Donghoon Gang

*Installation View(Rat-a-tat, Pom-pom, Bang!), at JEJU CULTURE & ART CENTER, JEJU*

Rat-a-tat, Pom-pom, Bang! (2025)

Solo exhibition at JEJU CULTURE & ART CENTER, JEJU

One of the geometrical conundrums introduced in the 20th century goes as follows: If all the possible eigenfrequencies emitted from a drum can be determined through equations purely based on its shape, could one identify, conversely, the shape of a drum given only its eigenfrequencies? To some extent, this question has been answered with the discovery that “two drums of different shapes can share the same natural frequencies.”

We can also glean a similar question and answer from words that describe sounds.
For instance, the singular sound and utterance ‘um—’ can serve as an expression of soft affirmation, but also one that precedes a negative response, or perhaps even of undisclosed intention that delights persistingly in its very ambiguity. Of course, some words are exclusively linked to ‘a single sound.’ Such is the case with vocal imitations of instruments with distinct timbres.

However, a word like ‘thud’ is just as enmeshed with complicated cases as ‘um—’, attributed not only to countless instruments but also a multitude of physical phenomena, where we can sense in the act of reading that something has fallen while being unable to grasp the actual sound, like many things compressed and encoded into language.

Rat-a-tat, Pom-pom, Bang! is the gradual onomatopoeic succession from dense plosives to a larger sonic eruption. Such onomatopoeia, which condense complex sounds into human language, are generally employed in rehearsals when trying to inscribe certain things into corporeal memory. Released, for instance, from the hands and lips of performers who, in order to orchestrate a climax onstage, experience it preemptively in multitudes. Or, from their bodies, repeatedly refined in anticipation of a singular moment of triumph. For performers in practice, these words are the very manifestations of the language of rehearsal.

The exhibition contains the time, devices, and stage of those preparing for an indeterminable future. Teeming with coarse sensation, this is a zone that deals with temporalities preceding the blow— the auditory ‘boom.’ While one remains in the purgatory of rehearsal, another meticulously primes an instrument like a well-honed weapon. When, where, and how the performance will unfold remains opaque, yet what’s clear is that a stage exists. In this space of sound and sound-makers, where we expect to hear, we read the flow of sonic words as we listen to concrete sounds.

Precisely where those sounds are headed is unclear. Onomatopoeia evocative of ruptures and explosions do not align precisely with the sounds heard here. Preceding occurrences that may be described as ‘Rat-a-tat, Pom-pom, Bang!’, the exhibition unfolds as a rehearsal of sorts, through which it will likely be impossible to predict the events that await our encounter. As is the case with anticipating the future, or the myriad of events through sound.

Yeasul Shin

trans. Joan Lee