Performances

Speak Slowly and It Will Become a Song

• “From Cheongju To Kyiv” 2022
• Photo: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea

Profile

• Born 1971 in Seoul, Korea. Based in Seoul, Korea.

Kwon Byungjun commenced his career as a singer-songwriter in the 1990s, and became active in many other fields including film soundtracks and music for theater. In the late 2000s, he went to the Netherlands and studied the development of electronic instruments at STEIM, a center of research and production dedicated to music and technology. Upon his return to South Korea, he developed new media performances fusing music, theater, and art, and came to the fore as a pioneer in sound installations utilizing Ambisonic (an immersive 3D audio system). In 2023, he won the Korea Artist Prize for a work using robots.
For Aichi Triennale 2025, Kwon is making a sound installation that will allow visitors to explore a virtual world built of sound that matches the natural environment in the space outside the Aichi Prefectural Ceramic Museum, while strolling around the area wearing headphones. The title represents the process by which song naturally emerges from within through the slow articulation of spoken language. In preparation for this work, he researched Seto pottery and folk songs conveying the traces of traditional life. He likewise collected sounds of the local earth, water, fire, vegetation, and sounds of streets and people. He used them to construct a sonic outdoors sculpture in which the virtual world and nature overlap. Through the application of precision GPS and three-dimensional audio technology, the sounds change in correspondence with the movement of the visitor. The work engenders a special experience that makes the boundary between reality and virtuality fluctuate.

Selected solo and group exhibitions

2023–24

Korea Artist Prize 2023, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul, Korea)

2022

Solo exhibition, “We Will Have a Serious Night” by Ghost Theater, Hong-Dong Reservoir (Seoul, Korea)

2021

“We Will Have a Serious Night” by Ghost Theater, Namsangol Hanok Village (Seoul, Korea)

2021

Solo exhibition, Neverland Soundland: Kwon Byungjun - Sound Walk, Busan Museum of Art (Korea)

2020

Solo exhibition, Club Golden Flower, Cosmo 40 (Incheon, Korea)