On June 23rd, Wrightwood 659 and the Chinese American Museum of Chicago join Dragon Boat Festival celebrations worldwide in memory of the ancient Chinese poet, politician, and musician Qu Yuan. In Warring States Cyberpunk, Kongkee reimagines the story of Qu Yuan, transplanting his ancient and poetic soul into an android, merging the past with a rapidly approaching future. Honoring Kongkee’s retelling, Wrightwood 659 will present two live performances moving from the augmented, imagined future to practices rooted in millennia-old tradition.

The program will commence at 4 PM with the electronic compositions of acclaimed Japanese-born sound artist Kikù Hibino. The music will accompany the silhouettes of Kongkee’s vinyl window installation, as the sun projects them across the floors and walls of the Tadao Ando-designed fourth-floor corridor in a convergence of sound, light, and space. Hibino’s layered orchestration, inspired by nature’s rhythms and optical illusions, resonates with the dancing shadows of Kongkee’s bionic figures.

At 6 PM, the program will conclude with a ceremonial lion dance, a form that can be traced back to the end of the Warring States Period roughly 2,200 years ago. Performed by the Chicago Chinese Cultural Center’s dance troupe, the lion dancers weave their way through the exhibition to the beat of drums and cymbals, embodying a living link between timelessness and temporal.
About the Performers

About the Performers

Kikù Hibino

Japanese-born sound artist Kikù Hibino produces electronic music focusing on unusual rhythmic structures and melodies inspired by nature, optical illusion, and moiré patterns.

From chamber music for media productions to ambient noise for art installations, he has collaborated internationally with a wide variety of artists and scholars, including Baudouin Saintyves, Yuge Zhou, Mitsu Salmon, Kawaguchi Takao (Dumb Type), Theaster Gates, Mike Weis (Zelienople) and Norma Field.

Kikù is on the Italian record label Superpang. His work has been shown in Museum Of Contemporary Art Chicago, Bemis Center For Contemporary Arts, Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago Cultural Center, Three Walls, Compound Yellow, Elastic Arts, Hairpin Arts Center, Hyde Park Art Center, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, among others. He’s a 2017 Individual Artist Grant recipient from Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and a 2021 Outer Ear Artist in Residency at Experimental Sound Studio. Kikù lives and works in Chicago.

The publication, The Wire (U.K.), once described his music as “trying to cram in as many memories as possible before it all disappears” and that the music “concerns itself with themes of capturing and preserving fleeting moments” (2007, issue 279).

He studied electronic music composition at Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus with Toru Iwatake, Atau Tanaka, and Christopher Penrose, and at the University of California at Santa Barbara with Curtis Roads and Karen Tanaka, and holds M.A. in media art and technology.

In 2021, Kikù and Gregory Bae launched SN, an electronic music record label.

Official Website

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Tags: Chicago, KIKÙ HIBINO, Lincoln Park, Qu Yuan, Reverberating Histories, Reverberating Histories: Celebrating Qu Yuan in the Digital Age, Wrightwood 659