[On the Bird’s Day] First Edisode – Fear of the 13 Ahae

R.O.T.C(Robot Theater Company)

 
  • Director Kwon Byungjun
  • Date 10.11.FRI. 8:00pm 10.12.SAT. 3:00pm 10.13.SUN. 3:00pm
  • Conversation with Artists 10.12.SAT. 3pm
    After the performance, a conversation with the artist will take place.
  • Venue PLATFORM-L Platform Live
  • Rating 7 and over
  • Venue PLATFORM-L Platform Live (B2)
  • Duration 50min
  • Premiere 2024 Seoul Performing Arts Festival
  • Produced by R.O.T.C(Robot Theater Company), Producer Group DOT
  • Commissioned SPAF, Arts Korea Lab
  • Cooperation
    Platform-L
  • *This performance is produced and presented within the cooperative project ‘Art and Technology’ by Arts Korea Lab and Seoul Performing Arts Festival.
Introduction

The performance explores gravity, friction and human walking. It asks us about the meaning of being bipedal and walking on the ground. The steel plate stage suggests a possibility of new spaces and movements. It also shows an experiment of unique movements using the materiality of the steel plate and magnet.

Synopsis

his first performance of the series <On the Bird’s Day > deals with the “fear of the thirteen Ahae.”[1] While the thirteen Ahae in “Crow's Eye View” written by Korean poet Yi Sang symbolize people’s anxiety during the tumultuous period of modernization in the early 20th century, the thirteen Ahae in <On the Bird’s Day > refer to today’s fear which appeared somewhere in the 21st century. These are shamans who connect heaven and earth as well as divinity and humanity. Before starting their journey to this world, the 13 Ahae are born with mechanical bodies and learn to walk on the ground. Walking step by step and feeling gravity and friction, they move in the human way of walking. Their movements become dances. The thirteen Ahae choreograph their own group dance in the world on a steel plate.

[1] “Ahae” refer to the thirteen children depicted in the 1934 poem “Crow's Eye View” written by Korean poet Yi Sang. “Ahae” is an archaic word meaning “child” in Korean.

Concept·Direction·Sound·Technology Director
권병준
ⓒ Park Seungki

Kwon Byungjun



Media artist sharing the sound of the world at the forefront of art and technology
Kwon Byungjun is a hardware researcher combining art with technology and a sound-based media artist. In different cultural fields, he presents performances using tools of music and the performing arts. Since 2018, he has developed robots for exhibition-type performances, thus exploring mechanical movements and offering works combining light and sound, acts and narratives. In parallel, he suggests new possibilities on stage through site-specific sounds involving GPS and the control of stage lighting.

His major works include <Dancing Ladders > (2022), <Ghost Theater ‘We will Have a Serious Night’ > (2021), <Bold Theater > (2020), <Lyrics of Cheap Android 2_Robot Nocturne > (2020), <‘Forest of Subtle Truth’ Series >, <Self-sounding Town Resonant Village > (2019) and <Club Golden Flower > (2018). He won the prize for the artist of the year 2023 awarded by Korea’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art.

Credits

Concept·Direction·Sound·Technology DirectorKwon Byungjun
Creative TeamKim Taekmin, Lee Jumi, Lee Yujin
DramaturgHam Seongho
Lighting DesignerKim Hyun
Producer Park Jisun, Choi Bongmin
Produced byR.O.T.C(Robot Theater Company), Producer Group DOT
CommissionedSPAF, Arts Korea Lab
CooperationPlatform-L

Robot Theater Company

Robot Theater Company is artists’ collective led by media artist Kwon Byungjun who collaborates with other artists and engineers. Having created multidisciplinary productions encompassing the theater, dance and music, Kwon Byungjun is willing to work with them in order to offer a new form of music theater where human performers coexist with robots he currently produces. By doing so, he will explore and develop the possibilities “Mechanical Theater” and the way machines and humans coexist on stage and in an exhibition space.

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