Sound Art China:
representing a decade
of Chinese sound art
March 26–April 26, 2013
Installations, performances, and workshops by 30 artists
Colgate University
Hamilton New York, USA
Co-curators: Wenhua Shi, Assistant Professor of Digital Art, Colgate University and Dajuin Yao, sound artist and Director of the Open Media Lab at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou
The exhibition:
Revolutions Per Minute is the first-ever survey exhibition of Chinese sound art inside or outside of China. Revolutions Per Minute will feature sound installations, audio-visual works, and live performances by emerging and internationally renowned Chinese sound artists. The exhibition will be installed throughout buildings and facilities on Colgate University campus and within the village of Hamilton. Among the 30 Chinese sound artists represented will be Wang Changcun, Xu Cheng (a member of the renowned Shanghai noise group Torturing Nurse), Yan Jun, and Samson Young.
“As far as the auditory tradition in China is concerned, the Cultural Revolution achieved its goal with total success, cutting newer generations off from most musical forms, Western as well as Chinese. For the young people growing up in the 1990s and early 2000s, Western-influenced pop, rock, and punk were the only musical nutrients and formed their collective aural memory. In the area of experimental sound, the Chinese artists had a blank slate to start over with” writes Dajuin Yao, who is currently planning a series of exhibitions around the world as a retrospective of Chinese sound art. Revolutions Per Minute marks the very first in this series; other exhibitions will take place in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and European cities.
Artists-in-residenceMarch 26–29, 2013
Wang Changcun, Xu Cheng, Samson Young, Qu Qianwen, and Xie Zhongqi will be artists-in- residence at Colgate, joining Wenhua Shi and Dajuin Yao to present live sound art performances during the opening week of the exhibition, including improvisations, inter-media performances, and circuit bending. On March 28, at 7pm and 9pm, Qu Qianwen (also known as Vvzela), along with curators Wenhua Shi and Dajuin Yao, will present two sets of audio-visual performances in Colgate’s Ho Tung Visualization Lab, a state-of-the-art dome with 360-degree video projection and 7-channel surround sound. DIY workshops and demonstrations will take place throughout the course of the exhibition.
Key works in this exhibition will include:
Klone Concerts by Wang Changcun, a tribute to and parody of Keith Jarrett’s The Koln Concert; Social Media Soundscape by Dajuin Yao, an interactive installation that allows the audience to play with a new sound-based social media platform currently popular in China; Twice Cooked Pork by Weng Wei, an interactive audio mixer that morphs Chinese word pronunciations; I am thinking in a room, different from the one you are hearing in now by Samson Young, an homage to the American sound art pioneer Alvin Lucier
Information and exhibition materials at www.rpm13.com
A two disk CD featuring works included in the exhibition is available for purchase. Exhibition essays by Dajuin Yao and Sampson available electronically.
The Christian A. Johnson Foundation Visiting Artist-in-Residence, made possible with additional support from the Colgate Arts Council, the Department of Art and Art History and the Film and Media Studies program, Colgate University.
