Haribo Kimchi
Jaha Koo / CAMPO
Floating aromas of a steamy simmering soup, the sharp sound of a knife quickly slicing spring onions, hissing and sizzling of mushrooms on a scorching fire.
In Haribo Kimchi, we find ourselves in a pojangmacha, a typical late-night snack bar that can be seen scattered across the streets of South Korea. There we meet several lost souls: an eel, a snail and a rice cooker. They take us on a culinary journey, exploring food culture as a form of language that reveals the structure of a society. In several absurdist and touching anecdotes, they recount the diaspora of Kimchi culture, cannibalism during the great famine, the sour pain of unadulterated racism and the deep umami taste of home.
After the Hamartia Trilogy (2021), in which he delved into the far-reaching imperialism in East Asia, the South Korean theatre maker and composer Jaha Koo returns with his newest creation. In his typical hybrid style, combining music, cutting- edge video and robotic performers, the artist reflects on cultural assimilation with all its conflicts and paradoxes. In an exceptional performance that plays with all the senses, he alters our perception of food for good.
Duration: 60 min
English and Korean (with Dutch surtitles)
press
Haribo kimchi is a performance as sophisticated as it is seasoned about living in a country that is not your own. Not only love, melancholy also goes through the stomach.
A performance that inimitably blends Korean cooking with personal stories and reflections on comfort food, identity and migration.
A diaspora from an upbeat, culinary perspective
credits
concept, text, direction, music, sound & video Jaha Koo performance Gona, Seri, Haribo & Jaha Koo dramaturgy Dries Douibi scenography & media operation Eunkyung Jeong artistic advice Pol Heyvaert technical coordination Korneel Coessens technique Bart Huybrechts, Babette Poncelet & Jasse Vergauwe Cuckoo hacking Idella Craddock production coordination Wim Clapdorp production CAMPO coproduction Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Rideau de Bruxelles, Theater Utrecht, SPRING festival (Utrecht), Festival d’Automne à Paris, Théâtre de la Bastille (Paris), Tangente St. Pölten – Festival für Gegenwartskultur, &Espoo theatre (Finland), International Summer Festival Kampnagel (Hamburg), Sophiensaele (Berlin), Meet You Festival (Valladolid), Bunker (Ljubljana), National Theatre and Concert Hall Taipei, The Divine Comedy International Theater Festival/ Teatr Łaźnia Nowa (Kraków) & Perpodium with the support of the taxshelter of the Belgian Federal Government via Cronos Invest & the Flemish Government
The prototype of the eel was developed as part of Innovation:Lab's funnel in co-production with Theater Utrecht and creative technologists Adriaan Wormgoor & Willem Vooijs.