queer

  • Spectral Rite

    A collaboration between HYENAZ, Sylbee Kim & Nico Pelzer

    Dates

    27-31 August 2014MULTI-ARTS PROJECT II Annyeong! Hello!
    National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul

    Through the aural and visual act of the procession, Spectral Rite explores the architectural condition and the institutional environment of MMCA Seoul. Berlin-based performance duo HYENAZ incarnate as androgynous celestial beings, beautiful monsters, hybrid street peddlers and warriors for justice. Their presence evokes remote yet acquainted spaces, archaic and future tenses, as they appear within the MMCA as familiar strangers.

    The procession is guided by an analytic approach to the architecture of MMCA Seoul, and implies contemplations around the destiny of a space which could rupture into another field of parallel time that is both history and future.

    HYENAZ presented four musical compositions with lyrics in Korean exclusively composed for Spectral Rite. Each station in the procession is connected by movement transitions and atmospherically sung language. Reacting to the condition of mobility during the procession, the geometry of each costume is embedded with a variety of inventive solutions for acoustic and digital sound experimentation. The pseudo-instruments recall shamanistic tools, weapons of war, futuristic media machines and recognizably mimic existing instruments.

    In Spectral Rite, the voice suggests a pre-linguistic phase of sound, and attempts to overcome language-centered systems as well as the impossibility of translation. The movement visualizes a yearning for a unified hybrid of gender, histories and spaces. Spectral Rite is a wedding of physical bodies and the architecture of the museum. As warriors, HYENAZ intend to prevail over apathy and daily complacency of consumerist and institutionalized city life.

    Credits

    DirectionSylbee Kim
    Performed byHYENAZ
    MusicHYENAZ with Nicolas Pelzer, Sylbee Kim
    LyricsSylbee Kim, HYENAZ, Nicolas Pelzer
    CostumesJuan Chamié (for EXIT)
    Styling, Objects and InstrumentsYeorg Kronnagel with Rilk Mob
    ProjectionSylbee Kim
    CoordinatorTaejun Kim
    DocumentationSylbee Kim, Seung-Bum Hong, Nico Pelzer
    Supported byKorean Cultural Center, Berlin; Mi-Hyun Park (Gayageum)

  • Cypher

    In Cypher, HYENAZ uphold the hyena—a creature maligned as grotesque—as a totem of queer survival. The work unravels a love story spun through the animal’s mythos: its androgynous physiology, its scavenging, its supposed ugliness as a testament to thriving at the margins.

    Graysister (Dušan Pejčić)’s video distills this ethos into a flesh-and-pixel psalm. The artists’ faces and bodies fuse into a luminous, three-breasted hybrid—part human, part apparition. Limbs and bones blur, and genders dissolve into a radiant monstrosity that defies categorization.

    Through distortion and desire, Cypher weaponizes the hyena’s vilified traits—scavenging becomes resourcefulness, androgyny becomes multiplicity, ugliness becomes a radical self-acceptance. Here, love is not pristine communion but a feral pact.

    Credits

    Music & LyricsHYENAZ
    MixHYENAZ, Bartłomiej Kuźniak (Studio333)
    MasteringBartłomiej Kuźniak (Studio333)
    VideoDušan Pejčić

  • Sister

    In Sister, HYENAZ conjures a visceral dialogue between fusion and fracture. Filmed at Ngannelong (also known as Hanging Rock) the work captures artist Adrienne Teicher in a raw, psychedelic performance that mirrors the destabilizing thrall of longing. The work’s title invokes the eternally deferred ideal of sisterhood: a bond that promises wholeness but may never offer full or lasting consumation. HYENAZ’s soundscape oscillates between ethereal vocal symbiosis and electronic rupture, embodying the ecstatic terror of being both consumed by and estranged from a beloved other.

    While the work does not explicitly address the history of Ngannelong, it is critical to remember that this is a site of profound significance to the Dja Dja Wurrung, Woi Wurrung, and Taungurung peoples, who were violently displaced during the genocidal campaigns of Australia’s frontier wars.

    Credits

    Music & LyricsHYENAZ
    Audio MixHYENAZ, Bartłomiej Kuźniak (Studio333)
    Audio MasteringBartłomiej Kuźniak (Studio333)
    VideoHYENAZ

  • Scavenge

    In their 2014 self titled debut, also known as “Scavenge”, HYENAZ imagined themselves as transgender hyena-humanoids, scavenging on the edges of apocalypse, building bodies and identities from civilization’s detritus.

    HYENAZ are one, defiled and immaculate, their androgynous flesh quivering on the thin edge between the digital and the divine. They believe that all beings and matter are intrinsically connected, that we can choose utopia over dystopia, that time is an illusion. The album is written as an infinite circle. An electro-symphony, it is composed not track by track, but as a whole, adapting sounds and samples from around the world and influences from across time. 

    Collage: Isaiah Lopaz / Graphic Design: HYENAZ
    BuyBandcamp
    StreamSpotify · Apple Music · YouTube Music · Tidal · Deezer · SoundCloud

    Credits

    Music & LyricsHYENAZ
    MixHYENAZ, Bartłomiej Kuźniak (Studio333)
    MasteringBartłomiej Kuźniak (Studio333)
    Album ArtworkIsaiah Lopaz
    Graphic DesignHYENAZ