, feels out the dust and fills the quiet, to paraphrase a line from the t. tran le poem ("Vegetalscape") that gives the album its song titles.
Video and movement by Kyoko Takenaka and Marie Lloyd Paspe
Alongside the two singles OHYUNG also shared a new music video for “yes my weeping frame!," a single-take capture of improvised movement made by artists Kyoko Takenaka & Marie Lloyd Paspe, which depicts the complex interplay between body and soul: “We were exploring the concepts of inner child and intuition as it relates to one’s body as the frame,” says Takenaka, “such as how our source energy comforts us and wants to be one with the present body, but also how it can get scarred and want to protect us from misuse or abuse.”
[COCOON]
Performed live at SOMArts, San Francisco.
Commissioned by Ahn Lee
Annual Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards Exhibition
About “Cocoon”
“Cocoon” is a 45-minute ceremony performed by Jas Lin and Kyoko Takenaka underneath Ahn Lee’s sculpture of the same title. Exploring grief through the container of a cocoon, the performers embody ancestry and progeny, railroad worker and Chop Suey circuit nightclub dancer, silkworm and moth, light and shadow, as they move through non-linear cycles of metamorphosis between the simultaneous truths of trauma, pain, freedom, and joy in their lineage.
Notes on performing during the COVID-19 pandemic
“Cocoon” was performed at the first in-person opening of SOMArts Cultural Center since the pandemic began. The gallery relayed certain asks of this performance during its development that became integral to the performance itself.
1. “Masks must be worn by everyone inside at all times regardless of vaccination status.”
2. “What we want to avoid is a big crowd trying to gather to see the performance.”
See the virtual gallery here for more information
A Collaborative Performance Project by Ahn Lee,
Jas Lin and Kyoko Takenaka
Performed by Jas Lin and Kyoko Takenaka
Documentation by Aidan Jung
Edited by Ahn Lee, Jas Lin, Aidan Jung and Kyoko Takenaka
Music by
Kyoko Takenaka
Bintang Manira
Ghaliz Haris
Morgan Sully
Recorded in Berlin, Germany August 2021
Ceramic Sculptures by Ahn Lee
Installation at SOMArts Cultural Center
for the 2021 Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards Exhibition
Curated by Kevin B. Chen
on September 10, 2021
in honor of the 2021 Murphy Award Winner Ahn Lee
Presented by the San Francisco Foundation and SOMArts
Dedicated to our elders, our ancestors
those we talk to every day
who guide our work, our movement and our hearts.
[BANDALOOP]
Winner of the Pearls Artist Prize; Internationales TanzFilmFestival, Berlin
Pool Dock 11
Bandaloop
Director: Johan Planefeldt
Choreography: Ardian Hartono, Kyoko Takenaka
Johan Planefeldt, Shiran Eliaserov
Production: HOLYTROPIC, Rita Couto
Country of Production: Germany
Dance and Acting: Ardian Hartono, Kyoko Takenaka
Camera: Johan Planefeldt
Editing: Johan Planefeldt, Shiran Eliaserov
Music: Forest Swords