CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing) presents the 21st concert in its Crossing Boundaries series, gamin x yuniya edi kwon: OO / LL / IM, curated by gamin, at Abrons Art Center as part of the @Abrons Series. OO / LL / IM is an interdisciplinary ritual performance – a passageway through which grief, entanglements, and historical cycles might reverberate and be witnessed. As artists of a diverse Korean continuum, gamin and kwon approach performance as spiritual spaces containing at once tradition and experimentalism, and through their explorations of improvisation, composition, text, and movement, they create openings for new syncretic lineages to emerge.
As a duo, gamin and yuniya edi kwon will experiment with movement, ancient / contemporary sounds, improvised melody, literature, and space to create a ritualistic journey toward healing. gamin and edi enter the crossroads with different identities but similar interests. gamin was born in Korea and influenced by traditional culture while she practiced traditional music, but she has a strong bond with contemporary music, exploring ideas of openness and freedom. edi is Korean American, influenced by American culture while practicing violin in various contexts but also strongly connecting with Korean shamanic ritual through her unique and beautiful presence.
TICKET LINK:
https://shorturl.at/hyCJ6
ABOUT CROSSING BOUNDARIES CONCERT SERIES
CROSSING BOUNDARIES is a concert series devoted to dissolving boundaries between performers and audiences, the traditional and contemporary, classical and experimental, and the culturally specific and the global. Series curators are given the opportunity to create unique performance events in collaboration with musical, visual, and/or movement artists of their choosing. The series was conceived in 2018 by the Korean traditional wind player and composer gamin, who has continued to help curate the series each year. https://crsny.org/crossing-boundaries-concert-series/
Crossing Boundaries is made possible in part with public funds from Creative Engagement, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and administered by LMCC. LMCC empowers artists by providing them with networks, resources, and support, to create vibrant, sustainable communities in Manhattan and beyond.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
gamin (b. 1976 – also known as Gamin Kang) is a distinguished soloist who tours the world performing both traditional Korean music and cross-disciplinary collaborations. gamin plays 3 traditional winds, and is a designated Yisuja, official holder of Important Intangible Cultural Asset No. 46 for Piri Court Music and Royal Military music. Re-inventing new sonorities from ancient, somewhat restrictive, musical systems, gamin has received several cultural exchange program grants, including Artist-in-Residence at the Asian Cultural Council, and Ministry of Culture, Republic of Korea. gamin has collaborated in cross-cultural improvisation with world-acclaimed musician presenting premieres at Roulette Theater, New School, and Metropolitan Museum. gamin was featured artist at the Silkroad concert, Seoul, 2018, performing on-stage with Yo-Yo Ma. gamin’s scheduled Carnegie Hall début for 2020 March, as featured soloist, with the Nangye Gugak Orchestra, was postponed due to covid. Since 2018, gamin has curated performances at the Center for Remembering and Sharing. For 2020, gamin was selected as artist-in-residency at the HERE Arts Center, NYC and released her solo album, “Nong” by Innova Records. In 2021, the Jerome Foundation awarded gamin a 2-year Fellowship, and Howard Foundation awarded their prestigious fellowship in 2023. gamin teaches graduate and undergraduate ethno-musicology as Adjunct Faculty at the Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA.
yuniya edi kwon (b. 1989 – also known as eddy kwon) is a violinist, vocalist, poet, and interdisciplinary performance artist based in Lenapehoking, or New York City. Her practice connects composition, improvisation, movement, and ceremony to explore transformation & transgression, ritual practice as a tool to queer space & lineage, and the use of mythology to connect, obscure, and reveal. As a composer-performer and improviser, she is inspired by Korean folk timbres & inflections, textures & movement from natural environments, and American experimentalism as shaped by the AACM. Her work as a choreographer and movement artist embodies an expressive release and reclamation of colonialism’s spiritual imprints, connecting to both Japanese Butoh and a lineage of queer trans practitioners of Korean shamanic ritual. In addition to an evolving, interdisciplinary solo practice, she performs and collaborates with artists of diverse disciplines, including The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Senga Nengudi, Du Yun, Tomeka Reid, Holland Andrews, International Contemporary Ensemble, Kenneth Tam, Isabel Crespo Pardo, Moor Mother, and Degenerate Art Ensemble. She has performed alongside Roscoe Mitchell, Mary Halvorson, Nicole Mitchell, Cory Smythe, Henry Threadgill, Susan Alcorn, Carla Kihlstedt, Jessika Kenney, Lesley Mok, Satomi Matsuzaki, and others. In 2023, she founded SUN HAN GUILD, a sound and performance collective with composer-improvisers Laura Cocks, Jessie Cox, DoYeon Kim, and Lester St. Louis. She is a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Robert Rauschenberg Award in Music/Sound, an Arts Fellow at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, a Civitella Ranieri Fellow, a Johnson Fellow at Americans for the Arts, and a United States Artists Ford Fellow.
TICKET LINK:
https://shorturl.at/hyCJ6
Tickets can be purchased online or at Abrons Art Center reception. The Abrons Art Center box office opens 1 hour prior to showtime. No phone sales.
VENUE LOCATION:
Abrons Art Center
466 Grand St
New York, NY 10002
DIRECTIONS:
Abrons Art Center is located between Pitt and Willet streets in Manhattan.
NEAREST SUBWAY STATIONS:
East Broadway Station Essex Street (F train)
Delancey Street Station at Essex Street (F/M/J/Z trains)
“The @Abrons Series Program is a subsidized theater rental program that provides access to our spaces as well as subsidized production services including labor provided at-cost. While @Abrons is not curated, priority is given to shows and events that align with our mission and that are committed to anti-oppression. For shows, events or artistic projects working to build community projects that are socially or civically inclusive – yet have very small budgets – there is an application for an extra–subsidized rate.”
One of the first arts facilities in the nation designed for a predominately low-income population, Abrons Arts Center is a home for contemporary interdisciplinary arts in Manhattan’s Lower East Side neighborhood. A core program of the historic Henry Street Settlement, Abrons believes that access to the arts is essential to a free and healthy society. Through performances, exhibitions, education programs, and residencies, Abrons mobilizes communities with the transformative power of art.