Torturing Nurse videos

by lawrence

The American label “Roil Noise” has made a web release (for free) of Torturing Nurse’s live videos. Click here to get the links of video files.




Qiu Zhijie’s take on “Playing John Cage”

by lawrence

UPDATE Dec 3: A severe mis-translation was corrected, thanks to iSub (see his comment on this post).

UPDATE: the translation of Qiu’s blog post is now completed. (4:14 am, Dec 1)

Chinese video artist QIU Zhijie（邱志杰）blogged about his visit to Arnolfini (center of contemporary art) in Bristol, UK. I’ve translated the part about the ongoing sound installation exhibition “Playing John Cage”. Participants of the exhibition includes Alvin Curran, Ryoji IKEDA（池田亮司）, Rolf Julius, TAKAGI Masakatsu（高木正胜）, Kaffe Matthews, Carsten Nicolai, Akio SUZUKI（铃木昭男）, Michael Prime and more.

In case any of you are going to read the original Chinese version, it would be necessary to note the two mistakes made by Qiu.

1. The name of the exhibition was mis-typed as “Playing with John Cage”.
2. The name of the art center was mis-typed as “Anotoni”.

Also, Qiu’s blog is hosted by Blogcn.com, which is one of the most famous and most notorious blog hosts in China, do not feel frustrated if you have problem accessing the blog. In fact, I can’t access it right now (no, it’s not about censorship), the original text appeared in summary on my Bloglines RSS feed, so yes, it’s imcomplete, I’ll finish it as soon as I load Qiu’s blog.

Zen is about robustness, vitality & being truthful, not deathly stillness & silence

by QIU Zhijie, translated by Lawrence Li
(the following text is an abridged translation of the original one)

…An exhibition titled “Playing with John Cage” (sic) is also on, this is mainly a sound installation exhibition, the scale is much smaller than I have expected, and I don’t see too many good works either. One passable exception on the 2nd-floor is an installation composed of mushrooms attached with alligator clips, all put inside of a glass container. Another work is nothing but a bunch of boskage up-side-down, arranged into a circle to enclose a couch, on which the audience would listen to the sounds in the venue. It’s amusing to hear YAO Yirong（姚依荣）said that the sound of the piece is actually audible to him. So, to have this piece exhibited is valid & justifiable at least in his case. Most sound art compositions are derived from John Cage’s so-called “chance operation”: picking up some daily noise & making them into music. One example [on the exhibition] is a sound art piece called “Music on the Table”, which is played from iPod and must be listened to via earphones.

In fact, Cage’s understanding of eastern culture is very superficial, in my opinion. He only knows that nothingness is good, void/blankness is better than fullness, he thinks this kind of thinking of Chinese is cool and he just follows it. The fact that English-speaking people translated I Ching into “I Ching: A Philosophy Based on Chance” also shows their limited understanding of our system: the indeterminacy of giving, the inevitability as a result of intentional control. Westerners can’t wait to express their appreciation of indeterminacy and void/nothingness because they think it’s so subtle, sophisticated and esoteric to be like this. Therefore, their perception of Zen Buddhism has always been limited & pretentious. The fact is, Zen is always about robustness, vitality and being truthful, not about deathly stillness and silence. The western approach to Zen is bound to lead to that kind of total stillness and silence. This is fake Zen mis-interpreted by Japanese.

It’s true that the Chinese thinking system has never been in favor of rational control on any level, hence we have tons of discourse about the superiority of void over fullness, “to change according to the circumstances” has always been our philosophy. But, this kind of thinking shall not be automatically equated with Dada-ist indeterminacy or chance. Rather, it’s about facing the actuality with skillfulness, not about invalidating the rule-breaker with mis-teaching. The Diamond Sutra says: The Buddha-teaching must be relinquished; how much more so mis-teaching! We relinquished words in order to free our perception, but this was never meant to sing praise for ignorance: The knowledge must be relinquished; how much more so the ignorance! Therefore, after we transcend the mundane into the divine, we still have to descend upon earth again; after we perceive the void in the fullness, we still have to return to fullness, thus we will be more rich, calm and tranquil inside. So The Buddha can be found in this mortal coil, Zen can be found in the seams on the walls. The saints are not born divine, they achieve divinity through their labour for the mundane. Or even, on a higher level, we regard the act of differentiate between void and fullness as a barrier to a higher truth.

People like John Cage, all they know are to abandon knowledge in favor of ignorance, to abandon action in favor of inaction, can’t imagine that such a figure is regarded as some kind of gurusin the west.

[The English version of the script in The Diamond Sutra is that of A. F. Price’s translation, which can be read here.]




Dickson Dee’s Japan tour (timeline)

by lawrence

Following my previous post on Dickson Dee’s Japan Tour, here’s the detailed information, from Dickson’s own blog.

(LI Chin-sung 李劲松 is Dickson’s Chinese name)

- Dec. 8 - 10: LI Chin-sung + HAINO Keiji（灰野敬二）@ CCA Kitakyushu [workshop & concert] (curated by Akiko MIYAKE 三宅晓子/CCA Kitakyushu)

- Dec. 12: LI Chin-sung, Tetsuo FURUDATE（古馆彻夫）, ADACHI Tomomi（足立智美）, Astro, Tatsuya YOSHIDA（吉田达也）@ Stormy Monday [concert] (curated by FURUDATE)

- Dec. 14: LI Chin-sung, Zbigniew Karkowski, Tetsuo FURUDATE, ADACHI Tomomi @ Fourth Floor [concert] (curated by FURUDATE)

- Dec. 15: LI Chin-sung, Zbigniew Karkowski @ Musashino Art University, Tokyo [lecture & small concert] (curated by Karkowski)

- Dec. 17: LI Chin-sung, guest musician @ Yokohama Triennial [multimedia performance] (curated by Maco Miyazaki)

More info about Dec 12 & 14 show here.




Admin: typeface of GNO

by lawrence

I have never figured out why the fonts of Global Noise Online look so much better on Mac than on PC (my main browsers are Flock/Firefox), and I have to say that the web-based control panel of Wordpress.com still has much room for improvement (for example: no font-setting button! I think one can do that buy dig into the HTML code but that’s never the preferred way though I know how to do it). Sorry, PC users. I will rent my own server and switch to Wordpress.org template soon, hopefully that would provide more customizability.




2pi Festival 2005 photos

by lawrence

Guilin-based experimental musician Ronez has some photos of 2pi Festival 2005 (GNO’s report, official website) posted to his blog, check it out.




Introducing the band - 21floor

by lawrence

I mentioned an experimental group in Guangzhou by the name of “21st-floor Sound Unit” in this previous post, now it’s about the time to unveil the mask.

21floor (the title has been changed to this) is a Guangzhou-based experimental group composed of Justin ZHONG Minjie（钟敏杰）, LIN Zhiying（林志英） & Zafka (ZHANG Anding 张安定), both Zhong & Lin have been working with sound for several years, Zhong already has two self-released albums and a series of live performances (including one at Nuit Blanche festival, Paris, 2004) on his portfolio, and Lin also has one album out and a wide exposure nationwide. Zhang used to be the lead guitarist of the Shanghai-based post-rock act “Prague Spring“, but he has been making sound art under the alias of “Zafka” for about a year now. These three are clearly the most prominent sound artists in the South China.

Below is the text about the unit’s debut appearance as well as the statement of purpose, written by Zafka, the original Chinese version can be read here.

The KTV project proposed to the 2nd Guangzhou Triennial by 21floor（二十一楼）, which was aborted due to the lack of an appropriate venue, is having a second chance of life now.

If the negotiation with the owner of the KTV goes smoothly this Wednesday, the show is going to be on mid-December (the best day would be Dec 17 Saturday night). This will be a free but invitation-only concert, the attendees will be selected in the fashion of a sociological research, and each of them will receive a special invitation. There will be an after-concert party on which you can talk and play and get stupid with the artists. The first concert will be about urban soundscape/field-recording/phonography more than anything else.

We look forward to making the KTV project into a continuous series, with the aim of digging the “possibilities of KTV”: to “Karaokize” the experimental, to “experimentalize” the Karaoke.

The official website of 21floor is under construction, the unit considers itself to be a multimedia group rather than just a soundart trio.

Last but not least, 21floor will do field-recordings at the 2nd Guangzhou Triennial and release an album based on them afterwards.

In a word, 21floor will use the room (and the built-in speakers and amps) of a KTV in Guangzhou as the venue for their first performance, the concert will be on either Dec 16 or 17, come back soon for updates.

Related info:

Zafka’s podcast




Torturing Nurse’s new split with Armenia

by lawrence

Yet another brand new item to the already massive (well, compared to other Chinese experimental acts’) discography of Torturing Nurse! This time it’s a split with American hardware noisician Leonardo Sabatto (aka Armenia). Sabatto released the split under his own label called Bizzarre Audio Arts.

The artworks can be viewed here. (designed by XU Cheng)

Some of Armenia’s works can be downloaded in MP3 format here.

GNO wrote about Torturing Nurse before, read it here.




Waterland Kwanyin #24

by lawrence

Multi-talented Beijing artist 718 (SUN Lei，孙雷), once a regular WK guest, will take the stage yet another time next Tuesday; Australian software improviser Hetleveiker will fly to Beijing from Hangzhou after 2pi Festival 2005; other participants include the french multimedia group Blin + De Tapol and the mysterious band called “Sugar“.（糖）

A little disclosure of WK #25: A tribute to John Cage’s Imaginary Landscape No. 4? That might be what THX (SUN Wei，孙伟) had in mind when he decided to bring his 8 radios to the 25th installment of WK. Also, Blixa Bargeld from Einstürzende Neubauten will come with his wife Erin ZHU（朱忆尔）for a special screening of EN’s to-be-released DVD Grundstueck.

When: 9:30 pm, Nov. 29
Where: “2 Kolegas” bar（“两个好朋友”酒吧）, Qi Che Dian Ying Yuan (”Driver’s Cinema”), 1.5 km east of Yansha mall, Beijing.
Inquiry: +86.10.8196 4820, +86.135 5227 6845 (mobile)
Entrance: Free.

# Waterland Kwanyin is a weekly sound art event curated by critic/musician YAN Jun in Beijing.

Related info:

# GNO’s report on 2pi Festival 2005.

# 2pi Festival 2005’s official website.

# Resume of Frédéric Blin of Blin + De Tapol (PDF format)

# Aymeric de Tapol’s bio:
Born in 1974. Sound pickup man, composer, multimedia artist.
2000: Graduates from Fine arts academy of Toulouse.
2001: Joins “Construct”, a multimedia collective, in which he works on video and music pieces.  Participates to residency programs in the Albi Electro-Acoustical Music Group, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaisia and in Bilbao, Spain.
2001: Meets VOLKSYSTEME in Toulouse and works with different artists on video, sound improvisation and dance.
At the same time he’s working as a composer and a sound pickup man for cinema and documentary films.




Li Jianhong’s selected works for free

by lawrence

Cornersound reported that Hangzhou-based noisician LI Jianhong’s “Selected Works 2001 - 2005″ is now available at online label netwav for free, click here to download (one RAR file).

Li was called “the best noise musician in China” by Zbigniew Karkowski. In fact, he’s the only prominent noise musician in China who has a western exposure, he has played on the Nuit Blanche festival in Paris last year, and his albums are distributed in Japan and Europe (by Volcanic Tongue).

Also available on netwav is the video of Double Fish and iLoop’s live at Waterland Kwanyin #17 in Beijing. Click here to download (WMV format).




Soundart in GZ Triennial

by lawrence

Hi all, sorry for the hiatus, I’ve been working hard to meet a deadline for my daily bread in the past few days, blogging would be a luxury during such a period. Also, despite that I have quite a lot to say about the 2nd Guangzhou Triennial (apart from this), I choose to reserve them because a). GNO is about sound art more than anything else, other contemporary art forms will be touched only if there is a sound art facet attached to them; b). the Triennial is simply too complicated to talk about.

Just to let you know some sound art-related facts here: As the sound designer of CAO Fei（曹斐）’s theatre piece staged in the first day of the Triennial, CHU Kim-fai（朱剑辉, aka Double Fish）appeared on stage with the local Canton-rap group “Cicada“（蝉）. Speaking of the theatre (which is merely a juxtaposition of numerous parodies of Canton pop culture), sound-wise, it’s a pity that everybody had a mic attached to them, so all the sounds you heard came from the in-house loudspeakers. As a result, the spatial quality of each actor/actress’ voice was lost. According to a theatre-savvy friend, this has been the common practice of Chinese theatre performance for quite a while.

Scanner (Robin Rimbaud)’s sound installation is 2 pairs of speakers mounted on the wall, each has a flash-based compact MP3 player connected to it. One of the 2 players plays the original music in the  Flower Echoes album, the other plays only the human voice recording (reading of street names, place names in Guangzhou, in both Mandarin & Cantonese) used in it. I went to the Triennial in the opening day, when the noise made by the crowd was so dominating that the installation can hardly be heard.

Another sound artist, Justin Bennett’s work is a 24-hour recording of a specific site in Guangzhou (when I asked Mr. Bennett where, he didn’t seem to be able to recall), which was then edited into a shorter version and was played in a multi-channel system. It didn’t draw too much attention, at least not in the first day, my speculation is that the visitors to such a Triennial always want to actually “see” something with their eyes, so a darkened space with no visual elements failed to appeal to them.

These are pretty much all the on-site sound art events there, in December there will be an off-site event curated by a mysterious “21st-floor Sound Unit“, we’ll keep you updated on this.




Waterland Kwanyin #23

by lawrence

Focus this time will be Nakatani-Chen duo, the free-form improv group Tie Kwanyin（铁观音）will play as quartet (YAN Jun, WU Quan, GUO Long & to-be-announced fourth member).

When: 9:30 pm, Nov. 22
Where: “2 Kolegas” bar（“两个好朋友”酒吧）, Qi Che Dian Ying Yuan (”Driver’s Cinema”), 1.5 km east of Yansha mall, Beijing.
Inquiry: +86.10.8196 4820, +86.135 5227 6845 (mobile)
Entrance: Free.

# Waterland Kwanyin is a weekly sound art event curated by critic/musician YAN Jun in Beijing.

Related info:

Nakatani-Chen Duo info and 2005 Asia Tour date (English and Japaese)




What we saw on 2nd GZ Triennial

by lawrence

We saw men, we saw women, we saw labyrinth, we saw array of TV sets, we saw gigantic tortoise, we saw an enormous piece of shit, we saw rabbits, we saw glued eggs, we saw table tennis, we saw karaoke, we saw slogans, we saw buffet, we saw man jerking around, we saw kitsch, we saw symbols, we saw theatre, we saw video, we saw PRD, we saw scaffolds, we saw students, we saw curators, we saw Europeans, we saw Chinese, we saw Thai, we saw Americans…




2nd GZ Triennial schedule

by lawrence

Just a quick note, the 2nd Guangzhou Triennial will open in 9 hours, check out the schedule of the first few days here:

http://www.gztriennial.org/second/schedule/schedule-en.html 




New Doufu compilation

by lawrence

LI Jianhong reported on his blog that the Guilin-based label Doufu Records is going to release a compilation with contribution from China, Australia, US, France and Japan.

The title of the compilation is: Emotions (sic): From Somewhere to Nowhere（迷情 失心）, click here to see the cover.

Doufu (literally means bean curd) is the one-man label of Ronez (ZHOU Pei), I’m pretty sure he’s the only experimental musician in Guilin so far. He’s working to get the comp. finished before 2pi Festival 2005 so that the audience will be able to buy a copy then, online order will follow soon.

Here’s the line-up of the compilation:

Two Noughts (Shanghai)
LI Jianhong (Hangzhou)
YAN Jun (Beijing)
Persimmon, aka Shizi (Beijing)
D!O!D!O!D! (Hangzhou)
LI Tieqiao (Beijing)
Ronez, aka ZHOU Pei (Guilin)
Hetleveiker (Australia)
Torturing Nurse (Shanghai)
Stimbox (US)
BIE Feng (Lanzhou)
Jedung kying (Shanghai/Guangzhou)
ZHOU Jin + Marqido (China/Japan)
Go Gooo (France)

Related info:

About Doufu Records’s past releases

About Ronez

Ronez’s blog (in Chinese, but scroll down for more larger photos of the comp., Go Gooo is responsible for all the artworks.)




Justin Bennett in GZ Triennial too!

by lawrence

Now here’s a real scoop: Justin Bennett is here in Guangzhou as the participant of Guangzhou Triennial. I honestly don’t think this has been mentioned too much elsewhere, be it MSMs or new media (blogs), it’s really under-exposed.

I bumped into him at Guangdong Museum of Art today, the staff there are of course working hard together with the artists to get all the installation finished before Friday (the opening day). The space was decorated in a very crude and raw fashion, the walls were left unpainted, all the scaffolds remained there. Of course this serves as the metaphor of Pearl River Delta as a huge construction site.

I’m not sure what will Bennett’s work be like since we didn’t get a chance for serious conversation today, I saw a six (seven?) - channel-system in the space he worked though, it seems he’s having some problem with it and probably has to mix it down to stereo. I’ll talk to him about it tomorrow, so stay tuned.




Welcome to Guangzhou again, Robin.

by lawrence

I’m in Guangzhou now and will stay here for 3 days working as Robin Rimbaud’s oral interpreter, the Sound and the City project is getting pretty big, City Pictorial (Guangzhou-based lifestyle magazine distributed nationwide) did a 10-odd-page feature about it, featuring interviews, an essay on urban sounds by Hong Kong cultural critic/film specialist Lawrence K.L. PUN（潘國靈）, and a “favorite sounds list” by 3 journalists of CP, even the Editor’s Note - titled “Sonic City” - is about the editor-in-chief’s personal perception of sounds in Guangzhou. 5,000 copies of “Flower Echo” - the CD that Robin made for the project - are being distributed for free with the magazine. This afternoon during my 15-mins-stay at the British Council Guangzhou office, there were already 2 people coming in asking for the free ticket to the Scanner/WANG Lei concert this Friday night, several thousands of the tickets were printed, the organizer probably over-estimate Canton audience’s enthusiasm.

It’s good to see that MSMs in China has developed an interest for sound art/new music, though many (all?) of the reports simply miss the point. For instance, in the feature by City Pictorial, they interviewed 3 “sound collectors”: one in Beijing, one in Shanghai and one in Guangzhou (that’s me). The Shanghai interviewee (who is a fashion designer) talked about her obsession with recording her favorite music in the radio with cassette recorder. Despite the fact that she has a wide range of interests for music genres (from Peking Opera to Beatles to Quincy Jones to Tchaikovsky), it seems to me, judging by the text, that she’s more of a conventional music lover rather than a person who has a particular interest in sound (no, she’s definitely not an follower of John Oswald ^_^). Therefore, the interview somewhat makes the feature less coherent.

One may argue that the media people’s ignorance of sound art, or experimental art, or anything cutting-edge in general, is universal, which reminds me of this Wall Street Journal column by Terry Teachout (got the link from BuzzMachine). Mr. Teachout sees blogs about art as potentially more important a platform of art criticism than mainstream media. I don’t really care about what the guys in MSMs think about sound art but we do need more blogs for serious discussion/discourse about it, and I hope GNO can contribute to this process.




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