[La plante dansante de désastres]
Gayageum Performance / 40 min
– A mythic soundscape for a planet facing climate crisis
– Reclaiming and redefining the role of women as heirs to tradition
“Can my body become an alternative space?”
Jo Seon Ah, a Gayageum player and creator, projects herself—an artist with hew own female body—onto the traditional Korean instrument. The connection between instrument and body expands outward and inward, rejecting or re-enacting roles imposed on women, while focusing on the hidden layers of nameless sounds. The repeated gestures, techniques, and tones become acts of resistance against the neoliberal cycle of production and efficiency. 《La plante dansante de désastres》 is a festival of grasses dancing in the midst of disaster.
Seon-ah Jo
School of Korean Traditional Arts,
Korean Traditional Music
Gayageum Major
Graduated with a bachelor’s degree (2021)
Seon-ah Jo is a performer and creator who has mastered the art passed down on the Korean Peninsula through the gayageum. She utilizes movements found in gayageum playing techniques as creative material. Here, the performing body functions as a kind of alternative space through which sound passes or is contained. Employing field recording as an ecological methodology for her musical work, she perceives the universe as one vast open source, questioning what vibrations it produces and what contributions it makes.
Selected for the 2025 Jeonju World Sound Festival ‘Sound Frontier’, she released the digital EP [eco-echo] in 2023. Since 2017, she has been active as a creator and performer in the collaborative collective Yeonhui Collective Gang.
Major works include 《Lying in the Flowing Wind – A Moment of Stillness》 (Nodul Island, 2025), 《The Unwritten History of the Unspoken》 (Dalyongyeong Ujeongguk, 2024), 《carved flag》 (Web, 2022), 《Singmul》 (Sinchon Culture Development Center, 2022), 《Flying Squirrel Shelter》 (Outdoor Guerrilla, 2019), and 《How to Play the Traditional Gayageum (Performance Group Gang)》 (Art On Gong, 2019). She also composed the music for the silent film <The Identity of the Monster>.
Key collaborative works include Kim Ye-ji’s <Ear duct, us>, Park Min-hee’s <The Wind Blows from the Mountain Where Gods Gather>, Lim Eun-jung’s <Lump of Rice>, and Kim Min-ji’s <To Luca>.