sonic flows
Pushkin House, London, UK
🖇️ sonic flows, mythic phenomenon in emerging art practice through perfromance & choreography, CLOT Magazine [review]
Featured artists:
Yiwen Li
Lao San Yang (BiancoLi, Corey Lyu and Zhuyang Liu)
Samuel Barbier-Ficat
The history of information and communication technologies has always been associated with something that transcends human experience or, as William James put it, a ‘religious impulse’ that extends far beyond religion. That’s a double-sided coin: on the one hand, any technology possesses the qualities of a physical thing. On the other, especially if we talk about IT, it allows for the incorporeal encoding and transmission of meaning. sonic flows, bringing together performances by Yiwen Li, Lao San Yang collective and Samuel Barbier-Ficat, is a three-act programme aiming to explore the alleged juxtaposition between religious and scientific perception, arguing that the present is replete with numerous examples of when these two ways of perceiving the world merge into one. During the first two acts, we pay particular attention to the origins of Chinese culture and the media associated with it, whereas the closing performance serves as a rumination on the broader relationship between classic and contemporary sonic media.
In a group performance Cavernous Whisper Yiwen Li takes as a point of departure images of dancers found among the numerous murals from the Mogao caves. Built between the 4th and 14th centuries, this complex is one of the most important places of Buddhist meditation and worship. Combining the sounds of Qin (or Chinese lute) and contemporary electronic, made in collaboration with Samuel Barbier-Ficat, the performance serves as a fictionalised ritual, raising the question of how using the body as a medium can explore the supposed line separating a religious and a more grounded scientific view on the world.
In a similar vein, in their performance ‘声卦 Sound of Hexagrams, Lao San Yang collective addresses the system of hexagrams, first described in The Book of Changes, an ancient Chinese text that dates back over 3,000 years. Each hexagram comprises six lines, either yin (broken) or yang (solid), representing the duality of life and the universe, which was later understood as the first instance of binary coding – the basis of modern computer science. As each hexagram represents a different condition of life, this ancient system is still widely used as a technology of divination and decision-making. At the beginning of their performance, each artist throws coins in order to make their own set of hexagrams that are subsequently interpreted through sound. This practice allows each artist to bring the relationship between their own understanding of Chinese metaphysics and knowledge of music.
The event will be closed by Samuel Barbier-Ficat with his newly created piece Curtain Music. In this composition, Samuel references the cacophony of a symphonic orchestra tuning prior to performance. This dischord is present throughout Western classical music, from the 12th-century compositions inspired by erratic religious visions to Bach’s endless contrapuntal canon. Drawing from these elements, Samuel combines classical music and experimental electronic sound, and thus blurs the line between the organic and digital domains.
Yiwen Li, ‘Cavernous Whisper’ perfomed as a part of ‘sonic flows’. Pushkin House, London, UK, 2024. Photographed by Ar Liu.
Yiwen Li, ‘Cavernous Whisper’ perfomed as a part of ‘sonic flows’. Pushkin House, London, UK, 2024. Photographed by Ar Liu.
Lao San Yang , ‘Sound of Hexagrams’, performed as a part of ‘sonic flows’. Pushkin House, London, UK, 2024. Photographed by Sam Parry.
Lao San Yang, ‘Sound of Hexagrams’, performed as a part of ‘sonic flows’. Pushkin House, London, UK, 2024. Photographed by Sam Parry.
Lao San Yang, ‘Sound of Hexagrams’, performed as a part of ‘sonic flows’. Pushkin House, London, UK, 2024. Photographed by Sam Parry.
Samuel Barbier-Ficat, ‘Curtain Music’, performed as a part of ‘sonic flows’. Pushkin House, London, UK, 2024. Photographed by Sam Parry.
Samuel Barbier-Ficat, ‘Curtain Music’, performed as a part of ‘sonic flows’. Pushkin House, London, UK, 2024. Photographed by Sam Parry.
Samuel Barbier-Ficat, ‘Curtain Music’, performed as a part of ‘sonic flows’. Pushkin House, London, UK, 2024. Photographed by Sam Parry.