Global Noise Offline

(Correction Appended 1:14 am, Dec 11)

Having been working for the 1st Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture since Dec 5, I have just too much to talk about. But as usual, GNO is primarily about sound art, so I’ll just pick up a few related works.

- CHEN Dili: City Images（陈底里：城市映�）

A sound installation composed of 20-odd radios, each connected to loudspeaker cones (just the cones, no cabinets) put in plastic bags stuffed with papers. The bags are hung above the radios, which (presumably) are tuned in a random manner.

Another “tribute” to John Cage’s Imaginary Landscape No. 4? I don’t know, but I must admit that I was surprised to see Chen’s name on the list in the first place – about 5 years ago this guy released a premature electronica album and disappeared quickly, and now he’s here on this Biennale making sound installation! Well, people change, but can anybody explain the hiatus in Mr. Chen’s career to me please? Where has he been all these years?

- LIN Zhiying（林志英）. He contributes to OU Ning（欧å®?）’s film titled “Borders, Illegal Zones and Urban Villages” (as the English supervisor of Ou, I insisted the title should be translated as “Boundaries, No-Man’s-Land and Urban Villages” but he stuck to his own. The original Chinese title is 二线关·æ?’花地·城中æ?‘) with the field-recordings he gathered in Shenzhen. The film is the latest installment of Ou’s study of the Urban Village phenomenon in China, previous works including San Yuan Li（三元里）and Dazhalan Project（大栅æ ?计划）.

- FENG Jiangzhou（丰江舟）. The rocker-turned-digital-hardcorist is the composer of MENG Jinghui（孟京辉）’s theatre piece “City Metamorphose”. This is the work that opens the Biennale. Besides sound design, Feng projected some video during the rehearsal, whether they’re his own works or other’s remains unknown.