《La Plante Dansante de Désastres》 by Seon-Ah Jo
Multidisciplinary (Choreographic Sound · Experimental Music)
La Plante Dansante de Désastres is a performative practice in which the performer perceives the instrument as the body—or the body as an instrument. The performer projects herself, an East Asian female body, onto the gayageum, a traditional Korean string instrument. The connectivity between instrument and body expands both inward and outward, resisting or reenacting the duties imposed upon the female body while attending to the unnamed strata of sound that reside beneath the surface.
The question, “Can my body become an alternative space?”, expresses the desire to liberate both the performer and the gayageum. Instrumental gestures, choreographic movements, and repeated sonic patterns become bodily acts of defiance against the cycles of productivity and efficiency demanded by neoliberal systems. Inspired by The Rescue of Beauty (Die Errettung des Schönen), La plante dansante de désastres unfolds as a ritual of grasses dancing at the heart of disaster.
Following the performance, the soundscape installation Yeongsan 靈山 will be presented.
Artistic Director, Choreography, Composer & Sound Design, Performer | Seon-ah Jo
Video | Syeyoung Park
Outside Ear | Seungki Hong
Special Thanks to Creative Collaborators
Production Management | Sang-Hee Bae
Spatial Design | Hyejeong Kim (NACA)
Artistic Advisor | Diana Band
Buddhist Chant Guide | Seung-hee Lee
Photo Documentation | Kwanhee Yoon
Video Documentation | Chang-gu Kim
Seon-ah Jo
School of Korean Traditional Arts,
Korean Traditional Music
Gayageum Major
Graduated with a bachelor’s degree (2021)
Seon-ah Jo is an interdisciplinary artist and performer whose work moves fluidly across music, movement, and sound art. She treats the gestures and sounds generated by her Gayageum-playing body as equal artistic languages. Each movement becomes a spatial gesture through which the performer herself becomes the instrument, while the body functions as another site where sound both resides and passes through.
Her practice combines traditional music, performance, and sound installation to reveal moments in which movement and sound co-create space. Through ecological methodologies—such as field recordings and the resonance of the Gayageum vibrating in the wind of an electric fan—Jo explores new ways of understanding relationships between human and more-than-human beings.