HO JAE KIM: ODE TO JOY: Virtual Discussion

The poem, ‘Ode to Joy’ was written by German poet Friedrich Schiller in 1785 and then revised in 1808, where Beethoven used it in his final fourth movement of his Ninth Symphony with a slight addition. Beethoven’s famous fourth movement of the 9th Symphony was intended to be revolutionary as Beethoven was inspired by the idea of heroism and the French Revolution. Historically, Ode to Joy was used in Nazi Germany to celebrate significant public events; Beethoven was lionized in the Soviet Union, and Ode to Joy was used as the song for the communists; when most Western culture was censored in China during the great cultural revolution, Ode to Joy was one of the few that was not; on the extreme right, Ode to Joy became Southern Rhodesia’s national anthem (before it became Zimbabwe); on the extreme left, President Gonzalo of Peru declared that Ode to Joy was his favorite music when asked by a reporter; today Ode to Joy is the unofficial anthem of the European Union. 

The six poem pieces in the series are paintings of each verse of the lyrics to Ode to Joy carved into stone. After building a rock-like surface, a sculpting tool was used to carve into the painting literally. 

Ideas and truths become building blocks of institutions—ideas, once novel and man-made, over time become towering structures that cast shadows on mankind. When ideas become ideological, people abide by them as if they are laws of nature, forgetting their ontological immaterialities. 

The compositional structure of the poem pieces in relation to the centerpiece, The Garden (2023) finds inspiration from Piranesi, an Italian archeologist and architect, who made etchings of itemized and indexed drawings of ruins and imaginary cityscapes of ancient structures. Similar to the practice of Piranesi, the audiences of the Ode to Joy series can see the ideological building blocks independently indexed and together as a single institutional structure as the support of the frescos.

— Ho Jae Kim