沒有什麼是出界的。用德里達來解釋,沒有額外的音樂。
(Kim-Cohen, In the Blink of an Ear: Toward Non-Cochlear Sonic Art. pp.107)
聲音和話語,是日常的一切,也是社會個體溝通、傳達和理解彼此的重要媒介和產物。因此,它同時具有政治性和社會性意義,形塑和包含著個體、集體、多元社會和文化之間的溝通與傳達的各式管道。
「超音樂・異聲驅動」探索聲音的社會性、文化性和能動性,即其所具有的超音樂性的特質,藉由聲音的非物質與物質性、聲響和傳播特質,重思社會、政治、性別、階級和不同的經驗所形成的視角如何作為其主體性的組成。此次展覽藉試圖提出幾個層面的思考,並藉由作品有更近一步的討論。首先,聲音和話語做為互動的媒介與產物,在相互作用之間,如何與鄰近的人、事、物產生意義,成為一種脈絡構造;且在跨越時間和空間的傳遞與相互詮釋中,又如何重新創造理解的意義。在王虹凱的作品《甜小調練習》中,她邀請學生進行一系列的「musicking」音樂生成工作坊,從當代生活者的角度,回溯並再詮釋麻豆地區糖業勞動者的音樂社會生活史,將音樂和聲響視為編創公共場域和身體政治的方法與生成。奈鳩・布朗在此次的計畫中,則針對台北當代館和建成國中的場域特質,邀請學生共同敲響已失去功能的校鐘,重新理解鐘和鐘聲作為日常的指引和紀律的象徵性,亦是場域精神和記憶的連結與招喚。
展覽內涵亦試圖思考,在日常的話語和聲音之外,我們如何發現並重新理解那些隱性的和破碎和聲音殘渣,並藉由作品對聲音的反白與顯現,進而重新理解和想像那些被遺落的碎片。江忠倫的《無人樂隊#當代館》邀請台北當代藝術館的工作人員針對自身的工作場域和經驗進行歌詞的書寫,以當代館作為展演的場域,將擴大的聲音練習與個體的經驗和視角,成為擾動和翻轉層級位置和機構政治的表述方法。而楊嘉輝在《消音狀況》系列中提出「靜音不是沉默(或消聲)」的思考,作品通過有意識的揭露和消聲不同聲音層的優先級,來重新聽到和理解聲音的情況。如果聲音有其展現的主導性和被邊緣化或消聲的狀況,我們如何藉由聽到和不聽到,進而想像和假設多種聲音的協商與張力關係。
更進一步,展覽思考聲音如何藉由其超音樂性的多種可能性,喚起個體和全體在社會間的能動性,重新思考、定義或想像個體與集體之間的社會結構關係。莊偉的《位於未來的聲音》所提出的參與式藝術的表演,和咖容琳娜・布瑞秋拉以展覽剩餘物所製作的《噪音樂器》,此樂器在展示的過程中可出借予人們在抗爭示威中製造噪音用,皆是希望藉由作品的參與式行動和擴大的聲音練習,讓參與者的身體進入到日常公共場域之中,創造述說和表述的管道,也重新探索聲音和話語的創造與接收的空間與主體位置。
Nothing is out of bounds. To paraphrase Derrida, there is no extra-music.
(Kim-Cohen, In the Blink of an Ear: Toward Non-Cochlear Sonic Art. pp.107)
Sound and speech make up everything in the daily life, and are important media for and products of communication, delivery of meaning and mutual understanding between individuals in a society. Therefore, they also carry political and social implications, shaping and encompassing multifaceted channels for the communication between individuals, groups, diverse societies and cultures.
Living Soundeech make up evExtramusical explores the sociality, culturality and agency of sound, along with all the extramusical qualities it embodies, and reflects upon the formation of subjectivity from perspectives informed by social, political, gender, class and other crucial experiences through exploring both sonic non-materiality and materiality of sound as well as their communicative characteristics. This exhibition reflects on several levels in the hope to prompt further and interwoven discussion. Firstly, it focuses on sound and speech as media and products that are interactive and discusses how they produce meanings when the interaction is carried out with the related people, things and objects to form a contextual structure, re-creating the meaning of understanding through communication that transcends space-time and mutual interpretation. In the work Sweet Minor Keys, artist Hong-Kai Wang invites a group of students for a series of ‟musicking” workshops, whcih adops, a contemporary perspective to revisit and reinterpret the social-sonic history of laborers working in the sugar industry in Madou Tainan, treating music and sound as a formative method to fabricate the public site and body politics. Nigel Brown’s work Sounding Symbol: Jian Cheng Junior High School Bell Tower, on the other hand, focuses on the site characteristics of the adjacent Jian Cheng Junior High School. Together, the artist and the students sound the school bell that only as a symbol and the function has never been used, as a way to re-examine how bells and bell sounds serve as a form of guidance and a symbol of discipline while reviewing how they connect and evoke the spirit and memory of a site
The exhibition also reflects on how we discover and re-comprehend invisible sonic fragments hidden from daily conversations and sonic scenes, and through highlighting and revealing sounds made by artworks on view in the exhibition, encourages audience to re-interpret and re-imagine these hidden fragments. In Nobody Band #MoCA Taipei, Chiang Chung-Lun invites the museum staff to write about their work and turn their experiences into lyrics. The museum is then transformed into a performance site, through which the practice of singing as well as individual experiences and perspectives are amplified, constituting an expressive method to stir and reverse the rank structure and politics of the institution. In the Muted Situation series, Samson Young proposes the idea of ‟mute is not silence. Muting is not the same as doing nothing.” By foregrounding and unveiling certain sound layers and consciously muting others, the series presents audiences situations, and simultaneously opportunities, to listen to and understand sounds again. Whereas the presentation of sounds exposes the dominance of certain sounds and the marginalization or muting of others, the series prompts audiences to imagine and hypothesize negotiations and tension between multiple sounds through the interplay of hearing and not hearing sounds.
Taking a step further, the exhibition also looks at how sound, with its varied extramusical possibilities, awakens individual and collective social agency to re-consider, re-define or re-imagine the social structure and relations between individuals and collective communities. Isaac Chong Wai proposes a participatory art performance in One Sound of the Futures, and Karolina Bregula’s Instruments for Making Noise exhibits instruments made from detritus of exhibitions. Throughout the exhibition, the instruments can be borrowed for people to make noises in demonstrations. By engaging people in participatory works and expanding the practice of making sounds, the artists hope to incorporate the participants’ bodies into daily public sites, creating channels for narrative and expression whilere- exploring the creative and receptive space of sound and speech as well as their subjective positions.