HaedongLee is a transdisciplinary artist who explores the intangible and temporal nature of sound through spatial movement and tangible objects. He creates Sound-Sculptures with metal, wood, and Anthropocene by-products, reinterpreting ritual and ceremony as performance in a contemporary context.
He has explored sound’s role in physical, spatial, and social contexts by engaging with traditional sound cultures in West-Africa, Asia, and Europe, such as shamanism, folk beliefs, rituals, ceremonies, and labor-songs. Learning performance techniques and sound object-making, he explores the origins of sound by collecting and structuring it as a percussionist working with the unique voices of objects. Sound is transformed by the material characteristics of the objects from which it originates, such as material, structure, and form, and the artist explores these primordial characteristics of sound by approaching it from the perspective of visual art's sculpture along with the language of auditory art. Furthermore, the artist interprets the characteristics of the relationship between objects and the form of movement from the perspective of performance art.
His series The Sound of Restriction(2021–) was inspired by cowbells, used as shackles for domesticated and sacrificed animals. He develops sound objects that reveal how sound operates as a tool of restraint and control beyond mere aural elements. Alongside constructing a Sound Ecosystem within an object-scape shaped by artistic creation and selection, he reconstructs Anthropocene by-products into sculptures, reflecting on ecological and civilizational crises. Lee hopes his sound sculptures will serve as an urgent artistic wake-up call to anthropocentrism, beyond the simple experience of sound.
