SEATTLE, WASHINGTON.- The Henry Art Gallery presents “Lee Bul: Live Forever,” at the North Galleries through January 14, 2004. Lee Bul’s futuristic installation includes a trilogy of video projections alongside three soundproof karaoke booths—white pod-like capsules lined with leather and body-conforming foam—that visitors are invited to enter one at a time for a private performance. Part road trip, part space odyssey, Lee Bul: Live Forever blurs the lines between art and entertainment, artifice and nature, and public and private performance.

Lee Bul explains that in these pods, where the body is surrounded by a machine-like shell, “the act of singing becomes a performance only for the self, like dancing in front of the mirror.” The physical isolation of the capsule encourages each user to explore the personal fantasies and the collective memories evoked by popular music. Lee’s use of karaoke conveys her notion that everyone’s life has a soundtrack that evokes a mixture of memory and desire, both distinctly individual and composed of elements of mass production and public consumption.

Each of the karaoke pods corresponds to a video and song list that addresses a specific theme. The first pod is lined in black and explores the notion of journey. Visitors can choose from songs including Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen and California Dreaming by the Mamas and the Papas. The accompanying video depicts couples dancing in the Tonga Room of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco and explores relationships between lounge singers, tourists, and businessmen in transient hotel culture.

A second pod lined in orange is devoted to a collection of love songs such as Every Breath You Take by The Police, and One by U2. The video captures a group of Korean schoolgirls dancing and playing in nature.

Silver-blue leather lines the third pod, which combines imagery and songs about urban life. The fast-moving video depicts a nighttime journey along a six-lane freeway in Seoul. Blurring headlights and neon signs speed by, accompanying songs such as I Wanna Be Sedated by The Ramones and Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Lee Bul has exhibited worldwide at venues such as the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Walker Art Center, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. In 1999, she represented Korea at the Venice Biennale. Lee Bul: Live Forever has traveled to the San Francisco Art Institute, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, The New Museum of Art, New York, Orange County Museum of Art, The Power Plant, Toronto, and Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art before its final stop in Seattle. Lee Bul lives and works in Seoul.

The works in Lee Bul: Live Forever were produced by the artist in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia and the San Francisco Art Institute. Support was provided by the Korea Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, The E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, and Mr. and Mrs. James E. Douglas, Jr. The exhibition was organized for the Henry Art Gallery by Pamela Meredith, Assistant Curator with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, PONCHO, and the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, and in-kind support from the Grand Hyatt, Seattle.