Featured Artist
Enoch CHENG, LEE Kai Chung, LO Lai Lai Natalie

Behind the glass door opens into the exhibition are voices waiting to be heard, sounds waiting to be listened to, be it a bird, a song, or an unidentified audible. The sources which initiate the sounds are invisible in the space. Artists are there to contour, or to animate the invisible, like an ethnographer attempting to unveil the true meaning of the distant and exotic voices.

在玻璃門後的展覽場，隱藏著私密的聲音，那可以是鳥鳴、一首歌、或者一件響鬧物件。藝術家嘗試貼近那些不見影的發聲源頭，捕捉它們的輪廓、發掘它們內在的本質，並試圖揭開它們的面紗。

Exhibition review

Reflection on Sonic Anchor #29: Voices From a Distance

Text: LEE Kai Chung, Sound Artist

Personally, I considered the show didn’t take an immersive approach that normally sound art or performance does, instead, the curator tried to convey an imagination of intangible sonic quality by linking up individual works, for instance,What we talk about when we talk about them(LO Lai-lai) and the bird singing on the eaves above the terrace, the clicking keys of typewriter (From Two to Five Thousand Three Hundred and Seven, LEE Kai-chung) and texture of a historical building.The show posed a few critical questions, how sound works can fit into contemporary art exhibition context, and what sort of experience it can bring along to the audience in association with strategies and active engagement. I believe the artwork were responding to the space and created a narrative in certain level; however, the intriguing architectural structure and features were yet to be fully explored, since the venue was not designed for such purpose in the first place, the inflexibility somehow hindered the creative process, a longer exhibition period may provide a better momentum for generating chemistry between works.Besides, majority of the exhibition rooms were left unused during our exhibition period, while our exhibition room was situated at the end of hallway, in such case, audience found it difficult to locate the show though there were signage installed at the main entrance. The infrastructural setting was not, or could not be our curatorial concern, in contrast, if there were some shows or events going on, it would connect the partitioned spaces in a way that delivered stronger contextual message.Sometimes, the audience appeared to be confused once they entered the room; the first thing they would encounter at the threshold was the sound of typewriter, then they saw me working at a conventional Hong Kong office setting, dressed in white shirt and sat at a metal office desk. Quite a number of them did not even step into the room, they turned around and left without seeing the show. I reckoned that they perceived it was the management department instead of an exhibition, which was not part of my plan but revealed the image of the space itself.I was surprise by the wide variety of audience: artist, writer, art students, neighbors, mainland China tourists, minority groups (Friday guided tour), elderly. As a constant attendant at the show, I opened up different kinds of conversation that did not normally happened in conventional white cubes or art institutes. Consequently, I knew I had to slightly adjusted the mentality of my daily presence as an artist, to capitalize the characteristics conceived with the space and its context, then further turned into a site-specific and time-based piece.