with a performance by bela
About this Event
Book Launch and Bilingual Reading with Tyler Coburn and InYoung Yeo
Solitary is an experiment in site-specific writing produced at a wellness center in South Korea designed to resemble a Pr*son. To make this work, artist Tyler Coburn commissioned nine contributors to spend time in ‘solitary confinement’ at the center, where they produced texts using the materials on hand. What results is a book exploring wellness, solitude, incarceration, and what it means to seek freedom through confinement. For this event, Coburn will introduce the project then discuss its making with artist and contributor InYoung Yeo. The artist bela will also give a reading performance.
Solitary is co-published by Sternberg Press and Art Sonje Center. Contributors include Jaeyeon Chung, Sunjin Kim, Hyunjeung Kim, Kyungmook Kim, Min Kyoung Lee, Woochang Lee, Russell Mason, and Jiwon Yu. The book was designed by Luke Gould and primarily translated by Minji Chun.
Tyler Coburn is an artist and writer based in New York working in writing, sound, sculpture, and performance. The subjects of his artwork are diverse and may, at times, seem unrelated—botany, industrial sabotage, ergonomics… However, there’s something that connects them, which he owes to growing up in a house with a storyteller for a mother: his artwork tells stories. Coburn develops these stories in response to topics in contemporary discourse. In return, he hopes they add something the conversation, offering moments of intimacy and insight for the public.
InYoung Yeo is an artist based in Seoul. Her work expands from text, drawing, and video installation to research-based ** with interdisciplinary approaches to such topics as gender, urbanization, and AI. Yeo explores personal narratives of vulnerabilities, migration, and gendered memories, structures and systems of communities, and ethics and humanities around artificial intelligence, finding patterns, coincidences in numbers, and critical and romantic dimensions. Yeo works internationally and has participated in various projects, exhibitions, residencies, talks, and workshops in Korea, Germany, North America, and Southeast Asia, among other places.
The evening will be activated by a performance by bela
bela shapes pungmul into the ritualistic purge for queer rage and grief with sub-heavy distortions and intimate whispers and cries. In the performance, bela uses a mic-torch, a vocal pedal, and growling technique to recite and improvise over their diary - which contains letters, lyrics, curses, and broken-up pansori arias.
Originally from Paju South Korea, bela (they/them) is a musician and a performance artist based in Berlin. They are known for electronic music performance merging pungmul—a Korean folk act rooted in agricultural traditions and linked to past social movements—and vocals inspired by extreme metal. Their releases include [Guidelines](2021), [2020](2021), and [why are you so lost sweetie](2020).
bela has performed in various experimental music festivals including CTM Festival(DE), Unsound Kraków(PL), and Rewire Festival(NL). They also participated in European art festivals transmediale(DE) and EVA International(IE). bela has supported artists Okkyung Lee, Pharmakon, and Eli Keszler. In 2023, they joined the roster of SHAPE+ Platform 23'-24'. bela is a co-runner of Sorrow Club: a mixed event series spanning from music to non-music and performances.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
a.p., Lindower Straße 20, Berlin, Germany
USD 0.00