The project Mourning Heat (열곡(熱哭)) is a performative installation attempting to explore the left-behind, the departed, and the in-between through the medium of heat. Through the medium of heat, this project aims to reinterpret the behavior of mourning through rising heat and the fading of warmth.

At the core of the project is the mourning device, which creates thermoacoustic sound via the expansion, contraction, and flow of air caused by heat. The subtle vibration and strong volume of the sound is controlled by mourning performers. Each performer begins by finding their own sound of mourning, which gradually builds into a collective resonance. The heat, which rises through the ceramic tubes held by the performers, amplifies these sounds, creating a moment of relief and connection. This sound serves as a metaphor for sending someone off into the sky, invoking the image of farewell in many mourning traditions.

These days, the process of mourning is often condensed, leaving little time for people to fully express their grief. Mourning Heat invites participants to experience a prolonged moment of mourning, one that transcends linguistic empathy and offers solace through sound, heat, and resonance

Choreography : Mourn alone – Mourn together through heat

Mourning (crying) is a condensed form of expression. When complex emotions are released before they can be organized into language, crying can be a powerful means of communication that creates emotional intimacy and a call for help – even towards strangers. It is also interlaced to the birth and death of life. The first cry at birth, as a form of breathing, signals the healthy birth of a new life, and at the moment of death, crying is also an expression of grief.

Crying is a condensed form of emotion. Heat, too, is a condensed energy. In this project, the two intertwine, each causing the other.

When the performance begins, the coils of the chilled and lifeless mourning devices start to glow. The ceramic tubes direct the flow of the vibrant energy of heat while performers utilize the mechanism to produce sound. In exploring the heating elements, the performer can practice mourning through heat while finding the element that resonates best with their tube. Once all the performers have found proper heating elements and sounds, the performance ends with all three performers resonating with each other.

The air in the resonating mourning device eventually cools and disperses into the surroundings as a stream of heat. Although the heat will cool, like a physical body that eventually remains cold, it will not disappear, but will exist in an invisible form, permeating the surroundings again as energy and warmth, a metaphor for presence.\

Resonance of Heat – Thermoacoustic

Heat is oscillating, relative, flowing, and in a continuous state of exchange and circulation. This exchange tries to find a balance of energy and approach zero, but it is constantly overflowing, falling short, and repeating itself in an infinite interaction. Within this circular interaction, there is no hierarchy in heat, and it is impossible to define what is hotter or colder.

A performer (a living person) intervenes in this heat to give it flow. While there are various affective experiments in art, this project attempts to explore the balanced cyclical relationship between life, matter, human, and non-human through the thermo-acoustic crying caused by the flow of heat, as well as the act of performers who are finding a delicate point of balance where sound is produced.

The technique used in this work is related to thermoacoustics, which is the principle that when vibrant heat is directed by a tube, it causes a resonance within the tube. It has been observed for centuries by glass blowers and studied by the physicist Pieter Rijke. When a heating device within a tube produces heat, the air around it is energized, eventually causing the air inside a tube to oscillate. This expanding and shrinking air becomes regularized and transformed into a sound that we can hear. Different sizes and lengths of tubes are used to create this flow, resulting in different sounds. The air rising along the tube has the property of falling back down as it cools. This property of heat is used as an important conceptual and physical medium in this work, demonstrating the relative and cyclical nature of heat, which is also a metaphor for many funerary rituals and the metaphor of sending someone to heaven when they pass away.

Design log

After testing iron, glass, plastic, etc. using a heating device, I decided to use ceramic, as it is a material that can easily withstand heat. In particular, the pipe part was previously tested with glass, but the glass was broken after multiple stress tests, so it was decided to use ceramic, which has a good compatibility with heat. In addition, the ceramic tubes are made of organic shapes with different lengths and sizes, and it was confirmed through tests that unpredictable resonance effects occur.

The shape of the heating apparatus comes from a mixture of a candle holder (or incense holder) and an instrument used in ritual ceremonies. Instead of incense or candles, the structure has three holes for +, – , and stainless steel rods. The steel rods are used for maintaining the stability of the structure.

The components used to separate the + and – cables from each other are also made of ceramic, which is commonly used in electronics for isolation and for heat resistance. The nichrome wire holding part is also made with ceramic which can withstand more than 700-1100°C. For making the structure to coil the nichrome, the ceramic is trimmed to a cross shape with small gaps after the firing process.

Co-curated by : Hyoga Park\
Photo by : Chul Lim Choi\
Video by : Deok Man Kim\
Performers in the documentation : Young Lim, Danbi Yoon, Hyein Jeon\
Coordination : Shawn Pak Hin Tang, Daniel Vadasz\
Technical Advice : Daniel Vadasz

Special thanks to

Young Hee Sung\
Qianxun Chen\
Valentina Gaete\
Victor Artiga Rodriguez\
Milton Raggi\
Alevtina Senik\
Ute Alexandra Fischer\
Nicola Essig\
Karl Robert Strecker\
Nicolas-Friederich Hohlt

With the support of digital media master study program and professors

Reference\
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoacoustics\
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1–xnRPkmlhc-kKkv-Ivqun-dNBjdp8Z8PrCnoE9wCqA/edit\
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oPTEe-xUjMUvwng7OHYhhRRBo6Vx3zOKimXWOJ_4aH8/edit

This project is an extension of “A Chair for Co-responding (2022),” a chair that produces body heat from Digital Media Bremen, and “Flowing Bodies Do Not Decay (2023),” which is an extension of my last solo exhibition supported by the Seoul Arts Foundation. It was awarded a grant by Arko(Art Council Korea) in 2024.