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Paayme Paxaayt
Sharon Chohi Kim’s creative practice centers around elemental forces and collective intelligence, incorporating a blend of acoustic and electronic sound, movement, and ritual to explore the interconnections between human beings and more-than-human actors. Through her performative works and experimental operatic projects, Sharon facilitates intimate, healing engagements with Mother Earth, all the while promoting essential themes of ecological listening, corporeal fluidity, and coexistence.
Co-produced by Living Earth, Nina Sarnelle, Black Cube Museum, and Spectra Studio, Paayme Paxaayt is an intentionally site-responsive and adaptive piece that expresses Sharon’s relationship with the Los Angeles River. She submerges metal instruments and a metal bowl filled with river water directly into the river, using hydrophones to amplify both the instruments and the water itself. Rather than control the sound, she allows the current to play the instruments, creating a shifting and unpredictable sonic field. In a deeply immersive fashion, viewers are invited to enter a state of flow and soften their spirits into the land.
Like a sculptural and ecological material, the vocalizations emerged through cycles of improvisation and embodied research, very much inspired by the majestic Great Blue Herons that frequent the area. The costume design also drew from avian motion and form, adding a distinct physicality to the piece.
Taking place at sunset, Paayme Paxaayt approaches the river as a living, breathing energy source, a collaborator, and a main protagonist. Employing the tenets of Korean shamanism and channeling fluctuations of light, wind, and water throughout, Sharon convinces us to relinquish egocentric impulses, deconstruct interpersonal boundaries, and once again reciprocate with local ecosystems and the living world.
