易水流聲 / fluid voices
Venue: AVA Gallery, HKBU Kai Tak Campus, 51 Kwun Tong Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong (Choi Hung MTR Station Exit A2)
Click to register for visit.
Click to register for visit.
We are delighted to present to you the exhibition "Fluid Voices," which will take place from September 8 to September 20, 2024, at AVA Gallery, Kai Tak Campus, Hong Kong Baptist University. This exhibition delves into the essence of water—an element celebrated for its fluidity, adaptability, and capacity to traverse boundaries, both geographical and temporal. Throughout history, water has symbolized flexibility and containment in East Asia, and today, in an era defined by rapid change, it embodies the crucial ability to adapt and coexist with instability.
"Fluid Voices" with the body of video and sound, presents a series of dynamic social explorations through various artistic mediums, including short films, sound installations, and performance documentations. The exhibition gathers works from both established and young artists across diverse regions, showcasing the myriad possibilities that water, as a metaphor, can represent. By drawing from a broad spectrum of geographic and cultural backgrounds, the exhibition brings together a wide array of voices and perspectives, all encoded within the fluidity of water.
Water has no fixed shape, and neither does the experience of this exhibition. It marks a unique opportunity to shift the focus from formalism to enablement itself, inviting audiences to immerse themselves in the art and weave their own narratives into their daily lives. The fluidity of the exhibition ensures that the voices gathered by this exhibition remain ever-present and adaptable, mirroring the ongoing evolution of human experience.
我們很高興向您介紹即將於2024年9月8日至9月20日在香港浸會大學啟德校園視覺藝術院畫廊舉行的展覽《易水流聲》。本次展覽探索了水的本質——其流動性、適應性以及跨越地理與時間界限的能力。東亞文化歷來歌頌水的特質，包括其靈活性與包容性，而在當今這個瞬息萬變的時代，水所象徵的適應力與與不穩定共存的能力，顯得尤為重要。
《易水流聲》透過影像和聲音，展示了一系列以多種藝術媒介進行的動態社會探索，包括短片、聲音裝置和行為藝術紀錄。展覽匯集了來自不同地區的知名及新晉藝術家的作品，展示了水作為隱喻所能代表的無限可能性。展覽通過水這一主題，匯集了來自廣泛地理和文化背景的多元聲音和觀點，這些聲音如支流般匯聚，最終融入展覽的流動性中。
水不具有固定形態，本次展覽旨在引導觀眾將對藝術與文化的關注從形式主義轉向行動過程本身，鼓勵他們積極參與並將這些聲音融入日常生活的敘事中。展覽所倡導的流動性模糊了不同聲音和觀點之間的界限，賦予這些觀點更多的適應性，從而以開放的姿態迎接環境的變化。
Artists:
Jonathan Onsuwan Johnson, 劉香林 Xianglin Liu, 梁美萍 Leung Mee Ping, 黎朗生 Lai Long Sang, 李靜嫻 Nogueira Li, Tong Wing Sze, Tomás Maglione, Fuyuhiko Takata, Ege Aktepe, TaeHwan Jeon, Evgeny Tverdokhlebov, 熊彧秀Yuxiu Xiong, 敖林德 Lin Htet Aung, 黃姬雪 Ice Wong Kei Suet, U5, 柏青 Bai Qing & 林冬 Lin Dong, 袁廣鳴 Yuan Goang-Ming
Curators:
Tong Yang
Phạm Nguyễn Anh Tú
Poster Photo:
Heman Singh Lutchmun
Special thanks to F&B Sponsor Mr. Wolf Hong Kong. https://mrwolf.hk
Jonathan Onsuwan Johnson, 劉香林 Xianglin Liu, 梁美萍 Leung Mee Ping, 黎朗生 Lai Long Sang, 李靜嫻 Nogueira Li, Tong Wing Sze, Tomás Maglione, Fuyuhiko Takata, Ege Aktepe, TaeHwan Jeon, Evgeny Tverdokhlebov, 熊彧秀Yuxiu Xiong, 敖林德 Lin Htet Aung, 黃姬雪 Ice Wong Kei Suet, U5, 柏青 Bai Qing & 林冬 Lin Dong, 袁廣鳴 Yuan Goang-Ming
Curators:
Tong Yang
Phạm Nguyễn Anh Tú
Poster Photo:
Heman Singh Lutchmun
Special thanks to F&B Sponsor Mr. Wolf Hong Kong. https://mrwolf.hk
Sound Installation
U5, 柏青 Bai Qing & 林冬 Lin Dong - Longing 誤讀
Multi-Channel Sound Installation
U5, Sound Recordings from Venice, 2010
林冬Lin Dong & 柏青Bai Qing, Installation with Fragments of chinese antique porcelain, resonant horns, amplifier plates, 2024
Multi-Channel Sound Installation
U5, Sound Recordings from Venice, 2010
林冬Lin Dong & 柏青Bai Qing, Installation with Fragments of chinese antique porcelain, resonant horns, amplifier plates, 2024
Venice is a place of longing and imagination. While images can block out realities, sound immersively distributes acoustic waves. How does a city that exists on water sound? In 2010, U5 was commissioned to bring the sound of Venice in the German Pavilion under the theme of “Longing” at the Architecture Biennale. U5 members walked through Venice with six mobile recording devices and created six recording tracks, which were synchronized and played on six loudspeakers in the pavilion. The original sound installation was a generative result of a social interaction and a performed choreography. The essence of Venice was captured, from the quiet moments of dawn to the bustling peak of the day.
林冬Lin Dong & 柏青Bai Qing respond to those soundscapes in an "archaeological" way. Just like physical archeology, They excavate, clean, and then imagine its past and stories of the sounds, and generate a concept of community through imagination. The sounds can also serve as a carrier of imagination, responding to moments that are always in flux. Ceramic is an element in the history of "mobility". They "fragmented" these sounds from Venice and apply the resonance of the chinese antique porcelain pieces to make these sounds "archaeological" materials.
U5 in colaboration with 林冬Lin Dong & 柏青Bai Qing
林冬Lin Dong & 柏青Bai Qing respond to those soundscapes in an "archaeological" way. Just like physical archeology, They excavate, clean, and then imagine its past and stories of the sounds, and generate a concept of community through imagination. The sounds can also serve as a carrier of imagination, responding to moments that are always in flux. Ceramic is an element in the history of "mobility". They "fragmented" these sounds from Venice and apply the resonance of the chinese antique porcelain pieces to make these sounds "archaeological" materials.
U5 in colaboration with 林冬Lin Dong & 柏青Bai Qing
Video Installation
Yuan Goang-Ming - Dwelling (2014)
In the depicted scene, the setting sun’s slanted rays filter through a window into the living room of an unnamed family home. With its middle-class aesthetics, the room exudes comfort and serenity. However, this tranquility is subtly disrupted by occasional bubbles rising from a corner of the frame, hinting at an underlying suffocation and unease beneath the idyllic calm. Suddenly, the entire scene shatters before the viewer. We realize that, like the ephemeral bubbles, the beautiful world we see is only a model inside an aquarium. The illusion of perfection is broken by the sounds of explosions, revealing a harsher reality.The title of the work, Dwelling, invokes Martin Heidegger’s (1889– 1976) reference to a verse by poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843). Yuan Goang-Ming transforms Heidegger’s aspiration for people post- World War II to find an emotional and physical ‘homeplace’ into a reflection on contemporary Taiwan’s situation. The root of the German word for uncanny (unheimlich), is the word for home (heim): connoting the loss of safety and comfort typically associated with home. This “unease of rootlessness” (unheimlich) is a central aesthetic in Yuan’s work. Our daily comforts provoke us to question whether this beauty is an illusion, akin to a fleeting bubble. The pervasive fear amplifies our yearning for a poetic dwelling in the future. Yuan employs dramatic simulation and destruction to interrogate the definition of a homeplace, expressing a microcosmic representation of an anxious premonition and fear about life. He responds to the concealed uncertainties and crises in Taiwan’s contemporary political, technological, and economic structures, and the challenges of dwelling amidst these threats. As Yuan states, “The image progresses towards dwelling as poetry, and falls in the direction of poetry.”
[5 mins]
Evgeny Tverdokhlebov - Dystopia (2023)
The video for "Dystopia: Water World" immerses viewers in a tense, dystopian world ravaged by ecological catastrophe, where survival hinges on strategic decision-making and ethically challenging choices. It prompts reflection on the difficult decisions humanity faces today, drawing parallels between the game's grim reality and our own environmental dilemmas.[2 mins]
Xianglin Liu - What can I do between 10:14 and 2:18 (2021)
A wave of foreign tourists flood into a personal emotional territory. In the river of time, making choices is difficult, and only the spirit can swim against the current.Date: 2021.9.5
Duration: 20 minutes
Location: Yelang Valley, Guiyang, China
Process:
- In the plaza where tourists gather in Yelang Valley, record a sound clip lasting 10:14.
- Write the time on a white cardboard.
- Walk to the stone mask along the way and record 2:18 of natural sounds.
- Write the time on the other side of the cardboard.
- Cut the cardboard, reflecting my body outline, into my shape and hold it in the middle of my body.
- With the cardboard, jump into the pool, confronting the waterfall in the pool like a time sailboat for 7:56.
- When the time is up, the work ends.
[5 mins]
Ice Wong Kei Suet - Can I be heard like you listening to the light? (2023)
In "Can I be heard like you listening to the light? (2023)," the artist navigates between hope and hopelessness, seeking to merge with light as a way to escape darkness. The performance reflects on disorientation and the struggle for liberation, embodying a journey toward self-realization through a meticulously structured routine.[12 mins]
Tomás Maglione - pattern governed behaviour (2014)
[1 mins]
Fuyuhiko Takata - Cambrian Explosion (2016)
A video work based on a mermaid’s story. The artwork is in the fashion of a music video featuring a romantic song in which a mermaid dreams of becoming a human and walking with two legs on the land. In the video, the mermaid (played by Takata) sings the song whilst she cuts her fish tail in half in order to create legs. Red blood pours out from the tail. The blood consists of red beads, and their sparkly splatter fills the screen.
A video work based on a mermaid’s story. The artwork is in the fashion of a music video featuring a romantic song in which a mermaid dreams of becoming a human and walking with two legs on the land. In the video, the mermaid (played by Takata) sings the song whilst she cuts her fish tail in half in order to create legs. Red blood pours out from the tail. The blood consists of red beads, and their sparkly splatter fills the screen.
[2 mins]
Film Screening
Jonathan Onsuwan Johnson - River Ghosts (2018)
In this experimental documentary, an unseen filmmaker uses unseen memories to follow traces of his deceased grandparents throughout urban and rural Thailand. Loosely following a travelogue-essay format, the search for identity is intertwined with the old and new history of rural and urban Thailand.
In this experimental documentary, an unseen filmmaker uses unseen memories to follow traces of his deceased grandparents throughout urban and rural Thailand. Loosely following a travelogue-essay format, the search for identity is intertwined with the old and new history of rural and urban Thailand.
[5 mins]
TaeHwan Jeon - Amorphous Ice, Amorphous Eyes (2022)
Amorphous Ice, Amorphous Eyes is a work about Camp Century, a secret US Army base operated in Greenland during the years of 1959-1966. It was constructed under the Greenland ice-cap, making it hidden from the surface. Camp Century was official defined as a research station facilitated with a nuclear reactor, later to be revealed that the end goal was to install a vast network of nuclear missile launch sites, known as Project Iceworm. It draws from military reports, scientific researches and Watsuji Tetsuro’s book, A Climate: A Philosophical Study (1935), to sketch the interconnection between human existence, historical events, and geographical situations. The video takes the form of a photo essay, bringing together audio and visual materials from cinema; that either was filmed in Greenland, or attempted to depict it. It is accompanied by a narration performed by two documentary voice actors. Amorphous Ice, Amorphous Eyes looks at the stories of coldness and the Cold War in their metamorphic state; from solid to liquid, from ice to water.
Amorphous Ice, Amorphous Eyes is a work about Camp Century, a secret US Army base operated in Greenland during the years of 1959-1966. It was constructed under the Greenland ice-cap, making it hidden from the surface. Camp Century was official defined as a research station facilitated with a nuclear reactor, later to be revealed that the end goal was to install a vast network of nuclear missile launch sites, known as Project Iceworm. It draws from military reports, scientific researches and Watsuji Tetsuro’s book, A Climate: A Philosophical Study (1935), to sketch the interconnection between human existence, historical events, and geographical situations. The video takes the form of a photo essay, bringing together audio and visual materials from cinema; that either was filmed in Greenland, or attempted to depict it. It is accompanied by a narration performed by two documentary voice actors. Amorphous Ice, Amorphous Eyes looks at the stories of coldness and the Cold War in their metamorphic state; from solid to liquid, from ice to water.
[13 mins]
Yuxiu Xiong - Let’s Meet When the Sun Reaches Its Highest Point On the Full Moon Day (2022)
A video piece on how everyday events unfold and connect with each other, and how the constellation of these events reveal forces of life that go beyond the linear space and time, just as Borges wrote in The art of poetry “To gaze at a river made of time and water / And remember Time is another river.”
A video piece on how everyday events unfold and connect with each other, and how the constellation of these events reveal forces of life that go beyond the linear space and time, just as Borges wrote in The art of poetry “To gaze at a river made of time and water / And remember Time is another river.”
[3 mins]
Ege Aktepe - What Is Wrong With The Sky? (2022)
One love is different, two loves are different. The love you feel for the road you walk every day is different, every day. Don't try to compare the loves that punch the walls of the heart. Because neither love is the same nor the heart is the same. You are in love with tomatoes, and you are also in love with the lover. You have made the flower your lover, and a body made of flesh and blood. You are in love with the road as well as the passenger. Neither do you know my love for your lover, nor do I know your love for a pair of eyes you hide behind a pair of tomatoes. This is a love movie, a movie about falling in love, not being able to fall in love, and experiencing the most beautiful love. Leave your body to the ice-cold water, maybe then you will understand your love for the sun, put yourself into the heated fire, and maybe then you will understand your love for the sea in an icy morning. Fall in love with the pillow you put your head on, the headband with the smell of your lover's hair, the flower you picked from the road, the friend you lean on, the love you put in your bosom. Go in front of the mirror, be a buffoon, fall in love with a buffoon.and never forget.only a dog in love, can love its collarMusic, video, editing: HΛDƧIZ
Actor: Berkay Işık
Narration, Text: Zeynep Sami
Lighting Assistant: Canberry, b4ttre[7 mins]
Leung Mee Ping, Lai Lang Sun, Laura Li Nogueira, Tong Wing Sze - Home Lost (2019)
The coastal erosion nearby poses risks to the villagers and the ecological environment, which connects our concerns over livelihoods, land and conservation. Originated from the research project Community Resilience in Locales of Coastal Erosion: Local Knowledge, Culture and Practice in the Upper Gulf of Thailand. This work brings environmental awareness and the future prospects of the community to people from all walks of life.[6 mins]
Lin Htet Aung - Seeking Wombs For Rebirths (2021)
A boy went to a town. He went to find his next life.[25 mins]