Donghoon Gang

 Donghoon Gang is an artist, composer, and researcher.

The work begins with Pantomime, an instrumental movement from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's opera Le Devin du Village (1752). Although Rousseau is widely known today as a philosopher, political thinker, and educational theorist, he was also deeply engaged with music throughout his life, writing on musical theory and composing several works, including this pastoral opera. The melody of Pantomime, originally conceived as a wordless theatrical interlude, would later embark on an unexpected journey across different cultures and historical contexts.

Through processes of adaptation and transmission, the motif from Pantomime was transformed into hymns, folk songs, and school songs (唱歌, shōka). In Japan, it was introduced through the Elementary School Songbook, becoming the basis for the familiar children's song Musunde Hiraite (むすんでひらいて) and eventually becoming embedded within the musical cultures of East Asia. Tracing this passage, Gang rearranges the various historical transformations of the melody into a choral composition, presented as a 4-channel sound installation. At the same time, the lyrics appropriated from these different stages of transmission are installed as an unbroken strip of vinyl text, positioned at both eye level and ear level.

By revisiting this overlooked musical fragment from Rousseau's opera, whose very title pantomime denotes a wordless theatrical form, the installation traces a quiet irony at the heart of its survival. A melody born without words endured precisely by being repeatedly given new ones, passed from hand to hand as hymn, folk song, and shōka. The installation examines how this single melody has continuously acquired new lyrics, functions, and meanings over nearly three centuries according to changing historical, educational, and cultural conditions. Through the simultaneous experience of listening and reading, the work reveals a layered history of transmission and proposes a heterophonic coexistence in which multiple languages, memories, and cultural trajectories resonate together.

Photo : Donhoon Gand and TAKAHASHI KENJI