“It is always fleeting - you’re just trying to look at yourself as close and as direct as possible in that moment. You’re not trying to define what you are doing or who you are, you are just trying to understand what you are like in the moment.”
Series 001/14: in conversation with Okkyung Lee
Okkyung Lee is a cellist, composer and improviser. She was born in South Korea and moved to Boston (USA) in 1992, to study Contemporary Writing and Production and Film Scoring at Berklee College of Music and continued with a Master’s degree at the New England Conservatory of Music in Contemporary Improvisation.
Okkyung moved to New York in the 2000s and fell with ease, into the avant-garde music scene that included performance nights at Tonic, the Knitting Factory and a plethora of artists and musicians that she was able to stretch, move, bend — and create a sonic world with. Over the last two decades, Okkyung has been widely recognized for her improvisational works and instrumental compositions. She has collaborated with artists from a range of disciplines including Arca, Mark Fell, Ellen Fullman, Douglas Gordon, Christian Marclay, Marina Rosenfeld, Thurston Moore, Ikue Mori and Rashad Becker. In 2016, Okkyung formed Yeo-Neun Quartet and composes music for a harp (Maeve Gilchrist), cello, double bass (Eivind Opsvik), and piano (Jacob Sacks). Okkyung has performed internationally as a solo artist and composer including; Borealis Festival (Bergen, Norway), Donaueschingen Music Festival (Donaueschingen, Germany), Museum of Modern Art (New York), Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, USA), The Met Breuer (New York, USA), Museo del Novecento (Milan, Italy), Serpentine Galleries (London, UK), White Cube Galleries (London, UK) and has recently moved to Berlin, where she is the recipient of the 12-month DAAD Artists-in-Berlin residency program.
Interview by Emily Nam