Art in the Cloud
Art in the Cloud – Ken UENO
Ken UENO (Artist)
Rome Prize and Berlin Prize winner Ken UENO is a composer, vocalist and sound artist. Ueno’s collaborators include the Hilliard Ensemble, Kim Kashkashian and Robyn Schulkowsky, Steve Schick and SFCMP, and Frances-Marie Uitti. As a vocalist, he has performed his concerto with orchestras in Boston, New York, Poland, Lithuania, Thailand, North Carolina, and California. His sound installations have been installed at MUAC, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Art Basel, and at SCI-Arc. Ueno is currently a Professor in Music at UC Berkeley. His bio appears in The Grove Dictionary of American Music.
Video: Kitchen Breath
Kitchen Breath is a one-minute performance, that recalls another piece, TARD.
In TARD, I hold my breath in a bowl of water for 2 minutes, as an analog to how I have felt my breath has been suspended since November 2016, as well as how I feel my voice as a person of color has been muted. I am the hunger artist. I risk my life on stage as entertainment for a largely white audience. As a form of protest against the underlying premise of being of Asian descent in America: invisibility, I am asking, “How close to death do I need to come?
