Zhang Xiaozhou on Dickson Dee’s soccer-themed sound work

by lawrence

A column title struck me when I was flipping through today’s Southern Metropolis Daily, also known as the most outspoken newspaper in mainland China. It’s in the opinion page of their special feature about the ‘06 World Cup, and here it goes: “Sound art in the World Cup”.

It can’t be from anyone else but ZHANG Xiaozhou 张晓舟, a veteran media worker and the columnist who built up his reputation by “writing soccer review in the style of Rock review”. So he’s on errand in Germany covering the game and took his chance to visit the soccer-themed sound art exhibition called Audio:Elf at Museum für Angewandte Kunst, in which Hong Kong-based Dickson Dee (LI Chin-sung) is a participant. It’s Zhang’s reputation as a much-loved (and hated) columnist that makes SMD willing to publish anything he pens: as it turned out, few of his writings for the sports pages are about sports at all.

In the article about Audio:Elf, Zhang offers the following description of Dickson’s piece:

(in translation)

A lot of works involve field-recording from the pitch or the sound of TV / Radio narrators as sound materials. Li uses the voice of mandarin and cantonese commentator! (Liu Jianhong could go and sue him.) He has taken two alternative source materials: an essay by Zhang Xiaozhou (the title of which - a tad bitter given the current circumstance - is called “I don’t mind Brazil being the champion every time.”), and the photos of Yang Chen, Xie Hui and Shao Jiayi (Li misses the “yi” in “Shao Jiao (sic) Yi” in the intro text though) - three Chinese soccer players who has played in Germany in succession. Li transforms the text and the pics into sound with software.

Same old tricks. Theoretically of course everything can be used as source material of sound art. In reality, some artists use materials, some exploit them. Don’t take me wrong, Dickson is NOT one of the latter - he’s not sophisticated enough to do that - but inevitably falls into the “user” category. This is a blessing indeed, as Li’s music is much more enjoyable and much less annoying than those of some of the “exploiter-type” sound artists out there.

Related: Zhang Xiaozhou’s blog (in Chinese).




1 Comment »

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  1. check the website

    http://www.sonambiente.net/

    its a large, well-organised and impressive sound art “event” based on the world-cup theme. perhaps dickson’s exhibit was part of this event.

    zhang and i were just in berlin last week, but were too busy to see any of the installations. nevertheless, people in the city are raving about how wonderful it is…

    Comment by christiaan — July 4, 2006 #

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