Launch of e-flux Journal #156 with Jung Hee Choi

Doors at 7, program starts at 7:30

Jung Hee Choi performing RICE, Composition in the style of La Monte Young’s 1960 sustained friction sounds, March 28, 2009. Dream House, Guggenheim Museum, New York City. Photo: Jung Hee Choi, © 2009.

To celebrate the launch of #156, a special issue dedicated to the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, we are very pleased to present a sound performance by sonic and visual artist Jung Hee Choi, on Tuesday, September 30th, at 7pm.

e-flux Journal #156 comprises the texts commissioned for the exhibition catalogue for . The exhibition maps contemporary artistic practices and discourses that draw on occult, mystical, and spiritual traditions and proposes that there exist multiple coexistent worlds—not all of which are legible to reason. Music and experimental sound practices have always been a means of accessing these other worlds while attempting to understand our own.

It is within this context that Jung Hee Choi, an artist whose work is included in the Biennale, will present her video piece RICE (1999) in conjunction with a live solo performance of Composition in the Style of La Monte Young’s 1960 Sustained Friction Sounds (2000/2024) at e-flux. In this work, Choi simultaneously celebrates her own discipleship while carrying forward Young’s teachings in her own voice.

About Choi’s live performance, La Monte Young has written: “In the guru-disciple relationship it is said that the soul of the guru can be passed on to the disciple. With the passing of the soul to the disciple, the ephemeral essence of the soul is passed on through the transmission of knowledge, both directly and indirectly. By this process, eternity is attained through the transmission of knowledge, tradition and beauty from generation to generation. Thus, through the guru-shishya (disciple) parampara (succession), an eternal stream of pure knowledge with a life and tradition of its own can continue into time and beyond.”

Jung Hee Choi works across video, performance, sound, drawing, and multimedia installation. A disciple of La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, together they co-founded The Just Alap Raga Ensemble in 2002 and have performed together widely, including at the Guggenheim, the Merce Cunningham Memorial celebration, and in tours across Germany. Her solo and collaborative projects often merge sound, light, and visual form into immersive environments. Notably, her installation RICE was named one of Artforum’s “10 Best of 2003,” and her work is held in the permanent collections of Dia Art Foundation and FRAC Franche-Comté. Critics have described her installations as hallucinatory and transformative, with The New York Times noting their capacity to induce altered states of consciousness. Beyond her artistic practice, she has curated festivals, produced experimental television, published writing on sound and cosmology, and received grants from institutions such as New Music USA and the Experimental Television Center. Her work continues to expand the legacy of immersive sound-light environments while cultivating a uniquely intersubjective and transcendent artistic language.

For more information, please contact [email protected].

Accessibility
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
–For elevator access, please RSVP to [email protected]. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the event space and this bathroom.

Host or Publisher e-flux Screening Room