After parking his skateboard, climbing onto the bar and ordering "a well-poured beer, with its two fingers of foam, very cold and if it's self-produced, even better, that way I contribute to local commerce or business", Hun Deok Lee asks to accompany the chat with the notes of Slowdive's Souvlaki, "for me, the best shoegaze album of all time. It came out in '93 and, the first time I heard it, it marked me forever," he explains, remembering himself as that indie kid who, thanks to the album now playing, discovered Brian Eno, who had participated with a couple of tracks on that recording.
Of Korean descent, this multidisciplinary artist arrived in Barcelona in 1982, "when the World Cup was held and the mascot was Naranjito." His is perhaps the first wave of South Korean immigrants who arrived in the city and integrated "absorbing part of the local popular culture and adding it to my heritage," love for kimchi and allioli, which leads him to conclude that "based on the sum of these two parts, we could define mine as a cultural remix." He smiles and sips his beer before confessing that his life -- each moment of which he defines as a different scenario where nothing is monotonous or constant -- has taken a thousand turns. "Of course, I have always been linked to three disciplines: art, music and skate."
In the 80s, he grew up sheltered by the city's skater subculture. "It's not just a sport, but it's a lifestyle to which I've been linked for more than 35 years," and to which he has dedicated a good part of his cultural activism through exhibitions, festivals or the opening of the Ikara Skate Shop. That incorruptible subcultural spirit comes to the surface when he claims that everything he does, his songs, his installations, is self-taught, "and bears the Do it yourself (Do it yourself) seal."
Vibrating wood
"I still remember that wonderful moment when I first touched a violin, and felt its sound and its vibration." At that time, the parishioner was eleven years old and had barely received any musical education. Even so, he assures, that instrument, the vibration of the sound in its small woody body, was what led him to make music. "Together we have gone through several stages. My time in the 90s with Minema marked me forever. There I discovered, learned, and absorbed pop music. It was the best time of my life. I had very little experience and yet I was able to play in almost all national venues and festivals like FIB, BAM, and a long etcetera. In fact, I am very proud of the last concert we gave at BAM in '96. I said goodbye to the Indie scene with my head held high. Later, I experimented learning to improvise with Ummo, a krautrock band, without forgetting that many of my artistic installations were sound-based, and in these, the improvisation of my violin, connected to the effects of guitar pedals, created shoegaze atmospheres in exhibition halls."
--Artistic installations? Explain one to me, what it was like, and so on…
--Well, look, one I'm very proud of was a workshop-format installation I did for the Picasso Museum and which I called Let's Build a New Tower of Babel, curated by Anna Guarro, and for which old, disused, punished, and damaged skate boards were rescued, but which were once objects of desire. With those boards, I built a mega tower in the Noguera courtyard of the museum. The workshop consisted of painting them again, sporting graphics with new personal stories from the participants. That day we broke attendance records: more than 20,000 people came to visit it and more than 2,000 signed up for the workshop.
Right now, the artist is focused on his new musical project, Cotton Tree, "in which my drawings and paintings are the core and inspiration for the songs." Winner in the emerging project category in 2021, from Radio 3's program, Disco Grande, by Julio Ruiz, the regular defines the sound of Cotton Tree as (attention) "something that borders between clean and transparent pop and folk, that transcends the allegories of life, adorned with layers of romanticism, introspection, shoegaze, melancholy, tales and spirituality, and that is ritually distilled into songs that are the mirror of my soul." At the same time, he is creating a personal brand that will encompass "from skateboards to clothing and graphic work that carry my art. The next step is to present it in exhibition halls in the form of a pop-up store, where all my disciplines can be appreciated in one package."
A city to be skated
Passionate about the idea of exploring the city on his skate, he emphasizes that he loves "contemplating the monuments, the architecture, secret places where an endless number of historical stories await. I love the history of Barcelona, starting from Roman Barcino, passing through its walls, the history of Las Ramblas and its hidden secrets, 1714, the Call or Jewish Quarter, the Sephardim and their history, Ildefons Cerdà, Antoni Gaudí and his legacy. I am fascinated to see facades that contain modernist decorations, I could spend hours contemplating them!".
Currently linked to the city by a love-hate relationship, like so many Barcelonans, the artist surveys with the gaze of memory "the transition of how that degraded post-industrial city was reconverted into the headquarters of the '92 Olympic Games and, with it, came the restoration of public space in which, in a city that did not reach the sea, suddenly kilometers of beach appeared and, in a short time, it would end up becoming a tourist destination." A city model that also brings with it detestable aspects, "such as vulture funds, lobbies, uncivil tourists, city center traffic, the ring roads early in the morning, fascists, pickpockets or skate stoppers," he laments, finishing his beer at the same time.
--Do you want another one? We also have good food: skewers, sandwiches, combo plates, menu...
--Bring that other beer! And bravo to the full menu. I love traditional homemade food bars and restaurants.
And, after uttering these words and sipping the first gulp of his new beer, a jubilant Hun Deok Lee adds, brandishing the bottle as a toast:
--I insist on supporting local businesses!