Talk_Yurie Hu & Aaron McLaughlin

[Project The Great Museum_Talk]

*Originally this conversation is conducted as audio talk. You can listen here.

Yurie Hu is a Korean pianist, violinist, singer, and composer based in Rennes, France. She is part of the bands YachtClub and La Battue, as well as the interdisciplinary performance project Comme dans il fait beau.

Aaron McLaughlin is an artist originally from Ireland and based in Amsterdam since 2013. Alongside his artistic practice, he runs Still Making Art, a community art development platform that aims to support artists in the initial (and usually most turbulent) stages of their careers. aaronmclaughlin.studio, @britafilteredfutures

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Aaron McLaughlin 01:46 How was your sport?

Yurie 01:50
It was intense. I haven’t done any sports for four days because I’ve been doing concerts, smoking lots of cigarettes and drinking lots of beer. So it was intense. I’m a little bit numb but it is okay.

Aaron McLaughlin 02:10 What sport do you usually do?

Yurie 02:12
Actually, I told you that I was back from sport, but I was never out. I do sport on the mat in my home, in front of a video of a Korean lady. She does many home training videos.

Aaron McLaughlin 02:43
Okay, it’s this kind of new home training COVID thing. I’ve never tried it, but maybe I should do it.

Yurie 02:53
Yeah, you should do it if you’re like me. Many people are able to go outside to jog but for me, when I feel like doing anything, just to dress up to go outside is like a mountain climb. So doing sports outside the house is a really big deal, so I feel better doing it inside.

Aaron McLaughlin 03:28
I’m also yearning for it, as I’m currently in Ploumilliau. I usually do a lot of yoga and like to run, although these things kind of clash. Running is quite bad for your back. But by being here I haven’t really been able to do anything. So I’m yearning to do some sports. Saying that it’s also nice being in the countryside.

Yurie 03:54 Yeah, of course.

Aaron McLaughlin 03:56
So you’ve just been on tour?

Yurie 03:59
Yeah, I’ve been on tour around Paris, inside and out in Paris and more last weekend. I’ve been playing many concerts the past two weeks, and now it’s beginning to be very calm, so it is good.

Aaron McLaughlin 04:27
What type of music is that? Because when I met you very briefly, you were playing Celtic music.

Aaron McLaughlin 04:32

You also do alternative or pop rock, right?

Yurie 04:32 Yeah.

Yurie 04:40
Yes. When we met each other, we were in the pub, just around the corner. I live just one block from there. I have been going there since I came to Rennes because I love Celtic music. I have been listening to that music for many years, and I’m a violinist so I wanted to learn how to play some tunes, some jigs and reels. I played in a band for a while when I was on tour, but I didn’t want to go on as a fiddler, because there was a cultural appropriation problem inside of me because I’ve never been to Ireland to properly learn how to play. Back in the city, there was only me who was really playing it, so I felt a little bit like a con artist. *both laugh* So I stopped for a bit and now I just go to Irish sessions and I don’t really think about myself as a fiddler. But I really enjoy being among people who really know how to play good Irish music. That was the Irish part. So I’m a tourist. I want to be a tourist all my life in that kind of area.

Aaron McLaughlin 06:42
Yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t feel like a con artist doing Irish music. Brittany seems almost more Celtic than some of Ireland.

Yurie 06:49
I don’t know about that. Because when I went to the city of Galway and I went to some pubs, I’ve never seen anything like that in France. All the generations together and the musicians were playing acoustic. Everybody was talking but not as loud, nor were they talking too softly but you could hear the music everywhere. It was amazing.

Aaron McLaughlin 07:26
As Irish bars bring in Irish tourists, sadly enough, the standard of folk music in some Amsterdam Irish pubs is very high.

Yurie 07:37 Yeah.

Aaron McLaughlin 07:37
There are people from all over Ireland. It’s quite amazing. Did you have this interest in Celtic music before you moved to France?

Yurie 07:46
No, never. Actually, I have to say that I came to France when I was 15. So before I was 15, I did the same routine, school to home, home to school. I was living in Seoul, which is the capital, but there were no cultural exchanges as rich as it is now. I guess it’s better now. But when I was a child, I never saw anything like Celtic music. It’s really easy to get commercial American stuff. Otherwise, it’s more underground.

Aaron McLaughlin 08:42
And what was the genesis of you moving to France? Was there any particular reason?

Yurie 08:51
The reason was me being me, I guess. Since I was very little, I had the character that never really went along with the traditional way of being a girl because I was very loud. I was very allergic to injustice. So I was really hated by all the boys at school. *both laugh* Then my father always told me: if you don’t behave like the others, if you don’t be silent and pretty, you will not be able to get married and have a quiet life like everybody else. So I was like, ‘in that case, I will never live in Korea’ and he gave me the opportunity to go abroad. At that time, it could have been anywhere, like the United States, it could have been Ireland, or it could have been elsewhere. In the end it was France because he met somebody who was talking about moving to France with her family, so I came with them.

Aaron McLaughlin 10:30
So your whole family came over when you were 15?

Yurie 10:34
No, not my whole family, just the family that my father met.

Aaron McLaughlin 10:39 Right, okay.

Yurie 10:40
I’d never seen them before. They were not even friends of my father’s. They just met, they talked and then my father gave them confidence. He decided to trust them to keep me safe in France. Then he sent them some money to do the job of being guardians.

Aaron McLaughlin 11:18
It’s an interesting move from your father. Was it supposed to be a temporary thing? Or did you decide to stay permanently after that?

Yurie 11:26
The first interest for me and my father was to learn a new language, in an immersive way. So we decided that I will pass the secondary final exam after high school, and we’ll see how things go. I spent four years in French high school, and was the only foreign student. It was very hard in the first year, because I really didn’t know how to speak a word of French. I had to re-do the first year, because of exams and all. Then things went better and I passed the final exam.

Aaron McLaughlin 12:44
I can resonate. It’s not quite the same cultural difference but I moved from Ireland to England. I started high school being the only Irish kid in that school. Even speaking in a different accent in that environment can be quite alienating.

Aaron McLaughlin 13:08
Now, like you, I also feel like a tourist in my general life.

Yurie 13:13
Some could say that your experience was easier, because you speak the same language, but in different accents. But for me, I couldn’t really understand anything. So I was in a bubble. I was not really connecting to the difficulties, I was just floating in the air all by myself. Not even the loneliness was really clear to be felt. I was just there, in the air.

Aaron McLaughlin 14:02
It sounds almost cathartic. It’s horrible if you’re in school, if you have no friends, and you’re just completely confused, but also in a way, it sounds kind of nice.

Yurie 14:13
Yeah, it is. In my head, it is nice. If somebody asked me ‘do you want to go back to your past, just one day, to when you were in high school’, I would say yes. Now, I cannot really pretend to not understand anything. I think as a human being, when you’re a baby, you hear adults saying things all day long, and they want you to learn things. They’re looking at you, they’re speaking but you just get the intention. You don’t know, you don’t understand anything for three or four years. I was back to that condition and it was nice.

Aaron McLaughlin 15:08 Just like starting again.

Yurie 15:10 Yes exactly

Aaron McLaughlin 15:12
I think these situations; again, I can’t compare them totally, but being in France in situations where everyone’s speaking French, I’d have this kind of anxiety of the fact that if I can’t speak properly or communicate, people might not understand my personality entirely and then I might get pigeon-holed into someone who’s quiet or someone who’s shy. Did you feel that it hindered your personality or affected your personality in a way?

Yurie 15:47
You’re giving me some very interesting questions. I’ve never thought about that. Who I am now is maybe based on the moment that I was erasing all the things I’ve learned, such as how to behave, how to be, and how to speak, that I learned in Korea. When you start over in this whole different country and a whole different culture, you have to take a moment to reboot yourself. I think, naturally I had that because I had to take a moment in the whole first year.

Aaron McLaughlin 16:40

Do you think this kind of influenced you creatively as well? Because I would say that a culture change, in your case, having your conditioned reality in Korea deconstructed, could inform this.

Yurie 18:33
I would say that I was feeling free, having no attachment. I had a lot of time by myself on the internet. I was really concentrating on everything I wanted. If I wanted to listen to some kind of music I discovered just by chance, I could just dig into it. I had that liberty and freedom and nobody was watching over me.

Aaron McLaughlin 19:11
Since when did you start making music?

Yurie 19:15
I think I can say that I was making music with my violin when I returned to learning music when I was 20.

Aaron McLaughlin 19:29 Okay.

Yurie 19:30
I learned instruments when I was little, from 8 to 13. I learned how to play piano and violin, in the same school. I don’t know what it’s like in Ireland or in England, but in Korea, there are private music schools everywhere. It’s like a boulangerie, there is an academy of piano, an academy of guitar. They are everywhere. So I went there to study music and studied in my school for five, six years, so it was really intense. I had a good level of skill in piano, more than violin actually. Then when I was 13, my family had no money at all, so we had to sell all the instruments, and the lessons were finished for me. When I finished high school in France, my father wanted me to go to medical school, you know classic Korean family stuff. ‘I want my child to be a doctor or a lawyer’, a really classical desire, because they’re not doctors. So the condition for me to go to medical school was that my father sent me some money to buy back a violin, because it has been seven years since I had played any musical instruments. It started there. I bought a very cheap Chinese violin, and then I just played for myself. I had no sheets, nobody to play with, so I was just playing whatever came in my head. So, I can say that it started there.

Aaron McLaughlin 22:08
Did you feel a resistance playing this instrument because it’s connected to the culture of your past that you wanted to move away from? Or was it cathartic to reassess that instrument, just as you reassessed your own way of being?

Yurie 22:25
I think the second statement is much better, because the truth is I asked my father to give me some money to buy that violin and I didn’t go to medical school. I went there for one week and then I realized that it was not at all the thing that I was going to do with my life. My father was

very, very far away, he was not here to watch over what I was doing. So I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to take the power of that freedom, and I’m going to lie to him’ *Both laugh*. Then I was stuck with my violin. That became the tool for me to socialize with people on the streets, everywhere, because the violin is very small and it’s easy to go and jam. At the time in Tours, there were musicians everywhere. It was a very focused time to see music outside, everywhere, not only the terrace. So it was calculated in my head that in my high school years, I didn’t exist, but now, I will exist, I will become whoever I want. With this violin, I will have that identity of the girl with the violin. I wanted to become a musician and that’s what I became.

Aaron McLaughlin 27:42
I also did a project funded by Japan in which I was engaging with a lot of Japanese diaspora in Europe, and the main thing that I noticed is this idea of Eastern collectivity compared to Western individuality. So in terms of being creative, it’s quite hard to have an individual practice or arts, or creative music. It’s done differently there.

Yurie 28:14 Of course.

Aaron McLaughlin 28:15
So it seems like a culture clash of moving to France, it’s like you have had this kind of awakening of things that you can do.

Aaron McLaughlin 28:24
Do you think it’s hard for your parents to understand this path? Or are they happy with it?

Yurie 28:27
It was very hard for them to understand. When I say my parents, I mean my father because they are separated, and I’ve been living with my father for a long time. I realize now that my father is a modern thinker, compared to the others. That’s why he sent me to France all by myself, trusted me, and wondered how his daughter would be okay. There are not many parents who could do that because of separation. Autonomy is dangerous. It’s sometimes over-protected in terms of educating a child there, and we see a lot of grownups still living with their parents. I’m not judging but it’s different. Because in France, in Europe, when you turn 18, you will not shock anybody by wanting to have a flat, moving in with flatmates, and leaving the nest. It’s the culture in the west that you have to leave the nest, when you finish high school you go away. But in Korea, it’s not the same. Until you get married, you don’t leave the nest. So in terms of being creative, it is problematic when you don’t exist outside of your family. It’s really your identity. You don’t think about your identity, you think about your role in society. You think about if you are a good person, if you make others happy. Of course, as a girl, I can say that. I know what education is for men, but I cannot say what it’s really like, I just presume that it is also hard for them because when you’re a boy, you have all the financial responsibility. You’re going to go to this university, you have to study this and you have to earn this amount of salary by this year, and you have to find a nice girl to bring her to your family to do a good job for your parents. So

when can you be creative? I mean, there’s isn’t the time and mindset to just get out there and be yourself.

Aaron McLaughlin 31:46
I guess you can see how strong this narrative is, with quite a few people that come from Korea. They come to the west, but they’re still kind of in that narrative, where they have to go to that place to learn English, and they’re still going through this system to become a doctor and make lots of money. Have you been back to Korea recently? Do you think it’s changed? Or is it still kind of similar to how you remember it?

Yurie 32:19
It has been three years since I’ve visited my family. Before that, I went just once and it was 10 years since going back there.

Yurie 32:39
I was having some visa problems here. I was a student and started my career, and it took me 10 years before I could go back there. So it was kind of shocking for me. At the same time it hasn’t changed, In terms of the way of thinking in my father’s generation. Of course, it cannot really change that easily in our generation, because they’ve been working for 40 years. My father’s generation is the generation just after the Korean war finished. So they grew up eating potatoes, and then some of them had the chance to go to university. Almost all men, of course, because the girls there were lucky if they could go to high school. That generation built every economic power that Korea has now. Their children like me, all in one generation, are taking freedom because like my father, they’ve been under the pressure of that poverty in Korea where they couldn’t be themselves. They’re really used as the tools to build and to make money. So they’re very frustrated. When I see them, I have that kind of respect, but at the same time I pity them, and I feel how lucky I am to be born afterwards. So, in one generation, they gave us the chance to go abroad and for us women to speak a little bit louder, maybe? I don’t know. I don’t live in Korea. So I don’t know what the condition is for women now. But what I hear about it is that it’s slowly but surely changing. For my father’s generation, they’re tired and there’s no money from the government. They’re not really supporting the elderly now. It’s been a problem. I feel really sorry for them.

Aaron McLaughlin 35:50 What does your father do?

Yurie 35:55
My father is one of the lucky kids who could go to university because his sisters and brothers were working for him.

Yurie 36:55
So he went to university to become an engineer, and he had that American dream that he could build companies on his own. He tried, and he always ended up with lots of debt.

Aaron McLaughlin 37:23 Yeah, it’s the same.

Yurie 37:25
He was in debt all his life. Because suddenly the credit cards and the American way of living arrived in Korea, and in the 60s, nobody had that kind of concept of being. In the 50s, Korea was the second country after Somalia, which was a very poor country. In the 10 years that passed, there were cars and fridges and credit cards. So, people went crazy. There were lots of debts. I always saw my father suited up with a beautiful car and I was always thinking how come he is that rich? Because my grandparents weren’t. I grew up with them. We grew up in a 20 square meter room. To go to the toilet, we had to go outside. I understood when I was a little more grown up that there were all these debts. It was not his money, it was somebody’s else’s money, and he was borrowing it all the time.

Aaron McLaughlin 39:28
It sounds like he was kind of influenced by the Western culture in a bad way.

Yurie 39:34
Of course. It was in the way that media promoted in movies. It became a code where you had to show it. It still happens in other countries. You have to show that you have the money and power to earn more money.

Aaron McLaughlin 40:03 Yeah, yeah.

Yurie 40:05
That was the thing that he told me all the time.

Aaron McLaughlin 40:08
It also seems like he kind of knew it would be good for you to move to France. So maybe he kind of had an inkling of the kind of potential of making this commitment, in a way. But of course, I have no idea because I don’t really know. I also wanted to ask you, going back to the aspect of adversity, what has been the development of sustaining your creative pursuits? How do you sustain yourself now and how have you developed that from when you started your career? Quote, unquote, your career in music.

[Reconnection]

Aaron McLaughlin 0:59
I mean I can relate to this personally. I went to Amsterdam to study a Masters with no money, and ended up living in a squat and sleeping in school. Seven years later, I’m still kind of just about scraping by, which is fine and normal. But I think it’s important to highlight that art and creative pursuits are generally glorified by people who have success. So to me, it’s good to make transparent the adversity that always happens when pursuing these creative pursuits. I

was wondering for you, how do you sustain your creative practice now? And how did you develop that from the past?

Yurie 1:44
I think the creative process for me was creating stories in my head. When I got my violin back, I was creating stories. I was creating a second persona. As it was me, and I always have played the violin, I never stopped. So when I play in front of people, I don’t tell them that I have been cut off or who I really am, but I’m just being a violinist, right? So I liked that story. When I integrated into some groups, because I’ve been playing with many people up until now, I create the stories with them. Sometimes I’m a keyboardist, sometimes I’m a singer, sometimes I compose, sometimes I write the lyrics. Every time I’m not the same person, and that’s what I like. To be whoever I want to be, and still remain the same person. But to show one side or two, or some sides that I choose to show. My way of transcending that thing is the music. So whatever the tool is; my violin, the keyboard, my voice, my writing, my computer, I am able to create. The story changes depending on who I talk with or work with or travel with.

Aaron McLaughlin 3:54
Do you think that’s why you have so many projects? Because you’re pursuing or exploring these different personas in different forms?

Yurie 4:01
I think from a different perspective, somebody might say, I don’t understand that girl because she can do many things, but she doesn’t do her own thing. Because you know, everybody does. I can do this and I can do that, so I’m going to make my project about myself and show the world who I really am. But the thing is, since the beginning of being a musician, I was always invited to a party. So I don’t need to create a party on my own. I’m always invited and it’s really fun to be invited. I go to their party, and then I discover a new side of myself and I enjoy that on that night. Maybe I’m waiting for the moment and now I understand that every party that I’ve been to, now I want to create my own thing. I’d go there and sit, and until now I enjoyed it so much. Just to dive into the pool of others and sometimes I dive into the story of brothers and sisters, and sometimes the punks, they’ve been constant all their life and I just arrived there. Then, sometimes it’s other people’s stories, sometimes it’s just women alone and they tell me all the stories and I’m like, ‘Okay, how can I behave with them?’. It’s really social, more than music, it’s social work, social connections, and then the music will translate the relationship we are having. Me and the other person.

Aaron McLaughlin 6:06
That’s interesting, because I guess the traditional format of music, especially in Celtic culture was to make a mnemonic to remember stories and remember people and remember cultures, it’s like a thing that would be passed on.

Aaron McLaughlin 6:23
Kind of like a poem that gets passed through a family that actually holds a message of the past. That’s interesting that that relates to you specifically.

Yurie 6:35
Oh, that’s why I love it so much, the Celtic music. All the tradition and the overall transmission of the music. Actually, it’s really vulgar to the ego. All music has an ego, but an individual ego. I love Bjork, who has an identity as a person. But I also love the much older, traditional, overall transmitted music that tells the stories of the past, stories of a person, they tell the stories of how they met, how they connected, how they were enjoying or having felt that past. What is the present feeling now with that song? How is the feeling of that past in the moment as we are playing that thing now?

Aaron McLaughlin 7:40
This was also what I pushing on with my last question. Do you not worry about financial sustainability? Or is it more of a collective project that you always go into where it doesn’t really matter.

Yurie 8:01
Luckily, I’m in France. In France, they have ‘intermittence’ (social benefits). I’ve been in intermittence since six years. Sometimes, I feel like it’s like a golden prison. It feels like prison sometimes. Because you’re attached now to your power of being in a little safe situation. I’ve been living for 15 years, just with 200 Euros, 400 Euros, and I was really happy. Now I’m beginning to get old. I aspire to have things, such as a better functioning computer, maybe to earn more money. I don’t know.

Aaron McLaughlin 9:06 Yeah.

Yurie 9:06
Sometimes it feels like I’m not really thinking about creating, but how to live. What is my condition of living? Sometimes it’s not really nice to have to feel that, oh, I’m not punk anymore.

*Both Laugh*

Yurie 9:28
I know that I’m very lucky, and now I don’t have any problem with that anymore, with the money. My family was always poor. They haven’t gotten richer and my father is getting poorer and poorer. So I will have to lend a hand. I will never be rich, this is not my aspiration. But as long as I can pay my rent and eat whatever I want, I think it’s okay. Sometimes, yes, of course I worry. In general, it’s in January, because in January, there are not really many concerts.
Although I cannot really imagine a life where a gig is more interesting, because I’m going to play in front of more people, and I’m going to get paid more. I will never really think like that. So, I’m ready to be poor again. I’m lucky that intermittence as a security. I am beginning to understand that the less I worry and the more that I just go with the flow and just trust that I will always be invited to some party. It’s going to be okay.

Aaron McLaughlin 12:11 Yeah.

Yurie 12:11
And then, yeah. Let’s see how things go. But now, I’m quite confident.

Aaron McLaughlin 12:21
Yeah, same for me. It’s always a kind of blind faith, that some sort of money will come through when I need it.

Yurie 12:28 Yeah.

Aaron McLaughlin 12:29
And it always does. Or I mean, if you are on the lookout for it you can find it.

Yurie 12:34
Yeah, in this kind of job. If you’re anxious, it’s finished. Sometimes even musicians are naturally anxious. They’re always talking anxiously. I tell myself, it has to be hell in their head. Because when you worry about the future in this kind of job, it’s finished.

Aaron McLaughlin 13:09 Yeah, exactly.

Yurie 13:09
The future will eat you up, the anxiety will eat you up. So I think I’m lucky. My basic personality is the opposite of anxiety. So I feel good about the future, and knowing the future will be very adventurous.

Aaron McLaughlin 13:32
Yeah, being an artist definitely trains you for precarity.

Yurie 13:36
Yeah, yeah, of course. I think it’s a life that I find elegant. You get attached to the details of the colors, of the feelings of them. It’s not really palpable. But the other very concrete things, like how much are you paid? What will be your retirement? Those kinds of things, you decide not to think about it because the present is more important than the future.

Yurie 14:16
That’s why we get to keep the young blood. The passion of what will be, will be. I think it makes us young, physically and mentally.

Aaron McLaughlin 14:36
For sure. Yeah, I’m still acting like an 18 year old in a lot of ways.

Aaron McLaughlin 14:42
But just going slightly against what you said. I mean, what would be your ideal scenario in the future?

Aaron McLaughlin 14:50
Do you imagine doing similar things? Or do you have a sort of a dream scenario, dream project, dream place?

Yurie 14:57
Oh, I’m feeling quite happy right now. So it is at least like this. The only thing I hope is to have a garden.

Aaron McLaughlin 15:12 *laughs*

Yurie 15:12
To have a garden for my cats to go outside, and have somewhere to put the seeds and to grow things and to see more green things around my house.

Aaron McLaughlin 15:27
It’s a very nice, modest aspiration. I think it’s very attainable for you as well.

Yurie 15:34
Yeah, because it’s realistic. I know.

*both laugh*

Aaron McLaughlin 15:40
Is there anything else you want to add?

Yurie 17:16
I would like to add to the Korean people, who aspire to go abroad to do things on their own, especially in the creative area. I think the most important thing is very simple, to get out of your parent’s house, and to exist. To get them to understand that you’re not just the tool they’ve been making to do other things for them. But you can really exist for yourself, and sometimes it’s going to be hard to make them understand that, because under the name of love from parents, you can feel like you’re a bad person to go against their will or something. But once you pass that confrontation, you will be free and your parents will have the right to evolve.