HK119 @ White Noise Festival

HK119 is playing at the White Noise Festival in Newquay, Cornwell this November (7th, 8th & 9th). She will be performing with the likes of The Nitewreckers, Jarvis Cocker, I Monsrer, Asbo Kid, pYGMY gLOBERTROTTERS, DAMO SUZUKI and more. For more information visit the White Noise website here.

HK119 Performances

Before Encore..

23 June - 22 July , group show at Generator Projects, Dundee

24th of June - 29th of July, "Extend your neck" at Café Gallery (live performances from HK 119 and Will Hunt on the opening night 24th.june)

6th July - Live performance @ The Game Tokyo - click here for more information

24 July - 29 July, group show in Tokyo, Japan, "Tech-Mac-Mayacom" at Myounichikan (The building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1921) (live performance By HK 119, date to be confirmed)

3 August 2007-until mid September 2007, " Double A Side" group show, Stedelijk Museum Œs Hertogenbosch, ARTIS and the Centre for Fine Arts, Den Bosch, Holland

 

HK119 Video to be shown @ Optica International Video Festival

For more information about this event taking place in Gijon, Spain, between November 11th-17th please visit http://www.opticafestival.com/

Live HK 119 Webcast

On October 3rd HK 119 will be doing a live webcast from Hoxton Hall from 8pm to 10pm onwards.

HK119 announces new dates

HK119 has announced more dates in the coming months, they are as follows,

7 April, UBERKUNST,Glasgow School of Art,Glasgow, UK

17 June, PROVINSSI ROCK,SEINAJOKI,FINLAND

HK119 Interview

In Playlouder magazine this month there is a great interview between HK119 and Jeremy Allen.
To read the full interview click here

HK119 Videos Exhibition!

An exhibition of HK119 videos at Fortescue Avenue will take place between 31st March and 30th April.

Opening hours on the 31st March are 6.30 - 9 with a short live performance at 7.45.

To view the flyer for the event click here

Hk119 Photo's

4 photos taken by Adam Tiernan Thomas at the Far out Females gig on the 27th of October 2005.

Click on the images for the full size photo.

Let's Radiate Baby

The Debut Single 'Pick Me Up' will destroy on 12th September.

HK119 is hardly the average pop star. A star, yes. But neither pop nor average.

A star who fell to earth from the Metropolis future of Fritz Lang’s dystopian vision, through George Lucas’s THX1138 and the virtual canyons or Tron all the way back today with a message that the world urgently needs to hear.

First, there are the striking, futuro-Amazonian looks – the Asimov bone structures, geometric jawline and trapezium hair, and a figure that’s somewhere between Catwoman, Brigitte Nielsen and the Thin White Duke at his thinnest and whitest.

Then there is the voice – the androgyne sound of a tomorrow that has yet to be imagined, but once experienced, is never be forgotten. An organic-synthetic humanoid rendering of Grace Jones, Siouxsie Sioux and Nina Hagen filtered through the innards of Daft Punk’s mixing desk deep in the catacombs of Paris.

There is art – multimedia living-sculpture experiences of what unenlightened lifeforms and obsolete humanoid beings call ‘music’. Constructivist synth-punk with resonances gathered from the radioactive debris of 30 years of pop: HK119 has everything, and nothing, to do with Bauhaus, The Human League, Suicide, Kraftwerk and The Slits. These strands converge into timecoded two- and three-minute science-fact songs that discourse on media sickness, consumerist malaise, the post-modern condition and the evils of plastic surgery.
And lastly there is the performance. Videos are in circulation that show HK119 performing at salons, arts galleries, museums, Third Spaces and underground cinemas in Athens, Rotterdam, Finland, Tokyo, Liverpool and London clubs including Fesh, Kashpoint, Crash and Zigfrid.

They are performances that have to be believed to be seen, and vice versa. Audiences look on aghast and perplexed as a catlike figure conjures beguiling spectacles that transcends art, music, fashion and physics – punk from twenty-second century beamed back to 2005 and before.

Audiences have never seen anything like this before, because they watching the future unfolding itself.

Only rudimentary facts are known about HK119. She was born in a sauna in Finland. There may or may not be a human presence behind her painstakingly constructed façade. Her name is a barcode. She reads New Scientist for fun. She is single – in part because she is an androgyny, but also because ‘she is on a mission’ and has no time for the trivialities of a boyfriend or girlfriend.
But we do know that she set out to trash the conventions around music making. ‘I abandoned using computers early on, and went into a simple digital eight-track’ she says of her album, ‘XXXXX’. ‘It was an organic feel, a very punk approach. Two- or maximum three-minute songs. I mixed music with image and created a persona for each.’

HK119 looks as enigmatic as she sounds. ‘Very soon afterwards I realised the character needed a name and needed to evolve – HK119 is this monstrous character who entices people to use mobiles as much as possible and buy as much stuff as possible and live to excess – these are the contemporary illnesses of today’s society. We all like to shop, we watch shit on TV… when it goes to extremes it is a concern in terms of what kind of humanity we’re gonna become.’

There is a strong premonitional vibe to HK119’s discourse. She has identified a hyperconsumerist future where individuals sacrifice their identity to the needs of the capitalist construct, but everybody is too busy shopping to bother worrying about it.

HK119 has a profound empathy with the human condition of the twenty-First century, and she employs a dazzling aesthetic range to convey her message. ‘The iconography of Russian Constructivism fascinates me,’ she says. ‘I relate to their complete awe of technology from the beginning of the 1900s, their love of speed and technology which was going to set us all free. But my vision is dystopian. These things are going to create more problems than they solve.’

There is only one way to understand HK119, however. Watch her live performances to experience her unique combination of conviction, style and substance. ‘People should expect to see intense passion and humour. You’re not sure if you should be laughing at me because I don’t want to be taken completely seriously. I might appear to be angry and some of the things I sing about are worth being angry out – say, a two-minute punk song about plastic surgery. I’m pissed about how women are pressured to look great by magazines.’

HK119 is a message from the future for today. You have been warned.