Fri, 28 Apr, 5:30-7pm | Top Ten: Selections from Sounds Like Print
For this casual gathering, Sounds Like Print curators Dr Edward Sanderson and Ingrid Pui Yee Chu will be inviting special guests, including publishers of "sound and print" from BOOKED:. Join them as they press "play" and count down through 10 select items from the display, sharing music on vinyl, cassette, and CD, while giving their reactions to how sound and packaging work together to encapsulate precious moments, sensory feelings, and meaningful messages.
Mon, 1 May, 12-7pm | Furniture Music: Sight Reading
For this durational performance corresponding with Coffee Table Music, Samson Young uses the final day of BOOKED: being Labour Day to serve as "page turner" for a rotating set of pianists who play the musical score from the Hong Kong artist's algorithmically-generated "songbooks"—one published for each day the work is presented in the Artists' Book Library.
Pianists: Shelley Ng and Linda Yim; Special thanks to Hong Kong New Music Ensemble (HKNME) and Tom Lee Music.
Wed, 7 Jun, 7:30-9pm | Tai Kwun Conversations: Sound Imprints
How do regional artists negotiate the changing relationship of sound between the "underground and academic milieux"? As scholars both writing on this subject, Dr Ryo Ikeshiro (School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong) and Dr Edward Sanderson (Co-curator, Sounds Like Print, Tai Kwun Contemporary) will discuss the role that academic and art print publishing, along with evolving contemporary media formats, play in documenting the development of sonic art scenes.
This TK Conversation also explores the possibilities of building up and conserving "immaterial heritage" through "sound" and "print" practices, followed by a Q&A session and a live performance by Ikeshiro.
English, with simultaneous interpretation in Cantonese.
Sun, 30 Jul, 4-5:30pm | Li Yilei | Tacit Listening: On deafness and muteness
Li Yilei who premieres the third act of TACIT, a multivalent programme designed to encourage “tacit listening”—a nuanced and unspoken listening practice encompassing unheard, disabled, muted, and silenced sounds.
Working across a diverse range of media, Li imaginatively reflects upon our everyday relationship to sound. As a parallel event for Sounds Like Print, Li will develop a sonic performance from a set of graphic scores constructed from found materials. These include broken or damaged instruments, and poetries to delve into the intricacies and challenges of creating music through inaudible, linguistic, or muted mediums.
Li will be responding to specific locations across Tai Kwun, as well as the materials they find there, thereby mapping real and speculative situations that will culminate in their performance at JC Cube.
Sun, 19 Nov, 3-4pm | Serene Hui | Siren
With its cluster of music stands and songbooks, Siren is an installation by Hong Kong and the Netherlands-based artist Serene Hui currently in the Artists' Book Library. For this associated performance, she has invited the flautist Isaac So to play from an original score, which references previously unidentified, unconventional, or unrecognisable sounds and languages—"siren calls" and obscure modes of speech.
By intermixing sound and print, Serene Hui creates "blueprints" that mimic if not follow standard musical scores. Playing the resulting songbooks live means that the artist demands of her professional players "to summon all precision" in their trained abilities, so that "an invisible power beyond recognisable human control" may take hold, enabling Hui's "siren call" to resonate.
Image 1: Aad Hoogendoorn, courtesy of TENT, Rotterdam; images 2-3: courtesy of the artist
