dogr – Read Aloud Lyrics iv: Bergen

On the opening night, David Michael DiGregorio (dogr) sings Read Aloud Lyrics iv: Bergen, part of an ongoing concert series. The concert accompanies Sung Hwan Kim's exhibition "Dirt in the Shape of You" and draws in part on research for and works from Kim's series A Record of Drifting Across the Sea (2017–). In the series, Kim turns to past histories of migration, parsing the traces – archival and bodily – left by undocumented Korean migrants who came to the US by way of Hawaiʻi at the turn of the twentieth century.

The lyrics in Read Aloud Lyrics often carry histories whose meanings are not equally available to every listener. The songs reframe those references – and the varied forms of recognition and non-recognition they invite, from unfamiliarity and partial memories to familiar feelings and immediate recognition – within new musical contexts.

DiGregorio composes, sings, and plays, bringing together voice, acoustic instruments, field recordings, and electronic textures. His early musical training centred on Baroque repertoire at the piano. In the early 2000s he began experimenting with voice, modular synthesis, treated table-slide guitars, and no-input mixers, alongside formative singing experiences both in intimate settings and in a large gospel choir. For the series in the room, sung voices accumulated in layers alongside sound sources and processes including ocarina, delay, custom LiSa sample banks, harmonica, kazoo, pump organ, guitar, mallets, stretched membranous materials, air, dry-erase marker on plastic, jae-gum (Korean cymbals), and pang-eul (Korean bells). By the 2010s his concerts had begun to include duets with the opera singer Elizabeth Jane Dudley Baker and instruments such as the ondes Martenot, alongside a continuing interest in 꺾임 (kkeokk-im, a characteristic bending or turning of pitch within Korean traditional music). In recent work, DiGregorio has been exploring the lap steel guitar, returning to the piano, and paring down layers, re-examining the use of field recordings through techniques rooted in musique concrète. Across his music, older instruments and technologies coexist with newer forms of electronic and electro-acoustic processing, informing an ever-morphing, idiosyncratic treatment of rhythm and structure.

DiGregorio has worked extensively in contemporary art and performance, including a long-standing collaboration with Sung Hwan Kim; other collaborators include Rosa Barba, Otobong Nkanga, Byungjun Kwon, Andi Toma, Danai Anesiadou, and Ari Benjamin Meyers' Kunsthalle for Music. His music and performances have been presented at MoMA, New York; HyundaiCard Music Library, Seoul; Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan; STEIM, Amsterdam; and Établissement d'en face, Brussels. As dogr, he has released albums including In Korean Wilds and Villages (Sonig) and one from in the room (BR2/Intermedium).

During the concert Landmark is a listening room: come early, take a seat or find a place to stand, and save the conversation for afterwards. The exhibitions stay open all evening, and from 22:00 the opening party carries on with a DJ at Landmark.