Portrait

Kunsu Shim is a composer and performance artist, also working as a photographer and installation artist. His musical language blends ideas of opposites such as chaos and order, chance and causality, walking and lingering, running and interruption, smooth and rough, I and you (WE). Shim sees his work as a contemplation of the outside world, without mysticism. His performances in the Fluxus tradition strive to destroy the visibility of things and thus make them incomprehensible.

Kunsu Shim was born on 15 September 1958 in Busan, South Korea, the son of Korean remigrants from Japan. At the ages of 18 and 19, he won first prize in a competition for young composers in Busan. While studying composition at Yonsei University in Seoul (1979-83, with Inyong La, among others), he attracted attention in his home country with the Dong-A Ilbo Newspaper Prize (1982) and the Joong-Ang Ilbo Newspaper Prize (1983). From 1987, he studied with Helmut Lachenmann in Stuttgart and in 1989 transferred to the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen to study with Nicolaus A. Huber, with whom he completed his composition studies in 1992. At Huber's suggestion, Shim familiarised himself with a wide variety of current trends in music, especially from the USA, and composed his first orchestral work, orchester in stereo mit fünf sinustönen (1990), which aims to create music without subjective expression. The ensemble piece for violins and players, written following orchester in stereo, received the composition prize at the WDR Forum for Young Composers in 1992. Further awards in the following years included invitations as Artist in Residence to Djerassi, California (1993), Akiyodashi, Japan (1994), the Ragdale Foundation, Illinois (1995), Schreyahn, Lower Saxony (1996-97) and the Museum of Contemporary Arts, Chicago (1998), as well as a scholarship from the Academy of Arts in Berlin (1998).

Among the significant composition commissions that Kunsu Shim has received are the orchestral pieces ATEMWENDE – Stille (2007) and STEINSCHLAG·ZEIT (2008), AFTER A HUNDRED YEARS for soprano and orchestra, commissioned by the Essen Philharmonic Orchestra (2011), and the large a cappella choral works HIER·SEIN and Here to me (2012). In 2014 and 2016, the Würzburg Philharmonic Orchestra premiered the orchestral work AND HERE AGAIN – eine Perlenlandschaft. WOLKEN, BLINDENSCHRIFT for soprano, vocal ensemble and orchestra was premiered at St. Kilian’s Cathedral in Würzburg. In 2017, Kunsu Shim wrote DAS FEINE, DAS FLÜCHTIGE for the Norwegian ensemble Bit20. Commissioned by the Kunststiftung NRW, he composed the ensemble works leise, frei (2018) and KLEINES, FERNES (2022), the string quartet luft.inneres (2019) and, for the anniversary year BTHVN2020, the orchestral work VON HIER FORT? – Ein Intermezzo zu Beethovens Sinfonie Nr. 7 and the performance with Beethoven symphonies for several turntables …ÖFFNETE PLÖTZLICH DIE AUGEN, which premiered at the Muziek Biennale Niederrhein 2021. Since Das Andere, Inneres for piano(s) with keyboard player and string player in 2019, Shim has been developing fundamentally new possibilities for piano composition. In 2023, the Luna Quartet premiered his string quartet so seidig, so subtil at the OPENING Festival Trier. In addition, EarPort Duisburg dedicated a portrait concert to him on his 65th birthday.

Kunsu Shim’s work as a photo and installation artist has also been documented in solo exhibitions in Kassel (2021), at the Kunstverein Trier (summer 2024, supplemented by a portrait concert at the Trier University of Applied Sciences) and in the exhibition project IM KINOSAAL at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in spring 2025. In fact, 2025 has proven to be a particularly productive year for Shim: With the new compositions QUASI NIENTE for string quartet, DAS UNSTILLBARE I and II for strings, WENN EIN GLÜCKLICHES FÄLLT for solo cello and a new work for solo viola, Kunsu Shim will make a strong mark on the EarPort 2026 programme with these premieres.

EarPort Duisburg and international activities

His collaboration with German composer Gerhard Stäbler has been a defining feature of Kunsu Shim’s career since the 1990s. From 1992 onwards, Kunsu Shim was co-organiser of the AKTIVE MUSIK project in the Ruhr region, which was initiated by Stäbler and Igor Popovich. In 2000, at the invitation of the Goethe Institute, he and Stäbler realised the music theatre project futuressencexxx at the New Langton Arts Theatre in San Francisco, which was subsequently performed again in Duisburg, Essen (2001), Seoul (2003) and Olympia/Washington (2004). Shim belonged to the composer group wandelweiser from 1994 to 2000, with whom he initially shared basic orientations such as silence and simplicity. However, through his intensive collaboration with Stäbler at EarPort, which the two composers and life partners established as a venue for new music and encounters between the arts in Duisburg's inner harbour from 2000 to 2010 at the invitation of the Lehmbruck Museum, Shim's views and activities moved in a different direction – especially with regard to the social role of the arts.

In the EarPort programmes, Kunsu Shim and Gerhard Stäbler developed the concept of performance music, which, based on historical art movements such as Dada, Futurism and Fluxus, strives for a fusion of music, visuality and action, blurring the boundaries between watching/listening and acting. Shim’s own performances, the instructions for which he has since written down in detail and included in his catalogue of works, are a decisive and original component of this art form. With his photographic works and installations, Shim continues to shape not only the visual appearance of EarPort, but has also "developed an authentic and original body of work as an installation and photographic artist" (C. Brockhaus, 2022).

In October 2015, EarPort was reopened as a place of experimental encounter between the arts. Since then, Shim and Stäbler have realised numerous concepts in sustainable cooperation with partners from the region such as Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, K20 Düsseldorf (Kunstsammlung NRW), DIE GROSSE Kunstausstellung NRW (Kunstpalast Düsseldorf), NRW-Forum Düsseldorf, Tonhalle Düsseldorf, Schloss Benrath, Muziek Biennale Niederrhein, Schlosstheater Moers, Essener Forum für Kunst und Architektur, Kunstlabor Essen, Philharmonie Essen, Musikbibliothek Essen, as well as national and international partners such as the Diocese of Würzburg, OPENING Festival Trier, Bergen Festival, Borealis Festival, LONDON EAR Festival, MusikTheaterLabor of the Bruckner Private University Linz, Creative Performance Lab of the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, and many more. During the pandemic season of 2020/21, Shim & Stäbler digitally implemented major projects such as TIEFEN·SCHÄRFE – two performance concerts as part of the Muziek Biennale Niederrhein – and the Quadrophonien concert series in collaboration with composers from Ukraine, Great Britain and South Korea.

Regular guest performances as composers, performance artists and lecturers take Shim and Stäbler to Japan, Korea, Norway, Portugal, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Turkey, the USA (in 2018 to the Universities of North Texas/Denton, Chicago and Northwestern/Evanston) and South America (in 2022 as visiting professors at the Faculty of Arts of the Universidad de la República de Uruguay in Montevideo). Their stay as artists-in-residence at the GALATA artist residence of the Kunststiftung NRW in Istanbul in 2022/23 has led to close artistic relationships with the ARTER Museum, several Istanbul universities and the renowned HEZARFEN Ensemble. Shim and Stäbler also have an ongoing working relationship with the Grupo de Música Contemporânea de Lisboa ensemble, which led to invitations to the Festival de Música Contemporânea de Lisboa and the VI. International Composition Competition GMCL/Jorge Peixinho, guest performances in Portugal and, as part of an artistic exchange, further concerts in Weimar, the Azores and Duisburg (with a DVD recording sponsored by MKW and the Kunststiftung NRW).

Highlights of 2025 include an invitation to AuditivVokal Dresden's New Year's concert at the Leonhardi Museum, workshops and performance concerts in Istanbul (ARTER Museum, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University and Austrian Cultural Forum), participation in the exhibition project IM KINOSAAL at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, and a guest performance tour in November with concerts and workshops as part of TRIALOG in Seoul, Korea.

Publications

2018 saw the publication of leise, frei. der komponist kunsu shim, the first comprehensive publication about the composer. The anthology DAZWISCHEN. Die Zusammenarbeit der Komponisten Kunsu Shim und Gerhard Stäbler from 2022 contains current academic articles on Shim’s work as well as a CD with piano and chamber music works by both composers. 2022 also saw the release of the portrait CD luft.inneres with the Luna String Quartet at the renowned British label anothertimbre.com, as well as the CD Piano Music by Gerhard Stäbler | Kunsu Shim with pianist Martin Tchiba. In 2023, the concert project Musik der (Un)Ruhe/Music of (Dis)Quiet, inspired by the Book of Disquiet by Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, was released on DVD. Current CDs in the EarPort edition include the portrait CD Kunsu Shim: Chamber Music and the live recording of the collaborative concept MAGISCHE SPIELE with three intermezzos by Kunsu Shim.