OKKYUNG LEE (KR)
Residency period: January-March 2023
Okkyung Lee is a cellist, composer and improviser who moves freely between artistic disciplines and contingencies. Since 2000 she has worked in various contexts as a solo artist and collaborator with creators in a wide range of disciplines. A native of South Korea, Lee has taken a broad array of inspirations – including noise, improvisation, jazz, western classical, and her homeland’s traditional and popular music – and used them to forge a highly distinctive approach.
Although she is probably best known for her improvisational work utilizing visceral extended techniques on her instrument, she has been creating various types of compositions and site-specific works, responding to architecture, audience or objects surrounding her, producing an immersive experience that also challenges the built-in hierarchy in traditional concert settings. She has appeared on more than 30 albums, including her latest solo releases Yeo-Neun on Shelter Press, Na-Reul on Corbett vs Dempsey and Teum (The Silvery Slit), on Editions Mego/Portraits GRM.
During the pandemic, Lee began making highly personal and intimate audiovisual pieces as a response to our profoundly modified ways of making and sharing. This new angle to her work is one she has continued to develop at La Becque, which she has combined by pursuing new approaches to composing with found/natural sounds and stepping beyond conventional instrumental virtuosity to explore almost tangible aural textures in a search for bodily co-resonance among listeners, a constant theme across sound art endeavours at La Becque in 2023.
Okkyung Lee, photo Euh Chun