REDCAT to Premiere MADAME FREEDOM in United States, 10/2

By: Sep. 19, 2014
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The Seoul-based video and performance collaborators Hyung Su Kim and Hyo Jin Kim, who awed audiences at the 2013 Edinburgh International Festival, will present the U.S. premiere of their immersive piece Madame Freedom at REDCAT, CalArt's Downtown Center for Contemporary Arts on October 2-5, 2014.

A stirring fusion of live interactive dance and a sumptuous media installation that incorporates black-and-white footage from the classic 1956 Korean melodrama Jayu buin (Madame Freedom), this stage collaboration looks to the historical struggle of Korean women to break free of the social, economic and political constraints of yesteryear as it considers the uneasy contemporary legacy of hard-won changes nearly 60 years later. Today's Madame Freedom is a rumination on identity, myth, and the tension between dreams and the burdens of the past.

Choreographed by Hyo Jin Kim, who co-directs the production with media artist Hyung Su Kim.

Director and Choreographer Hyo Jin Kim was trained in traditional Korean dance from an early age and studied dance forms including ballet and modern dance at Ewha Womnas University, the most famous dance institution in Korea.Kim pursued her interest in contemporary Korean dance by joining the ChangMu Dance company from 1993 to 1997. Since 1995, she has developed an independent dance style which is combined with contemporary dance and Media Arts and is performed in theatres and galleries.

In 2006 Kim established YMAP (Your Media Arts Project) with her husband Professor Hyung Su Kim, the renowned media artist. Through YMAP, they produced media performances Da-si-gae-hang opening celebration at Incheon Arts Platform, Media TaepyeongMu (Seoul Light Festival, 2009), Media Façade (Gwacheon International SF Film Festival, 2010), Alice in Wonderland (The Korean Performing Arts Center, 2011), andMadame Freedom (The King's Theatre of Edinburgh International Festival, 2013).

Kim was an invited artist of the Korean National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in 2000. She was awarded for the best performance from the Korean Association of Dance Critics and Researchers in 2011. She also received the best dancer of Dance Arts Award from the dance magazine MOMM.

Art Director Hyung Su Kim is a media artist who graduated from the California Institute of the Arts. He is a professor and Dean at Yonsei University and the director of the Media Arts and Design Center at the Institute of Convergence Science, Yonsei University, Korea. He is a leading artist on projects relating to internal and external media displays and projections, performances and exhibitions using LED, LFD (Large Format Display), projection mapping and multichannel media display systems.

His credits include directing the 2009 Seoul Light Festival in Gwang-hwa-mun Square, Seoul, creating contents for media façades and media arts; acting as the media design director of the 2012 Yeosu World Expo; and directing the opening media performance at the Nam Jun Paik exhibition Rhapsody in Video, held by Korea's national broadcasting station in 2007. A successful large scale outdoor interactive media performance on the foot of a mountain, 200 meters in width which had been held and placed in front of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, 2008. One of the first and unique outdoor performance held in Korea since then until today.

He has exhibited and performed extensively in Korea and the USA. In 2013, he has been officially invited by the 2013 Edinburgh International Festival (United Kingdom) for the Media Skins exhibition under the visual arts section of the festival and most recently in December 2013 until March 2014, held a Solo Exhibition Digital Kaleidoscope at the Yonsei University Museum.



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