Fail Safe :: Young Joon Kwak & Kim Ye // Steiner Lecture in Creative Inquiry, 11/21/2022 from STUDIO for Creative Inquiry on Vimeo.

Young Joon Kwak (b. 1984 in Queens, NY) is a Los Angeles-based multi-disciplinary artist who primarily uses sculpture, performance, video, and community-based collaborations to reimagine new and continually evolving bodies, selves, and futures. They are the founder of Mutant Salon, a roving beauty salon/platform for experimental performance collaborations with their community of queer, trans, femme, POC artists and performers, and lead performer in the electronic-dance-noise band Xina Xurner.

Kim Ye (b. 1984, Beijing, China) is a Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary artist whose work incorporates performance, video, sculpture, installation, and text. Influenced by language and aesthetics from BDSM, drag, and other avenues for self-actualization, her work explores the inversion of power dynamics through creating situations of exchange and intimacy. She has performed and exhibited nationally and internationally at The Hammer Museum, Getty Center, Banff Center for Arts and Creativity, Material Art Fair, Human Resources, Machine Project, Morán Morán, Satellite Art Fair, and Visitor Welcome Center among others.

Young Joon Kwak and Kim Ye’s lecture is presented as a collaboration between Fail-Safe and the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry with support from the 2022-2023 Sylvia and David Steiner Speaker Series.

Fail-Safe is a recurring variety performance show which brings together artists exploring performance across disciplines to present new experimental projects in early stages of development. Organized by STUDIO fellows Angela Washko, Scott Andrew, and Jesse Stiles, this fourth edition of Fail-Safe will create a dialogue about performance between Los Angeles and Pittsburgh. 

Fail-Safe: Los Angeles x Pittsburgh presents two evenings of new and in-progress performance works by interdisciplinary musicians, performance artists, and dancers from these two cities. On both evenings, visiting artists will be preceded by a lineup of Pittsburgh-based artists whose practices share affinities. Fail-Safe: Los Angeles x Pittsburgh is happening at Kelly Strayhorn Theater on November 10th and 11th at 8pm.

More details: https://kelly-strayhorn.org/events/fail-safe/Fail-Safe: Los Angeles x Pittsburgh is co-organized between Fail-Safe and the Kelly Strayhorn Theater, with financial support from the The National Endowment for the Arts, Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, and the Carnegie Mellon University College of Fine Arts.