While we work to reschedule a new date for Dohee Lee’s ritual theater shamanic experience, MU/巫: 9 Goddesses, we are excited to announce that the prolific artist take over our social media channels on Saturday, July 25. A creative visionary trained at the master level in music composition, singing, drumming and dance, the 2016 recipient of The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts in Music made her Los Angeles debut at REDCAT in 2017 with her genre-defying solo piece MU/巫, an original multimedia iteration of ancient Korean shamanism. During her takeover, Lee shared her most recent work, as well as what she’s been up to during quarantine, before going live our Instagram to present “Singing Ritual.” During the solo performance, Lee created an Electronic Singing Ritual with live voice processing and soundscapes through SensorPlay.

 

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While we work to reschedule a new date for Dohee Lee’s ritual theater shamanic experience, “MU/巫: 9 Goddesses,” we are excited to announce that the prolific artist will be taking over our social media channels this Saturday! A creative visionary trained at the master level in music composition, singing, drumming and dance, the 2016 recipient of The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts in Music (@doheemago) made her Los Angeles debut at REDCAT in 2017 with her genre-defying solo piece MU/巫, an original multimedia iteration of ancient Korean shamanism. Make sure to follow along as Lee shares her most recent work, as well as what she’s been up to during quarantine! #calartsredcat #REDCATondemand

A post shared by REDCAT (@calartsredcat) on Jul 22, 2020 at 10:22am PDT

 

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By Bulwhigong Project in Jeju Island 2018-2019 A visual art of ritual performance, exposing deadly destruction of the land and many sacred sites by senseless industrial development on the Jeju Islands, South Korea, and for showing how to heal the earth through arts and shamanic ritual. From the beginning of the 2000s, the Jeju Islands have been experiencing brutal attacks on Her land by tourism, militarism, and capitalism. Worse, many sacred sites have been erased from the ancient landscape for good, by dynamite demolition, for building a US naval base/Militarism and tourism/Capitalism. Through her signature style of dance and Sori (Voice) that are deeply rooted in traditional shamanism of Jeju, Dohee Lee (@doheemago) captures and conjures up hauntingly the powerful, healing, life-affirming story of the mythological world of the ancient goddess Sulmundae, the Creatrix of Jeju. Finally, “The Future of the Disappeared” also functions as a shamanic ritual for the dead. In general this ritual is called kut, and in the Jeju tradition, it is called “Sanamkut.” In this kut, the living and the dead mingle, share pain and regret, and build bond through healing, for a better world. Watch the full video at www.facebook.com/calartsredcat ! #calartsredcat #REDCATondemand

A post shared by REDCAT (@calartsredcat) on Jul 25, 2020 at 9:27am PDT

 

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Puri Art community ritual at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, Oct 5, 2019 Communities: Bay Area Bhutanese Youth, CoRazOn Collective, Ieumsae Korean Drumming Group, Korean Performing Arts Institute of Chicago, Labor y Dignidad and Puri Arts Ensemble For many years, I have been working on rituals with the intention of making connection. In this case, connection means bringing the community together in collective action, balancing disparate facets of humanity, society, nature, and spirituality. If the community is to thrive and sustain itself, there must be balance. When these facets are fractured, life goes out of balance. MU Fall ritual brings us together to recognize, honor and harmonize with nature, land, ancestors and spirit. We tell our stories through ritual performance, breaking the silence and creatively confronting memories of grief and fear, continuing the process of reconciliation and healing. Together, we are creating new community ritual for our modern, urban villages. Empowering our voices in the fight for equity, justice and freedom. - @doheemago #calartsredcat #REDCATondemand

A post shared by REDCAT (@calartsredcat) on Jul 25, 2020 at 10:16am PDT

 

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Video: Carole Kim, Emily Encina Music: Adria Otte Direction: Dohee Lee My story begins when one of my ancestors took the huge boat bound to America that he might have thought… did he even know where he was going? Maybe he thought America will have helped him to keep his own country in 1904. That hope grasped in a nine year old boy’s fist. He was alone, he came by himself without any family members. Through that boy’s eyes, I saw how my country was slowly taken away and people losing their home where they were born, losing the land they have farmed for generations. Losing hope to keep their native land, my people fled to another countries, desperately, with a handful of hope to protect their country becoming refugees. I followed his footsteps without knowing him, many years past, without knowing his name, without knowing of his existence. His steps remain, my steps follow to trace his. Every time, one step forward, teaches me a step back towards our ancestor’s time. Each step forward, shows me many steps further back to their time with endless tears. Time that they were born with a county been occupied and colonized, language taken away, culture, believes. People were used for labor, poverty, dictatorship, separation from family by wars. I see them through the times, leaving behind their home and loved ones, crossing borders, living in the camps and leaving again…. Finding something… searching for something…. That brought me here, to be aware of who you are, where you are from, why you are here, and what to be… I am still asking those questions to myself and finding wise answers through other people’s stories like mine, or mine is like theirs, how do we live this life on this earth. I am living in a village, surrounded by people’s lives and stories. I am kneeling on the land and water where all our ancestors are buried, with their tearful stories which never had a chanced to wipe, or be seen and heard.

A post shared by REDCAT (@calartsredcat) on Jul 25, 2020 at 12:45pm PDT

 

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“Uprising/Uprooting,” Drawing by Dohee Lee We are living under pressure of a white supremacy system, a patriarchal system. This system of oppression is all about competition – result oriented value rather than relation and process value. I am thinking about this a lot as an artist how we have thrown ourselves into that system and live with lack of realization of how we can break the system in order to survive. This will be our ongoing struggle and I always put hope that we can change this. This pandemic time with Black Lives Matter/Racial structure system totally gave us to realize how this is not working for planet system and human system. I deeply contemplate on how we re-look at human lives, environmental system. So during this time, I have been pen drawing about reflecting what is going on these days with our planet. Through COVID 19 and racial uprising, there are consequences that we need to pay attention to. We face death everyday, numbers are increasing. Death that came from our ancestral time. How are we going to process these times that are coming from the past and the present, which all weave towards the future. My practice at home is a lot drawing, a lot reading, a lot singing, a lot praying, this teaches me matriarchal ways that we can approach to our future, our work, our lives. - Dohee Lee #calartsredcat #REDCATondemand

A post shared by REDCAT (@calartsredcat) on Jul 25, 2020 at 1:14pm PDT

 

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“Eastern Birth Chart Reading with Sound Healing,” Drawing by Dohee Lee Do our part! It has been a deep dive beneath the desperate truths which have been buried, ignored and wiped out for many hundreds of years of how this Indigenous people’s land has been stolen by colonizers and built the new nation with Black Americans who were being kidnapped from their motherland. We should try more and hard enough to learn the depth of grief and truth until it could meet for the understanding and action of true change on capitalized racial system. Are we digging enough to know our ancestries? Can you see the grief with times that tangled each other? It is time to rise together! Their pain, grief and struggles are ours as well. Let’s do the part what each of us can contribute for the better system of this life, land, and environment for all. We need to dive deeply like Grandmother free divers in my hometown Jeju island and guided by our forgotten ancestors. They are uprooting toward to us, they are uprising through our body and voices… As an artist, healer, ritualist and educator, I am dedicating my work to manifest their voices to be heard and seen. “So, transform yourself first… Because you are young and have dreams and want to do something meaningful, that in itself makes you our future and our hope. Keep expanding your horizon, decolonize your mind, and cross borders.” —Yuri Kochiyama These days I am reading these books: Kazu Haga “Healing Resistance”, Robin Diangelo “White Fragility” and Adrienne Maree Brown “ Emergent Strategy”, Grace Lee Boggs “ The Next American Revolution”, James Baldwin “ I am not your negro” – film and also book and so on…. I have been studying and working on reading birth chart in Eastern philosophy “Sajoo- Myungree” This study is all about relationship between human to others, nature, seasons, environment, and body organs and universe cycles. - @doheemago #calartsredcat #REDCATondemand

A post shared by REDCAT (@calartsredcat) on Jul 25, 2020 at 1:54pm PDT

 

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Processing voice and sound through electronics and SensorPla. Dedicating to Covid victims and ancestors who resist for the equity and their land. Thank you for witnessing this! #calartsredcat @doheemago @calartsredcat

A post shared by REDCAT (@calartsredcat) on Jul 25, 2020 at 2:46pm PDT