Fractured Scenes: Underground Music-Making in Hong Kong and East Asia 9811559120, 9789811559129

Citation preview

Fractured Scenes Underground Music-Making in Hong Kong and East Asia

Edited by Damien Charrieras François Mouillot

Fractured Scenes

Damien Charrieras  •  François Mouillot Editors

Fractured Scenes Underground Music-Making in Hong Kong and East Asia

Editors Damien Charrieras School of Creative Media City University of Hong Kong Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong

François Mouillot Department of Music and Department of Humanities & Creative Writing Hong Kong Baptist University Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong

ISBN 978-981-15-5912-9    ISBN 978-981-15-5913-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Fiona Lee performing her piece Delight on October 25, 2015 at venue tf:vs:js in Hong Kong © Damien Charrieras This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Note on the Presentation of Romanized Chinese Names Throughout the Book: Unless requested otherwise by chapter authors or interviewees, romanized Chinese and Japanese names appear in the following order: Surnames (family or clan name) first, followed by given names. Romanized Chinese names are presented with upper case surnames and given names (e.g. Yan Jun), and romanized Hong Kong Chinese names with two distinct given names are presented with an upper case first given name and lower case second given name separated by a hyphen (e.g. Yip Wing-sie).

Acknowledgements

The editors wish to thank all the music practitioners, academics and commentators who participated in this book. Hong Kong Arts Development Council fully supports freedom of artistic expression. The views and opinions expressed in this project do not represent the stand of the Council. For logo Cf.: http://www.hkadc.org.hk/?p=10063&lang= en#Logo.

vii

Contents

1 Introduction: Nomadism, Fragmentation, and Marginality - The Hong Kong Music Underground in the East Asian Context  1 Damien Charrieras and François Mouillot Part One: Perspectives on the Hong Kong Underground

23

2 Ice Skating and Stinky Foods: Notes from the Hong Kong Underground, 2018–2019 25 Ken Ueno 3 Interview with Xper.Xr. 37 Damien Charrieras and François Mouillot 4 Interview with Kung Chi Shing 51 François Mouillot and Damien Charrieras

ix

x Contents

Part Two, Take 1: Individual Case Studies in ­Noise/ Experimental Music/Free Improvisation

63

5 The Politics of Noise: An Interview with Sound Scientist Dennis Wong 65 Blair Reeve 6 Opportunities in Theatre Performing Arts Advancement in Bettering Underground Music Development: A Reflection on the Relevance of the Technical Production in Local/Global Experimental Music Performances 79 Kam-po Tse 7 A “No-Venue Underground”: Making Experimental Music Around Hong Kong’s Lack of Performance Spaces 95 Gabriele de Seta Part Two, Take 2: Individual Case Studies in Sound and Contemporary Art

107

8 Interview with Samson Young109 François Mouillot and Damien Charrieras 9 Noises That No One Else Hears121 Cédric Maridet 10 In Crevices, Stairwells, and Ever-­Changing Tides: A Personal Reflection on Holding Up a Walking and Listening Body133 Yang Yeung

 Contents 

Part Two, Take 3: Individual Case Studies in ­Indie-­Rock/ Indie-Pop and Electronic Music

xi

143

11 From Indie to Underground: The Hong Kong DIY Rock Scene in the Post-Hidden Agenda Era145 Ahkok Chun-kwok Wong 12 The Transformation of Indie Music in Hong Kong161 Stella Lau 13 Underground Club Music After Social Media: A Study of Hong Kong Underground Club Music Scene Through Absurd TRAX from 2016 to 2018, A Personal Perspective173 Alex Yiu Part Three: Interfaces

   187

14 Radical Participation: The Politics of Performance in Chinese Punk-Rock Concerts189 Nathanel Amar 15 An Underground Music Venue in Beijing: fRUITYSPACE205 Edward Sanderson 16 History of Sound in the Arts in Japan Between the 1960s and 1990s225 Katsushi Nakagawa

xii Contents

17 “Like the Apocalypse Is Imminent by Guys Who Could Barely Play Guitar”: Performing Amateurism in the Garage Rock Underground of Tokyo241 José Vicente Neglia 18 Conclusion: Notes on Cities, Undergrounds and Closed Upper Rooms259 Will Straw

Notes on Contributors

Nathanel Amar  Amar is researcher and director of the Taipei branch of the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC). Damien Charrieras  Charrieras is a cultural studies scholar and a media theorist. He is currently programme leader for the Master of Art in Creative Media (MACM) and deputy programme leader for the PhD in Creative Media at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, where he is associate professor. His current funded projects investigate situated forms of digital creativity in urban setting (media arts, electronic music); the diverse technologies used to conceive 3D real time environment (especially game engines); blockchain in video games and art; discursive approaches to creative software; and new pedagogical approaches to critical worldbuilding. He recently published for the Hong Kong government a report on the development of a new media expertise in the creative economy of Hong Kong (2019) and he co-published a paper on the shifting spaces of creativity in Hong Kong in the journal Cities (2018). Kung Chi Shing  Kung Chi Shing is a composer, performer and music activist. He studied classical music and composition in the United States with Chinary Ung and George Crumb. He is known particularly for his work in the music and performance group ‘The Box’, which he founded with Peter Suart in 1987. In his compositions and performances, he xiii

xiv 

Notes on Contributors

focuses on experimentation with different formats, including pop, classical, improvisational music and theatre art. Stella Lau  Lau is the former Programme Director in Performing Arts at School of Professional and Continuing Education, University of Hong Kong. She received two major scholarships from EMI Music Sound Foundation and University of Liverpool Graduates’ Association (Hong Kong) for her postgraduate studies at Institute of Popular Music, University of Liverpool, England. Her publications include an authored book Popular Music in Evangelical Youth Culture (2012). In 2016, she released her first monograph in Chinese, In the Name of the Father 《因 父 之 名》 (Red Publish, Hong Kong) which is available in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Cédric Maridet  Maridet’s works are presented internationally through residencies (Asia Art Archive), group and solo exhibitions (Blindspot Gallery, Art in General, Tate Modern, Para/Site, 2P Contemporary). Maridet studied literature and sociolinguistics in Paris VII University and hold a PhD in Media Arts (City University of Hong Kong). He holds a position of Assistant Professor at the Academy of Visual Arts (Hong Kong Baptist University). Some of his works have been published on his platform monème and released on CD and books. François Mouillot  Mouillot is a cultural theorist whose interdisciplinary research is at the intersection of Cultural Studies, Media Studies and Music. He is jointly appointed as Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Music and the Department of Humanities & Creative Writing at the Hong Kong Baptist University. His work deals with the technological, infrastructural and identity dimensions of popular artistic practices. His multi-pronged research spans the developments of the recording and live music industries, the evolution of independent and underground music practices in various culturally hybrid contexts, the social and cultural implications of artificial intelligence in artistic practices, and improvisation and Do-It-Yourself practices in the popular arts. Katsushi  Nakagawa  Katsushi is an associate professor at Yokohama National University, Japan. Completing his dissertation about the conceptual change of ‘musical sound’ in the tradition of Cagean experimen-

  Notes on Contributors 

xv

tal music. His research focuses on the genealogy of sound art and the intersection of sound practices (especially in Japan and other Asian countries). He co-published on this topic in Leonardo Music Journal 27 with Kaneko Tomotaro (2017). ‘A Documentation of Sound Art in Japan: Sound Garden (1987–1994) and the Sound Art Exhibitions of 1980s Japan.’). José Vicente Neglia  Neglia is a lecturer at the University of Hong Kong. An ethnomusicologist by training, his current research concerns the politics of memory in popular music, for which he has conducted extensive research in Japan and North America on a genre of rock called garage rock. He is working on a project on reissue recordings as a distinct form of media in rock music, which is funded by the Research Grants Council (RGC) of Hong Kong. Blair Reeve  Reeve is a writer working in Hong Kong. In late 2018 he began publishing a music zine called press: release  (p:r) (with Nick Langford) as an outlet to investigate some of the more esoteric and less commercial music events happening in Hong Kong. In 2019, Blair Reeve published with Nick Langford three issues of press: release. The interview with Dennis Wong that appears in this volume was first published in December 2019 for p:r #3. Reeve teaches creative writing at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and has published two poetic narratives for children through his imprint Anapest Press. Edward Sanderson (李蔼德)  Sanderson (李蔼德) is an art critic and curator and a PhD student at Hong Kong Baptist University Academy of Visual Arts. His research and writing focus is on sound art and experimental music in Mainland China and Hong Kong. Gabriele de Seta  De Seta is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bergen, where he is part of a European Research Council project on machine vision in everyday life. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taipei. His research work, grounded on ethnographic engagement across multiple field sites, focuses on digital media practices and vernacular creativity in the Chinese-

xvi 

Notes on Contributors

speaking world. He is also interested in experimental music, internet art and collaborative intersections between anthropology and art practice. Sin:Ned  (Wong  Chung-Fai/Dennis  Wong) Wong is an improviser, experimentalist and noise practitioner from Hong Kong. He is the co-­ founder of Re-Records, SECOND and the Hong Kong organizer of JOLT Festival. He is the founding member of No One Pulse, After Doom, adeō, underture, Archetype Ensemble and the main advocator of Hong Kong underground experimental music scene with his prolific output and concert series Noise to Signal and festival series Kill the Silence. His works have been featured in the infamous Belgium imprint Sub Rosa’s ‘An Anthology of Chinese Electronic Music’ and ‘An Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music Vol. 7’. Will Straw  Straw is James McGill Professor of Urban Media Studies at McGill University in Montreal, where he teaches within the Department of Art History and Communications Studies. He is the author of Cyanide and Sin: Visualizing Crime in 50s America (Andrew Roth Gallery, 2006) and co-editor of several volumes including the Cambridge Companion to Rock and Pop (with Simon Frith and John Street, 2001) and Circulation and the City: Essays on Urban Culture (with Alexandra Boutros, 2010). He has published widely on cultures of the urban night and is the author of over 160 articles on music, cinema and urban culture. Kam-po Tse  Kam-Po is Lecturer in sound at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA), and he is still producing experimental music performances. Ken Ueno  Rome Prize and Berlin Prize winner Ken Ueno is a composer, vocalist and sound artist. Ensembles and performers who have championed Ueno’s music include Kim Kashkashian, Robyn Schulkowsky, Wendy Richman, Greg Oakes, Vincent Daoud, Philippe Brunet, Alarm Will Sound, Steve Schick and SFCMP, and Frances-Marie Uitti. Ueno’s piece for the Hilliard Ensemble, Shiroi Ishi, was featured in their repertoire for over ten years. He has performed as soloist in his vocal concerto with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project in New York and Boston, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Lithuanian National Symphony, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, and with orchestras in Pittsburgh, North

  Notes on Contributors 

xvii

Carolina, Stony Brook and California. Ueno’s installations have been featured at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) in Mexico, Art Basel, SCI-Arc, the Osage Gallery in Hong Kong and the Telfair Museum. Professor in Music at UC Berkeley, Ueno holds the Jerry and Evelyn Hemmings Chambers Distinguished Professorship in Music. His bio appears in The Grove Dictionary of American Music. Ahkok Chun-kwok Wong  Ahkok Chun-kwok Wong is a musician, writer and activist based in Hong Kong and London. In 2016 he published caak3 seng1 (拆聲), a collection of essays on music culture in Hong Kong. He is a PhD student at the City University of London. Xper.Xr. 

xviii 

Notes on Contributors

Yang Yeung  Yeung is a writer of art and an independent curator. She founded the non-profit Soundpocket in 2008. She conducted independent artistic research project A Walk with A3 (2015–17) to support the right of art to be in the streets. Yeung is a member of the international research network Institute for Public Art, independent art critics collective Art Appraisal Club (HK) and the International Art Critics Association (HK). She is also Councillor on the board of Make A Difference, a regional platform that encourages social innovation. She was Asian Cultural Council Fellow in 2013–14. She teaches classics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Alex Yiu  Yiu is a PhD candidate in the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. Prior to his PhD, he completed the MMus Sonic Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London. His research interests include deconstructed club music, the Hong Kong underground music scene and other music-/sound-related topics. As a member of the local underground club music collective Absurd TRAX, he has performed and DJ’d in numerous venues and platforms such as XXX, OIL Club, ALL Club, Sónar Hong Kong 2019, CTM Festival 2020, NTS Radio and more. Samson Young  Multi-disciplinary artist Samson Young was trained as a composer and graduated with a PhD in Music Composition from Princeton University in 2013. In 2017 he represented Hong Kong in a solo project at the Hong Kong Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale. Other solo exhibitions include the De Appel, Amsterdam; Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh; SMART Museum, Chicago; Centre for Contemporary Chinese Art in Manchester; M+ Pavilion, Hong Kong; and Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, among others. Group exhibitions include Solomon R.  Guggenheim Museum, New  York; Performa 19, New  York; Biennale of Sydney; Shanghai Biennale; National Museum of Art, Osaka; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; and documenta 14: documenta radio, amongst others. He was the recipient of the BMW/Art Basel Art Journey Award, Hong Kong Arts Development Council Artist of the Year Award, Prix Ars Electronica and the Bloomberg Emerging Artist Award. In 2019,

  Notes on Contributors 

xix

he was shortlisted for the inaugural Uli Sigg Prize. His works are held in the collections of Solomon R.  Guggenheim Museum, New  York; M+ Museum, Hong Kong; Mori Art Museum, Japan; and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

List of Images

Image 2.1 Calligraphic Zamboni traces at Festival Walk. (Photo credit: Ken Ueno) Image 2.2 Ken Ueno performing Vessel. (Photo credit: Courtesy of Osage Art Foundation) Image 2.3 Kung Chi Shing performing Bread. (Photo credit: Courtesy of Osage Art Foundation) Image 2.4 The full group performing Bread. (Photo credit: Courtesy of Osage Art Foundation) Image 6.1 The proposal cover for the early experimental music exchange series on campus Image 6.2 Performers rehearsing in the HKSC Music Room Image 6.3 HKSC VIP Room transformed into a performance space Image 6.4 Performance in the HKSC Music Room Image 6.5 Performance in the HKSC VIP Room Image 6.6 Classic lighting setup with market lamps in the  HKSC Garage Images 6.7, Performers interacting with stage lighting 6.8, 6.9, and 6.10   Images 6.11 Audio-visual performance with adhesive tape interaction and 6.12  Image 6.13 MacBook Pro and chisel Image 6.14 The interior of the Bimhuis, Muziekgebouw

26 32 34 35 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 90 xxi

xxii 

List of Images

Image 6.15 The exterior of the Bimhuis, Muziekgebouw 91 Image 6.16 Interior overview of the refurbished Twenty Alpha space 92 93 Images 6.17, Snapshots of happenings in Twenty Alpha 6.18, 6.19 and 6.20 Image 6.21 Twenty Alpha’s technical team supporting a globally broadcast event 94 Image 7.1 Google Street View of the industrial buildings on Wah Sing Street, where art gallery and performance venue CIA (Cultural Industries Association) was located. (Source: Google Maps, June 2011) 97 Image 7.2 The flyer for the NOISE to SIGNAL 0.08: Lost in Transmission event, designed by the author and Dennis Wong in October 2012 98 Image 7.3 The author improvising with Shanghai-based musician Huang Lei (as 大小) and local organizer Dennis Wong (as Sin:Ned) at Strategic Sounds, Hong Kong, November 2012. (Photo by KWC) 99 Image 7.4 “Performance area” signage on a mezzanine of the ACO stairwell delimiting KWC’s live set during the Sound-OnSite: Space Oddity #1: From Below show, January 2015 102 Image 9.1 M001 audio CD, moneme, 2004 123 Image 9.2 Symposium 4H concert poster in White Noise, moneme, 2014123 Image 9.3 _habitus, audio CD, moneme, 2006 126 Image 14.1 The space of a Chinese rock live venue 193 Image 14.2 The beer competition at the DMC. (Photo by the author) 194 Image 14.3 The space of a punk show and the interactions between the musicians and the audience 196 Image 14.4 Invasion of the stage during a Demerit concert at the Wuhan Prison on September 1, 2018. (Photo by the author)197 Image 14.5 A policeman in his monitoring highchair during the Shenzhen Midi Music Festival, December 31, 2017. (Photo by the author) 199 Image 14.6 The stage setting during the Shenzhen Midi Musical Festival, December 2017 200 Image 15.1 Portrait of Zhai Ruixin of fRUITYSPACE 207 Image 15.2 The entrance to fRUITYSPACE 209

  List of Images 

Image 15.3 Inside fRUITYSPACE, the view from the stage area towards the entrance Image 15.4 The audience for a performance in fRUITYSPACE Image 15.5 Performance in fRUITYSPACE: Kaoru Abe No Future Image 15.6 Performance in fRUITYSPACE: sourtower and yayeci Image 15.7 “NO DRUGS, NO SMOCKING, NO FIGHT”, sign above audience area in fRUITYSPACE Image 17.1 Ed Woods at the end of their set. Note that the singer, Billy, is lathered in shampoo. (Photo taken by Miles Wood)

xxiii

210 215 216 216 220 254

1 Introduction: Nomadism, Fragmentation, and Marginality The Hong Kong Music Underground in the East Asian Context Damien Charrieras and François Mouillot

Defining Musical ‘Undergrounds’ In music studies, fewer concepts are more fluid than the notion of “underground”. In Sounds of the Underground, Stephen Graham points out that the term has been “[…] adopted by practitioners and accorded by critics across many different [music] genres as a marker of cultural distinction” (Graham 2016, p. vii). In the most vernacular sense of the term, one could say that a majority of music styles, artists or practices—whether

D. Charrieras (*) School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] F. Mouillot Department of Music and Department of Humanities & Creative Writing, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. Charrieras, F. Mouillot (eds.), Fractured Scenes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6_1

1

2 

D. Charrieras and F. Mouillot

jazz, popular musics, or Western classical musics, among others—indeed began by being in some sort of “underground”: as music that was known, practiced and appreciated only by a small amount of people, often because it challenged or explicitly went against the commonly accepted musical conventions of the time, and sometimes because its content was deemed morally or politically subversive. In the past 50 years or so, the term “underground” has readily been applied to a variety of popular or experimental music movements that, either due to unwanted circumstances or as deliberate moves, have flown under the radar of the commercial music industries. Notably, the term has often times been seen as interchangeable with notions such as “independent”, “do-it-yourself ” (DIY), “experimental”, and “avant-garde”. While these terms have been defined and discussed extensively in a number of landmark scholarly contributions (see e.g. Bernstein 2008; Born 1995; Piekut 2011; Bennett and Guerra 2018; Hesmondhalgh 1997), the notion of “underground” had not received the kind of critical analysis provided by Graham’s study. He specifically uses the notion as an umbrella term to link disparate music practices that in the past have been studied separately. Musicians operating between the cracks of the commercially music industries deserve to be analysed together, Graham argues, because they, make work that sometimes gets programmed in the same venues and festivals; often gets written about in the same places; and, broadly speaking, operates in the same kind of exploratory cultural tradition where techniques and sounds both from “high”-art and popular forms, from free jazz to metal to techno and jungle, are variously important. The shared radical aesthetics and cultural marginality of these musics places them into some kind of continuum, notwithstanding important subcultural genre differences between them. (2016, p. 4)

Graham’s emphasis on a diverse stylistic range of marginal musical practices sharing common infrastructures is salutary and is the subject of increasing academic focus in specific scenes (see e.g. Mouillot 2018). Yet, in many industrialized contexts, the notions that radical aesthetics and marginality are inherent to musical undergrounds have been challenged by technological advancement in recent years: with internet developments, it is indeed possible for many but the most misanthropic and

1  Introduction: Nomadism, Fragmentation, and Marginality… 

3

subversive artists to find a relatively large—if globally disseminated rather than locally concentrated—audience, therefore at least partially mooting arguments for marginality and limited appeal. Furthermore, the abundance of new music available freely (or almost freely) online has changed music consumption habits as well as musical taste among both music enthusiasts and artists alike. Music listeners have access to more decontextualized music than ever before, and for some artists, musical aesthetics previously considered as radical are now little more than novelty whose previously radical elements can be included in a patchwork of blended ‘post-genre’ music and reach new heights in mainstream popularity.1 At the same time, in other contexts—sometimes more politically conservative, or within music markets hegemonically dominated by more traditional forms of pop music, like Hong Kong (HK)—aesthetic radicality and industrial marginality remain clearly prevalent to “undergroundedness”. It is one of the aims of this book to begin charting the various modalities under which the notion of “underground” unfolds in some contemporary contexts outside of North America and Europe.

 ositioning Hong Kong in East P Asian Undergrounds Scholarship on music practices outside the spectrum of the commercial/ mainstream music industries has blossomed in the past 20 years in various disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts—including but not limited to cultural studies, sociology, musicology, and history—with entire subfields devoted to the study of punk and its off-shoots (with academic journals such Post and Post-Punk, now in its eighth publication year, attesting to the vitality of the field), insightful examinations of heavy metal genre and subgenres (likewise reflected in dedicated academic venues such as the Metal Music Studies journal), diverse forms of underground rap (and the newly launched Global Hip-Hop Studies journal), and various forms of experimental and avant-garde music. Much of this scholarship has tended to focus primarily on musical undergrounds  As evidenced by the global mainstream success of artists such as Billie Eilish.

1

4 

D. Charrieras and F. Mouillot

existing within Western countries to emphasize the transient nature of communities constituting underground music scenes, the relativity of their system of meanings, as well as their internal complexities and divisions (Bennett 2004; Straw 1991, 2015). Over the past decade, there has however been heightened academic interest in underground sound and music expressions outside of Western contexts, as evidenced in the increasing global scope of the scholarship published in the above journals and in a number of landmark longer academic studies on how these undergrounds might extend, reflect, and challenge our understandings of the notion of underground from a Western perspective (Alonso-Minutti et al. 2018; Novak 2013; Fermont and Della Faille 2016; Wallach 2008). Within this turn to global underground music studies, increasing attention has been paid to various types of subcultural musical expression in the contemporary Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese contexts (Amar 2020, n.d.; de Seta 2011; Kloet 2010; Steen 2008; Tsai et al. 2019; Yan 2017; Jian 2018; Xiao 2018). Yet, analyses of undergrounds in specific regional East Asian locales, including the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, are still under-represented. The contributions in this book illustrate that Hong Kong underground music scenes, like Hong Kong itself, are situated in a divided cultural and institutional context which forbid any single characterization of Hong Kong as either ‘Western’ or ‘East Asian’. Within the field of music studies, Hong Kong has benefitted from sustained but relatively narrow academic focus. To date, socio-cultural studies of music practices in HK have mainly focused on the city’s best-­ known mainstream popular music practice, Cantonese pop (often referred to as “Cantopop”). Significantly, the genre has been widely studied from historical (Chu 2017), social/political (Lee 1992; Ho 2000; Mittler 1997), linguistic (Chan 2009), postcolonial (McIntyre et  al. 2002), globalization (Ho 2003, Chow and de Kloet 2012), as well as gender perspectives (Erni 2007) among others. For all of its worth, this emphasis on Cantopop runs the risk of masking the real diversity of music practices present in the city. If indeed Cantonese pop music is by far the most popular music genre among local Hong Kongers and the most developed local music industry, the HK music landscape spans a broad spectrum of styles and genres. These range

1  Introduction: Nomadism, Fragmentation, and Marginality… 

5

from Western classical music, contemporary music, sound art, to jazz, traditional Chinese music, and various forms of popular musics (including but not limited to rock, rap, electronic music genres), which are all supported by a set of diverse official and grassroots actors and infrastructures. Referring to some of the contributors to this book, Mainland Chinese experimental musician Yan Jun stated that the amateur scenes in Hong Kong are thriving even in a context where the potential for culture seems limited (Yan 2017). Within this diverse musical environment, underground musical practices exist, in spite of the fact that they might appear under-developed and scattered compared to other similar global cities. Scholarly and journalistic reports of live underground music activity in HK in the last decade have pointed to the existence of dedicated venues (Steintrager and Hamilton 2011), but tend to emphasize both their low number and extreme transience (Charrieras et  al. 2018; de Seta 2016). Actors supporting these practices—musicians, concert promoters, and venue owners—have pointed to expensive rents, regulations on zoning, hygiene and fire safety, and a lack of subsidies from both the government and non-­ profit organizations as three of the main issues undermining the activities of independent live music infrastructures in the city (Ives 2019). In other words, despite its relatively small size when compared to Tokyo, New York, or London, the Hong Kong underground landscape is a disjointed but lively ensemble characterized—as many authors point out in this volume—by fragility, amateurism, openness to both Western and Asian sonic influences, and a search for its own musical singularities beyond the tropes of various global musical undergrounds. Yet, attributing a definite character to underground musical activities in Hong Kong is difficult. Like many other undergrounds across the world, it is animated musically by a fever for aesthetic and technological experimentations, politically often by a contestation and a resistance to pre-established official structures and ideologies within music industries, and operationally, by a quest for multimodal survival involving institutional recognition, public financing, and private patronage. If the Hong Kong underground has the usual ingredients of undergrounds studied elsewhere, it is indeed a very specific articulation of these elements.

6 

D. Charrieras and F. Mouillot

Locality, Translocalism, Sceneness This book examines the various modes of articulation of underground music and sound practices in the Hong Kong and East Asian contexts while seeking to avoid the pitfalls of cultural essentialism. It takes Hong Kong as a focus not only due to the need to better understand Hong Kong music practices beyond Cantopop, but also because Hong Kong exists in various degrees of economic, political, and cultural contact with contiguous East Asian regions as well as with more distant locales outside of Asia. Following social research on borders, Hong Kong can be described as a socially constructed and administratively managed ‘frontier zone’ which is “in constant state of flux” (Newman 2006, p. 173). Arjun Appadurai famously defined locality “as primarily relational and contextual rather than scalar or spatial” (Appadurai 1996, p.  178). According to this definition and in relation to individuals, locality is a complex phenomenological experience bringing together a felt social immediacy, interactive technologies, and the relativity of context rather than ‘simply’ in spaces of different scale. According to Sparke, Appadurai seeks to overcome the traditional focus of anthropology on the local through processual geographies highlighting dynamics of ‘deterritorialization’ that are embodied in the lived experience of diasporic communities (2005, p. xiv). Extending Appadurai’s take on locality, Barone uses the metaphor of sceneness—as a form of locality in the context of music making—to account for the social density and the internal conflicts (a “fissive” nature) characterizing different metal scenes in Tunisia. In the Tunisian context, Barone argues, underground music scenes are more fragile than in first-world industrialized settings. Barone’s notion of sceneness relies less on the existence of scene-supporting infrastructures—which by and large tend to be extremely transient for political, religious, and economic reasons—than on “distant experiences of closeness provided by music scenes, such as urban leisure, trans-local music phenomena and virtual communities” (2016, p. 28). He specifically contends that music scenes “become . . . an arena for the production of new definitions and significances: this, in turn, pushes scenes to mutate, splinter and experience new forms of sceneness” (ibid.). The notion of

1  Introduction: Nomadism, Fragmentation, and Marginality… 

7

sceneness highlights the necessity for new social groups to be ritually revived due to their heightened conflictual nature in troubled and unstable political contexts (ibid.). In other words, underground scenes in contexts such as Tunisia rely on specific forms of knowledge and socialities more than on infrastructures. Sceneness as a result must continually be re-performed in order to maintain its hold on the local. Underground music-making practices in Hong Kong cater to a variety of genre and can be seen as presenting similar degrees of fragile sceneness. Beyond the availability of infrastructures (or lack thereof ), Hong Kong musical undergrounds are marked by phenomena of particularly rapid emergence and fading away. On one level, this is because underground music scenes often stem from impulses on the part of scattered individuals—rather than groups or collectives—to create new live venues, festivals, and concert series dedicated to less commercial forms of music making (e.g. Maridet, Shing, Wong, Yiu, and Xper.Xr, this volume). These initiatives occur on the margins of more established practices of institutional music and pervasive commercialized club culture—as seen in the infamous Lan Kwai Fong entertainment district (Cheng 2001), or as exemplified by programming at the West Kowloon Cultural District, the local government–sanctioned arts and culture hub opened in 2016. Quoting “non-place” theorist Marc Augé, Barone highlights: “[S]cenes define themselves against mainstream spaces, or against the grey flow of urban ‘non-places’ (Barone 2016, p. 28). Yet, initiatives behind underground musical activity in the city are always already tampered by heightened spatial precarity (primarily linked to prohibitive rents) that frequently leads to nomadism in the activities of musicians and event organizers (as clearly outlined in this volume by de Seta, Maridet, and Wong). Furthermore, if the notion of underground communities and DIY ethics conjures the image of marginal groups functioning apart from the flow of everyday consumerized life and the mainstream cultural industries, the different components of underground scenes nevertheless have to grapple with surrounding larger-scale constraining and enabling dynamics. In Hong Kong, these dynamics involve among others, relatively generous public funding for the arts,

8 

D. Charrieras and F. Mouillot

the re-development strategies of real-estate promoters,2 and government licensing policies widely considered ill-adapted for grassroots cultural activity. In other words, if many actors are able to benefit from public funding, these same actors also point to the absence of concerted broader political effort to support and promote them as part of the Hong Kong cultural economy.

 ong Kong Underground Music Scenes H as Fractured Scenes As a global city, Hong Kong functions as an administrative, financial, and cultural interface—a hub where international flows of people, capital, technologies, and ideas are converging and dispersing—an incarnation of these displacements and disjunctures linked to the open-ended geographical struggles Sparke refers to. These struggles are further complicated by Hong Kong’s peculiar political history. Writing about the complex postcolonial situation of Hong Kong at the turn of the twenty-first century, John Erni highlights: “Inevitably, writing about Hong Kong involves a triangular articulation of Chinese nationalism, British colonialism, and globalism, which also evokes the impossibility of serving three masters. […] Three-headed as it were, [Hong Kong’s] cultural sphere offers diverse scripts of divided loyalties, unclean breaks, residual connections, and ambiguous hopes for the future” (2001, pp. 391–392). In this ‘liminal postcoloniality’ (ibid., p. 390), Hong Kong has long been a place of institutional ambiguity and of political contention, particularly since the special administrative region has been retroceded to China in 1997. To many international readers, this will have been made acutely obvious through the 2014 and 2019 large-scale social movements that have been opposing broad segments of the local population to the Special Administrative Region government.  Sparke criticizes Appadurai’s take on locality for ignoring the larger political economic factors and the objective persistence of nation-state and structural factors that are part of this production of locality. In his “critical geographies of displacement and disjuncture” (Sparke 2005, p. xii), Sparke notes that deterritorialization involves processes of reterritorialization that are often beneficial to the ‘neoliberal business elite’ (Sparke 2005, p. xx). 2

1  Introduction: Nomadism, Fragmentation, and Marginality… 

9

As a liminal postcolonial border zone, Hong Kong then articulates very culturally and geographically diverse remote sites. This process of articulation is, not surprisingly, also reflected at the level of underground music practices. Against accounts that would tend to simplify the internal particularities of local scenes, this volume aims to show the ways in which Hong Kong underground scenes are the product of internalized and, at times  contradictory, historical, geographical, political,  and  cultural influences. The local underground music landscape takes explicit references from musical undergrounds from other contexts, most notably Western European and Japanese. These references include (but are not limited to) tendencies towards various forms of musical experimentalism (including improvisation and noise) on an aesthetic level, and on an operational level, the re-appropriation of momentarily affordable post/ industrial spaces and commercially zoned spaces. But in the same way that the irruption of rock music in China in the early 1980s entailed the collision/conflation of musical rock genres that emerged at different historical times and places in the West (de Kloet 2010), aesthetic and cultural underground articulations in Hong Kong are not directly embedded within Western European, North American, or even East Asian-centric histories of experimental and underground music scenes. Following Appadurai, we may assert that these diverse spaces of references invoked in the context of Hong Kong underground music-making fuel the production of locality and are constitutive of scenes understood as “translocal neighbourhoods”, that is, provisional actualizations informed by aesthetics and cultures that can be geographically distant.3 Although underground scenes elsewhere draw similarly from geographically remote aesthetics and cultures, this book aims to trace their specific contemporary translocal articulations in Hong Kong. In the European and North American contexts, the notion of scenes has often been used to gesture towards the intricacies and openness of  Through translocalism, Appadurai wants to give an account of the lived local experiences in a globalized and deterritorialized world (Appadurai 1991, p. 196; see also Appadurai 2003, for the notion of ‘production of locality’). In his research, Appadurai points to the reproducibility of the locality through the mediation of neighbourhood-as-actualized-localities (Appadurai 1996, p.  178). For Barone, scenes stand for Appadurai’s neighbourhoods, while sceneness pertains to Appadurai conceptualization of the local as translocal. 3

10 

D. Charrieras and F. Mouillot

different musical subgenres inside relatively stable locales. In these settings music scenes, one example being the punk rock scene in New York in the 1970s, might be considered as, at least temporarily, relatively stable and homogeneous when compared to the ways in which macro-political and economic trends tend to be directly experienced by the actors of Hong Kong underground scenes. Maybe more than in other locales, larger conflicting cultural, financial, and political dynamics cross in Hong Kong and configure the way underground scenes emerge, develop, and fade away. The peculiar forms taken by locality as well as the cultural, political, and historical splits that characterize Hong Kong may explain in part why, in this context, musical, and sonic undergrounds are made up of much more than avant-garde and experimental music styles per se. What effectively can be experienced as a musical/sonic underground in the city encompasses practices such as deconstructed club music, fusion hip-hop, indie pop, a variety of rock genres and subgenres, ‘white cube’ sound art, to name a few. These practices may either find some degree of relative stability or institutional acceptance (through patronage or public support), or de facto exist below official or commercial grounds for individual or joint lack of venues, organizers audience, revenues, or policy support. One consequence of this particular configuration is that as mentioned above, for many local actors (and perhaps more than in other contexts) it is difficult to speak of a single identifiable Hong Kong underground scene. Rather than a scene, the Hong Kong underground is better characterized as a landscape marked by a collection of small, fractured, pockets of marginal musical activities—micro-scenes perhaps—which often coalesce around specific events, people or spaces, providing the observer with a sense of extreme fragmentation. It is not the ambit of this collection of essays to provide any attempt at an exhaustive picture of what might code as underground music in Hong Kong, or to account fully for the complexity of dynamics that animate these undergrounds. Instead, this book calls for further examination of the musical diversity inherent to Hong Kong and other East Asian cities. On one level, and like in many other global left-field musical milieus, musical undergrounds in Hong Kong are biased towards male performers

1  Introduction: Nomadism, Fragmentation, and Marginality… 

11

and scene gatekeepers.4 This particular bias deserves further analysis in future research. Additionally, key spaces and styles of underground music, such as venues Empty Gallery and Sai Coeng, record store/label White Noise Records, or underground hip-hop, are either unaccounted for or not given extensive treatment in this volume. These limits point to areas where further documentation and analysis are also needed. This book does however begin showcasing the variety of sonic and musical practices, as well as of voices (academic, artistic, and organizational) that inhabit the often unaccounted for broadly defined underground terrains of the city. In their respective chapters, many of these voices point to the diverse number of afore-mentioned issues that can rightfully substantiate the perspective that Hong Kong functions as a rather inhospitable environment for the practice of less commercially oriented sonic and musical forms. Yet, taken together, these stories paint a somewhat different picture: underground music in Hong Kong is indeed a fractured ensemble seemingly perennially on the verge of disappearance, but its actors are diverse, ambitious, acutely aware of the specificities of the conditions in which they operate, and cover wide aesthetic, economic, geographic, and political spectrums.

Chapter Outlines The first part of this book includes texts and interviews presenting personal takes on the wider panorama of Hong Kong underground. The second part gathers case studies exploring diverse musical components of the Hong Kong underground: Noise/Experimental/Free Improvisation; Sound Art/Contemporary Art; Indie-rock/Indie-Pop and Electronic Music. The third part explores specific configurations of undergrounds in China and Japan.

 Yang Yeung, whose perspective is present in this book, is an important actor in the city’s cultural landscape providing a significant counter-example to this trend. Co-owner of the Twenty Alpha experimental music venue Wendy Lee and sound artist/experimental musician Fiona Lee are two other key female actors in the city’s undergrounds. 4

12 

D. Charrieras and F. Mouillot

 art One: Different Perspectives on the Hong P Kong Underground Ken Ueno, an American composer, sound-artist, academic, and regular performer in the city’s underground circles, paints a personal and affective panorama of the Hong Kong underground. Evoking the era of colonialism, when the cultural space of references were Paris, London, and New York, he notes that “[t]he decoupling of local geographic (and climate) realities from metrics of identity and culture is a strange exercise”. He describes music making in the conflicting context of Hong Kong as the making of radically contextual musical instruments, an escape from the anonymizing global forces creating the conditions of possibility for the upcoming historical developments. Xper.Xr is one of the veterans of experimental music in Hong Kong. Often considered the city’s first noise artist, his musical performances (both recorded and live) date back to the end of the 1980s. In his interview, he describes his own artistic trajectory as a pendular movement between Hong Kong, London and Paris, and elsewhere with a continuous strong tropism for Japan. Xper.Xr might be seen as an embodiment of the ways in which distant but affectively close people and sites might inform a nomadic experimental attitude in Hong Kong (an attitude which also extends to healing practices, BMX racing, and (non)education). According to him, experimentalism translates in being where one is not expected. His continuous influence on the diverse experimental scenes of Hong Kong has been especially acute in his activities as a co-­ venue owner/curator and event organizer (with Fredie Decombe) at CIA, a now-defunct dedicated experimental space of performance. Along with Xper.Xr, musician and event organizer Kung Chi Shing stands as one of the most widely recognized figures in the underground and independent music circles of the city. Over the course of the interview transcribed in this volume, he outlines a history of left-field music practices in Hong Kong spanning 1980s discotheques, his own performance activity as co-founder of legendary local experimental music unit The Box, the first concerts by John Zorn and Japanese guitarist and turntablist  Otomo Yoshihide in the Central District of Hong Kong in the

1  Introduction: Nomadism, Fragmentation, and Marginality… 

13

1990s, and his recent programming at the government-licensed flagship venue at the West Kowloon Cultural District. His wide-ranging account of Hong Kong experimental music practices highlights the volatile and fractured nature of experimental music in the city over time, but provides at the same time sharp contrast to other contemporary accounts presented in this book. Of particular note are the collaborations between visual artists and composers involved in various improvisatory practices, which appear retrospectively as strikingly different from the current context of Hong Kong underground scenes were such interdisciplinary collaborations seem less en vogue in the more recent context.

 art Two Take 1: Individual Case Studies in Noise/ P Experimental/Free Improvisation Though singular in its approach, Dennis Wong’s discovery of and subsequent journey into experimental music highlight a great deal of what might be considered typical of the articulation of the genre in Hong Kong. Initially exposed to experimental music and noise through (notably Japanese) album reviews appearing in  local cultural publications, Wong has slowly developed his own multi-instrumental practice by playing at live shows that he organized with the help of often unstable concert venues. Quintessentially nomadic and irregular, his Noise to Signal concert series and Kill the Silence festival have become landmarks in the city’s underground soundscape. Importantly, Wong’s perspective is featured here through an interview he gave to press: release, a local zine dedicated to independent and experimental music activity in Hong Kong run by long-time local music enthusiasts Blair Reeves and Nick Langford. While the publication itself might be seen as one of the objects resulting from the city’s independent music activity (effectively acting as a kind of scene artefact), Reeves’ introduction for the interview is a testimony to Wong’s importance in the scene. In his chapter, Kam-po Tse offers a first hand-out account of his work as an audio-visual director working to produce experimental music events in a context where the artistic specificity of this music is not readily recognized and adapted into the pre-existing technical and institutional

14 

D. Charrieras and F. Mouillot

framework of the city. His ambitions—to generate high audio-visual quality live performances of left-field music in collaboration with other local experimental music actors such as Dennis Wong and the curators of the recently opened dedicated venue Twenty Alpha—reveal both the amount of communicative work still to be done between the multiplicity of actors involved in the presentation of non-conventional music in Hong Kong, as well as the collective vision shared by many of the city’s experimental music actors to push live performances of this music forward. Gabriele de Seta, an Italian experimental musician, event organizer, label owner, and scholar active in the Hong Kong underground between 2012 and 2016, describes how the scarcity of venues led experimental musicians to embrace the sonic peculiarities of industrial spaces as performance spaces. Following the perspectives that Hong Kong may be seen as “a city without ground” due to its vertical architecture whose independent sector may be qualified as a “no audience underground”, he characterizes parts of the local scene as a kind of “no venue underground” in which musicians ironically perform in staircases of tall buildings as free improvisation and experimental music organizers often to fail to secure regular performance venues.

 art Two Take 2: Individual Case Studies in Sound Art/ P Contemporary Approach Samson Young is an award-winning visual artist who has been developing his career over the past ten years between Hong Kong and New York at the frontier of experimental music, avant-garde musical composition, digital, and visual art. In this interview, he details how and why he initiated Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong, an organization geared towards musicians  with diverse backgrounds who seek to extend their practice outside of the traditional concert space. Sound artist and scholar Cédric Maridet describes a nascent underground scene that formed around 2004–2005 around a cluster of individuals interested in experimentations encompassing sound, music (particularly involving laptops) and the broader artistic environment of

1  Introduction: Nomadism, Fragmentation, and Marginality… 

15

the city in Hong Kong. Importantly, he highlights the role of local art galleries such as Osage and Videotage in fostering hybrid experimental practices on the margins of contemporary art and sound art. He invokes the notion of amateurs as practitioners aware of the limits of technical mastery and whose curiosity and exploratory attitude characterize some Hong Kong underground practitioners. Following her activities as part of the collective experiments described by Maridet, Yang Yeung initiated Soundpocket, one of Hong Kong’s seminal grassroots cultural organization devoted to nurturing young local sound artists through local mentorship and international collaborations. In her contribution to this book, she narrates a soundwalk in Hong Kong (one of Soundpocket’s activities) as a new kind of experiential sonic practice. She shows how these soundwalks—stemming from “sound as space” approaches foregrounded by the likes of Japanese artist Aki Onda—allow a different apprehension of shifting, yet grounded places, and open new ways to develop ‘a public life’ oriented towards new futures.

 art Two Take 3: Individual Case Studies in Indie-Rock/ P Indie-Pop and Electronic Music Ahkok Wong describes a specific moment in one of the key scenes in the contemporary history of the Hong Kong undergrounds: the creation and the demise of Hidden Agenda, one of the largest and longest-running venues in Hong Kong for the performance of various forms of punk, metal, and indie-rock music. The venue’s history epitomizes some of the regulatory and licensing issues that a number of local actors have identified as key factors leading to fragmentation and fragility within local independent music institutions: initially running unofficially in an industrial building in one of Hong Kong’s manufacturing districts, it was forced to close on multiple occasions by the government, and re-located to operate “above ground” in order to comply with zoning regulations before closing permanently in February 2020 following mass cancellations of live shows during the COVID-19 epidemic. His conclusion highlights the importance of participatory practices—re-evaluating the notion of “do-it-yourself ” in favour of the concept of “do-it-together—and of dispersion as a

16 

D. Charrieras and F. Mouillot

strategy of resistance under changing conditions in a portion of the city’s undergrounds. Stella Lau shows how, around the time that Cantopop’s popularity notably decreased (most experts agreeing on the late 1990s period), a new wave of local “indie” artists, often operating with attitudes/ethos indebted to the original push brought forth by punk and post-punk in the 1970s U.K. and U.S., have started creating music drawing on various Cantonese mainstream and Anglo-American indie pop music tropes. Though they may not perform music that typically codes as aesthetically subversive in most international settings, due to the overwhelming dominance of the mainstream music markets by Cantopop, these ‘indie’ acts appear resolutely more underground in Hong Kong than they would in many other contexts. The value of these artists, Lau argues, is manifold: not only are they able to operate at a relative distance from the various pressures faced by Cantopop superstars, but they also offer a breath of creative “fresh air” to the Cantopop music market. Deconstructed club music producer Alex Yiu provides a preliminary history of one of the most recent and liveliest underground music scenes in the city by detailing the activities of three of its key institutions: the micro-independent record label and concert series Absurd TRAX, the Hong Kong Community Radio (HKCR), and the now-defunct underground music dance-club XXX.  The ways in which these institutions operate highlight the translocalist tendencies that are often inherent to underground music-making in the city particularly saliently. Yiu’s account also highlights how such tendencies increasingly make use of the interlocking of physical spaces and internet platforms to ensure both international visibility for local artists and Hong Kong’s positioning on the global map of deconstructed electronic music.

Part Three: Inter/faces This book chooses to put these various iterations of Hong Kong undergrounds in relief with other East Asian left-field sound and music practices: punk and experimental music in Mainland China, sound art in

1  Introduction: Nomadism, Fragmentation, and Marginality… 

17

Japan, and the garage rock scene in Tokyo. The aim of this approach is three-fold: to frame the discussion of the Hong Kong underground in some of its most immediate geographic and historical contexts; to highlight the diversity of histories, contexts, aesthetics as well as general degrees of development of left-field music practices that make up the musical landscape in the region; and to add further contrasting depth to current understandings of the notion of “underground” in music. If, as Neglia rightfully points out in his chapter on the garage rock scene in Tokyo, umbrella terms such as “underground” run the risk of obscuring the sonic and cultural specificities of the music genres they seek to gather, positioning Hong Kong sonic undergrounds is larger contexts contributes to highlighting their respective socio-historical particularities.

Mainland China In his chapter on the spaces of punk performance in China, Nathanel Amar outlines the kind of radical undertones that a musical underground can take in the East Asian context. While in Hong Kong, Japan, and a variety of other Asian (and Western) contexts, punk exists in primarily commercial relations to more mainstream music markets—either positioning itself resolutely against them or engaging in various types of aesthetic and industrial partnerships with mainstream taste and industries—in the contemporary Chinese context, punk takes on a new dimension: ostracized by other Chinese rock communities and their performances channelled into large-scale increasingly tightly controlled cultural events, the style of live music participation of the Chinese punk communities emphasizes the improvisatory and participatory practices at the root of the genre. Edward Sanderson was an event organizer and curator for ten years in Beijing before coming to Hong Kong to pursue academic research. In this chapter, he provides an ethnographic account of one of the most important underground venue in Beijing, fRUITYSPACE. Emphasizing the space’s multiple functions, he shows how the it operates as a performance venue for local and international underground musicians, as a place to for passer-by’s to rest and socialize, as well as a space to hold

18 

D. Charrieras and F. Mouillot

non-­musical activities (such as garage sales) in line with the ethics of the founder, Zhai Ruixin. It is also an example of a venue in Beijing where the owner  strives  to keep the choice of the group performing at his venue coherent, despite various economic and legal pressures.

Japan Katsushi Nakagawa’s text is a contribution to the genealogies of sound art in Japan from the 1960s to the 1990s, based on interviews with key historical protagonists, a description of milestone events, and a rigorous analysis of Japanese art magazines publicizing this practice. If the recent history of noise music in Japan has been the focus of several academic studies, robust accounts of the history of sound art in Japan are sparse. Nakagawa uncovers the decisive influence of forgotten pioneers  in the genre, the influence of foreign contemporary artists and plastic artists. He notes that the focus towards noise music and music-making practices in the 2000s is a departure from approaches centred around sound art he describes. Finally, in problematizing the fraught notions of “the underground” in relation to the Tokyo garage rock scene, Jose Vincente Neglia not only analyses an under-studied musical current in Japan’s long and rich history of left-field music practices, but he highlights the ways in which the notion of musical undergrounds is both laced with these other hard-todefine categorical descriptors such as “indie”, “do-it-yourself ” and “amateurism”. His chapter expands the body of literature analysing specific forms of underground music in Japan while offering a wider view into an underground milieu where musicians, audiences, and other scene actors operate on a less precarious institutional, cultural, and economic base than in the Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese context.

1  Introduction: Nomadism, Fragmentation, and Marginality… 

19

 owards a Plurality of Translocal Undergrounds T in East Asia Taken together, the ensemble of “underground” practices outlined in this volume and the aesthetic, institutional, historical, and cultural fractures that both link them together and push them apart point to two of the primary goals of this book. On the one hand, this collection aims to broaden the spectrum of what is typically considered and discussed in relation to musical activities in and of Hong Kong to include actors, styles, and structures beyond those related to the city’s main music industries of mainstream popular music. And on another level, through the diversity of styles, visions, and voices that it highlights, this book hopes to contribute regionally grounded perspectives that expand the range of styles and practices typically involved in academic discussions on undergrounds. Crucially, it points to the highly relative, transnational, and historically contingent nature of underground music. As the successes and failures of the various actors that animate the Hong Kong and East Asian underground musical landscape attest, there can be no simple, continuous, homogenous, or consensual definition of what constitutes “undergrounds” in music.

References Alonso-Minutti, A.  R., Herrera, E., & Madrid, A.  L. (Eds.). (2018). Experimentalisms in Practice: Music Perspectives from Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press. Amar, N. (2020, February 11). “We Sing This Song For You, Wuhan!”: A Short History of Wuhan Punk. RADII | Culture, Innovation, and Life in Today’s China. https://radiichina.com/wuhan-­punk-­history/ Amar, N. (n.d.). “你有freestyle吗?” The Roots of Censorship in Chinese Hip-hop. CEFC.  Retrieved April 9, 2020, from https://www.cefc.com.hk/article/ ni-­you-­freestyle-­ma-­roots-­chinese-­hip-­hop-­censorship/ Appadurai, A. (1991). Global Ethnoscapes. Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology. In R.  G. Fox (Ed.), Recapturing Anthropology (School of

20 

D. Charrieras and F. Mouillot

American Research Advanced Seminar Series, p. 264). Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Appadurai, A. (2003). Illusion of Permanence. Perspecta, 34, 44–52. Barone, S. (2016). Fragile Scenes, Fractured Communities: Tunisian Metal and Sceneness. Journal of Youth Studies, 19(1), 20–35. Bennett, A. (2004). Consolidating the music scenes perspective. Poetics, 32(3-4), 223–234. Bennett, A., & Guerra, P. (Eds.). (2018). DIY Cultures and Underground Music Scenes (1st ed.). Milton: Routledge. Born, G. (1995). Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde (1st ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. Chan, B.  H.-S. (2009). English in Hong Kong Cantopop: Language choice, code-switching and genre. World Englishes, 28(1), 107–129. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-­971X.2008.01572.x. Charrieras, D., Darchen, S., & Sigler, T. (2018). The shifting spaces of creativity in Hong Kong. Cities, 74, 134–141. Cheng, S.-l. (2001). Consuming Places in Hong Kong Experiencing Lan Kwai Fong. In G. Mathews & T.-l. Lui (Eds.), Consuming Hong Kong (pp. 237–262). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Chow, Y. F., & de Kloet, J. (2012). Sonic Multiplicities: Hong Kong Pop and the Global Circulation of Sound and Image. Bristol: Intellect Ltd.. Chu, S.  Y.-W. (2017). Hong Kong Cantopop: A Concise History. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Erni, J.  N. (2001). Like a Postcolonial Culture: Hong Kong Re-Imagined. Cultural Studies, 15(3–4), 389–418. https://doi. org/10.1080/095023800110046632. Erni, J.  N. (2007). Gender and everyday evasions: Moving with Cantopop. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 8(1), 86–108. https://doi. org/10.1080/14649370601119055. Fermont, C., & Della Faille, D. (2016). NOT YOUR WORLD MUSIC: Noise in South East Asia. Berlin/Ottawa: Syrphe/HushHush. Graham, S. (2016). Sounds of the Underground. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Bernstein, D. J. (2008). The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde. Berkeley: University of California Press.

1  Introduction: Nomadism, Fragmentation, and Marginality… 

21

Hesmondhalgh, D. (1997). Post-Punk’s Attempt to Democratise the Music Industry: The Success and Failure of Rough Trade. Popular Music, 16(3), 255–274. Ho, W.-C. (2000). The Political Meaning of Hong Kong Popular Music: A Review of Sociopolitical Relations between Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China Since the 1980s. Popular Music, 19(3), 341–353. JSTOR. Ho, W.-C. (2003). Between globalisation and localisation: A study of Hong Kong popular music. Popular Music, 22(2), 143–157. Ives, M. (2019, October 18). Crackdown Chills Hong Kong’s Indie Music Scene— The New York Times. Retrieved, from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/09/ world/asia/hong-­kong-­live-­music.html Jian, M. (2018). The Survival Struggle and Resistant Politics of a DIY Music Career in East Asia: Case Studies of China and Taiwan. Cultural Sociology, 12(2), 224–240. Kloet, J. d. (2010). China with a Cut: Globalisation, Urban Youth and Popular Music. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Lee, J. C.-Y. (1992). Cantopop Songs on Emigration from Hong Kong. Yearbook for Traditional Music, 24, 14–23. https://doi.org/10.2307/768468. McIntyre, B. T., Cheng, C. W.-S., & Zhang, W. (2002). Cantopop: The voice of Hong Kong. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 12(2), 217–243. Mittler, B. (1997). Dangerous Tunes: The Politics of Chinese Music in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the People’s Republic of China Since 1949. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Mouillot, F. (2018). Constellation Records: Punk, Pós-Rock, e Música Experimental na Angloboemia de Montreal/Constellation Records: Punk, Post-Rock, and Experimental Music in Montreal Anglo-bohemia. In C.  S. Fernandes & M.  Herschmann (Eds.), Cidade Musicais/Music Cities (pp. 341–363). Porto Alegre: Editora Sulinas. Newman, D. (2006). Borders and Bordering. European Journal of Social Theory, 9(2), 171–186. Novak, D. (2013). Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation. Durham: Duke University Press Books. Piekut, B. (2011). Experimentalism Otherwise (First ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. de Seta, G. (2011). Mediation through Noise: Experimental Music in China. Master Thesis. Universiteit Leiden, Leiden.

22 

D. Charrieras and F. Mouillot

de Seta, G. (2016, December 19). The no-venue underground: Sounding Hong Kong’s lack of performance spaces. Sound Matters: The SEM Blog. https:// soundmattersthesemblog.com/2016/12/19/gabriele-­de-­seta-­the-­no-­venue-­ underground-­sounding-­hong-­kongs-­lack-­of-­performance-­spaces/ Sparke, M. (2005). In the Space of Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Steen, A. (2008). The Long March: A History of Chinese Rock Music. In G.  Lind & S.  Messmer (Eds.), Beijing Bubbles. Punk and Rock in China's Capital. The Film + The Book (pp. 47–56). Berlin: Fly-Fast Records. Steintrager, J., & Hamilton, A. (2011). Global Ear: Hong Kong. The Wire Magazine  – Adventures in Modern Music. https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-­ writing/the-­portal/global-­ear_hong-­kong-­portal Straw, W. (1991). Systems of Articulation, Logics of Change: Communities and Scenes in Popular Music. Cultural Studies, 5(3), 368–388. Straw, W. (2015). Some Things a Scene Might Be. Cultural Studies, 29(3), 476–485. Tsai, E., Ho, T.-H., & Jian, M. (Eds.). (2019). Made in Taiwan: Studies in Popular Music (1st ed.). Andover: Routledge. Wallach, J. (2008). Modern Noise, Fluid Genres: Popular Music in Indonesia, 1997-2001 (1st ed.). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Xiao, J. (2018). Punk Culture in Contemporary China. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­981-­13-­0977-­9. Yan, J. (2017). Re-Invent: Experimental Music in China. In C. Cox & D. Warner (Eds.), Audio Culture (Rev. ed., p.  664). New  York: Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

Part One: Perspectives on the Hong Kong Underground

2 Ice Skating and Stinky Foods: Notes from the Hong Kong Underground, 2018–2019 Ken Ueno

Gamja-jeon. A clue into how culture operates and how materials can be freed from neocolonizing histories might be learned from food culture. On a trip to Korea, tucked away in a small side street in the Seochon neighborhood of Seoul, I discovered a restaurant where a mousy lady, the genius proprietor, makes a transcendent haemul pajeon (seafood pancake). Scallions and octopus legs are mostly whole but bound together by a batter whose force of union is more delicate and less smothering than that which holds blueberries captive in pancakes in breakfast diners across America. In the perfect haemul pajeon, the quality of the batter is more like a canvas that presents the quality of its constituent ingredients. Somehow, though, those independent components are enlivened for being in the pajeon together (Image 2.1). What lessons can we apply from this into music? The greatest revelation for me in that meal, however, was the gamja-­ jeon, the potato pancake. Consisting of just finely grated potatoes, lightly K. Ueno (*) UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. Charrieras, F. Mouillot (eds.), Fractured Scenes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6_2

25

26 

K. Ueno

Image 2.1  Calligraphic Zamboni traces at Festival Walk. (Photo credit: Ken Ueno)

fried, light and fluffy (like the best gnocchi) with a slight crunch, it asks to be consumed as soon as it reaches the table, when the temperature is still optimal (before it gets heavier and soggy). Like a minor pilgrimage, I understood the moment to be a temporally specific experience. I also thought of how the potato had traveled so far, geographically and in time, to this moment, while I was delighting in it. Potatoes are indigenous to the Americas and it was not introduced to Korea until the early nineteenth century. But, in the hands of the artisan chef of this small

2  Ice Skating and Stinky Foods: Notes from the Hong Kong… 

27

restaurant in Seochan, as I was eating the gamja-jeon, what I felt was local specificity. Is there a special quality to potatoes that allows it to float in space and time free of cultural signifiers? Certainly not. Steak frites are Belgian. Latkes are bound to a place and peoples too. And mashed potatoes are Robuchon’s. Or, more commonly for Americans, mashed potatoes carry the memory of being the mushy accompaniment to family dramas during Thanksgiving. Perhaps differences in recipes help liberate the potato from these vernacular significations. Is the distance of time a factor too? Or, that hungry, talented, peoples around the world fashioned the potato into their image, merely acting out a natural desire? The classical music score is a recipe book which, over time, lulls us into thinking that the best possible way to cook has already been achieved by a chef whose tongue was foreign to hot spices and whose mind and imagination were blind to the possibilities afforded by winged beans, exocarpium citri rubrums, and ottelia acuminatas (when fruits and vegetables are most foreign to the Western experience, they only have scientific names in English). I have spent the 2018–2019 academic year as a Visiting Professor of Sound Art at the City University of Hong Kong. During that time, I regularly passed by the ice skating rink at the upscale Festival Walk mall as I climbed from the MTR station located in the belly of the mall to the Libeskind-designed building housing the School of Creative Media at the top of the hill. Sometimes, on breaks, I would grab coffee and watch flocks of children learn to skate—some naturally dexterous, many awkward and fragile, like baby birds learning to fly. Other times, the somehow-calligraphic-and-meditative grace of the Zamboni coating the surface of the ice would hold my gaze for a good part of an hour. There were times I would be reminded of the first sentence of A Hundred Years of Solitude: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” (Márquez, 1967, p. 8) But, mostly, I considered how hot it was outside and that the ice-­ skating rink in Festival Walk superimposes one climate’s condition onto another. It’s hard to escape the upscale capitalist frame of the mall (think Rodeo Drive) and how all the stores are the same stores you find in fancy

28 

K. Ueno

malls around the world. At what point in the development of Asia, will we make things that the rich people of Europe and America will be compelled to purchase to show off their elite status? Until that happens, many affluent Asians will be defined by their attachment to expensive Western items and remain deferential adherents to the cultural dictates of the West. And ice-skating is present in Festival Walk for the same reason expensive handbags are there: it represents neocolonial prestige value. But more than that, the ice skating rink is a freezing of time. A prominent figure in the art scene in Hong Kong once said to me, recounting the “Golden Age of Colonialism” (the late 1970s and 1980s), in which she grew up, “oh, we never thought of Hong Kong as part of Asia. We always looked to London, Paris, and New York, as our peers.” The decoupling of local geographic (and climate) realities from metrics of identity and culture is a strange exercise. During the spring 2019 semester, at one of the institutions where I presented composition masterclasses, there was a small flock of students attracted to the allure of what they termed “postmodernism,” which was expressed mostly as a hodgepodge of quotes from Classical and Romantic masterworks, the most popular composer being Wagner—the ice skating rink of Western Classical music culture (somehow tragically appropriate as Wagner’s operas often yearn for a suspension of time). Within this milieu was a student who espoused a different mission. He said he was sick of blonde-haired white composers who didn’t understand Chinese culture writing for Chinese instruments. His work, he said, would right this wrong and demonstrate how to correctly compose for Chinese instruments. Being that he was a local Hong Kong student, I asked him what he meant by “Chinese,” if it was colored by language, geography, and politics. He didn’t seem to understand my question. When I asked him what his plan was for the following year, he said he would matriculate at the Central Conservatory in Beijing to pursue a master’s degree in composition. While most of his colleagues are Ice Skaters, he is a Plate-­ Five composer. In the Palazzo dei Consoli in the Umbrian town of Gubbio are kept the Iguvine Tablets—a series of seven ancient bronze tablets which document the sacred rites of the pre-Roman Umbri people (examples of their rites include instructions on how to sacrifice three suckling pigs in front

2  Ice Skating and Stinky Foods: Notes from the Hong Kong… 

29

of a city gate). Though the content is written in the Umbrian language, the first five plates are written in an Etruscan-derived alphabet. Plates five through seven are written in a Latin-based alphabet. The transitional moment is in the middle of plate five where the alphabet changes from the Etruscan-based to the Latin-based alphabet. The change in the alphabet documents the moment when the cultural prestige and power of the Romans overtook that of the Etruscans, the moment when it became more attractive for the Umbri to change their alphabet to align themselves with the culture of the Romans in lieu of the Etruscans (which also meant that the direction of reading changed from right to left to left to right). Hong Kong has been engaged in a prolonged Plate-Five moment ever since 1997. Sometimes, painfully so. Recent developments point toward a burgeoning, anti-capitalist, mode of creativity in the young people of Hong Kong. In his introduction to Jacques Attali’s The Political Economy of Noise, Frederic Jameson says that Attali’s greatest original accomplishment in the book was to state music’s unique potential to create a possibility of a “superstructure to anticipate historical developments, to foreshadow new social formations in a prophetic and annunciatory way” (Attali 1985: p. xi). If Hong Kong’s underground music does not annunciate a new order, it nonetheless parallels the authentic indigenous contemporaneity, a sense of community, and the creative energy of the young people of Hong Kong. Michael Pollan in his television food series, Cooked, says that fermented foods define culture. “We are the ones who eat this stinky food.” I’d like to transpose that notion into music—“we are the ones that listen to this weird music.” Members of underground music scenes everywhere are marginalized minorities. Finding our communities gives us strength. What I see in the underground Hong Kong scene is a blurring of the traditional roles of culture exchange—performers and audience members are not specialists in production or consumption, but often are both. The musical outputs stand outside the cultural economy of the bourgeoisie tastes of the ice skating rink. Vividly contemporary, largely electronic, noise-based, and free of the musical signifiers of neocolonialism—Plate Five-ness is not an aesthetic driver. In its stead is an energy that is an assemblage sourced of non-traditional materials. In Hong Kong, we see, as we also do in small measure in micro-communities of underground

30 

K. Ueno

music around the world, an emergence of the last stage of music’s grand narrative as heralded by Jacques Attali in The Political Economy of Noise: the age of Composition. Written in 1977, “composition” here represents a musical stage of development in society, something larger than merely “composition” as a piece of music or the art of creating such a work. I locate other traits that link the current Hong Kong underground music scene to Attalian Composition as well. If there is a common practice, then, it is in the spirit of making new instruments. Non-transportable tools against the ever-anonymizing forces of the internet and history. Hacked electronics. Arduino-based controllers. As Attali says, “a very significant fact: the production and invention of instruments, nearly interrupted for three centuries, is noticeably increasing” (Attali 1985: p. 140). New instruments liberate participants from the semantics and forms (and modes of production and exchange) of historical instruments, which can be neocolonizing agents. It democratizes access to participation. Custom instruments begin to shift the locus of identity to the node of the individual, wherein we can all be patient zeros. Whoever we are. Wherever we are from. We can enter into a new history as equals. We eat our stinky foods and listen to and perform noise. Our radical locus of indigenous contemporaneity. In October 2019, after having returned to my normal duties and life as a professor of music composition at UC Berkeley, I returned to Hong Kong for a two-week residency at the Osage Gallery. Drawn by an impetus to create sound art to highlight the poetic potential of the localized, I planned a mini-series of three nights of events, entitled “Vessel/Resonance/ Bread” featuring different aspects of my activities as a composer, academic, and curator/performer.

Background to My Work and Residency Breath is at the ontological center of my art practice as a vocalist, and taking a cue from Robert Hass’ thesis that “poetry is: a physical structure of the actual breath of a given emotion,” (Hass, 2012, p. 348) my practice transposes this notion into music through physical valence. I believe that physical

2  Ice Skating and Stinky Foods: Notes from the Hong Kong… 

31

gestures are, indeed, mapped to given emotions. When we hear the operatic tenor, Pavarotti, sing a high C and linger there for tens of seconds, he not only suspends his breath, but, we, too, as listeners, suspend our breath. Physio-valence directs our bodies to vivify, in real time, the suspension of our breath in parallel with the music to which we are listening. In my music, through circular breathing, that Pavarottian lingering moment is expanded to minutes, not seconds. The phenomenological reading of that lingering exacerbates traditional modes of analysis in terms of structural hearing. For example, in my piece Tard, I hold my breath in a bowl of water for 2 minutes as an analog to how I have felt my breath has been suspended since November 2016, as well as how I feel my voice as a person of color has been muted. I employ the megaphone as a prosthetic extension of my voice. I started using it, when I started performing in large spaces with complex architectural features, which afforded the possibility of a counterpoint of resonances. Armed with a megaphone, I am mobile and can incorporate the narrative of movement in a space, direct my sound in different directions, at different structural materials and angles, and to play with various lengths of echoes. And articulating the resonant frequencies of different locations in a space means that architecture, too, can be read as harmonic structure. I have developed an array of vocal techniques specific to the megaphone. For example, a kind of slap tongue whose attack is followed by a multiphonic drone shaped by changing the vowel shapes within my mouth. The shapes of these vowels, however, do not exist in any language (they are bespoke vowels). I have also learned to control the aperture of the multiphonic (or bandwidth) with the shape of my mouth, and I can also sing in counterpoint or in augmentation with the shaped feedback multiphonic by humming into my nasal cavity. There are other techniques which involve ingressive singing, which, in alternation with exhaled techniques, allows me to circular-breathe. Toward the end of my year in Hong Kong, Agnes Lin, the founder/ director of the Osage Gallery, attended a rehearsal of a workshop I was leading with the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble. After the workshop, Agnes graciously invited me to visit the Osage the next morning and mentioned that I should bring my megaphone. The next day, when I visited the Osage, she encouraged me to test out the acoustics of her

32 

K. Ueno

gallery with my voice. I spent some time outside on the larger terrace, directing my voice toward the spaces between the buildings that surround the open space, bouncing my voice off the sides of the taller buildings and the different levels of the parking garage below. Then, I walked through the long gallery inside. Singing short feedback pulsations, I tested how long the sounds of my voice took to traverse the length of the space. Once reaching the other side, the sound waves were trying to double back, like a swimmer doing laps, but having exhausted its energy, dissipated. As I walked toward the middle of the long gallery, continuing to sing multiphonics, I felt the resonance swell. I discovered a sweet spot near the middle of the long gallery where it is bisected by two alleys. Aiming my megaphone upwards, I felt the feedback push back into my mouth. By changing the shape of my palate, I could shape the multiphonics bouncing through the space, into my mouth, and back out. The Osage is a complex and site-specific instrument. I could divine specific resonances in specific spots in the space. Inspired by this acoustic test, I created Vessel, for the first night of my residency (Image 2.2).

Image 2.2  Ken Ueno performing Vessel. (Photo credit: Courtesy of Osage Art Foundation)

2  Ice Skating and Stinky Foods: Notes from the Hong Kong… 

33

Vessel: The First Night (October 9, 2019) Vessel is a site-specific, 40-minute installation performance piece designed for Osage Gallery’s specific acoustic characteristics. In preparing for the piece, with the help of assistants, I fabricated eight feedback circuit bowls. The bowls are plastic bowls equipped with a microphone and a transducer (a speaker that vibrates surfaces rather than air). The signal from the microphone is fed to the transducer and amplified through the plastic bowls which are used as resonators. In my recent pieces, I have used my voice in coordination with delicate interactions with the feedback bowls (it is very sensitive to the distance and angle between the microphone and transducer and affected by slight degrees of hand pressure on the resonator) to create different tones. I installed the eight feedback bowls on both sides of the long gallery, so that the directed movement of my voice (directionally projected with my megaphone in performance) could activate the feedback bowls and, thus, effectively transform the space into a droning instrument of complex microtonal harmonies. My physical movement traversing from one side of the long gallery and back during performance further helped activate the feedback bowls (proximity helps my interaction with each bowl, as I approached closer to them), as well as choreographically shaped the structure of the piece. The feedback bowls were hung with blue lights that shone through the bowls to enhance a visual sensation of “installation”-ness.

 esonance: The Second Night (October R 10, 2019) On the second night of the residency, my art practice was the subject of a panel discussion lead by Prof. Giorgio Biancorosso (HKU, Music) and Thomas Tsang (HKU, Architecture) along with the media theorist, Damien Charrieras (City U, SCM) and musician, Deborah Waugh (HKU, Music). Beginning with a consideration of recent scholarship on my work by Martin Jay and Marita Tatari on the somaesthetical aspects of my work and how my work readdresses the eminence of space and

34 

K. Ueno

Image 2.3  Kung Chi Shing performing Bread. (Photo credit: Courtesy of Osage Art Foundation)

time, the panelists discussed how I approach “instrumentalizing” architecture, with a special consideration of the new piece premiered at Osage on the previous night (Vessel). Further discussion of my participation in the local experimental music scene served as an introduction of sorts to the third night, Bread (Image 2.3).

Bread: The Third Night (October 11, 2019) The final event of my residency, Bread, was an evening length performance with local experimental musicians—Kung Chi Shing, Steve Hui, Fiona Lee, and Shane Aspegren. Having taken down the installation of Vessel, I made a score stationing my collaborators at far ends of the long gallery, as well as on the terrace outside. We played following timings indicated in the score. Armed with my megaphone, I led the audience from one performance station to another, like a Pied Piper. My collaborators each performed on homemade instruments (save for Kung Chi Shing who played an amplified violin). The site-specific nature of the performance also extended to the non-transportable performance practice of

2  Ice Skating and Stinky Foods: Notes from the Hong Kong… 

35

Image 2.4  The full group performing Bread. (Photo credit: Courtesy of Osage Art Foundation)

each of the performers: this was a performance one could only experience in Hong Kong, with these performers, at this moment, with this audience. This was our stinky food, our communal bread of noise. As I led the audience to the terrace outside, where Shane and Fiona were stationed, the humidity hit us as we ventured beyond the threshold of the air conditioning of the long gallery. It was as if we were stepping into not only the climate reality of Hong Kong, but its radical, Attalian future, realized (Image 2.4). There is always a danger of essentialization in discussing the art and art practice conditions of non-Western loci, since we are conditioned by Western lenses with which we have been trained (I am guilty of this too). The key to going beyond anthropological distancing is to consider each artist as individuals, rather than as part of an anonymizing field. One of my favorite authors, Italo Calvino, in, Invisible Cities, says, “seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.” This book honors those in the Hong Kong underground music scene who are not inferno, who contribute to the community not only through their unique and beautiful music making, but also through their advocacy of others in the scene as producers and curators and teachers.

36 

K. Ueno

References Attali, J. (1985). Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Calvino, I. (1978). Invisible Cities. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Hass, R. (2012). What Light Can Do. New York: Harper Collins. Márquez, G. G. (2000). One Hundred Years of Solitude. London: Penguin Books.

3 Interview with Xper.Xr. Damien Charrieras and François Mouillot

Q. How did you get into your practice in the beginning? It’s twofold. It was a time when HK was a bit stale, there is a lot of talks but there isn’t much of a scene. The scene was strictly alternative rock. You got people imitating New Order and Joy Division. When I came into it, I didn’t deliberately choose to walk that path. When I heard the word alternative and when I investigated what it means, and I saw those musicians play. I was a guitarist, I did formal training and it was kind of technical, yeah you achieve something, but it was, musically, kind of Interview conducted on the 15th of December, 2019, in Kwai Hing (Hong Kong) by Damien Charrieras and François Mouillot (2019). Edited by Steev Saunders.

D. Charrieras (*) School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] F. Mouillot Department of Music and Department of Humanities & Creative Writing, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. Charrieras, F. Mouillot (eds.), Fractured Scenes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6_3

37

38 

D. Charrieras and F. Mouillot

boring. You’re always trying to go out and search for something beyond the techniques, after all what is there? Is that what music is all about? Technical abilities, nice melodies, killer guitar solo, is that it? So, there was a drive to search for something a bit crazy and when I looked at alternative; yeah great, but it’s not that crazy. Q. Around what time was that? 86–87, maybe earlier 85–86. There was big talks about this, kind of hellish music that were unlistenable. “Ok that’s interesting, I’ll take a look” and when I did I saw something beyond the kind of horribleness, the unapproachable imagery and sound; there seems to be some kind of discourse, either philosophical or critical discourse going on. I never thought of music in those terms. I really got into it. I just wanted to know more and I buy the records and I keep looking at the sleeve. There’s only so much you can learn, you know, most of it is from your imagination, you thought, oh this guy is just crazy, that kind of stuff. 87–88 you got so much going on but we don’t have an answer locally, we don’t have our own version. When you talked to friends they all think, oh you know, “nobody listens to that shit”. Q. What were the artists you were listening to? The gods of the industrial scene: Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, Nurse with Wound and Coil. After I shipped myself off to London, I was lucky enough to actually meet these people. It wasn’t how I imagined it, you just go to a record shop or out on the street and hold on a minute… that’s… what’s his name. I just couldn’t believe it and you go up to them and they would talk to you. Like, you know, “Really, you like my stuff? Oh! thank you.” Going back to Hong Kong, to 87–88. There are people trying to do things but still in a musical way, there is nobody even on the free jazz scene, there is no such thing. There is no drive to go beyond the musical, to try to break the boundaries, aim for something beyond what’s currently available. So I thought: “Fuck it, someone has to do it.” I wasn’t really technically achieved at that point, so I just got a mixer, got some tape recorders. That’s how you start in your bedroom, get something down on the tape and do some low-level editing. Nobody’s putting out their own stuff yet, ok well I’ll go and look into putting out my own stuff, pressing a record is too expensive, let’s get a cassette tape out.

3  Interview with Xper.Xr. 

39

Nowadays cassette tape is really fashionable but back in the day it’s the only choice. I was working for this magazine as a writer, I got a column. I didn’t really want to advertise myself, but people heard about it and thought, “interesting, finally we got someone.” They start promoting a little bit whatever they can. So that’s how it starts. There was a bit of noise in the beginning because it hadn’t happened before. It was a novelty thing. Q. You mean local noise music? Yeah, like, “we got a local guy making industrial music.” The angle I had back then was all about technology, about sound overloading, noise in the city, and all that, naive and crude. After the first cassette I thought, yeah I need to really go for it or I won’t have the chance any more, you just have to dig deep. Opportunity comes later in the year. I sum it up, it’s about bringing something from nothing that was the feeling of it. Everyone was a bit reserved. They want to listen to this stuff but nobody wants to be first to take the step. Being an opportunist I thought, “ok, I’ll give it a go” and then other people joined in. It was a bit of a test of the will; you do get worried that nobody’s going to be interested but yeah that was the starting point. Q. Where did it go from there? There were a few things happening locally but after the cassette it was time for me to leave HK. The move brought the opportunity of getting in touch with the artists that I had been listening to, fantasising about actually. When they are in front of you, you really pay attention, everything gets blown out of proportion and you try to learn all you can. That year, 89, there was a Fringe Festival and I was offered a slot. It was the first live performance of that kind of music here. You can imagine how nervous I am. We had been given a place in a warehouse in Sheung Wan. An artist friend did an installation and I had the stage with a guitar and an angle grinder. The grinder somehow got to the guitar and there was a lot of sparks and smoke, the audience looked pretty scared. The gig was quite short, maybe five or ten minutes, it couldn’t go on any longer for obvious reasons. That concert woke me up. I realised art is not a one-­ way thing, it’s about connecting with the audience, you need some kind of communication. That performance coincided with the release of my second cassette which was a sound piece for Zuni Icosahedron, the theatre group.

40 

D. Charrieras and F. Mouillot

Then I went back to London again. Still attending gigs and doing more research because I was really fired up. The next piece was a 12-inch single. That single was a move away from the pure noise stuff because I felt that had already been done. Slightly more melodic, I think, but it wasn’t melody I am after but about letting people get on board. The result was mild, very drone and a bit mellow, if that’s the right word? It was the first local independent 12 inch pressing of noise music. Hand painted cover and all that. Soon after I released a CD of locally produced experimental music. The title was Voluptuous Musick (黎明). I was studying postmodernism back then; it was really hip at the time, not anymore. You try to put into practice those ideologies, bringing together high culture and alternative culture, break down the boundaries. I deliberately made the cover look like some pop star’s record but inside it’s pure nonsense. Taking the piss out of pop stars got a lot of press coverage. Q. Do you mean Cantopop stars? Yeah. So the media went crazy and the record company worried about getting sued. They hastily changed the cover but there are still some copies around with my original design. The CD was an attempt to fuse a lot of noise with seemingly musical elements. Whether it was a success or not I don’t know but back in the day that’s what we could offer. We had limited studio time and it was, for us, a big production. You don’t really know what it is at that moment, but now, looking back, I see so many things that could be improved. It’s embarrassing but there are still things to salvage from it. The new box set that is coming out has some remixes, extracting the elements to make a new composition. I could see the media latching on to something with that album but as with everything there’s a short span. The appreciation somehow dropped off. I thought I’m not going for something fashionable, it’s not like I’m trying to make a pop record; so what am I doing? At that time Hong Kong was not the place to pursue it further, unfortunately. People are too locked into their fashionable ideas and when the fashion passes, all this is gone. I can see it coming so I decided to concentrate my efforts in the UK. Next I recorded two albums under the name Ibid and made some extreme noise pop records. The first titled Golden Wonder was kind of successful; people still talk about it. At that time, you can’t have Boney

3  Interview with Xper.Xr. 

41

M, gabber and crazy techno, all kind of backward and wonky shape. I programmed the CD so you can’t skip tracks, you have to listen to it from the beginning to the end. This upset a lot of people. After that I can see the direction more clearly. I also got offered a gig at the Ministry of Sound. Q. Interesting, that’s primarily a dance club, right? They programme that sort of stuff? Yeah, the London Musicians Collective (LMC), Ed Baxter, he’s a nice guy. He understands it was the twilight of that UK scene and they were trying to get some diversity going on. Ed was kind enough to give me a chance. We put a washing basin filled with water on stage and stuck a microphone in there and I screamed my head off into the water. You can imagine the sound in the discotheque with the huge PA, that was a nice bit. That was another turning point, when things happen I always move away. My University course was coming to an end and EMI were suing me for copyright infringement, which was successfully beaten. So I went to Paris and was there for two years. I see how the European scene differs from the UK scene. The music is the same but focus is very different. In France there is more of a drive to really look into things. It was interesting for me to see all that. I met some pretty cool people and we did some projects on the radio. I got a call from the LMC urgently to say, “come, we have this concert for you.” It was with Stock, Hausen, and Walkman, a trio of electronic and acoustic musicians. Nice guys but I think, because they were quite fashionable at that time, they were a bit full of themselves; like they say, “we don’t have time to rehearse with you.” Ok no problem. I think they suspect I’m just going to get on the turntables and do whatever. I went in there doing a Kung Fu dance and screamed out some songs. I was pumping a bicycle tyre up till it explodes. The two things just didn’t come together. It was me in the middle and them at the back but I got nothing to lose, nobody’s heard of me. I was just getting established then. I guess it went down well, with Baxter at least, he said, “fucking hell, what was that?” It led to a residence. How I developed my work was very much thanks to them. I can name a few names but really it was the whole scene, the atmosphere. Working with people who don’t necessarily appreciate what you do but have the capacity to allow that to happen.

42 

D. Charrieras and F. Mouillot

Leaving France was a difficult one because I had built relationships with a lot of local musicians. As always, when things are developing it’s time for me to leave. Due to my passport status I can’t stay. So it’s back to UK and many different projects some crazier than others, some more expensive. I think it can only happen in Europe. When people don’t have to care so much about connections or pleasing someone, they free themselves both mentally and artistically. Then they can really do things that are more pure, more towards the concept of fine art… Just free themselves from it. A lot of musicians worry, “I can’t change my music so dramatically. If I play club music, I cannot suddenly pull out a noise gig/ I will get buried. I won’t be able to pay my rent.” So to speak. There is always that financial struggle, being an artist, commercial, you have to feed yourself, to buy that extra equipment that you want, a bit of a creature’s comfort. You have to sacrifice but choose wisely, either pay the bills and hang out at the right bar or you just have to, you know, cook that pasta a lot, and do what you want. Either way you have to pay, but I guess it is not such a terrible thing. Q. Was it more possible at that time to be more free in Europe, artistically speaking? Yes, it is just the whole arena, the whole scene. I’d been working with Lepke B. I remember there’s things I need his help with; he’s a really nice guy and technically knowledgeable. He invited me to his house one day but he said, “you have to be careful, right? Some people come to break down my house in the middle of night and, you know, threaten me.” I thought he’s joking. He gave me the address; it’s in Peckham. I thought okay I go to Peckham. The main road is fine but where he lives you have to go round the back and I thought, this looks like a war zone; that building’s got burned down, that car has been turned over, and nobody care. Rubbish bins tipped out on the street; all the windows broken. I finally found it and I went up. The door’s got no lock because it’s been kicked in so many times. I sat in there with him watching a video on a broken TV trying to talk about his piece; meanwhile there’s people shouting downstairs. I felt lots of respect; it is a difficult time for them. It’s tough but it doesn’t stop them from doing what they do. These people were willing to

3  Interview with Xper.Xr. 

43

sacrifice something to have that artistic integrity. I don’t know whether it’s a European tradition but certainly I don’t see it here. Q. Why do you think that it’s not like that here? I’ll just say because people can’t deal with a tough time. Nobody here, in this generation or last has really been through tough times. Yeah, I know it’s terrible, many people suffer with tough times, economically, but it sort of teach you something, it grounds you, it gives a perspective; how to handle yourself. You have a sense of value because of that. It might not be much, but it is what I am. It is a sense of being, a sense of value. You can learn about this from Western philosophies. Heidegger and Kant talk about that. It is almost a tradition to think in terms of me versus the world, and how I position myself. Whereas Eastern philosophy is about whichever way it flows, I flow with it; I am somehow inconsequential. I think, it’s a cultural mentality thing. Although it’s slightly changing now. The revolting is just the first move, like kids will say, “I don’t like it. Fuck, I want to break stuff.” But you have to evolve to the next stage, which is not a compromise but about self-control; then build something. Moving towards a better good, beyond yourself. I think Chinese culture is the opposite. Hong Kong is a funny place in that it’s neither Western nor Eastern. What’s happening now in Hong Kong shows you it’s not working. People end up going back to square one, let’s go out, and let’s shout. We didn’t plan enough but never mind; we shout first. I think it’s not just political, you know, music, art, philosophy, it all starts with that. You need to have that first stage of putting your foot down and say, “fuck it! I am not having this anymore; something needs to change.” That is the moment where everything else can happen. Q. That’s kind of what you did back in the 1980s. Yeah, it kind of come back in a big circle, I guess. Life is always like that. You know, it is not wrong, the communist ideology that says: there is a constant power struggle: that the revolution never ends. I’m not talking specifically about political events but also about personally, mentally and especially as an artist, you have to constantly challenge yourself. The moment you fall into a comfort zone, that, certainly, is not art anymore. I’m not saying you have to do different things all the time, but you can

44 

D. Charrieras and F. Mouillot

bring new elements to challenge your audience, yourself and society. You should keep evolving. A lot of artists, unfortunately, are not doing that. Q. In the 1980s, there was a certain political artistic context, and you had a way to make a clean break. How would you think about that clean break in the context of today, when a lot of things have changed? What’s happening in Hong Kong today is a caricature of a universal problem that we have right now. On one hand, there is an ideological clash. Communists versus Capitalists, but if you really think about it, what’s the difference? Deep down, they all want money, they all want to do what they want. It’s a bit superficial. These days we need to make people aware that there may be manipulation behind the scenes, manufacturing situations for people to go against each other. I’m not saying this is definitely the case, but there is a good possibility. Q. Going back to the chronology. After this long period in Europe, you came back to Hong Kong. You keep a personal artistic practice as you did in Europe? We came to know you through the events that you were organising through the Cultural Industries Association (CIA) [an association created by Xper.xr and one of his associate to organize cultural events, eds.]. How did that evolve? By 2006 I had established things in UK. I built up relationships within the scene, like Resonance FM. But [with, ed.] my last album I saw something worrying. The UK music scene becoming like it was in Hong Kong in 1989. I used to have these relationships with record shops that were independent. When I brought a record out they would put it on display and tell people about it, but this time they tell me they’re not selling many. I said, “yeah, I notice you’re not displaying it.” They replied that they can’t and I ask why: “All these display units have been bought up.” I ask, “bought up by who?” The answer: “EMI that’s the left, Sony on the right and the rest is Warner Brothers.” Mute got sold to Warner Brothers. Finally, UK, the birthplace of indie music, it comes to this? It’s kind of sad. People who supported us cannot handle this crazy stuff anymore because it’s just too weird. I stayed for another six, seven years but I can see it’s getting worse. I thought maybe things could happen in Hong Kong. Where in UK it would be just another gig; here it would mean so much more. I had heard about these old industrial buildings where the rent was reasonable and

3  Interview with Xper.Xr. 

45

thought maybe I can do something there; even though I know it’s not going to sell many tickets. So yeah, that’s why we started CIA [in 2012]. Things we had been planning for a long time, like Shintaro [Kago], New Noveta and Laibach, Hermann Nitsch could happen there. It was a kind of childhood fantasy. We never thought we could do it, but we did. Yeah it was nice for that to happen, but it bankrupted us. Q. It was not commercially successful, but artistically? Yeah, hopefully, it is what we could afford. We could have done more, but you know, I’m still glad we managed some of it. Q. Would you say it’s the difference between organising these events, as compared to when you started in Hong Kong? What the scene, or absence of a scene, is like now? The disappointment surrounding the last album I did caused a loss of drive. That was the beginning of me trying to give people a chance to experience this kind of stuff first-hand. I mean, you can learn about it from the internet, in books, but there is more impact having something there in front of you. Like my feeling when I was in UK and, you know, “Genesis, P.  Orridge, what are you doing here?”, that kind of stunned feeling. These experiences, I can tell you about but it’s better if you experience it yourself, right? It’s a lot of effort, organising stuff yourself; how much time and energy it sucks from you. Q. How do you think that Laibach coming to Hong Kong, for example, as one of the events that you organised, sits within the context of the underground in the city and within the political context? Laibach as a group has changed quite dramatically over the years. They are probably one of the longest-running independent alternative music groups, 30 years that’s a long time. But they’ve never managed not to get stuck in a certain mode, they have evolved and it’s interesting that they have had this drive for so long. The former Yugoslavia, where they come from, they’ve been through Civil War. I can see a similarity with Hong Kong and lo and behold, after their first visit, the Umbrella Movement happened. [Laibach]  were in between the conflict, they were running away from the government, the president wanted them killed, they had bomb threats. They survived it all, very interesting.

46 

D. Charrieras and F. Mouillot

The seminar that they produced at the SCM [School of Creative Media] was interesting. We got to hear Ivan, the group leader, talk about their history as a group. A lot of people asked very heavy political questions. For example, [people asked whether the group felt that Hong Kong is different from China, eds.], and provocatively, they answer, “but Hong Kong is China.” They love that kind of stuff. Just to make you think, to throw our questions back at us. Their clever political manoeuvring and their way of handling issues back in the days is a way for us to, maybe, try to find a way forward. Q. Would you like to talk about your interest in healing? Six years ago when I came back to Hong Kong, busy building this place, I worked so hard that I actually got health problems. I went through all the hospitals, take this and that, antibiotics, etc. Nothing works. I came across this technique and I managed to heal myself. It’s got a long history and uses sound frequency to heal. It’s connected to music, it might not appear so but in some weird way it is. The premise is that our physical body, as well as emotional and spiritual, is based on vibrational energy, sympathetic resonance. The stuff that happens within our cells. If we reinforce those vibrations, the idea is we get healthier. At first I was very sceptical. You know: “It can’t be? Everyone’s vibration is different it cannot be universal.” One thing that kept coming back to me is light therapy, using light as a frequency to resonate with the body. I use this technique with some of my patients. Q. It comes from a place where you have to go against the mainstream medical system the way you went against the mainstream musical landscape? That was the beginning but now I’m more thinking in terms of an alternative, to let people have a choice. I mean with this new identity, let’s say Voodoo doctor, I have seen very unfortunate situations. That was tough, I’m not saying this therapy works, but choice is good. No choice is not good. Q. Do you think that is also what you are doing with organising events in sound art and music is to give people a choice, an alternative to mainstream industries? Yes. Well let’s roll it back to the 80s. At that time if you turn on the radio, get in a taxi or go into a cafe, all you hear is Cantopop. It’s enough

3  Interview with Xper.Xr. 

47

to drive you absolutely fucking crazy. You can’t have a conversation with anybody without Cantopop lyrics being cited, it’s almost like a cult. The biggest cult in the world. So you can imagine if you want to keep sane, you can try to create an alternative. At least to have that choice but these days the choices have become multiple choices. If you want heavy metal it’s that way, you want folk music it’s this way, but many people don’t realise it’s all owned by one record company, it’s terrible. Warp records is owned by Sony and this name just keeps coming up. Everything just falls under the umbrella of corporations; they seemingly create choices for you but are these real choices? The real choice is in your head, but they blind you with these fake choices. You can choose antibiotics or steroids but hold on a minute these are all petroleum-based products. It’s got nothing to do with my body. Q. What is the equivalent of petroleum-based products in music? The equivalent these days is music made by the same vocoder or the same iTunes programme. At the end of the day is all MP3, it’s all digital. I’m not saying organic is the best, I mean there’s a lot of good digital music, but they are good because they provide an experience, again back to the experience thing. You can buy the CD and listen to it a lot, but when you can also see the artists play in front of you, that relationship is what music is about and it’s what we lack today. Q. Do you think the ways in which the underground in HK today seems to present limited but still different options? You said in the past that different people who operate under the guise of this kind of experimental side of things actually get their funding from similar sources. Do you think the underground in HK is healthier now than when you began? My answer will probably piss people off. I am being harsh here of course but I think it’s killing creativity. I’m not saying there isn’t work being produced. There are, in fact, many compared to the old days but are they so dissimilar? Is there a character to the piece that separates it from other works? It’s kind of worrying when you think about it. You see that in fine art sometimes in a group show. If you don’t put a name on the works, you may think they are all by the same artist and then you check the list and there’s 15 of them. I don’t mind if there is no work, but I do mind when there are a lot of works that are too similar.

48 

D. Charrieras and F. Mouillot

People will say, “oh there must be a problem with the educators.”, certainly it isn’t that. We can teach students this and that and show them all the options, but they need to digest those ideas and then come up with their own ideas. This is the essence of the exchange of information. Art has to come from the individual; it’s not about taking a formula and producing millions of really fantastic versions of it. It doesn’t work like that; art is the opposite of that. It doesn’t need to serve a purpose and it’s not about passing exams. Q. So it’s about having ideas? I think ideas are everything. Not just in art, everything has to be idea based; if you don’t have the idea nothing is going to work. Same for music or philosophy, same for the political situation right now. We simply lacking a basic understanding. Q.  How would you describe this process of digesting influences in order to make something? Of course, it’s down to the students themselves. As educators we act as a pointer, like a light house to say, “look this way.” Of course, there is the obligational responsibility to stimulate thinking. Sure, and we will and help them to move away from all the distractions such as parents, peer pressure, how society looks upon success. I think in HK, maybe not just here, but anyone who studies art or any of these, kind of, less useful subjects may say, “where’s my financial security after I finish the course?” Cynical but still it’s fair to think like that. So there has to be some kind of drive for people to see that there is a reason to investigate and come out somewhere. Q. In reference to experimental music, what are the artistic protocols that prevent people from having ideas? I spoke about this two or three years ago. Back then I was saying the whole scene is complacent; they are very comfortable in what they have achieved already. They got the funding and they just do regular works to satisfy the conditions of that funding. This goes back to what I said about it’s killing it, it’s bad circulation, you need to break away from that.

3  Interview with Xper.Xr. 

49

One of the reasons we closed down the CIA is precisely that there was a point when I’d rather there was no experimental music here than seeing the same thing being played again and again to your friends. I want to think back to the 80s, we have nothing, we have only a few words in magazines, we used our imagination, and if we can do it I’m sure you can. Honestly, I think it is possible but you need to have the attitude that we had, “ah, fuck it.”, you know, let’s just really get down and dirty. Create something out of nothing so to speak. Only when you are there do you stand a chance to make something different, perhaps. Q. There are these times when you have felt too comfortable and push yourself into new territories or you leave. You have been doing that for quite some years; so, you have some perspective about what real ideas are and not just a reproduction of something that was experimental 20 years ago. I was wondering how does that work to have this clean slate? Is it really a clean slate? You’re right, it’s not completely clean slate every time. You start accumulating the stuff that may work. As an artist you need to have that responsibility and try for something. I spoke about breaking away and negating some stuff, you always need to also run away from the last project. You need to be able to look at it from a third person perspective in order to move on. That’s just the way I work, I am sure a lot of successful musicians don’t do that, but everyone works differently. Whether that’s good or not I don’t know, you may come a point where it’s increasingly difficult to move forward. I think that is when you know, “shit, maybe I should stop.” Stopping isn’t such a bad thing. It gives you space to move into another category. I’m not making art or music so much these days, but under the right conditions things do come back together unexpectedly, like the Empty Gallery event [“The Body Electric”, Nov. 30th 2019]. It all worked out; it’s kind of crazy. So yeah, you never know, one day when it naturally comes together, it’s a nice feeling.

4 Interview with Kung Chi Shing François Mouillot and Damien Charrieras

Q. In our research we’ve found quite a bit of writing on underground and independent music from different geographical perspectives in the Asia region, including China, Taiwan and Japan, but very little about Hong Kong specifically: it seems Hong Kong has always been under the radar. You have so much experience and are one of the early pioneers in Hong Kong independent music, going all the way back to your group The Box, so we wanted to ask what is your perspective on this?

Interview conducted on the 28th of November 2019 in Jordan (Hong Kong) by François Mouillot and Damien Charrieras. Edited by Valerie C. Doran and Steev Saunders.

F. Mouillot (*) Department of Music and Department of Humanities & Creative Writing, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] D. Charrieras School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. Charrieras, F. Mouillot (eds.), Fractured Scenes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6_4

51

52 

F. Mouillot and D. Charrieras

KCS: I think first of all we need to look at the question of how you are defining “underground”? When I hear the phrase, I think more in terms of something “illegal”, something not allowed. In  places where you are not allowed to express your own thing, then you have to go underground, right? But in the so-called “free world”, whether Japan or Taiwan, Europe or the US, or even here in Hong Kong, where there isn’t that same kind of situation of overt repression, does the term underground still make sense? I think, very often, music is a reaction to a current situation. “Underground music” in a Hong Kong context very often just means experimental music with a small and specific audience, or even more generally, the opposite of the commercial music scene. I think in China there is a true underground scene because the government doesn’t allow particular kinds of things to happen, especially if they carry some political message that’s not permitted. For example, Yan Jun 顏峻, a major experimental musician in China, is working under totally different social conditions than we are. Another confusing thing is how to define HK “indie” music, because very often there’s little musical difference between commercial bands and some of the indie bands, especially when they both use Cantonese lyrics. It’s still the same chord progression, the same four-bar phrase structure. I remember I had this conversation with Lenny Kwok in the late 80s; he disagreed with the term indie music and said, “Call it ‘DIY’ (Do-It-Yourself ), because it is music that is independent from the mainstream market, the big companies. It’s not a stylistic thing”. Q: Underground is a tricky term to use. We use it loosely, meaning people who may have a desire to experiment or are disconnected from the mainstream or established art institutions. KCS: Before addressing that further I would like to look back at some developments in the Hong Kong music scene since the 70s, when things first started to change. It was in the 70s that Hong Kong’s economic situation was getting better and middle-class people had the possibility to send their kids overseas to study, although it was still very difficult for them—students had to work in places like Chinese restaurants washing dishes, or in garment factories—that kind of thing. I also went overseas to study music in the late 70s, when I was only 17 years old. At that time there were only two Hong Kong institutions with proper music

4  Interview of KUNG Chi Shing 

53

education: the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and Baptist College [now the Hong Kong Baptist University, eds.]. In fact, the music department at Baptist was co-founded and headed by Yip Wai-ong, the father of the conductor Yip Wing-sie of the Hong Kong Sinfonietta. The University of Hong Kong (HKU) started their music department in 1981 and Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in 1984. But all of these institutions’ approaches to music composition was very conservative. It was also at this time that Cantopop music started to develop, until eventually it dominated the entire commercial music scene, especially in the 80s and the 90s. So, on the one hand you had super commercial pop, and on the other hand super conservative academic music departments. When I first came back to HK in 1986, the first major non-­commercial music group I encountered was Lenny Kwok’s Blackbird. Lenny, a self-­ taught musician, is an anarchist. His music is rather Dylan-like, and the lyrics carry a political message. His first few cassettes were very important because of their social message. He was the only—can we even call it “underground”?—musician. In a way his music was more alternative, hippy rather than underground, because he was not under any political persecution, and nobody was harassing him. The mainstream radio channels may not have played his songs, but he had the freedom to write his songs and he had a following. In terms of visual arts at that time, there were three major alternatives artists in the city that I had a lot of respect for: Joshua Hong, who had come back after studying in the States, Yank Wong back from Paris and Antonio Mak back from London. Of the three I was closest to Josh. We did performances together, and we lived together for a while as a commune, together with my music partner in The Box, Peter Suart. In fact, Pete also has a visual arts background. He’s a self-taught musician, so working with him I had no baggage. We lived pretty intensely. After working on our art and getting tired of intellectual discussion, we’d drink and play video games or go out to a big disco house in Tsim Tsa Tsui. We didn’t go there for the music, we were kids with just too much energy, just trying to burn out our energy by dancing all night. I pretty much missed out on the raves of the 90s, as I was a bit older by then. HK’s rave scene was a bit underground too, I suppose, but I don’t really know much about it.

54 

F. Mouillot and D. Charrieras

Q. Do you think [entertainment district] Lan Kwai Fung (LKF) is the same for the people today? KCS: Totally different. Discos in the 80s were like big dance parties. I think today’s LKF and Soho [another entertainment district in the city, near adjacent to LKF] entertain a certain class of people, not many of my artist friends go there. People who go to LKF today are the money spenders. Back then we didn’t have much cash, we’d just buy a few drinks and spend all night dancing in the disco. Back in the 70s and 80s, we believed if you worked hard you had a chance to break out. Right now, no. It doesn’t matter how hard you work; it seems like you have no way out. We could say that in HK today, the gap between the poor and the rich is so extreme. In the last few years many people have completely lost faith in the government. We are very much aware of how they are on the [HK real estate, eds.] developers’ side, on the rich people’s side. That’s, I think, the main reason behind all this anger happening now. Q. The lack of possibilities to grow. KCS: I came back to Hong Kong at an interesting time, in 1986. The conversations about the return of Hong Kong to China were on everybody’s mind. You could say there was this big identity crisis and there was a lot of discussion among the artists. The visual artists and theatre people were more in the forefront of those conversations—musicians are always a little behind! I started hanging out with visual artists and theatre people as well as musicians, and we did a lot of cross-disciplinary experimental work, including theatre, happenings and installations. There were two main hangout places for artists at that time: the Fringe Club bar—which was very different back then to what it is now—where we went practically every night, and then there was a small performance space called the City Contemporary Theatre out in Wong Tai Sin that was run by Willie Tsao of the City Contemporary Dance Company. We all did performances there and we hung out there too—when we were working on a production, they’d let us have the space for a whole month, 7  days a week, 24 hours a day. And so at 3 o’clock in the morning we would all go out to 7/11 to get our beer supply refilled. The climate was so interesting to me then. People from different disciplines working together, a kind of spontaneous mixed media, multimedia scene. We worked with everybody. Then came 1989 and the Tiananmen events, and because of Hong Kong’s political position, we were suddenly getting a lot of international

4  Interview of KUNG Chi Shing 

55

attention. During the 80s and up to 1997, there continued to be a lot of artists coming back from studying or working overseas, and generally everybody had a stronger awareness about what was going on: there a lot intellectual discussion among artists about identity, language and that kind of thing. Q: What about the kind of music you were playing at that time? KCS: I started The Box with Peter Suart in 1987. I wouldn’t call The Box a strictly experimental group because we played around with all kinds of different things, noise and free improvisation and mixing in some pop and rock elements, everything. I think it was around 1988 that I started to notice some younger people doing more experimental music. At the time you had a mix, there were musicians playing commercial pop music, and then some serious, artistic kind of composers who had studied at university level, and then also the emergence of more self-taught musicians. One of the most interesting experimental musicians at the time was Nelson Hui. Nelson is originally from Hawaii, but he has now lived in Hong Kong for over 40 years. In fact, I first met him in Hawaii when I was a student in the Music Department at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. Nelson had also studied music there, but he finished a few years before me. When I moved back to Hong Kong, I found out that he was working at the APA (Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts) where I also got my first job in 1987. In fact, Nelson was the person who introduced me to Peter Suart, my partner in The Box. And the way I learned about improvisation also started with Nelson. In 1986 we began doing free improvisation together a few times a week. In the early 90s Nelson had this group called The Little Red Truck, with Chan Wai-fat on guitar, Simon Hui on double bass and Peter Suart on drums. I think they had just released a CD. Their music was pretty wild. It was around that time when John Zorn came to Hong Kong and did this concert at the Fringe Club, and The Little Red Truck was invited to play with him. I remember there was a big argument between John Zorn and the sound technician at the Fringe Club, because John wanted to turn all the levels way up and the technician wanted to protect the speakers, so he kept turning everything down. I was sitting there thinking, “what the fuck is going on?”. Too bad there was no documentation of that concert. Otomo Yoshihide was also in HK a lot around that time. The Box developed its

56 

F. Mouillot and D. Charrieras

own style of experimental music/theatre and beginning around 1995 I also worked on my own productions with an eclectic mix of international and local musicians. In the 90s Hong Kong started to see more concerts featuring hard-core, metal bands. They used the Ko Shan Theatre in To Kwa Wan maybe once a month with 6–10 bands. LMF [a prominent HK fusion rap group, eds.] was established around that time. It was interesting back then, there was academic and pop music, then everything else. Since then things seemed to quiet down, LMF became kind of mainstream, mainstream dissident. Starting around 1996, I spent a lot of time away from Hong Kong for a period of around six or seven  years, mostly on the East Coast of the US. When I came back to Hong Kong around late 2002, I noticed there was a lot more going on in the music scene. I started seeing more live houses and people organizing concerts in industrial buildings and a stronger experimental scene with people like Steve  ‘Nerve’ Hui, Dennis ‘Sin:Ned’ Wong, Paul Yip, Eric Wong, Wilmer, Nelson Hui and others. Samson Young also came back to HK doing his own kind of thing, and then Steve Hui began getting more active and serious about curating experimental concerts. So I’ve been seeing musicians who in the past were more isolated, working on their own, now joining forces and creating things together. Even though there’s still not a lot of communication between academic and non-academic musicians you are seeing more musicians who connect both sides, for example, Steve Hui trained at APA, Mike Yip who got his master’s from Hong Kong University, and then some interesting people at the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong, William Lane who used to be with the Hong Kong Philarmonic Orchestra but left and devoted all his energy to the New Music Ensemble. In the last few years, you are also seeing new platforms for experimental work cropping up like Yeung Yang’s Soundpocket 聲音掏腰包, Samson Young’s Contemporary Musicking Hong Kong (CMHK) and Steve Hui’s Twenty Alpha. They are well organized and big promoters for experimental music and that is something we’d never seen before in Hong Kong. Q. How do you position yourself now in the changing music scene? KCS: A kind of watershed point for me was when I started the Street Music series in 2009, with support from the Hong Kong Arts Centre, and later HKADC (Hong Kong Arts Development Council) and Jockey

4  Interview of KUNG Chi Shing 

57

Club funding. In the beginning it was a performance platform for young musicians from different genres, but then I notice they needed nurturing, more learning opportunities, so as I was working with a decent budget, I started creating workshops and master classes. When I joined the [governmentled arts and culture hub] West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD), that kind of programming and mentorship became even more my focus. Q: But in addition to this kind of work you are also still active as a composer and musician, so it seems you are straddling many different kinds of music activities. Can you give us a summary of some of your recent activities? KCS: I guess the first thing is how I define myself these days: I see myself as a presenter, curator, educator and cultivator. I try to work with people from different music genres, find out what they need and then try to help to support that. The other thing I want to see is more dialogue among different types of musicians. For example, every year I produce this mix tape programme through WKCD, producing tapes that feature with 7–10 indie groups, musicians or songwriters. I ask them to create a piece in a way they don’t usually work, like a singer songwriter working with a jazz arranger or a rock band working with a string quartet. I try to find ways to open their ears and be more creative. When I came back to Hong Kong in 1986 as a 25-year-old composer, I was very much alone, I couldn’t find any older mentor to support my ideas or give me any guidance. So in a way I am filling that gap now. In the fall of 2019 I organized two concerts for LCSD’s Nordic Festival, one featuring classical music and the other indie music, and there were workshops for local musicians held in conjunction with that. With WKCD, I organized a program for Taiwanese and Hong Kong composers, which includes a one-week open rehearsal of new work and then a concert and discussion session. And in November I organized the first major jazz festival at WKCD, with 15,000 people attending. At the moment I am working with Aki Onda on this program called Sonic Journey that I’m creating for June 2020. The idea is that Aki will come here and work with three or four local sound artists or experimental musicians including Fiona Lee and Jasper Fung. The concept for Sonic Journey is two-part: the first will be more about experimental music; the

58 

F. Mouillot and D. Charrieras

second part will be the HK New Music Ensemble performing Steve Reich’s “Music For 18 Musicians”, a very iconic contemporary classical minimalist piece that has never been performed in Hong Kong before. I’m interested in bridging the gap between experimental music and contemporary classical music. I want people to experience two things at the same time: how local artists are trying to use their own language and how a piece like “Music For 18 Musicians” affected a whole generation of musicians. For the audience it will be a challenging aural experience. Oh, and I also composed a 70-minute piece for  the City Contemporary Dance Company. A lot of academically trained composers ended up writing pop music and able to make a lot of money. I don’t see that they are thinking about social responsibility or aware that music can be a powerful social vehicle. I think visual art people tend to be better at that. Maybe because music is more abstract. You can either just hide and do everything in your own room or go to the other extreme, do your Cantopop at the Coliseum; you just do a stupid song and a hundred thousand people will come to listen to it. I think there is a longer tradition in the twentieth century of visual art carrying a social message. The other situation has to do with the general public, maybe audiences have become less sophisticated and that’s why Cantopop is so huge; it’s so easy. Q. About this notion of space and venues. How much of that defines making music that might be on the margins? It seems to be such a salient point for people who are doing non-commercial music in the city. KCS: Sometimes when I invited certain experimental musicians to come perform in West Kowloon, they turned me down; like this music should only be played in a grungy industrial building. It’s hard to change that perspective. So sometimes, I intentionally mix up the high art/marginal art perspective, like doing classical music in a factory and experimental music in the Cultural Centre. Why not? Why do we always carry this kind of baggage? At the end of the day it’s a kind of prejudice. As far as venues go, the case of Ko Shan Theatre is an interesting example. It’s now become the home for Chinese opera, but in the 90s it was home for the metal heads because it was falling apart and the cheapest place to rent. And in the 80s only the visual arts people used those kind of factory spaces.

4  Interview of KUNG Chi Shing 

59

One of the main differences I see between the situations for academic and experimental music in Hong Kong is that academic institutions, including the orchestras, get a lot of funding from the government. The HK Composers’ Guild, for example, they got a lot of funding from the government and every year they do this huge concert in Tsuen Wan Town Hall. They give away all these free tickets to primary and secondary school students who are so noisy it’s annoying and I’m not sure what it’s accomplishing; after 30 something years they’re still doing that. And then on the other hand you have experimental musicians who can’t even find a space to do their music. Q. Do you see some general linkages between the mid-1980s experimental music scene and now? KCS: Not really, other than many experimental musicians still being eccentric loners, as always. I guess that has to do with experimental music being such a personal language. In my day we didn’t have such a large pool of experimental musicians, or so many experimental concerts as we do now. I’m curious about the role the School of Creative Media the City University of Hong Kong has been playing. A really interesting group of artists/musicians has come out of SCM in the past ten years. Q.  What would you say are the advantages of this environment for doing less commercial music and what are the drawbacks? KCS: HK has many unique things and uniqueness is always an advantage. HK is always full of contradictions. And the anti-ELAB protests of the past few months [demonstrations triggered by the government’s proposed amendment to  an extradition law in 2019, eds.] really forced everybody to think about things; like what you’re taking for granted now may not happen anymore. What might happen tomorrow? It’s a bit scary but it is exciting at the same time. HK is very compact, the rhythm, the intensity and energy is something you can’t find elsewhere. Those are major elements affecting the development of an artist. We need to have more awareness, more sensitivity to that. Experimental music scene has always been a small fractured circle. Q. Interesting you see this as a defining characteristic, as not moving towards a unification. KCM: Jazz, pop, indie music and to a certain extent contemporary classical music share certain common aesthetics and language.

60 

F. Mouillot and D. Charrieras

I think experimental music is more personal, you have to find your own language, your own voice, there’s no point to imitate. Experimental music very often addresses chaos and should be, by nature, chaotic. Q. Do you see a connection with what musicians abroad are doing and the experimental music here in HK? KCS: I haven’t really explored the question of where they get their influences. But speaking from my own experience, when I first encountered John Cage, that affected me a lot. You may not hear any direct connection in my work but it’s more about the concept, the mindset, the attitude. Some experimental musicians are attracted by, let’s say, noise, so they create noise according to their own logic; maybe they know with this equipment they can create this certain type of sound or texture. For me experimental music’s always about expanding the horizon, expanding one’s experience; it can help you break away from your conditioning. I’m particularly interested in free improvisation and embarking on a journey with an unknown destination. Improvisation is also a more physical than intellectual exercise for me. Q. Would you like to see more visual artists doing music in the current context? KCS: I have noticed that more visual artists like to employ sound in their work. But sound installations sometimes can be problematic for me; the artists think certain sounds can create a certain kind of result and impact they want, but in fact they don’t. I think it would make their work more effective if they had some training in music/sound. Without proper training our ears are very under-developed. I hope art education can become more integrated with everything, being treated more equally. So, if you are interested in doing sound art, then you also need a strong training in sound or music. Q. Do you think we can have some kind of “white cube” kind of venue for experimental music in HK? KCS: Actually, I think that putting experimental music in such a setting would be harmful. Q. One of the things that is noticeable to me is how things in HK are so impermanent: the spaces that allow the artists to create music on the margin of other markets tend to operate for only a few years before disappearing. It seems to me that longer-running infrastructures have helped

4  Interview of KUNG Chi Shing 

61

other places be defined in terms of creative music activities, I mean places like Montreal, New York and Berlin. KCS: I visited Berlin a few years ago and I was totally amazed at the number of experimental musicians there; there were performances like 3 or 4 nights a week and always more than 2–3 concerts in one night, with small but very attentive audiences from 18 years old to like 80. That’s amazing. I was wondering how they can achieve that level of activity. One factor is that the audience is more sophisticated, and the experimental scene is also getting some government or institutional support. Of course, I’d like to see that in HK as well. I’ve worked as an advisor with the HKADC and talked to them often about the need to pay attention to less mainstream arts because sustaining artistic development in different groups and in different areas is important for a healthy ecology. One of the problems with HK society is that it is too pragmatic, too focused on the material gain; maybe that’s why everything is impermanent. These days a trendy bar will never last more than one or two years here even if it’s doing good business; they want to tear it down and rebuild, give you a new experience. Few want to preserve old buildings because that would be slowing down progress. Also, people have no patience, little willingness to encounter anything new, anything challenging; they still have this concept that music and art are just for entertainment. In schools we need to start at a very young age to teach kids about what’s the real value of art. Unless you are able to change those core values, HK experimental musicians might always be working on the fringe.

Part Two, Take 1: Individual Case Studies in Noise/Experimental Music/Free Improvisation

5 The Politics of Noise: An Interview with Sound Scientist Dennis Wong Blair Reeve

Foreword by Blair Reeve The phrase, “the politics of noise,” came to me one evening in 2019 as I sat in an underground music venue in the industria/commercial district of Kwun Tong, Hong Kong, listening to long-time sound scientist Dennis Wong draw out all manners of squelch and sludge from a bank of gadgets and circuitry. The phrase came to me because I’d done workshops back in 2012 with fellow creative writers in the City University of Hong Kong MFA program where we discussed the politics of sex, gender, identity, and so on, among numerous other ways of dissecting culture and humanity through the medium of the short story. Here was another medium, the one I’ve obsessed about for the entirety of my adult life—music and sound. Yet because of the medium’s non-linguistic nature, pop lyrics notwithstanding, it had rarely occurred to me to consider the political import of music, and I  rarely gave thought  about to how one form of music might be more politically interesting than another form, and so on. But

B. Reeve (*) Independent Writer, Hong Kong, China © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. Charrieras, F. Mouillot (eds.), Fractured Scenes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6_5

65

66 

B. Reeve

“noise” was different. Noise, by its very nature, wakes you up and irritates you. At least it does on the surface, or when you’re trying to enjoy it like you would rhythmic- and/or melodic-based music. Noise music demands you approach it from any angle other than enjoyment, not that enjoyment is not possible with noise music, but it’s a kind of enjoyment that derives out of the thinking mind more than the feeling heart. As a concept, noise does have different dimensions to it. A sound, especially one that is loud or unpleasant or that causes disturbance, or the irregular fluctuations that accompany a transmitted electrical signal but are not part of it and tend to obscure it. In the following interview with noise musician Dennis Wong from March 2019, Dennis muses on noise as an art form and its political implications. Interview with Dennis Wong, a pillar of Hong Kong’s experimental scene, festival and gig promoter, sonic mystic. In the past few years we’ve seen Dennis Wong perform several times (often under the stage name Sin:Ned) either at the now defunct Focal Fair in Causeway Bay or at SAAL in Kwun Tong. A mysterious figure at first—not exactly an extrovert, and hence not inherently approachable— one day I arrive at SAAL while Dennis is chatting to a musician in the lift lobby. We recognize each other and he invites me into the conversation. I learn that Dennis is eminently accessible, chatty, smart, and friendly. So I have to ask myself, is it the nature of the music Dennis makes (experimental noise) that causes my trepidation? Certainly a bit of that. I can’t deny that his music has given me the shivers on occasion, owing either to the levels of volume and aggravated noise assault he conjures out of his electromagnetic coils, or, to what I perceive as a dystopian representation of modern life through the grimly machinic rhythms and distortions he conjures, a tumult that emerges and unfolds at his shows like a Sonic Transformer. As Dennis says to me later that evening, “These sounds are already all around us. I just find them and bring them out.” For his March 9 gig at SAAL, The Silence Sessions, Dennis’s bio referred to his interest in “sonic mysticism,” and thus my goal was to lead the interview through to an understanding of this curious phrase. Q: What kind of music did you start out listening to? In the past I listened to a lot of different music because I used to write music reviews for a magazine called Music Colony Bi-Weekly (MCB). In

5  The Politics of Noise: An Interview with Sound Scientist… 

67

high school I was already writing reviews for non-mainstream kinds of music. I listened to a lot of different things like noise, experimental, electronic, even EDM. The time I was writing for MCB was when the first generation of post-rock emerged, Keiji Haino, and the Japanese underground psychedelic scene which became well known in the UK and overseas. Q: So it sounds like there’s a definite early slant towards electronic music and experimentation? Yeah, anything non-mainstream. The starting point for my writing was that I began listening to alternative music, but bands no one was really noticing. Sometimes they were very good, but no one was talking about them so I wrote about music, musicians, artists, or bands that people ignored or didn’t know or had no awareness of. From there I started to listen to all sorts of things, like alternative noise and Keiji Haino. I would force myself to listen even to music I didn’t like because when you’re writing, you have to have an open mind. So especially those CDs that you don’t like, I forced myself to listen to them repeatedly. Q: Before alternative music, was there a young Dennis who listened to pop music? Yes of course, like Cantopop and some U.S. music, anything on the pop charts. I still remember how the local radio station called it AT40— the American Top 40—but very soon I found it boring so I started listening more to U.K. indie bands like Depeche Mode. By that time, the New Romantic thing was going on. Q: I often find when you listen to anything enough times you get to a point where you start to enjoy it. Do you get that? Sometimes, but not always. At that time, the only thing I wasn’t able to enjoy was noise music, like Merzbow. I couldn’t get into Merzbow. I didn’t understand it. Although I still listened to it, I couldn’t find a way to enjoy it at that time. Q: How about the term “experimental music,” do you abide by that term? Can I use it around you without causing offence? I think so. I use it a lot. Maybe some people don’t really like it. For example, one occasion that I remember was when an artist was doing a presentation on underground music and he said he didn’t like to use “experimental music” because it’s like a big garbage bin, a problematic

68 

B. Reeve

term, not well defined. Anything you can’t categorize they put in there. What is experimental music? But immediately, when he talked about the music of other artists, he mentioned “experimental music” and he used the term unconsciously. For me I think it’s okay. I like it because it’s not well defined. There are a lot of things I’m interested in that are not well defined so why not use the term with a broad and open-minded attitude? Q: Would you describe what you do as experimental music? It can be described as such, although in general I try to stay away from labels, to avoid being pigeonholed. Q: Let’s think about the word “experimental”—an experiment implies you’re trying something out to see what the result is. Yes. Like for me when I use the term, I literally mean “experiment.” That’s the keyword. I’m trying something. I don’t know whether it works. I don’t know whether it makes sense. I don’t know whether it’s meaningful to anyone. But for me I just want to try to see what happens. That’s the attitude I see as experimental music. Q: You say you’re trying something out for the first time. Are you attuned to the results? Are you sensitive to the feedback you get and does that affect your subsequent performances? I would say not a lot because I perceive that the music I’m doing is not popular and the audience is so small that it doesn’t really matter. Of course sometimes some people will say, “Hey this is great, this is good,” but I don’t know whether it’s important. For me the most important part is whether I find it enjoyable myself as a performer. If the audience like it, great, but if they do like it, it doesn’t mean I’ll do it again. I will intentionally try not to do it again. For example, if there are some gigs where I know people are expecting quiet music, or electronic, then I’ll try to do something they’re not expecting. Q: Why do you think the average Joe Blow wouldn’t come to your performances? My theory is—since what I’m doing is not mainstream stuff—I’m doing something outside the system. If there are a lot of people coming, then there might be something wrong. Or that might be the time when I need to do something else. If the things I’m doing become popular that’s great, but then I’ll start to do something else.

5  The Politics of Noise: An Interview with Sound Scientist… 

69

Q: That implies a sort of resistance or an anti-establishment stance in the music. Do you see noise music as an anti-establishment form? Yep, for me it is. When I was young I was that anti-authority kind of person. I always remember, when I was a kid, when my mum tells me, “Hey Dennis you have to do this” I would never do it. When you ask me to do it, I won’t do it. I will do it only when you don’t ask me to do it. When I choose to do it. I had that kind of attitude always. Q: Can you tell me about your entry into electronic music as a creator? I was in a kind of local computer centre in Mongkok or Causeway Bay. We have a lot of those computer centres selling software and computer parts. I saw they had a box of software back when software still came in a big box, called Acid. I think now the name has changed and it’s under Sony, but at the time it was a product of a company called Sonic Foundry. I saw it and thought, “very interesting,” because they had a picture and description. I don’t really play an instrument. I have no musical background. I cannot play any instrument at all. Like if you ask me, “Can you play this song? This chord?” Sorry, no, no, no. Since I listen to a lot of electronic music, I thought why not try the software? So I got it and started with Acid. It’s very much a loop-based software sequencer that you install on your computer. That’s how I started making electronic music. Q: What aspects of that first experience led you to think you would continue doing it? When I started I would just make something and listen to it and become my own listener. I think the major change or turning point was when I started to do performance. That was the big change. Q: You talked about how you didn’t play a musical instrument, and you couldn’t play a chord or melody. Therefore, the kind of sounds you’re creating—can that even be defined as “music”? Does music require tones? Well sometimes there are pitch and tones, but usually I try to avoid that and a traditional kind of song structure or melody. I try to focus on something in between, like music, sound, and noise. But for me, I will see music and sound, or maybe sound and noise, as a bigger category. Music is just part of it. So I focus more on noise because it covers everything.

70 

B. Reeve

Q: When you started out with your Acid software, was there a particular artist or sound you wanted to sound like? Or was the primary influence the software itself? I would say mainly the software. Although there are some sounds I like, there were some things I couldn’t do with that software. So with Acid I was very much doing dance music, or electronic music because that’s what the software was created for. I added some noise but still it was very beat-oriented, rhythm-oriented electronic music, an EDM kind of thing with a twist. Q: How did you move from playing around at home by yourself to your first performance? The first performance was a festival called Sound and Vision festival. I was invited by KWC who is now my partner at Re-Records [Dennis’s own record label (CD format)]. We established Re-Records together. The first time he invited me to play—actually I didn’t really know him in person—but he said, “Hey why don’t you come and play?” “Okay fine.” That was the first time I did a performance, but I still had no idea what I was doing. I just prepared something. Q: So in your first performance, apart from the programming in the background, what were you doing? Mainly just the programming. That’s why I found it very difficult to perform. I couldn’t find a reason why I had to perform in real time using the software. Maybe you use some pre-prepared sounds, some pre-­ constructed phases, in real time, but still you have a very fixed boundary. You have to prepare something in advance and then select and play in some way. But very much fixed, not a big variation no matter what you do. And I found it very boring as a performer. Q: Can you remember when you first felt a sense of the thrill of being an improviser? The sense of being in front of people trying to make it up without knowing what might happen? I don’t remember but I think there was a slow shift from being well prepared. At the beginning I prepared everything. But slowly I shifted from computer to hardware. And then even for hardware, there was a time where I still prepared some things. But slowly I completely threw away everything and this is what I’m doing now. My setup is like a kind of composition for me. I just select the stuff, put it together, and try not

5  The Politics of Noise: An Interview with Sound Scientist… 

71

to rehearse a lot. But of course I have to know what things do and then I put them in public and then we have a live conversation. I see sound as something that exists already. So I’m just a kind of medium, a part of it, to have a conversation with it. And in terms of error—because when we make preparations then we want to present it exactly the way we want it right? That’s usually how people see a performance—but for me, it doesn’t really matter. The error is good. Of course there was a time when I still thought, “Oh shit, I’ve made something wrong.” But now I just go with it. Sometimes I see the sound and the machine that defies whatever object I’m dealing with. They have their own life. I just go with it. I always say to some of my friends, “If you make an error, don’t panic, don’t try to fight it. Repeat it!” If the mistakes want to come out, then let them come out. Go with it. Follow them. It’s like a dance. It’s not like you have a dictatorship. Q: Do you intuitively understand the science behind your equipment? No. Most of the time I don’t. That’s why I don’t really go in for software although now the software is a lot more complicated, like MAX/ MSP. It takes too much time to know the science. I try to avoid things that require me to do that because it doesn’t make sense. For example, if I meet you as a person, do I need to know the science of your composition, like your body or your cells and tissues? That’s kind of distracting. That’s not the point right? When we talk, when I meet you as a person, it’s a person, not how many carbohydrates are in your hair or your skin, what your sugar level is. Q: I agree and I even wrote beside my question, “Is it fair to ask Dennis about the science behind his equipment, because I would not ask Sherman [another local noise practitioner] to explain the science of guitars strings vibrating.” I guess it’s because what you’re playing looks like a science kit. What are the main pieces of equipment you use? There is no main piece. I would say every time it’s different. Almost every time. Q: You mean different modules being put together? Yeah, different equipment. Sometimes I use guitar, in terms of sound source, and the effect is always different. I try to do things differently every time. Like I mentioned, the setup for me is kind of like a

72 

B. Reeve

composition. A composition is usually this note, this note, this note, this phrase, etc. But for me the composition is the setup. Q: So you have no name for that box of components that you use? No, because every time it’s really different. But a lot of times, there is some common theme in between. For example, I do a lot of electromagnetics. Q: I’ve often seen you using a magnetic wand thingamajig. What is that and what are you doing there? For most of my setup, you can understand it in two parts. The first part is sound source and the second is the processing. Then I will require something I can interact with between sound source and processing. For electromagnetics, the thing you see is just an amplified pick-up coil. If you search pick-up coil you can find a really cheap one. They used it to call it telephone pick-up coil because it was used for the old telephones. The reason you can hear a voice on the phone is because of the electromagnetic translation of the sound. The pick-up coil is kind of like a magnet within the magnetic coil, so it receives the electromagnetic activity which is the sound, so you can record it. So that little device that looks like a suction cup, you can still find it on eBay. In the past it was used to record on the old-style phone. But now because we don’t use those phones, people found you can use that component to pick up other electromagnetic activities. For example, around us now, although we don’t hear it, your phone, your computer, lights, anything that needs electricity, is emitting some electromagnetic activity. That’s why they say it’s not healthy. If you’re living in a big transmission tower, there’s a lot of EMF. If you use a telephone coil to tap into it, you will hear the sounds. That’s how I reveal the sound. Q: What are the different sources you use? One is electromagnetic waves. Another source is some kind of noise generator, some synthesizers, but not standard ones. I used to look for non-standard synthesizers. There are a lot of people doing strange things so I always look on the internet to see who is doing what. I like those strange instrument creators who make noise synthesizers. Another source would be feedback. Various kinds of feedback. When I play guitar or Chapman stick, one thing that I use is called a “sustainer.” Because a guitar is a picking instrument right? It’s not like a violin. The notes are very

5  The Politics of Noise: An Interview with Sound Scientist… 

73

short. But sometimes you want a long sound so there are effects that increase the feedback and sustain. There is one called Sustainiac. It’s a bigger box, a stronger feedback unit, that has a kind of clip on the body of the instrument. Actually it’s kind of like a transducer. A big magnet. A super magnet that transmits sound back to the instrument as feedback. I like that one because it’s so strong. It can be very strong so it’s one of the things I like to use a lot. Another source is a mixer with no input. You connect the output back into the input and then you can manipulate and play with the feedback. Generally I like to misuse things, to use non-­ instruments as instruments, and to use instruments in a way that one is not supposed to. I love to work with things that are considered by others as error and defective. Q: I can’t help hearing at your gigs, and many of the experimental noise gigs at SAAL, something kind of doomy and mechanical, like the concept of police surveillance, AI, technological revolution, machines taking over the world. I associate your kind of music with that dark kind of feeling. Is this how you perceive it yourself? No. For me, I don’t perceive it that way. Maybe one reason for your perception is that the gear I use gives that impression. But I don’t intentionally try to create that. Also, personally, when I listen to it myself I don’t have that thinking. That might just be a logical conclusion because we are influenced by society, by the environment, by the gear I’ve made. Q: How Hong Kong-ese is your music? It seems like there’s a big noise vibe here. Is that true? This is something I’ve thought about once in a while, but I couldn’t figure it out myself. Like, for example, obviously the way I’m doing this kind of thing, noise music is not from Hong Kong or from the Chinese. It’s basically from Japan, or the US.  The source of that sound is from overseas. So I keep thinking, “What is the Hong Kong element in what we are doing among all the artists you see?” I couldn’t figure it out myself. I’m not able to notice any specific Hong Kong element. Q: But is Hong Kong having something of a growth spurt at the moment with regard to noise music. Is it a growing trend? Relatively yes, but I think compared to other cities, it’s very mild. When I think about what is happening now compared to ten years ago, a lot more is happening. A lot more people are doing things. But is it a

74 

B. Reeve

big explosion? It’s not like that. But there are small changes I would say. More people are aware of it. More people are doing it. Some people think that it is hip. Some. So that’s why they’re doing it right? And also it’s good that some people are trying to do something different. I’m not just talking about noise but non-mainstream music artists. Like, for example, the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble. They are doing something very different which is good. Sometimes they touch on experimental noise. Sometimes they touch on something technologically advanced. Q: Perhaps it’s because I’ve only discovered noise concerts since living here. I associate Hong Kong with the kind of music you make. Yeah, not on a conscious level, but the city is probably something I’m influenced by. Whether I say it or not, whether I make it explicit or not, my music, or any action I make, speech is always social and political. We cannot avoid it. Normally I won’t say, “Hey, politically I want to do this.” Even without that content what we do is already influenced by the political and social situation. It’s a part of the by-product of that. And so I would say it’s a possibility, but I don’t do it intentionally. Q: Is there anything you’ve done creatively a direct response to any political situation? For me no. This is just a personal taste, which might come from a literary tradition, because when I was in high school I studied Chinese literature. I always think the best literature is not explicit, like poems. If you’re explicit, then it doesn’t work. You have to be subtle. If you put everything in too clearly, you lose all the poetics of it. So I always prefer something hidden, something subtle, something unclear, something difficult to define. I think that is the beauty of it. So even for political kind of thinking, even if I have some preference, or liking, whatever it is, I try not to put politics explicitly in my music. Q: Despite that, do you have a conscious kind of manifesto, or would your political thinking come out of what you do naturally? No, not literally. But I always think the act of choosing noise as a way of making music, choosing this kind of chaotic improvisation as creating, doing gigs like this, this kind of operation, which is not really business-­ like, it doesn’t really fit into any kind of operation. It’s already quite political in a way. And noise itself I would say is always political. The definition of noise—think about it. In general, noise is anything rejected,

5  The Politics of Noise: An Interview with Sound Scientist… 

75

suppressed, or not accepted by the system. Noise is music that goes against the system (i.e. order). When you go outside established order and rules, and introduce things that are threats to the system, and the system sees them as threats, then it becomes very political. Q: I wanted to ask you about the phrase “sonic mysticism.” I like that phrase because when you’re up on stage with that magic wand, it seems to me that everything is emitting waves and you’re finding balances between waves or finding points where things go out of control. Is that right? Yeah, kind of exploring what is already there. Sometimes you hit something that is too strong or unexpected, so you try to deal with it on the spot. I try not to be too safe. Sometimes it’s difficult because it’s not fixed so it can change a lot. It’s very much like a person. Sometimes a person has a temper. Sometimes I push your button, you’ll feel unhappy. Sometimes we’ll have a good conversation or a bad conversation. Just like that. Q: I can imagine some people thinking “sonic mysticism” is a pretentious phrase. How do you see it? One of the main reasons I use that phrase is that I’m not into the scientific stuff. I’m into theoretical psychology and even under theoretical psychology I’m more into Carl Jung, and he has a very occult, or different, theory. And also another reason I use that phrase is because sound plays a very important role in almost all religions. Like Gamelan [traditional Indonesian music]. For them it’s not entertainment. It’s a form to connect with the gods. For the shaman, sound is the way in which they go into a trance, to connect with the upper world, the spirits, everything. And scientifically, I think the quality, or the effect of sound, how we are affected by sound, is less known compared to other mediums. So what I’m really trying to do with all these performances, music, whatever, is to try to find that direct experience of sound where you don’t really have to describe it. Sound itself is a language. Some people say, “Hey how do you describe this? What is the interpretation?” For me sound itself is a language. But of course how do you communicate or connect with it intuitively? Just like a religious experience. You don’t have a technical manual right? It’s a direct experience. You know it’s true. You know what it means. You just know. But in Western science, if you say, “It hurts.” “Okay, it

76 

B. Reeve

hurts but I can tell you why. Because of all the neurons sending signals, blah blah.” But for sound, besides the scientific understanding, there is a direct experience. I think one of the major influences on this idea is the Polish artist and academically trained composer, Zbigniew Karkowski. He passed away around five or six years ago. A very well-known noise artist, well known for blowing up sound systems. No matter how strong it is, he can burn the sound system. He was very famous for that. Some people were really afraid of him. “No, no, no, I don’t want him to play because he might kill the sound system.” I would say that one of his approaches to sound is the physical experience. Not explaining. Not language or explanation. But direct experience. And physical experience. That’s why he always needed a very loud volume. A small volume has no impact, whereas a big volume impacts your body because sound waves are a physical force. Q: What about sudden bursts of feedback when something goes wrong? I’ve seen that happen at one of your gigs too. Yes, that happens all the time. Because of the way I’m working it’s not all well planned. So there are some accidents, unexpected things. But that’s an interesting reaction. I think that is another side of white noise, really loud noise. Another theory is about perception. If you want to go into some kind of non-ordinary perception of state of consciousness, you have to go to the extreme. Extreme minimal, where you have no sensory perception or experience. Sensory deprivation where your brain becomes the creator and starts creating data out of nothing. You go back to yourself. Creating. Seeing things. Also extreme loudness, extreme situations, again, where your cognitive mechanism, your psychology, will push you out of your ordinary state of consciousness. So that’s why I think volume is important for noise. And the only way to listen to it live is to let go. First try not to think about it. “Oh how is he? Is it high, low? Is he doing good? Good move? What does that mean? What mood is he trying to express?”. No. Forget about all the thinking. Just rely on your perception, your body, to take over. Q: I know you have a day job. What would it take for you to be a full-­ time sound artist? I think in one way it’s not good to be a full-time artist unless you can get away from the financial thing. If one is a full-time artist, that means

5  The Politics of Noise: An Interview with Sound Scientist… 

77

you live by your art. And if you live by your art, that means you have to follow some system. You have to earn money from your art. You cannot create whatever you like with your art, right? And then you are not free. And one reason for me to make music, all this noise, another kind of hidden agenda, or unconscious background thinking, is freedom. I want that feeling of being free. Especially when you get into that stage of consciousness, you are really free. You are not bound by the physical world, anything. Of course when you’re doing this, you’re free from any rules. Q: What is your dream for Hong Kong music? The dream for Hong Kong music is to be recognized by other countries, other people. When people go, “Hey Hong Kong has a real good scene,” that would be what I want. But even now I don’t think we have a good identity in Hong Kong in terms of the current experimental or non-­ mainstream music. I would not want everyone to listen to experimental or noise music right? There has to be something like Cantopop right? There has to be something like jazz or metal. I always enjoy the diversity. All the things that coexist and the connections. I do not want what I’m doing to become the majority. A good society or city should have all the elements, the diversity. The bad thing only happens when one part becomes really big. Diversity is very important for me. Q: Can we wrap this up then by having you explain the different series you put on? The main series is Noise To Signal. That is where I started organizing gigs. Noise To Signal is for me very open, anything non-mainstream, anything outside the system. It doesn’t have to be a good performer, or someone famous you know? It’s okay, it’s an open platform. I always ask the artist, “Come do it.” “No no no, I’m no good.” No, it doesn’t really matter. This reminds me of Vanessa Law’s comment on our recent gig. This is one of the things she mentioned, because she’s an academically trained composer. And she says it’s always great to have a platform to be able to make errors. So that’s why I like Noise To Signal. It’s very open. Anyone can play. So that’s the main series. After that I started to do Kill Jazz. Kill Jazz is for acts who don’t fit into Noise To Signal. For example, improv jazz, or something like the band Dark Radish we had recently. It seems a bit weird to put them inside Noise To Signal, so I put them into Kill Jazz. Kill Jazz is more like alternative, but more on the improv side. Not that

78 

B. Reeve

much like real noise. Not really electronic. Maybe jazz, rock, you know, those kinds of genres being mixed together. I think the first Kill Jazz we had was Horse Orchestra, a jazz improv group [from Scandinavia]. Also, I put The Thing under Kill Jazz. Now Kill The Silence is actually a festival. But recently we only did it in Macau. Usually two days, but every time it’s quite different. We had 12 hours of performance with multiple stages in the first Kill The Silence at LMA, Macau. There was a main stage, with noise and rock, and at the reception area we made an electronic stage, and outside at the elevator by the stairs is a space we used as a screening room. A very compact multistage event for 12 hours though our stages are very small. I think the next year we did Hong Kong and Macau back to back. So Kill The Silence is like a more advanced, more sophisticated version of Noise To Signal. That time we tried to experiment with the payment mechanism and made it “pay what you want.” The average donation was about $100 per person which we thought was pretty satisfactory. We continued to use “pay what you want” for our events at Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity and later at Focal Fair.

6 Opportunities in Theatre Performing Arts Advancement in Bettering Underground Music Development: A Reflection on the Relevance of the Technical Production in Local/ Global Experimental Music Performances Kam-po Tse

One way to understand experimental music performances as high-end cultural entertainment generating new sonic experiences is the ways in which they reflect the development of a city. Ten years ago, I went to the renowned space SuperDeluxe in Roppongi, Tokyo, Japan, to experience my first experimental music performance. It was an underground performance venue but not a fully established club. That event was remarkable to me because I did not feel right. The lighting and sound configuration of the performance was an

K. Tse (*) The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA), Hong Kong, China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. Charrieras, F. Mouillot (eds.), Fractured Scenes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6_6

79

80 

K. Tse

Image 6.1  The proposal cover for the early experimental music exchange series on campus

issue. I waited for an hour before I could get in, and I ended up standing in the back. Sadly, I could not see, yet the entrance fee was high. Six years ago, when I was the Deputy Technical Manager for the Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture (HKICC) at the Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity (HKSC), I started to get involved in Hong Kong experimental music performance production. My role was mainly as the production head of a series of experimental music happening/performance at the HKSC campus space between 2014 and 2016. Being ambitious, I tried to host the performances everywhere on the campus, as long as there were no security or logistical issues. Due to frequent usage, the HKSC Music Room and HKSC VIP Room were the more popular and visited performance spaces (Image 6.1). The HKSC Music Room was about 50 square metres with basic acoustic treatment. The relatively low reverberation time made it a nice space for amplified music. The HKSC VIP Room was a typical high school multipurpose room, about 100 square metres with no special treatment. It was the workshop and seminar space for the school (Images 6.2 and 6.3). “For tonight’s performance, please blackout” was a usual request from the performers. To me, this was sad and discouraging. Performance is a delicate deployment of technological arrangements that should facilitate communication. Music performance is an audio-visual process sharing a

6  Opportunities in Theatre Performing Arts Advancement… 

81

Image 6.2  Performers rehearsing in the HKSC Music Room

sonic experience, as well as the performer’s gestures and body language. Considering classical music performance versus experimental music performance side by side, we can easily understand those indeed share the same essential visual aesthetics and musicianship. I do not believe an entirely dark environment helps. The question for me was: “What exactly are experimental music performances, and what should be the ideal configuration when it is a popular activity in the city?” My first involvement with experimental music in Hong Kong began when Dennis Wong, a local experimental musician and event organizer, invited The Language Lab, my experimental audio-visual creation team, to perform in the show “Noise To Signal 0.17: Peak Experience” in 2013. “Noise To Signal” is a prominent music/sound/noise/visual performance series led by Dennis for Hong Kong. As of January 2020, 58 performances have taken place in different locations of Hong Kong. Our first event together took place in a restaurant located near Victoria Peak, one of the Hong Kong’s richest and most scenic neighbourhoods.

82 

K. Tse

Image 6.3  HKSC VIP Room transformed into a performance space

Following the show, Dennis and I started to collaborate further for the local scene. We enthusiastically jointly produced local experimental music programs, and  the SO-MU-NO (SOund-MUsic-NOise) Experimental Music Exchange Series at the HKSC was the result. The initial technical specifications were minimal. When the performances were showcased in the HKSC Music Room or HKSC VIP Room, an analogue mixer, a pair of loudspeakers and a few LED PARs were the fundamental elements that supported the shows (Images 6.4 and 6.5). Linking the performance to the audience was the vision. I believe my ten-year theatre performing arts technical production experience served positively for those events. It taught me that reasonable lighting, sound and front-of-house experience always compose a splendid performance. By contrast, lack of production management was frequently observed in the local scene, which brought about issues including poorly arranged production schedules, short rehearsal time and overall low rehearsal

6  Opportunities in Theatre Performing Arts Advancement… 

83

Image 6.4  Performance in the HKSC Music Room

quality. I believed there were means  by ways of technical production to facilitate performer-audience connection, and then we should start to investigate the correct techniques to achieve such connection. We wanted these experimental music performances to be part of the theatre performing arts, and enhance their typically raw production aesthetic. We also wanted to treat these performances seriously with careful production concerns, so that the audience could be prepared psychologically to enter the artists’ world. In most global locales, contrary to most classically-trained or popular music musicians, experimental music performers do not request rehearsal time as they are familiar with their material (or their performance relies heavily, if not fully, on improvisation). At the same time, the typical show organizers classify this type of music performance into the generic four-­ piece band configuration. The performers are usually only assigned about a half an hour of rehearsal time. In my opinion, it is not ideal.

84 

K. Tse

Image 6.5  Performance in the HKSC VIP Room

In such a short rehearsal time, it is difficult for the lighting and sound technical production staff to digest the show contents and create appropriate solutions to strengthen the performance. In general, lighting elements improve the show quality the most. The blackout request during a performance is a critical ignorance of stage lighting knowledge. On many occasions I have witnessed, “no light” was evidently not the best solution. It was the laziest one. The approach we took at the HKSC performances was that stage lighting should not be an enemy ofexperimental music performances. In the context of the experimental music performances I participated in Hong Kong, self-confidence was an issue. Regardless of the show content, even the most decent performer would sometimes choose to hide in the definite “blackout” shortcut. For certain novel musical ideas, I understand that it would be awkward and embarrassing to present. However,

6  Opportunities in Theatre Performing Arts Advancement… 

85

Image 6.6  Classic lighting setup with market lamps in the HKSC Garage

not revealing is not always the right resolution. Besides, there are plenty of stage effects for less visible facial expression presentation, like a strong backlight with smoke to blur the overall visual environment. It would help to strengthen the audio-visual linkage (Images 6.6, 6.7, 6.8, 6.9 and 6.10). Even worse is when a performer does not intend to rehearse the entire performance during rehearsal. In my understanding, experimental music performances are often assembled in the process of in-situ devising and improvisation. For all of its artistic value, this performance approach creates a fundamental issue for the venue staff when they do not know the contents and the ways the artists construct it. For me, it is not ideal, and it can even be dangerous. One of the profound experiences I had as the head of stage production was the Kill the Silence Festival 2016. The event happened in the HKSC Multi-media Theatre, and the key performing elements included live sound manipulation with guitar stomp boxes and adhesive tape invasion.

86 

K. Tse

Images 6.7, 6.8, 6.9, and 6.10  Performers interacting with stage lighting

The performing unit rehearsed in a low-profile manner during the technical session. However, by contrast,  the performer interacted with the audience  extensively with a large amount of adhesive tape during the performance. It was unpredictable (Images 6.11 and 6.12). After the performance, the audience, the venue furniture and technical elements were stuck together. The audience was, of course, excited, while the venue staff was utterly unprepared and panicked. Such expectation mismatch was undoubtedly unnecessary, and a prior exchange of performance information would have been helpful for a successful performance. If the performer informed the venue staff in advance about the particular arrangement of the adhesive tape usage, the venue staff would stop the audience admission at that moment, which would be beneficial to the performance and reduce risks.

6  Opportunities in Theatre Performing Arts Advancement… 

87

Images 6.11 and 6.12  Audio-visual performance with adhesive tape interaction

I have participated in quite a lot of mysterious performances. I loved surprises, and I would never spoil the show in advance. A particular highlight for me was Nikola H.  Mounoud’s noise performance. Our first encounter was the Kill the Silence Festival 2015, and his MacBook Pro murder performance shocked me. For his show, an obsolete MacBook Pro was used to run an audio sequencing program in a dark environment. His last manoeuvres were to cut out the intense sound and to punch a chisel  into the machine at the same time. I never expected one would “kill” his personal computer live. For such performance, the “murder” process was one-off and was not the element to rehearse. In any case, the show content could be confidential to the audience, but not the venue staff or anyone who could help achieve a successful performance. I should not have been shocked (Image 6.13). Contrary to the lack of communication and self-confidence described above, I have also observed picky and arrogant performers. I remembered involving three distinctive performing units in which the first performer required the venue staff to shut down numerous stage lighting equipment, smoke machine and everything generating inaudible hiss sound. The reason was that their performance consisted mostly of low volume sounds. I appreciated the insistence, but it was mostly unnecessary as the front-ofhouse audio amplifiers on-stage produced significant noise which they accepted. The performing venue was also near a road of heavy traffic, something almost inevitable for performance venues of experimental

88 

K. Tse

Image 6.13  MacBook Pro and chisel

music in Hong Kong. The most profound impact was that it created unfavourable risks to the next performer, as the switched-off equipment was necessary for the next performance. As the audio-visual production head, I have always encountered a high level of professionalism regarding musicianship and show contents. Most of performing pieces were well thought out with workable and reasonable performing strategies. The sonic piece would be actualized thoroughly, in my view, if the performers showcased it in their own  studio. It means interfacing with the venue typically is the weakest link. Even the simplest performance with a headphone output connected to the main audio console, different hiss, hum and electric noise would sometimes be the audio engineers’ nightmare. I would summarize all those special audio “challenges” as “technical production  amateurism”. For the simple  circumstance mentioned above, there could be diversified causes: –– The show computer is a higher specification computer borrowed from others, and the user is only familiar with the software, but not the hardware.

6  Opportunities in Theatre Performing Arts Advancement… 

89

–– The power supply of the device is not grounded correctly, or was not designed with a proper ground. –– Permanent damage on the output port while the user does not realize in their routine usage. –– Multipurpose port with jack detection circuit and it rejects the venue direct-injection box. –– Incorrect low headphone volume (for low impedance headphone) belief in the performance. –– Badly managed dynamic range in the 24-bit audio environment, and more. Technical production amateurism is considerably specific to the local experimental scene, and those fundamental pieces of knowledge in sound system integration are always absent, including  among the performing veterans. It is where theatre performing arts advancement helps the most. To my observation, the Sound Engineering (Tonmeister) study program in Germany provides a relatively holistic approach to handle sound, as a subject lying between art and science. The German School of Music usually runs the Tonmeister programs where students will learn topics in music composition/audio recording/physics/electronic/acoustic in their “tonmeister” flourishing journey. However, I observed that undergraduate music composition and audio technology training is distinctly separated in Hong Kong. For example, there are three different sound/music/ audio courses offered by three different schools in the HKAPA.  The exceedingly specialized training is beneficial to the students in developing their chosen profession. At the same time, the fundamentals of the current experimental music practice undoubtedly rely on a blend of showmanship, musicianship, musical knowledge and digital audio concepts/ techniques. The lack of practical sound technology training and cross-­ disciplinary integration skills are likely some of the reasons contributing to technical production amateurism. I am now the technical adviser for Twenty Alpha, the only Hong Kong venue in the commercial/entertainment district of Wan Chai (and one of the very few in the city) focusing explicitly on experimental music

90 

K. Tse

Image 6.14  The interior of the Bimhuis, Muziekgebouw

performance. This unit of the city’s vertical art village1 was not a performance space before, and I was in charge of refurbishment and technical design so that it may fit this purpose. My main inspiration for this revitalization  was the Bimhuis, Muziekgebouw of the Netherland (Images 6.14 and 6.15).  Foo Tak Building is a typical commercial/residential building in Wanchai, Hong Kong. It has 14 floors with 2 units on each floor. Since 2003, 18 units have been leased to art and cultural entities at a sponsored rate through the Art & Culture Outreach (ACO). Rent in the Foo Tak Building is much cheaper than the local market price. Just as important, ACO exercises low management to leave more room for self-disciplining by the sponsored art and culture entities. ACO has stipulated only a few rules and allowed all kinds of ideas/creations/experiments/plans/actions/organizations to be planted, grow, practiced and performed in the Foo Tak Building. 1

6  Opportunities in Theatre Performing Arts Advancement… 

91

Image 6.15  The exterior of the Bimhuis, Muziekgebouw

To enhance the quality of the shows, we have invested a lot to create a better performance environment for the performers. We re-organized the windows for a better city view, and there is now an opening facing the Happy Valley Racecourse, one of our city’s landmarks. Our acoustics design is well recognized, and it allows multi-band absorption and diffusion of very low frequency. We have spent the summer of 2018 to do it, in a “DIY” manner. Having learned from our past show experiences, we have invested in many professional LED stage lighting equipment controlled by an ONYX console running two universes (Image 6.16). We aim to impress the audience with a stunning audio-visual experience. To find a balance between performers’ requests and venue technical production needs, we strive to have a lot of conversations and exchanges among the curator, the musicians and myself as the technical head. Of course, there are occasional conflicts, but I believe both artistic and technical sides learn from these arguments. Generally, we have tried

92 

K. Tse

Image 6.16  Interior overview of the refurbished Twenty Alpha space

wholeheartedly to address some of the issues that have happened with experimental music performances in Hong Kong outlined above (Images 6.17, 6.18, 6.19 and 6.20). In this chapter, I have not described a detailed model or configuration for future experimental music performances in Hong Kong. However, as an individual artist and technical producer, I aim to propose experimental music performances/compositions from a holistic performance perspective. In the context of my current  work at Twenty Alpha, as well as previously at the HKSC, I try to bring the latest advancements and maturity of skills and techniques related to production management from the field of the theatre performing arts to the experimental music performances in Hong Kong. I understand that this can only be made possible by venue staff who are professionals with advanced training in theatre and entertainment arts. Personally, I strive to create an

6  Opportunities in Theatre Performing Arts Advancement… 

93

Images 6.17, 6.18, 6.19 and 6.20  Snapshots of happenings in Twenty Alpha

environment where trust and communication between artists and venue staff can easily happen, and ultimately, where the blend of aesthetics in theatre, entertainment arts and music can bring about a positive change to the next generation of experimental music performances in the city (Image 6.21).

94 

K. Tse

Image 6.21   Twenty Alpha’s technical team supporting a globally broadcast event

7 A “No-Venue Underground”: Making Experimental Music Around Hong Kong’s Lack of Performance Spaces Gabriele de Seta

In a city drowning in the saccharine ballads and slick boybands of Cantopop, the hunt for Hong Kong’s raw and vital sounds involves peering beneath its skin to find its hidden pathways and secret spaces. (Margree 2013)

 nit 7, 8th floor, Block B, Wah Tat Industrial U Centre, 8–10 Wah Sing Street, Kwai Hing, Kowloon, Hong Kong It is October 10th, 2012. I have been living in Hong Kong for less than two months, and Dennis Wong—one of the few local organizers whom fellow experimental musicians from Shanghai suggested me to get in touch with—is waiting for me to arrive at the performance venue and do my sound-check. A few weeks before, Dennis sent me a Facebook message asking if I wanted to play a show at a newly opened local venue G. de Seta (*) University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. Charrieras, F. Mouillot (eds.), Fractured Scenes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6_7

95

96 

G. de Seta

called CIA, an acronym standing for “Cultural Industries Association” which of course also plays upon a certain ring of underground secrecy. “Sure, when and where?”, I replied. Dennis gave me an address and asked me if I needed anything else besides a guitar amplifier. I said I did not, even though I had no idea of what I was going to play, and how. A few days later I made my first trip to the Kowloon branch of Tom Lee, a large music gear retailer with stores across Hong Kong, and I bought a couple of guitar cables and a compressor effect pedal that I thought I would need for my set. Now I am standing outside the Kwai Hing MTR station (the closest to the venue, according to Google Maps) with my hollow-body guitar and a heavy backpack full of effect pedals, and I am trying to find my bearings via GPS. The air is still and humid, although the weather is less stifling than the past summer. I start walking, but there are not many useful reference points around the station: a convenience store, a small noodle restaurant, and an overpass leading to the entrance of a shopping mall. Behind my back, a dense cluster of residential towers and public housing estates. In front of me, a wall of industrial buildings, the overpass disappearing into a narrow crevice between two of them. I spend ten minutes circling around the block, following the directions provided by Google Maps, only to end up realizing that there is no way of crossing the six lanes of Hing Fong Road; I memorize the address of CIA and put my smartphone back in my pocket: Unit 7, 8th floor, Block B, Wah Tat Industrial Centre, 8–10 Wah Sing Street. I head back to the station and walk up the overpass, through an elevated courtyard, over another overpass, down an escalator, and eventually venture into an alleyway between two industrial buildings; I end up in a maze of streets without shops, cars, or pedestrians—only container trucks come in and out of garage doors and loading ramps (Image 7.1). Once I find the Wah Tat Industrial Centre (its name conveniently spelled both in Chinese characters and English), I still have to figure out how to reach Block B, and how to get to the eighth floor. “Not with that,” a security guard tells me as I approach a rusted sliding metal door, “that elevator is for cargo. People go in that other one.” Stepping out of the elevator into a damp corridor lit by fluorescent lights, the only signal helping me find the entrance of CIA is the bass frequency rumbling through the concrete architecture: I slide another heavy metal door open, and I am greeted by Dennis and the

7  A “No-Venue Underground”: Making Experimental…  

97

Image 7.1  Google Street View of the industrial buildings on Wah Sing Street, where art gallery and performance venue CIA (Cultural Industries Association) was located. (Source: Google Maps, June 2011)

other musicians doing their sound-check and preparing for the show in a large whitewashed room with no windows. A few weeks later, my Shanghainese friend Huang Lei tells me he has been invited to perform in Hong Kong and asks me if I can help him organize another show in the city. I get in touch with Dennis once more, and he kindly agrees to put together an event for Huang Lei (stage name Da Xiao) under his NOISE to SIGNAL series. We coordinate the details of the event through Facebook messages, and I help him design a flyer using a photo I took around Kowloon (Image 7.2). This time the venue is Strategic Sounds, another windowless space located on the 10th floor of the High Win Factory Building in Kwun Tong district, an industrial area on the East side of the Kowloon peninsula. After individual performances, Huang Lei, Dennis, and I end up performing an improvised set together, a jumbled 20-minute mish-mash of prepared guitar, crackling electronics and distorted feedback echoing down the grimy ventilation shaft right outside the venue. An attentive audience of around 15 people sits on the floor or stands against the walls at the back of the room, occasionally taking pictures or videos; when the final collaborative improvisation is over, some audience members walk up to Huang Lei to inquire about the touch-sensitive circuit board prosthetics he has used as DIY instruments.

98 

G. de Seta

Image 7.2  The flyer for the NOISE to SIGNAL 0.08: Lost in Transmission event, designed by the author and Dennis Wong in October 2012

Throughout the following year, I would be generously invited to play a few more shows at both Strategic Sounds and CIA, meeting many of the experimental musicians active in the city around 2013. CIA would even receive some media attention, being recognized as one of the city’s “hottest venues” that privileged quality of their bookings over revenue (Shamdasani 2013), but even this did not contribute to their sustainability. One after the other, both venues closed down or stopped organizing performances under the pressure of increasing rents and the challenges of sustaining an independent event schedule in Hong Kong—a demanding enterprise even considering the relatively more affordable rental prices of

7  A “No-Venue Underground”: Making Experimental…  

99

vacant units in industrial buildings. Of the eight venues in which I had the pleasure to play experimental music during my four years in Hong Kong, seven were located in industrial buildings. Besides CIA and Strategic Sounds, they ranged from the Dimension+ Lab (a small makerspace attached to an artist studio) and Floating Projects (an art production site) to the HKICC Lee Shau-kee School of Creativity (a secondary school with a creative industry focus) and Hidden Agenda (a long-­ standing live house very well known among local independent music audiences). During these years, I could also visit the same venues and enjoy live performances by some of my favorite musicians and bands including Acid Mothers Temple, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Hijokaidan and Laibach, which included Hong Kong in their international tours thanks to the effort of some of the same musicians and organizers I was hanging out with in former factory premises (Image 7.3).

Image 7.3  The author improvising with Shanghai-based musician Huang Lei (as 大小) and local organizer Dennis Wong (as Sin:Ned) at Strategic Sounds, Hong Kong, November 2012. (Photo by KWC)

100 

G. de Seta

Hijacking the City The two reasons pushing Hong Kong’s experimental musicians to find spaces in the post-industrial peripheries of the city are the famed expensiveness of Hong Kong’s real estate and the lack of suitable and welcoming performance venues in more central areas of the city. The pubs and clubs hosting live music in central Kowloon and Hong Kong Island predominantly feature DJs and cover bands catering to the commercial audiences they rely upon, while larger live houses like Hidden Agenda and The Vine sustained themselves by booking more mainstream bands and events. Given the scarcity of spaces like garages, squats, and cellars, and constrained by the diminutive size of residential units, Hong Kong’s experimental musicians turn to the 1400 industrial buildings hollowed out by the recent delocalization of factories that local visual artists and creative enterprises have pioneeringly explored (Zuser 2015). The move towards these spaces is facilitated by the fact that experimental music worldwide has embraced industrial buildings and warehouses as legitimate—or even preferable—venues for live performances. As Caleb Stuart notes, the stripped-down nature of these spaces and the absence of a proper stage bring musicians closer to their audiences and allow them to experiment with the “aural performative,” or the malleable spatial ambience offered by industrial architecture (2003, pp. 62–63). But regardless of the aesthetic advantages offered by industrial buildings, unreliable rental agreements and the uncertain legal status of these spaces leave musicians and organizers in a state of “reluctant nomadism” (Charrieras et al. 2018, p. 137). As hinted at by the fleeting existence of venues like Strategic Sounds and CIA, industrial spaces in Hong Kong offer experimental musicians a temporary and precarious performance site at best. Even Hidden Agenda, which predominantly booked indie, post-rock, hardcore, punk and metal bands, has had a decade-long history marked by four relocations before re-opening once again under the name This Town Needs in 2018 and eventually shutting down in February 2020 because of the COVID-19 lockdown. Tobias Zuser has extensively tracked the venue’s precarious existence, evidencing how Hidden Agenda has been repeatedly squeezed

7  A “No-Venue Underground”: Making Experimental…  

101

out of its premises by changes in property ownership, urban revitalization projects, as well as legal actions against its use of industrial space (2015, p.  228). Hidden Agenda’s exemplary ambiguity as an established yet secluded venue has allowed it to remain, for nearly ten years, a pivotal “space of vernacular creativity” (Evans 2010) for communities of musicians and audiences capable of rooting around the challenges posed by urban redevelopment and private interests. Profoundly shaped by Hong Kong’s zoning regulations that the venue itself challenges with its existence (Zuser 2015, p. 236), Hidden Agenda had also managed to avoid challenges commonly faced by small-scale music venues in urban areas such as noise complaints (Parkinson et al. 2015). Elaine. J. Ho highlights how similar practices of “spatial hijacking” are common across artist communities in Hong Kong, allowing a partial and temporary confrontation with the pervasive privatization of city spaces (2015, p. 192). The first Sound-On-Site show organized by booking agency Twenty Alpha1 and record label Re-Records at ACO (Art & Culture Outreach) at the end of January 2015—aptly titled “Space Oddity #1: From Below”— is perhaps the starkest example of Hong Kong’s experimental musicians’ hijacking of urban spaces for their performances. Rather than playing in the small bookstore located on the 14th floor of the Foo Tak Building, the three musicians billed for this event decide to set up their equipment on different landings of the building’s stairwell: laptops on small stools, amplifiers turned on their side to fit the constraining spaces, cables dangling between floors, performance areas sealed off by improvised signage (Image 7.4). Puzzled audience members move up and down the stairs, trying to figure out how to reach the floor where sounds are coming from, or sit on the concrete steps listening to the droning frequencies reverberating through the building. For musicians Sin:Ned, KWC and e:ch, each performing eclectic sets for guitar, processed voice and electronics, the architectural structure becomes an essential component of musicking and audience engagement. During a break between sets, a Chinese friend who is visiting Hong Kong for a few days comments that, in terms of scale and spatial politics, this performance arrangement  Twenty Alpha has since then also become a venue hosting intermedia art and experimental electronic music performances (see Tse in this volume). 1

102 

G. de Seta

Image 7.4  “Performance area” signage on a mezzanine of the ACO stairwell delimiting KWC’s live set during the Sound-On-Site: Space Oddity #1: From Below show, January 2015

reminds him of experimental music shows in his own city: “But whereas musicians in Beijing are taking back hutong alleyways and old housing, here in Hong Kong it seems to be all about industrial architecture.”

An Underground Without Ground Adam Frampton, Jonathan Solomon, and Clara Wong have provocatively defined Hong Kong as a “city without ground” in both physical and cultural terms—a topological uniqueness that distorts spatial hierarchy into a continuous network of liminal environments riddled by inequalities (2012). It is somehow ironically appropriate that, in this city without ground, experimental musicians find themselves relegated to a precarious underground actively carved out of fleeting spaces strewn across the upper floors of post-industrial peripheries. These precarious venues appear and disappear following the inexorable inflation of property prices and the investment decisions of landlords, leaving local show

7  A “No-Venue Underground”: Making Experimental…  

103

organizers to work in the present tense with whatever space is available at the moment. If the spaces established by visual artists since the early 1990s have transformed Hong Kong’s “proverbial cultural desert” (Smith 2015) into a shifting “middleground” of creative projects, private companies, and educational institutions (Charrieras et  al. 2018, p.  134), the underground of experimental music remains largely constrained by the lack of affordable spaces for vernacular creativity and the precariousness of the few venues in activity. Predominantly sustained by personal passions cultivated in the spare time squeezed out of full-time jobs and freelance careers, Hong Kong’s experimental music scene finds its most reliable spaces on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, where shows are organized, promoted, documented, and thus inscribed on the city’s cultural scene. In the year 2000, responding to a broader discussion around the current state of experimental music performance and consumption, musician and writer Rob Hayler coined the term “no-audience underground” to describe the scene of micro-labels and gigs that he found himself become part of in the UK (Hayler 2015). The idea of a no-audience underground has caught up in music criticism and is often used to describe underground scenes in which performers and organizers also double as audiences, promoters, and critics, such as the noise scene in Western Russia (Marshall 2013) or the independent music scene in Malaysia (Khaliq 2016). Given the usual attendance of local performances, Hong Kong’s experimental music scene could be similarly characterized as a no-audience underground—but in fact, as Paul Margree has discovered by interviewing to local musicians, the lack of performance venues trumps, in urgency, the scarcity of interested attendees (2013). Before even being a “no-audience underground,” Hong Kong experimental musicians orchestrate a “no-venue underground” out of precarious venues and nomadic event series. In the archetypal city without ground, experimental music reverberates through the post-industrial remnants of the city’s manufacturing heydays, and its aesthetics are inflected by the practices of spatial hijacking that make this underground scene possible.

104 

G. de Seta

References Charrieras, D., Darchen, S., & Sigler, T. (2018). The Shifting Spaces of Creativity in Hong Kong. Cities, 74, 134–141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. cities.2017.11.014. Evans, G. (2010). Creative Spaces and the Art of Urban Living. In T. Edensor, D.  Leslie, S.  Millington, & N.  M. Rantisi (Eds.), Spaces of Vernacular Creativity: Rethinking the Cultural Economy (pp.  19–31). Abingdon: Routledge. Frampton, A., Solomon, J. D., & Wong, C. (2012). Cities Without Ground: A Hong Kong Guidebook. Novato: ORO Editions. Hayler, R. (2015, June 14). What I Mean by the Term ‘No-Audience Underground’, 2015 Remix. Retrieved September 15, 2019, from Radio Free Midwich Website: https://radiofreemidwich.wordpress.com/2015/06/14/ what-i-mean-by-the-term-no-audience-underground-2015-remix/ Ho, E. W. (2015). (In)dependence, Industry, and Self-organization: Narratives of Alternative Art Spaces in Greater China. In H.  W. Wong, L.  Pan, & K. L. Chau (Eds.), Politics and Aesthetics of Creativity: City, Culture and Space in East Asia (pp. 183–217). Los Angeles: Bridge21 Publications. Khaliq, A. (2016, July 29). On Shows and People Not Showing Up. The Wknd. Retrieved from http://the-wknd.com/v2/ on-shows-and-people-not-showing-up/ Margree, P. (2013, June 26). Global Ear: Kowloon. Retrieved September 22, 2016, from We Need No Swords Website: https://weneednoswords.wordpress.com/2013/06/26/global-ear-kowloon/ Marshall, J. (2013, December). Global Ear: Western Russia. Wire, (358), 22. Parkinson, T., Hunter, M., Campanello, K., & Dines, M. (2015). Understanding Small Music Venues: An Interim Findings Report. London: Institute of Contemporary Music Performance/Music Venue Trust. Shamdasani, P. (2013, July 4). Going Underground: The City’s Hottest Hidden Venues. South China Morning Post. Retrieved from http://www.scmp.com/ magazines/48hrs/article/1271094/going-underground-citys-hottest-hiddenvenues Smith, K. (2015, August). Names for the Self, Shapes for the World: Leung Chi Wo. LEAP, 34, 76–83.

7  A “No-Venue Underground”: Making Experimental…  

105

Stuart, C. (2003). The Object of Performance: Aural Performativity in Contemporary Laptop Music. Contemporary Music Review, 22(4), 59–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/0749446032000156955. Zuser, T. (2015). On the Finding, Producing, and Losing of Creative Space: Hong Kong’s Hidden Agenda. In H. W. Wong, L. Pan, & K. L. Chau (Eds.), Politics and Aesthetics of Creativity: City, Culture and Space in East Asia (pp. 219–245). Los Angeles: Bridge21 Publications.

Part Two, Take 2: Individual Case Studies in Sound and Contemporary Art

8 Interview with Samson Young François Mouillot and Damien Charrieras

Q: How did you begin Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong? At the start it was registered as a society. It really started because I needed an outfit that was not my own name to apply for funding and to hire venues. After a couple of years of operations I started to do things under my own name and, actually, I found that I didn’t really need an organisation; but then I have this organisation, so we turned it into a group that supports other people and presents their work. I do less of my

Interview conducted on the 11th of June 2019 in Tsing Yi (Hong Kong) by François Mouillot and Damien Charrieras. Edited by Steev Saunders.

F. Mouillot (*) Department of Music and Department of Humanities & Creative Writing, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] D. Charrieras School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. Charrieras, F. Mouillot (eds.), Fractured Scenes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6_8

109

110 

F. Mouillot and D. Charrieras

own work under the Contemporary Musiking banner, especially since 2012 when we first began Sonic Anchor at the Hong Kong Arts Centre. Q: This evolution was because of a need in HK or because of you? It was all those things. In 2010–2011, I did a couple of shows at the Laking Sound Festival in Taipei, they were much more active then than now. But they kept going and it’s all very self-organised and what’s happening is, as they regularly do events, they ended up with an archive. A kind of messy but useful archive of what people have been doing in Taipei under the name of sound art over a couple of years. With this online archive they get people to write for the show. They document the show, really badly, like one camera; but still you get a recording of what’s been done. I thought: “That has to be useful for something. Maybe we could do that, maybe we should do that.” because I know for a fact there are people doing things in Hong Kong, but there isn’t a place where people can find information of what’s been happening, spanning the years. I thought I could start a series and use Laking Sound Festival as a model. I had already started working at SCM [the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong]. It had only been a couple of years since I returned to Hong Kong from the States, and I noticed there were not as many people starting their own group, starting their own ensemble. I thought the consequence of fewer people starting their own thing is that you don’t really get a common place or a community of practice. I thought it would be good, within the small niche that I work in, to start the concert series. From the get-go I was thinking the shows should happen regularly and at the same spot, so if people do come back again, they see the same faces. Q: How would you define your niche? People who have musical training but have since expanded their practice outside of the traditional concert space. They may have had an academic background in music or trained on an instrument. I was already aware of organisations, for example, Videotage that puts on sound related programs which are media-specific. They have their own niche audience; they attract a certain kind of artist, maybe audio-visual artists or people working with music production technology.

8  Interview with Samson Young 

111

Yang Yeung at that point had yet to start Soundpocket but had already organised her first large-scale sound art exhibition, and she was obviously looking at things in a very different way. The work she’s interested in has a certain quality, a social engagement and a quiet, poetic attitude but not a formalistic kind of practice; at that point anyway, I think she has since changed her focus as a curator. Certainly, nobody was doing multi-­ channel stuff or even electro-acoustic stuff back then. There were people in the academy doing that but that was very much limited to the usual classical contemporary music honours. I am looking at a very small group of people including myself who are outside of all of these pre-existing circles. Q: Would you say that “DIY” is a word that could describe what you were doing, initially? Yes, initially it was, but right from the beginning we had some support. I thought about the Lacking Sound Festival and wanted to start something more like that. I made a proposal to the Arts Centre, to Connie and Teresa. At that moment we were not yet getting any Arts Development Council (HKADC) funding. So I just went to them and said: “Hey, I have this idea”, here is my one-page proposal: “It could be fun [to do something, eds.] at the McAuley Studio, I think it’s important because there are people doing interesting things and they don’t really have a regular place to go.” That convinced them to give us the venue for free; they gave us six dates for the year, publicity and technical support. In that first year and a half we did it with my own money but actually, we only needed funds for publicity. We didn’t need money from the box office; therefore ticket revenue went straight to the artists, a practice we still have except in special circumstances, like a festival. People were willing to perform. At first, I relied on my personal network which was very useful; some of my students ended up playing. I don’t think that I started to see a community develop until maybe a year or two into getting the HKADC [Hong Kong Art Development Council] grant. You know when you try to build a common practice it’s really a very loosely defined group and then after a while you are like: “These people came back, isn’t that weird?” I think the people who do things for our festival and people who work more repeatedly with CMHK tend to be the kind of people I was describing, composers who have some sort of more rigorous academic training, who have since fallen through the cracks.

112 

F. Mouillot and D. Charrieras

Q: A series of six performances per year, how has that evolved? We did concerts regularly, every two months sometimes more frequently sometimes less, around six concerts per year. Two years ago we decided to instead do all six concerts together in one week, to pick a good week in April after Art Basel and see what happens. We started calling it “Sound Form” and we sold all the tickets, and not just to our friends, but actually sold out. There weren’t so many seats anyway because it’s McAuley Studio, but we thought something about it worked. We realised that we would have people that will come to all of the concerts, basically the whole week and that to us was very encouraging. So we did it again this year, not curated by me. We had Remy Siu, a Canadian composer, as our resident curator this year. I think his input was very successful in terms of the spirit, of the community and at the box office. I think next year, at least, we are still thinking about doing the festival again. By that point, it was maybe not as important to have regular concerts as we had already expanded the CMHK program. We started an educational initiative; we have an exchange program, a professional development workshop; we have an R&D program; and we also started a sound art summer camp. Throughout the year, the office is very busy, so it seems it’s okay not to have a regular concert series. Other people have already picked up the semi-regular concert series, like Twenty Alpha. What they are doing now is perfect and it’s also in Wan Chai, so you’ve got kind of a continuity of the community. Q: There’s problems with not having a stable venue, right? Yes. We’ve always had people like Dennis Wong organising events, but what is different about Twenty Alpha is its permanent location, it’s a place to go. We were trying to make McAuley Studio that place, this weird basement in the Arts Centre where every two months it is gonna have a weird day. Actually, Kung (Chi Shing) was already doing the Street Music Series and he encompasses everything at that point. Artists who perform for us at Soundpocket or the New Music Ensemble would also end up on the Street Music Series. There was a lot of cross-pollination. Q: You are describing the people that perform at Sound Forms as people with some form of academic background. Would you say that there is a distinction to be made between experimental music and sound art as part of the mandate of Sound Forms? Or does it matter?

8  Interview with Samson Young 

113

We don’t encourage things one way or the other. Composers who work with us have a sense of what we do and even if they work in the concert hall doing more traditional things, when they work with us they end up doing things a little differently. I think people perceive this but it is not like a mission statement. Q: There is not a mission statement on your side; but there is an aesthetic. We have an organisational mission statement, but it’s not communicated when you are working with the composer. It’s more like when you make your three-year plan or write a grand proposal for the future; you think about how those programs map to your mission, but it is not something that on a micro level you communicate with the artist. I think that these things just organically evolve. But it’s also got to do with the sort of connections I have because these people know me, we work together or I reach out to them; then it becomes a certain kind of aesthetic, consciously or unconsciously. What I noticed, for example, is that  when Remy curated the festival this year, it’s definitely not the festival I would have curated because he brings a different kind of aesthetic; even though me and him are very similar, I think, in terms of our history, of how we branched out. Q: Is your aesthetic informed by similar organisations overseas? In the early days we were. One reason why we put on the R&D program, for example, is we thought we would aspire to be, not in terms of size, but somewhere between STEIM and IRCAM.  So we did have a model. Over the last two funding cycles, it doesn’t feel like we still need to benchmark ourselves by others’ standard. The situation here is quite unique. Q: What do you mean by unique? The limitation of space, the density of cultural workers versus the density of the population, the culture of critique that is not here. Also, a disconnect between people working in more scholarly pursuits related to sound and music and the practitioners. What makes Hong Kong different is that, in terms of public funding, we are quite well funded. So we had a different sort of battle to fight; it is never for lack of resources.

114 

F. Mouillot and D. Charrieras

Q: Is it a cultural factor, rather than an economic one? I don’t know, it is a combination of things. Lack of space is not a cultural factor, it’s sort of a hardware thing. The culture of critique and connection to scholarly pursuit is more a symptom of the fact that people don’t really hang. I don’t think of that as a negative thing, it’s just the way things are. [Artists hanging out is, eds.] fun and you feel you are not working alone. You may get lazy but if there is a group and you get a WhatsApp message saying: “Hey Samson, you should come and see this”, then you go. If there isn’t that group that looks after and supports each other, then you tend to work a little more isolated. Yeah, you hang at a cafe and discuss projects. Or you are at a social event and through this person you meet that person. I feel like professionally that is also the way it works in New York because the scene is so saturated. I don’t know if the curators go to all the openings because they feel they need to be there rather than actually wanting to see what’s going on. That always exists as a kind of professional pressure, but I feel that pressure is less in Hong Kong because the scene is smaller and therefore it’s easier for people get to know each other. In Hong Kong, people don’t hang as much as in New York. I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s too hot outside or something. If people are not really exchanging ideas in person and across disciplinary silos of practices, then that’s a cultural thing. Q: Abroad there are shows at people’s houses and everybody hangs out together. So the concerts series was kind of a compensation of this lack of informal gatherings? It was never that precise. I didn’t have a space, I had an office at SCM. Going back to Lacking Sound Festival: they have a small audience, people coming back again and again, young people writing articles that are not really reviews but more like reflections and posted online, it just gives you a sense. If I was an undergrad or recently graduated, having something like that is a little comforting because I don’t think when you are starting up, you have a very clear direction. You have just what is out there. Q: At first you were this crossing point between the underground and academic scenes, but there is also an electronic music scene. How would that fit with your end goal, and the kind of space you wanted to make?

8  Interview with Samson Young 

115

I don’t define it. We’ve had all kinds. The first concert was Stephan Moore and Scott Smallwood, they have a group called Evidence. Stephan Moore used to be sound director at The Merce Cunningham company. They are trained in composition but their performance was quite wild. They took the covers off some electric fans and let the fans hit some chains and sort of self-destruct. They were all positioned on this big table, eventually everything was on the floor; that’s how the performance ended. Next we had a performance by Yu, one of our former students. At that point, I had already taught some sound art classes. Yu did a vacuum cleaning performance, basically going up to things in the space and vacuuming them up and when the space was clean that was the end of it. We had an artist from Taiwan who was more of a traditional sound/ noise artist who plays with sonic artefacts. Also HH from Taiwan who did an electronic minimal set with lights and smoke; an audiovisual set. All was under the CMHK umbrella, this banner of experimental music and sound. We don’t define it, people come to the shows knowing that is what we do. Personally speaking, I am not really interested in the question of ontology and definition of sound art. There are writers in the sound art community that are very interested in the question of definition, including in Mainland China. Q: In Hangzhou? Yeah, like Yu Jing, I think she is very interested in the definition. There are people who think that if you don’t attempt to define this thing then there is no point in doing it, right? I think the exact opposite. It is interesting to see how this terminology has become an umbrella under which people have connected previously disconnected nodes. Q: Was there ever a specific mandate to promote Hong Kong-based artists or to put them in relation with international artists? How did you go about finding a balance between HK-based performers and international performers? That is something that is important to me and to us, I think, but there is no hard and fast rule that we must commission 50% Hong Kong artists and having only international artists or only local artists I don’t think it is ideal. We should have a good mix, just arbitrarily half and half seems like a good way to go. That’s the concert program, but in the other programs, there is indeed a conscious effort to reach the people here including the

116 

F. Mouillot and D. Charrieras

larger community nearby HK. We have a long running program called Sonic Transmission Exchange Program that aims to connect people here with people overseas. It is done in a way that is very casual, doing an open call, people tell us what they want to do, we tell them about the people we have connections with, and then we try to make something happen. Since last year, we have been doing these mix tapes and sending them to radio stations overseas. They have been played on Resonance FM, BBC 3, Six Pillars, Fresh Art International, also some radio stations in Vancouver. It is very low cost for us to put together these tapes and then we reach out and say: “Hey, here are some people working with sound in Hong Kong, interested?” Q: There is a casual way to promote what is being done in HK internationally? Yeah. We should do that. We are taking Hong Kong public money. Q: You do publishing? Yes, we have one book, aimed at anybody interested in incorporating sound art and experimental music into a school curriculum. We did a two-cycle summer camp with Alain Chiu who teaches at CUHK  [the Chinese University of Hong Kong, eds.]. The summer camp tends to be college kids, we were originally thinking of this as a senior high school curriculum. We then ran a workshop for teachers to review the curriculum, thinking about what would be useful for them. Teachers can choose one of two modules for their visual arts or music class; it is a very easy to use 14-week program. We printed a whole bunch and they are quite popular; we gave them out at Sonar as well. Q: Is that with CUHK? Not really. We wrote to the Home Affairs Bureau and they funded it. One intention of that grant proposal was to make a publication at the end. If they start teaching this stuff at a high school level, it would make a big difference I think. Q: It is a response to the formalistic way of teaching music in HK? Yeah, here we are very focused on notations, the heroes, canons; it’s a legacy of the colonial music education. I don’t think it is a lack of will on the teacher’s part and I don’t think there is a lack of knowledge either. A lot of these teachers are very well informed; some come to our concerts or at least have heard of us, or our book. Teachers have a lot of teaching material thrown at them and the majority are following these traditional

8  Interview with Samson Young 

117

models. Most are not going to spend free time doing research to try to put together a curriculum; if it’s already there to download, then it is much more likely that they would use at least some of it. Q: Do you see any specific disadvantages or advantage to do what you’re doing in Hong Kong? I am pretty optimistic. I think things are okay. We are a very small community. On the HKADC funding list, there are only three groups doing similar things that are recipients. The three of us are very tight. For example, we just issued a joint statement to strike for tomorrow. Even though we are all working in a similar area, there isn’t any rivalry. If somebody approaches William at The New Music Ensemble and he thinks we would better suit their style, he would refer them to us and vice versa. CMHK and Soundpocket have been fundraising together for the past two years. Thinking of New York and the number of venues there, here there isn’t a great variety of venues for public presentation. Which has its own set of problems, at least for people who are craving more events. You may get a sense that there isn’t a very active musical sound culture, but there is a kind of alliance, say, between the field recording community and those working within electro acoustic music. I don’t think that the people organising the Shanghai Electronic Music event have much communication with any of those noise people. I think there are other art forms in Hong Kong with a longer tradition and therefore stronger presence. Sound art, experimental music and those other musical subcultures have a shorter history, but I think that there is an upward trajectory. Q: It’s interesting because what we’ve heard from people is a narrative of decline. You have a contrasting perspective. I don’t know when it used to be good. (Laughs.) Q: We do see a virtuous circle between your field and other fields, such as the contemporary art scene, which is financially thriving in Hong Kong. There is a separation of what I do personally as an artist and what CMHK does. CMHK is focused on the performative aspect of it. We have sponsored artists doing installations before, but we haven’t done a sound art exhibition like Soundpocket. I think we are still doing time-based things, which hasn’t really a symbiosis with the contemporary art world. We did invite a Taiwanese

118 

F. Mouillot and D. Charrieras

curator to Hong Kong to do a small show at Hong Kong Arts Centre during the week of Art Basel, but we thought it disastrous and haven’t done it since. Q: What do you think of recent organisations like Empty Gallery that are hard to put in a box? I think it’s great. People coming from a more event-based approach and the commercial gallery perspective; that’s fine too. The more different voices, the better; we need the variety. We have the Hong Kong Music Ensemble; they are doing great things and getting good funding and if we had more of those ensembles, even better. The city could support more than one ensemble; it could support another Empty Gallery, if somebody so wishes to make another one. Q: Recently some event organisers have moved their events across the border to Shenzhen. We have also witnessed more and more collaborations between Hong Kong-based new media artists and Shenzhen-based artists, for manufacturing but also for other things. Do you see that as an axis of development for yourself or for your organisation? There’s been lot of money thrown at this Greater Bay Area narrative, whatever you want to call it. I think it’s good that people are able to find an audience they are happy with; that understands their language, from anywhere. It’s always great for Hong Kong artists to have destinations to tour. We don’t have anything planned in the Greater Bay Area, we are busy enough already. Q: Do you think there would be an audience in Mainland  China interested in what you’re doing? I think the audience in China is very well informed. We are talking of a community of practice; these are like dots. There are glowing dots of people here and there; as these dots grow, there will be overlap. Q: What would be those places where the dots are most concentrated? Is that Beijing? In Shanghai, or Chengdu or Sichuan? I think it is difficult for an organisation to have a national outlook, owing largely to the way funding structures work right now. Anything that is done outside of Hong Kong is seen as an exchange, even if it is just over the border in Shenzhen. As an HKADC-funded group, with yearly grants, we are expected to serve mostly the local community. Of course,

8  Interview with Samson Young 

119

in the early days of Sonic Transmission, we did bilateral exchanges, not only sending people out. We did a yearlong exchange with Shanghai and another year we hooked up with Yan Jun. He recommended people to us and we sent people to him, to his living room basically. That was a fun, one of a kind thing. The rhetoric of that has to be framed in terms of the exchange program. Q: You have been running CMHK on a HKADC grant? Not at the beginning of Sonic Anchor, after two years we got our first ADC grant. ADC publishes the application details online. We started getting a one-year recurring institutional grant. We did that for a couple of years and then we got moved up to the two-year grant. This last cycle we moved up to the three-year grant. Q: What are your thoughts of the current climate in Hong Kong for the arts? The reason why people may feel things are getting worse or that not much has happened is because there is a severe lack of historicising of music here; not only in music, it is exactly the same with contemporary arts. I had not heard of Hon Chi-fun or seen a single painting of him until the Asia Society retrospective. It’s not imaginable elsewhere that such a historically important local artist has been so under-promoted. If you have a sense of what’s been happening, you will see things are moving forward; not feel like you’re at the bottom looking up. Q: There hasn’t been anybody writing in English about the history of this kind of music or sound activity in Hong Kong; it is surprising. It is a very complicated problem that has to do with the city’s relationship with its image, and to nationalism as well. Promotion of local subjects was never high on the colonial government’s agenda; nor is it for our post-colonial government. Any inquiry into having a distinct local identity is, for Hong Kong, a subject not up for discussion. We are in a very weird place.

9 Noises That No One Else Hears Cédric Maridet

Unbalanced movement of wind, creaking, crackling, rattling and rustling, asynchronous rhythm. (sound recording on minidisc, Lamma Island, Hong Kong, early 2000)

Since the early 2000’s, I have used a phonographic perspective to develop  a practice that has evolved from a musical approach, to field recording, composition and installations centred around the notions of sonic landscapes and sound as a form of knowledge and writing. This chapter describes some of my experiences around sound practice in Hong Kong from 2003 to 2009 from the perspective of someone who has been engaged with the music and contemporary art scene in Hong Kong since 2004. In its very literal understanding, the title of the text directly points to the small number of sound makers and listeners in Hong Kong during these years. These sounds and noises were simply not heard by a wide audience. It also addresses a commonly discarded category of sound, namely noise, and it questions our ability to hear it I am C. Maridet (*) Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. Charrieras, F. Mouillot (eds.), Fractured Scenes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6_9

121

122 

C. Maridet

not here talking about. The perceptual ability to hear, but the ability to describe and talk about a phenomenon for which we lack a vocabulary. How and where do people start to talk about particular sounds when such sounds do not necessarily fit a common language or a defined established aesthetic category, like musical sounds? In other words, this text poses the question of how to qualify and create a hierarchy among all of these noises. Recalling stories about people and spaces in Hong Kong from a first-­person perspective is very subjective and non-exhaustive. Yet, these are simple examples to describe people at large, the sound makers and listeners who care about and have paid attention to the practice of sound by experimenting with sound themselves under Hong Kong’s unstable DIY working conditions. In that sense, this text describes the amateurs of sound, who are constantly redefining their relationship with these noises that no one else hears.

Listening Under Unstable Conditions In approximately 2003, I started to become seriously engaged in developing a sound practice. Looking at the state of experimental music in Hong Kong at that time, it is clear that this music was only supported by a few actors, driven by passion, who were trying to make things happen. There was no real institutional support for funding or venues. In 2004, I decided to auto-produce a compilation of electronica, entitled M001 (Image 9.1). To this end, I invited a few friends based in Hong Kong, the UK and France to participate, and they provided me with some soundtracks. Not knowing anything about the scene or what I was doing at the time, I did not know where to start. A friend of mine directed me to White Noise Records to seek help with distribution. White Noise had been recently opened by three music enthusiasts---including Gary Ieong and Bruno Wong, who took an active part in the “day-to-day” management of the shop---whose taste leaned away from the mainstream and towards experimental music. The idea of opening the shop came from the fact that the trio could not find music that they were interested in Hong Kong. White Noise’s owners believed there would be people with similar taste in Hong Kong to whom they could sell the music to and with whom they could create a sense of

9  Noises That No One Else Hears 

123

Image 9.1  M001 audio CD, moneme, 2004

Image 9.2  Symposium 4H concert poster in White Noise, moneme, 2014

community around their passion for experimental music. Over the years, the owners have worked with many actors in the local scene, such as Nerve, Sin:Ned and Dickson Dee, in addition to many other international musicians such as Otomo Yoshihide, Mike Cooper, Oshihiro Hanno, Lawrence English, Kashiwa Daisuke and Efterklang, just to name a few. In January 2005, White Noise helped me organise my first live performance in their shop in Causeway Bay, during which I launched the CD, M001 (Image 9.2). I performed with my then-collaborator under the name of Symposium 4H, using a laptop and MIDI controllers. This was a similar setup as many of the concerts I had attended during a year I spent in Paris in 1998–1999. There I discovered music from Oval, Pan Sonic, the group Stock, Hausen and Walkman, Christian Fennesz, Pita or Tim Hecker (among others) through a series of concerts organised by a Parisian collective called Büro. I was personally influenced by these

124 

C. Maridet

concerts, and I was not aware of any concerts of these kinds happening in Hong Kong, hence my willingness in developing something in Hong Kong. At this first show, our audience was around 30 people. Together with label Lona Records, created and managed by musician Alok Leung, White Noise Records became one of the main actors in developing experimental electronic music, or laptop music, as it was labelled at the time.1 In 2005, this genre of music was relatively new in Hong Kong and was mainly played in intimate settings. The conditions for the experience of sound were rather minimal in the tiny store. People sat on the floor, and a simple white sheet that barely stretched far enough was used as a screen for the visuals. Apart from this Causeway Bay store, few venues were available. However, the White Noise team could occasionally secure other spaces, usually in  local artist run spaces or in independent art spaces, such as Para/Site, where they organised the Sand festival in June 2006. Under the direction of Tobias Berger and the curation of Christina Li, Para/Site hosted some rare concerts, such as those for Polish experimental musician and composer Zbigniew Karkovsky and Dickson Dee in February 2006.2 Additionally, White Noise tried to bring overseas musicians to perform in Hong Kong and treat the city as a layover venue when they were on tour in Asia. It was a way to develop a sense of community among the regular concert attendees and multiply the possibilities to confront listeners with new sounds. Also active in the scene at the time were also a few performers from Mainland China, such as FM3 from Beijing and Zen Lu from Shenzhen. In 2005 and 2006, I was invited to open a performance by Lawrence English, an Australian composer and the manager of the label Room40. White Noise also organised an improvisation set in a tiny bar in Central Soho, with some artists from the Japanese label Plop. At the time, another important space for experimenting was habitus, tucked away on the top floor of the Western Market in Sheung Wan. This  Luckily this term has not survived the next decade; at the time, it was probably symptomatic of the inability to classify such a genre of music and performance to be simply music. 2  Dickson Dee is another important actor in the development of a scene as he has imported European labels to Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan, as well as created his own label, Noise Asia. Over the years he has played different roles such as composer, performer, curator or event organiser. More information can be found at his website: https://www.dicksondee.com 1

9  Noises That No One Else Hears 

125

space started as a design collective founded by Kith Tsang Tak-ping, Tamshui, Yeelin Yeung and Miranda Tsui. The original focus of this space was to showcase independent local designers. It diversified when Yeung Yang, a then Phd candidate with an interest in sound joined the collective. At that point, they moved from a small space in Central to the Western Market. They started to organise and host mix media art projects, screenings, talks or music performances. It was there, in November 2006, that I participated in a collaborative real-time live performance with Norwegian artist HC Gilje. The event was organised in collaboration with Videotage to present a collection of films that HC Gilje made from a previous visit to Hong Kong and which were released as a DVD entitled Cityscape alongside of another DVD entitled City2City, also featuring works by HC Gilje and by Nose Chan, a video artist from Hong Kong. Both DVDs were released by Paris- and Singapore-based platform for curatorial research Lowave. At this time, HC Gilje was known as being a member of 242 Pilot, a live video ensemble with other video and software artist Kurt Ralske and Lukasz Lysakowski, who were doing a lot of collaboration with sound artists and musicians like Justin Bennet and Tim Hecker. I knew their works through the documentation of their performance in Bruxelles that was released on DVD in 2002. I remember being puzzled by the idea of having a performance involving listening in this peculiar location: the extremely noisy rooftop of Sheung Wan Market Building that is facing the Victoria harbour,  a busy flyover highway, and the nearby heliport of Sheung Tak Centre. Most of the time I experienced music (often DJs) there, the music had to be very loud in an attempt to cover the sound of the environment. To compete with the loudness was for me an impossible solution, so I proposed to only use the sound of the environment as a sound source for the performance. This idea was inspired by my way of working at the time: I would use field recordings and spend hours experimenting with my ears, using a trial and error method with different processing possible at the time, mainly using the early versions of software Ableton Live and the series of plugins Pluggo from Max/MSP.  My collaborator (Sylvain Holtermann from symposium 4H) and I then spent a whole month to set up and work on a system that could be used for a live performance, with two microphones that would capture the sounds from the environments,

126 

C. Maridet

mainly heavy sounds of traffic from the highway and bus and trams. In the end, the video and audio setup for the improvised performance was very coherent as HC Gilje was transforming images from the real-time feed of his camera facing the harbour and the sound was also processed in from the live feed coming from the microphone. Audience was thus facing a screen where images and acousmatic sound were projected coming from behind their seated position. Sonically, the performance was also about constructing a situation to listen to real sounds and their processed version together, blurring the lines between the real sounds and manipulated ones. As a result of this performance, I released another CD, entitled _habitus, which was made  under similar conditions as the performance, using the recorded sounds from the two microphones and transformed without cutting the flow of the sounds. This CD was also distributed by White Noise (Image 9.3). In 2007, as part of the habitus collective, Yeung Yang started her first curatorial project entitled in ‘mid air’.3 Different sound works by Felix Hess, Robert Iolini, Yuen Cheuk-Wa, Anson Mak, Anthony Yeung Ngor-­ wah, Kawai Shiu, Su-Mei Tse and myself (as Cedric Maridet) were installed in various locations in the city. A few years after the closing of habitus, Yeung Yang, decided to continue her research on sound practices and listening with the creation of Soundpocket, an organisation that has subsequently helped to foster and nurture new generations of local listeners and artists in a major way. Soundpocket’s first major programme was

Image 9.3  _habitus, audio CD, moneme, 2006  https://aaa.org.hk/en/collection/search/library/in-midair-sound-works-hong-kong-2007

3

9  Noises That No One Else Hears 

127

the ‘Around’ festival, in 2009. Again, many artists such as Japanese sound art pionner Akio Suzuki, Chan Kiuhong, Jaffa Laam Lam, William Lane, Yao Dajuin, Yui MIKI or Rolf Julius were invited to propose works around the multiple definition of listening. It adopted a strategy that might have been linked to Max Neuhaus’ idea of bringing the audience outside the concert hall as a way to create new locations and situations for listening. Soundpocket organised many outdoor performances and events at Mo Tat Wan on the outlying  Lamma Island to engage people with listening practices in a new environment. Prominent international sound art figures Akio Suzuki, Miki Yui, Rolf Julius and Felix Heiss were invited to become artists in residence, and they shared their works, experience and perspectives with the Hong Kong attendees. Their works might generally be perceived to be about particular sensitive practice to sound as defined by listening. Another important promoter that should be included in this list of venues is Videotage, an arts organisation that has supported video and media art since 1986. Other venues have included the Foo Tak Building, an artists’ studio with 14 floors, run by the Art and Culture Outreach (ACO) and the Lee Shau Kee Creative School under the direction of May Fung. Another more institutional but no-less important venue has been Osage Gallery run by Agnes Lin. Lin has long been a supporter of local artists through the programming in her gallery, and she has regularly organised and hosted events in which the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble and other sound artists and composers were invited to collaborate. For example, for their 2008 programme called Borders, the gallery invited composer Samson Young to create musical works that interacted with the architectural space and the art objects. In 2010, Sin:Ned performed through the same event, alongside the works of sound artist Zimoun and percussionist Louis Siu. Many cross-over events between new music, noise music and soundscape have taken place in the context of art exhibitions or through the Osage Gallery initiative, X Sigma projects. All of these actors and organisations have constantly had to find creative ways to obtain the resources needed to stage these events and to develop a community of listening amateurs. In other words, I want to point out that various porous communities, as well as different venues and promoters organised around different sound practices, like noise and

128 

C. Maridet

experimental sounds, new music and visual arts. I believe this may still be true today in some ways. Yet, all these venues created a ground for certain practices around sound to take place, as well as to support a sustained audience and the possibility to explore with difference experiences of listening through performances, artists talks, exhibitions, selling music, and other activities. It is impossible to mention all of the different events, and again, my aim is not to present an exhaustive picture. Many events and important people are missing from this discussion. However, I hope to provide a context in which to describe a situation where a few people have tried to navigate an unstable territory, and where experimental sound practices have  generally not been completely understood or addressed by many institutions. These practices have always lurked at the margins of music and visual arts. The struggles of White Noise to find performance spaces, and labels like Lona Records, are examples of how people have been driven by passion to organise different events that were sometimes more intimate, and at other times benefitted from the support of larger organisations. Together, audiences and sound makers have defined the possibilities for new encounters with sound, trying to find a potential common ground and language. In that sense, I would say that they have all been amateurs, in the positive, qualifying, definition of the term.

The Work of Amateurs The stories one could tell about the history of sound practices in Hong Kong are all about amateurs. This notion is relevant to the different actors in the experimental music ecology, like musicians, sound makers, listeners, curators and producers. Commonly, we use the term ‘amateur’ in its pejorative sense. We characterise someone who is skilful as being a professional and someone who lacks these same skills as being an amateur. Looking at the etymology of the term, many other meanings can be found. Jacqueline Lichtenstein’s typology of the term “amateur” shows how it has evolved from a “nominative, qualifying, descriptive and evaluative” definition (Lichtenstein 2008). The nominative definition points to an obsolete meaning dating from the nineteenth century when the

9  Noises That No One Else Hears 

129

word was a synonym for a dandy or dilettante. The qualifying definition hints at what it would mean to call someone “an amateur of experimental music.” This expression defines the class of an object, in this case experimental music, to which particular attention is directed. It might designate a more specific object, such as noise music or drone music, but it always encompasses a multiplicity of possibilities. This designation also refers to cultivating a taste for sound or music without the necessity of a practice. It is informed by various experiences of listening and the works of specific artists who are viewed as figures of authority. The practice of listening, as a pure aesthetic practice embedded in pleasure and knowledge formation, is central to the development of taste. In his discussion of Count Caylus, an amateur elected to the Academy of Painting and Sculpture, Jam highlighted how knowledge develops by engaging with works of art and possibly forms of practice. In his words, “for the amateur, practice is not the simple deployment of a technique and the acquirement of a know-how to match the artist, but rather the initiatory path by which, having become aware of his insufficiencies as a practitioner, he can approach the reality of a creative act and, consequently, perceive all its grandeur and mystery” (Jam 2000, p. 27). In the context of the Academy, the figure of the amateur became a qualification that did not mark any hierarchy with the status of the artist. The two other definitions Lichtenstein identified, namely descriptive and evaluative, refer to a more contemporary context in which amateurs and professionals are contrasted. Thus, from a simple description, the use of the term has shifted towards a pejorative evaluative meaning. Following the more constructive and relevant qualifying definition of the term, actors from the experimental music scene are all amateurs because they develop particular relationships and forms of engagement with sound through listening practices. By collecting various experiences with sound, these amateurs shape a sense of appreciation based on certain empirical knowledge. A sound amateur develops a practice and multiplies the possibilities for encounters with the class of objects of his/her liking, namely experimental music or sonic practices. Consequently, he or she is able to organise these experiences into a hierarchical system, and possibly develop a vocabulary. The amateur acquires the basis of a particular self-reflective attitude that is oriented toward both knowledge and

130 

C. Maridet

pleasure. Indeed, the object (here, sonic practices) and its effects are found in the performative meaning. This particular cultivation of listening and attention to sound is what Pierre Schaeffer promoted in his theory of acoulogy, and more specifically through his notion of the primacy of the ear (Schaeffer 1957, 1966). This expression should not be understood as a restrictive concept confined to a certain musical taste, but one that points to the multiple possibilities offered by a curious ear. The experimental attitude of the listener is important. In his study of taste, Antoine Hennion pointed out the importance of a practice developed over time and its consequences because the amateur constantly challenges and re-invents his or her relationship with sound. Indeed, Hennion defined different actors in the process of forming taste. Among them, he highlighted the sense of a collective as a general framework, and spatiotemporal conditions (for example, concerts or performances create a specific ritual). Of course, the specificities of sound are uncovered by the amateurs’ listening activities. More importantly, Hennion described the amateur as a “virtuoso of aesthetic, technical, mental and embodied experimentation” (Hennion 2003, p. 291). As such, the amateurs may redefine the relationship between biological, technical and social organs. They can produce what Stiegler labelled a noetic ear, defined through an organological montage of specific listening practices, social practices, such as concerts and performances, and particular techniques involved in listening or sound making. He remarked on this as follows: Therein it appears that a noetic organ always forms a system with one or several other organs that are themselves as such noetic, and that what links them passes outside the body, through a social body that is woven by a tekhnē: the tongue with the hand of the writer, the eye with the hand of the painter, the ear with the hand and the eye of the musician and so on – all of which is articulated by words, papers, brushes, pianos and other instruments (Stiegler 2011, p. 228). All of the different actors involved in the development of sound practices in Hong Kong took part in a similar organological montage, working in a system involving their listening bodies and experimenting with different techniques, social and institutional organisations. Soundpocket is a good example of how a new social organisation is created around an exploration of listening, and how it  can generate new possibilities to

9  Noises That No One Else Hears 

131

define an ear though the various experiences with artists coming from multiple horizons and practices. Their educative program engaging with various schools around Hong Kong is also of a great importance. It is interesting to note that sound art education has been almost inexistent in tertiary education and art institutions apart from courses about sound and film. Maybe the first initiative has been the course ‘Sonic Arts & the History of Sounds and Noises’ created by Dr. Linda Lai in 2014 that she and I co-designed and co-taught at the School of Creative Media when I was conducting my Phd on listening aesthetics. I believe this course has contributed to nurture new interests in sound practices as some of our students – Fiona Lee, Edwin Lo, Choi Sai Ho or Bjorn Ho to name a few – have continued to develop their own sound practices. Many of the encounters with sound that have been described herein have laid the foundation for the growth and nurturing of amateurs by multiplying the possibilities for listening situations and developing educative programs in various contexts such as secondary or tertiary institutions and artists’ public talks. This has not only helped to reveal the growing number of local young practitioners but also to illustrate individuals’ constant attempts to arrange events. Armed with a better understanding and knowledge, the audience has been growing and there are maybe more spaces, both independent and institutional, that dedicate their programs, either partially or completely,  to sound practices. It is gratifying to see many new initiatives that have emerged, spaces like Twenty Alpha, SAAL, Floating Projects, Empty Gallery or Taikwun. In the end, what is at stake is the possibility for audiences and sound practitioners to experiment, explore and reflect on their listening as a way to creatively refine and challenge their definition of taste and ways of being in the world.

References Hennion, A. (2003). Ce que ne Disent pas les Chiffres… Vers une Pragmatique du Goût. In T. Donnat (Ed.), Le(s) Public(s) de la Culture. Politiques Publiques et Equipements Culturels (pp. 287–301). Paris: Presses de Sciences Po.

132 

C. Maridet

Jam, J.  L. (2000). Caylus, l’Amateur Crépusculaire. In J.  L. Jam (Ed.), Les Divertissements Utiles: Des Amateurs au XVIIIè Siècle (pp. 21–37). Clermont-­ Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise-Pascal. Lichtenstein, J. (2008). Les Figures de l’Amateurs. L’Institut de Recherche et d’Innovation, Centre Pompidou. web.iri.centrepompidou.fr/fonds/seminaires/seminaire/detail/1. Accessed Apr 2019. Schaeffer, P. (1957). Vers une Musique Expérimentale. Revue musicale (No. 236). Paris: Ed. Richard-Masse. Schaeffer, P. (1966). Traité des Objets Musicaux. Essai interdisciplines. Paris: Seuil. Stiegler, B. (2011). The Tongue of the Eye: What ‘Art History’ Means. In J. Khalip & R. Mitchell (Eds.), Releasing the Image: From Literature to New Media. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

10 In Crevices, Stairwells, and Ever-­ Changing Tides: A Personal Reflection on Holding Up a Walking and Listening Body Yang Yeung

Pausing longer than planned for. Walking in a rhythm stranger than could be imagined. Listening is called for.

1 London. June 28. Winds were dry. Clouds were light. It was way before the morning rush hours I arrived at the Northeastern part of the city. Sunlight was starting to warm everything up. I heard something familiar flowing past me. A double decker—slimmer and smaller than those in Hong Kong, its engine sounding chubbier. Lack of sleep made my hearing a little blunt. Everything was bubbly. I drifted back to Hong Kong, a recent past.

Y. Yeung (*) Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. Charrieras, F. Mouillot (eds.), Fractured Scenes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6_10

133

134 

Y. Yeung

2 We gathered at 6 am in a dai pai dong in Shatin to have breakfast together before artist Fiona Lee led us onto a walk for listening. We moved from human hubbub to the rare quietude of the shopping mall. Instead of being crowded with eager shoppers, the mall is now described by our footsteps and echoes. Out in the open air, we took small paths through a park along the riverfront. Gradually, we moved into the plaza of a public housing estate. We followed the artist and went up to a stone wall roughly four-feet high. It was wide enough for one person to pass. We had to walk in single file. I am afraid of height. I forced myself and walked on. The idea of “sound walk” at that point to me made little sense. As fear intervened, there was only the feeling of my heart pounding. I became disconnected with the world and was squeezed into a small bundle of impulses. Back on the ground, the artist had us gather around a tree. She invited us to take turns to put our ears to it and listen. The tree was home for many ants—big black ones. Would I become their habitat, too? Another kind of fear. I did as I was told. I didn’t think I heard anything. Years later, I was with a different group visiting Nam Sang Wai. The leader of the group was a teacher, an activist, an ecologist and a farmer. He told us about the story of the British colonial government bringing in Eucalyptus trees to the area just to make it green, without considering their relation to birds’ habitat and the trees’ combustibility. Like Lee, he asked that we put our ears to a trunk of our choice and listen. He suggested slimmer ones. I heard water flowing. He said it was the trees drawing underground water to nourish themselves. I have not forgotten the murmurs since.

3 The fountain. Its jet is a little lame, though it is not to blame. It cares less being dwarfed by the skyward structures around it. The water keeps flowing. Around it is a plaza with steps on one end, linking two main roads

10  In Crevices, Stairwells, and Ever-Changing Tides: A Personal… 

135

in Central. This was where we gathered. Artists Susi Law and Sin-yu Tsang suggested that we choose any place in the plaza to be in, standing or sitting, and lend attention to the water. Near the fountain was a traffic island: triangular in shape, but not in manner of reception. It was only open on two sides. We needed to stand as a group of a dozen on the island. It didn’t matter which side we chose to turn our bodies, but our eyes had to be closed, as the artists instructed. All of a sudden, engines roared with more intensity. We were in their sounds’ way. We were in them and with them. The longer we stayed, the easier it became to realize the armour we routinely put on to fight street battles of sorts every day. In the moment, it was no longer necessary. In designing these listening exercises, Law questioned how social and public spaces were regulated to render individual listening bodies’ idiosyncrasies, desires, and aspirations irrelevant to public well-being. To connect with what might be missing, she looked up: “I particularly like listening to what comes from above. Imagine having ears on our heads.”1 Law told me about having worked with wind when she was studying art in Bergen. The live performance was a composition of opening and closing windows and doors of a Norwegian wooden house. The performance made the house breathe. Collaborating artist Tsang is a pianist and piano teacher. She had been acting upon urban spaces to sound out materials that made up the built environment. In one live action, for instance, she walked with one foot in a high-heel and another in a flat-heel shoe at Pottinger Street in Central. In a solo exhibition entitled Unintentional Pause, Tsang made an installation of water flowing through narrow, steel troughs in a gallery. Underneath the troughs were small, dysfunctional wheeled carts moving back and forth. Everything in the gallery was restless. Water drew the baseline rhythm. In Law and Tsang’s conceptualization of the sound walk, listening to how water and air move is one reason for pausing in the city. Buildings may be stubbornly standing still, but there is always something else moving between them—in the drains, in the air… There is also the sea. In the sound walk, the artists chose the ferry rather than the bus or subway to  Interview of Susi Law by Yang Yeung, May 10, 2017.

1

136 

Y. Yeung

cross the harbor. Law says, “On the ferry, some of us chose to stay close to the engine and forced ourselves to receive the mix of smell and sound, which caused some anxiety.”2 Is this anxiety similar to that resulting from the participants standing on the small traffic island? I am not sure, but whereas in conventional everyday routines, these anxieties might be suppressed in order to move on, in the sound walks, they are acknowledged—it’s up to each individual to embrace it, confront it, question it, or be with it. An intentional pause. An unintentional anxiety. Law and Tsang invited us to respond.

4 Wai-lam So and I met up in Tokamachi on a hot summer day.3 She showed me around what had been her neighborhood for three weeks. She constantly paused at houses with water flowing around them. In channels no more than one foot wide, water would be bent by the curvature of a stone, or pushed through a gauze. It rippled and glistened in ways it could not have if it were flat and calm as a body contained in wider and flatter structures. As pedestrians, we walked and listened, discovered and forgot, and started all over again, circuitously. We meandered through the streets like a brook would. We were in a sound walk. In Hong Kong, Wai-lam So made a self-directed walk in the Northeastern village of Ping Che. It was a series of listening “stations” in the village—under a tree, near a house falling apart with a view of the mountains at a distance, in an old school… All signs and instructions were displayed on site, printed on fabric, hung loosely so they followed the wind. Visitors were invited to listen with bare ears. This became a model for Soundpocket’s Echigo-Tsumari Triennale self-directed sound walk, which offered five points for pausing to listen: a bus stop on a main road, an empty swimming pool, a corner at the backdoor of the Hong  Interview of Susi Law by Yang Yeung, May 10, 2017.  Wai-lam So was artist-in-residence at the Hong Kong House at Echigo-Tsumari, with Soundpocket curating the residency by invitation of the Art Promotion Office, Leisure and Cultural Services Department of the government of Hong Kong. 2 3

10  In Crevices, Stairwells, and Ever-Changing Tides: A Personal… 

137

Kong House gallery, under a tree overlooking the Shimo River, and at the entrance of an old theatre building. Are these “places”? Anthropologist Tim Ingold argues that to understand sound and listening in relation to placement is mis-directed. Sound is not an object out there; instead, to listen is to be in sound.4 In Wai-lam So’s conceptualization, putting sound in place and as place is not entirely irrelevant, though inadequate in understanding the activity of listening. She includes little of the established meanings of places she works with in the brief for listeners, focusing more on raising the listener’s awareness of coming into a particular situation in his/her own time. The exercises do not register established meanings such as place-names, facts of persons, historical events, and so on, although listeners may bring in personal epistemologies into the listening moment in situ at their own pace. Wai-­ lam So prioritizes perceptual shifts that create a continuance between the listening body and the world it is in. Meaning making may involve place making but is not limited by it; it becomes an activity that begins over and again. In shifting along a spectrum of intimacies and distances in relation to other listening bodies, the listener becomes aware of his/her social presence: “Making the sound walks made me realize we do need a private space; if the bodies stand together, if they are too close to each other, it’s harder to concentrate on oneself.”5 In Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics, Shannon Jackson presents the idea of mobility as a form of social support that artists offer in public. According to Jackson, “the alteration in public mobility . . . brings the enabling conditions of mobility into view.” New possibilities for “‘being in space’ that had always been there” could be registered.6 Wai-lam So speaks of her experience: “Time is suspended; there is no rush, and no calculation.” In enabling the conditions of mobility, Wai-­ lam So makes it possible for listeners to identify these conditions as needs in their social lives, for oneself and for others.

 Tim Ingold, Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. Oxon: Routledge. 2011, p. 137. 5  Interview of Wai-lam So by Yang Yeung, May 15, 2017. 6  Shannon Jackson, Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics. Oxon: Routledge. 2011, p. 5. 4

138 

Y. Yeung

5 To Kwa Wan: a mix of industrial and residential structures, a neighbourhood by the sea. Close to the old flight path in Kowloon City, Tokwawan presents an undulating skyline—new buildings could go up to a high of 70 storeys, industrial buildings up to 20, and ‘tong laus’ (old Chinese buildings) from 5 to 9. Sin-yu Tsang and Chun-hoi Wong led us through the streets and up the steep staircases of a line of ‘tong laus’ to their rooftops. Wong speaks of his experience designing the walk in To Kwa Wan with Tsang: “What happened in the transition between one space and the other was impressive. For instance, we had to crouch in the pavilion in the park and listen to what lies between the stone pillars. We could hear the phasing of the waves. One sound with a particular texture us affected by other things. We also emphasized taking action to place our ears physically in places we normally don’t.”7 His reflection focuses on changing the habits of the pedestrian body, to make it attentive to layers of reality that might not be immediately accessible to everyday habits. “The concentration is quite fluid. Sometimes, it shifts to something I don’t really know is concentration or not.”8 One could perceive it but may not be able to control all of it. Individual choice in this case is a complex decision—it is not a simple response to utilitarian calculations. Wong shares Wai-lam So’s perception of the sound walk: “As participant, I had the chance to be immersed in sound. It is powerful as a physical barrier that is made to separate self from the world. . . . I became an individual entity; each of us is different. Sound walk opens this up. I don’t have to worry about those around me, although being aware that we are together. It’s a ‘light’ sense of independence, which does not require the planting of a flag, or the explanation to others who I am. Being slow also impressed upon me.”9 This independence is not isolation, not insulation, not egotism. It arises out of acknowledging being as both solitary and social.  Interview of Chun-hoi Wong by Yang Yeung, May 15, 2017.  Interview of Chun-hoi Wong by Yang Yeung, May 15, 2017. 9  Interview of Chun-hoi Wong by Yang Yeung, May 15, 2017. 7 8

10  In Crevices, Stairwells, and Ever-Changing Tides: A Personal… 

139

6 I first began reflecting on the sound walks artists organize in relation to Martha Nussbaum’s ideas on art and citizenship. In Cultivating Humanity, A Classical Defence of Reform in Liberal Education, Nussbaum argues how such narrative art as literature encourages narrative imagination that has a salient role “in shaping our understanding of the people around us”. She evaluates how storytelling in works of literature prepares for “moral interaction” between citizens,10 cultivating “habits of empathy and conjecture”, “a sympathetic responsiveness to another’s needs”, and ways of understanding how “circumstances shape those needs, while respecting separateness and privacy.”11 All these are “pertinent to decisions we must make as citizens.”12 I wondered if her ideas would be relevant to understanding the sound walks created by Law, Wong, Tsang, and Wai-lam So, when almost no story telling that makes use of language is involved. Could there be other ways these activities, as provisional and open-ended in presenting specific goods in public life as they are, manifest a particular quality of citizenship? Do they contribute to its well-being? In reviewing my own experience and the artists’ reflection on the walks as creators and participants, I find evidence that affirms the role of imagination in public life. While it is different from the kind of narrative imagination Nussbaum addresses, it enables questions that could be asked among citizens regarding modes of inhabiting the streets and public space and habits of sharing time. The sound walks open up pedagogical spaces for learning about our needs and others’ needs.

 Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity, A Classical Defence of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1998, p. 90. 11  Ibid., p. 88. 12  Ibid. 10

140 

Y. Yeung

7 I once had a conversation with an artist friend about why we love watching fireworks. Which one is the draw: the depth of the night sky, the sparks that splash, spill and fall? Or is it the involuntary exclamations liberating ourselves from ourselves, that drown us in their magic? Perhaps to be together as if right under the path of the sparks offer help in re-orienting standing bodies on the streets—we look up, and receive the open air. In a similar way, listening re-orientates walking bodies on the streets—we come close, and receive the bent air.13 In analyzing walking as a core human activity, Ingold argues that “a way of walking does not merely express thoughts and feelings that have already been imparted through an education in cultural precepts and proprieties. It is itself a way of thinking and of feeling, through which, in the practice of pedestrian movement, these cultural forms are continually generated.”14 It is about making one’s way “through a world-in-formation, in a movement that is both rhythmically resonant with the movements of others around us – whose journeys we share or whose paths we cross  – and open-ended, having neither a point of origin nor any final destination.”15 In this light, a “public life” constituted in and as walking is one that focuses not on accomplishment, but the ability and potential to accomplish, oriented towards the future.

Appendix

 “bent air” is a phrase inspired by Cedric Maridet’s project “Bending the Air, Again”, commissioned by The Library by Soundpocket in 2014. 14  Tim Ingold and Jo Vergunst (eds.) Ways of Walking: Anthropological Studies of Creativity and Perception. Ashgate: Routledge. 2008, p. 2. 15  Ibid. 13

Table 10.1  This table indicates select sound walks Soundpocket has organized since its founding up to the year 2018 (excluding commissioned ones by the Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble) Year & title

Places

Leaders/artists

Collaborators

2010, Walk for Silence

Wanchai

Susi Law, Soundpocket

World Listening Day (WLD) (July 18, 2010)

2010, Around sound art festival 2010 Sept, Otodate 2010 Oct 10, Otodate 2011, July 17, 2011

1. Mount Davis; 2. Central

Dajuin Yao

Sheung Wan

Akio Suzuki and Soundpocket Soundpocket as silent docent Susi Law, Sin-yu Tsang, Soundpocket Sin-yu Tsang and Chun-hoi Wong

Mount Davis etc. Sheung Wan to Tsim Sha Tsui Kowloon Park Tokwawan

2012 Bring your own ears:  An excursion to Tokwawan 2012, May 17–20, Guided sound walk for ART HK 12 LE SON DE VIPs by artist L’ART (THE Cedric Maridet SOUND OF ART) 2013, Big Ears Guided sound walks developed for high school students 2013, Feb 16 Motat, Lamma 2014/15

2014/15

2018

2018

WLD (July 17, 2011) ARTHK VIP Program

Cedric Maridet

ARTHK VIP Program

Chun-sing Tse Sin-yu Tsang

OXFAM

Mike Cooper

The Library by Soundpocket

Sui-fong Yim Mentorship public workshop x 4 walks led by local artists Sham Sui Po sound walk with HKBU MVA students Solomon Yu, Mentorship public Kai-chung Lee, workshop x 4 Fuk-kuen Wong, walks led by local Samson Cheung artists In one ear write out Sai-lok Chan and the other artist-mentors and mentees Soundpocket Sound Walk – sounds telling future

Mentorship Program public program New Vision Arts Festival

Part Two, Take 3: Individual Case Studies in Indie-­Rock/Indie-Pop and Electronic Music

11 From Indie to Underground: The Hong Kong DIY Rock Scene in the Post-Hidden Agenda Era Ahkok Chun-kwok Wong

A skinny man with fire-red hair, misaligned teeth, roughly in his late twenties, is singing at the top of his lungs. He is the vocalist of tonight’s headliner, Punk Rocker Labour Union from Tokyo, Japan. The band is touring in East Asia, performing at some of the most unusual sites. Here we are, at the top floor in one of the old industrial buildings in Hong Kong, where a communal living hub is shared by many local musicians and artists. It’s around 1500 square feet, smoky, dimly lit, zines, and donation box are placed at the entrance. There is no stage; performers and audiences are divided up by on-floor sound monitors, and sometimes even this boundary disappears, when they deliberately “invade” each other’s space. According to the regulation for industrial buildings, none of this communal living, music performance, or casual use of marijuana and other substances is considered legal. If everything were operated by the book, the band would have to find a government-approved music venue and apply for a working visa for foreign visitors in order to gain permission for performing in Hong Kong. And usually, we would A. C.-k. Wong (*) City University of London, London, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. Charrieras, F. Mouillot (eds.), Fractured Scenes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6_11

145

146 

A. C.-k. Wong

have to consume alcohol outside of these approved venues. Although this punk show was not advertised or even mentioned on social media, about a hundred audiences still were able to find their way here and, apparently enjoying it even more because of the exclusiveness. From what friends I bumped into at the event told me, there are roughly ten spaces like this, operating illegally at the time of writing. It is an unforgettable night in May 2019. I have been active in the Hong Kong independent music scene for twenty years, but tonight, all of a sudden, I realised the term independent music does not fit the description. For lack of a better word, I’m truly participating in an underground music movement. But how did all these music lovers and I ended up in this underground music space on top of a factory building? What were the circumstances that contribute to the growth of these hidden and illegal spaces? These questions triggered flashbacks of the conservation and cultural activism that I dedicated myself to for the last decade and prompted me to reconsider the relationship between music activism and the present Hong Kong  governance as it pertains to the arts. This  phenomenon, what I consider to be a cultural turn, demands a careful and rigorous articulation, which, to my knowledge, no one has attempted before. A couple of weeks later, I was invited by Tokyo University of the Arts for a special seminar, which was organised by my long-time anarchist friend Kenichiro Egami and supported by professor Mori Yoshitaka. Not long before the invitation, I published an article for the Hong Kong newspaper MingPao about the underground music scene in Hong Kong. My contributed article was titled “Preliminary Exploration of the Hong Kong Local Music Scene in a ‘Post-Hidden Agenda’ Period” (Wong, MingPao, 2019), and it became the backbone of my seminar in Tokyo. In this chapter, it is my hope to capture the essence of the previous publication and seminar and to further elaborate on and re-adjust some important critiques and arguments. As musicologist Stephen Graham suggests, the terms “independent” or “underground” music commonly loosely apply to cultural spaces identified as outside of classical and mainstream genres (Graham 2012). In his book Sounds of the Underground, he defines “underground music” as various forms of music making, such as noise, free improvisation, and extreme metal, which generally generates small profits, noisy and exploratory in

11  From Indie to Underground: The Hong Kong DIY Rock Scene… 

147

sound, and largely independent from both the mainstream or high art market (Graham 2016). Despite the multiple uses of the term, Graham’s main interest is in groups or organisations that display a “total aesthetic, cultural, and practical separation from mainstream culture” (Graham 2012, p. 15). Graham contends that a political dimension (for instance the radical anti-capitalist view that some punk music displays) is sometimes present in the underground music he examines, but it is neither central nor ‘definitionally binding’ to his definition of underground (Graham 2012, pp. 23–24). From this perspective, “independent music” and “underground music” might appear as interchangeable in describing musical activities across numerous genres which fall into similar economic and media constraints: underground means independent from canonical aesthetics, and from mainstream institutions, including those pertaining to production and distribution circuits (Graham 2012, p. 24). While the definition is completely convincing within his sites of research, which are largely based in Scotland, England, and the USA, I argue this interchangeability is site-specific and could lead to limitations in understanding how different forms of non-mainstream and non-classical music culture operate differently under individual state control. In this text, I want to propose a new use of the concept of underground in the current Hong Kong socio-economic and political context. Graham’s observations of, among other underground scenes, extreme metal remind me of the stories I heard regarding the organisation of extreme metal events in Asia, which functions as a suitable demonstration for my general argument. While participating in an Asian independent culture research project led by Korea curator/researcher Ryu Soung-Hyo in 2013, I met Yew Cheong, founder of Penang Island live house Soundmaker. Cheong told me stories about how organising black-­ metal shows could upset the Islamic fundamentalist authorities which actively cracks down on such events (personal communication, August 2013). Fast forwarding to spring 2019, during my visit in Lithe House, a famous independent live house in Singapore, founder Anvea Chieu mentioned all lyrical contents must first go through inspection from the Media Development Authority for the ‘restriction of hate speech’ and to ‘maintain harmony in race and religion’ (personal communication, April 2019). A list to illustrate songs with offensive lyrics was distributed in

148 

A. C.-k. Wong

Parliament and released on Facebook by Workers’ Party MP Chen Show Mao almost at the same time I met Chieu. The list mostly consisted of Western mainstream pop music, such as Ariana Grande’s “God Is a Woman” and Lady Gaga’s “Judas”, to name a few. That is why I was not at all surprised when I discovered Swedish death-metal band Watain Live was banned from performing in Singapore with the critique of “denigrating religions and promoting violence” (Reuters 2019). It seems to me, while underground music in Scotland, England, and the USA exists, the term ‘underground music’ takes on a different connotation under state suppression. The term consists of the ability to precisely indicate these struggles, because in such social condition of political constrain, these music activities have to literally operate under the administrative ground in order to hide from a government’s interference or even punishment. In this chapter, I deliberately maintain a distinction between “independent music” and “underground music” precisely for this reason. To me, from a socio-musicological standpoint and within specific social contexts, these terms are not interchangeable. Independent music is generally used to describe music produced independently from commercial record labels or their subsidiaries, a counter-cultural act against the global big four (or five) corporations dominating the majority of the world’s music market. Studies of independent music usually highlight the essence of music practice as an alternative choice, an autonomous, “do-it-yourself ” approach to recording, publishing, and consuming music, with more limited resources and consumption than major labels and mainstream music market (including but not limited to Bourdieu 1996; Harris 2000; Hesmondhalgh 1997; Hodkinson 2002; Kruse 2010; Strachan 2007). From the above case studies of extreme metal in Malaysia and Singapore, the term “underground music” is more apt for the fact that such musical activities are not only limited by resources, but also restricted by the authorities for economic and political reasons. Under oppressive actions, usually by an authoritarian or totalitarian regime, a slightly different meaning for “underground music” can be uncovered. In other words, my attempt at illustrating the transformation of a portion of Hong Kong’s independent rock music scene into a much more underground set of social activities is a phenomenon which reflects the perception of social and political changes by some of the scene’s actors. It is for the sake of

11  From Indie to Underground: The Hong Kong DIY Rock Scene… 

149

self-protection from intervention by the authorities that this indie scene gradually manoeuvred to somewhere more hidden, more underground. I would like to begin with an auto-ethnography of an independent music scene in Hong Kong from the 2000s, in relation to the transition of cultural and art spaces in the Kwun Tong industrial district where I had spent over a decade living and fighting for its recognition and preservation. This district was an important place for nourishing autonomous culture and art in Hong Kong in the 2000s, and the (in)famous music venue Hidden Agenda is only one part of this cultural movement. Hidden Agenda became a convenient case study of this bigger cultural turn because of the media attention it received from organising and participating in social movements. I was an active member of Hidden Agenda, and I also facilitate countless social actions for the wellbeing of the local music scene. However, it is my belief that scrutinising other independent music venues operating within this era could reveal a bigger and clearer picture regarding Hong Kong’s social and political transformation. Therefore, the “Post-Hidden Agenda” in the title has another layer of meaning; it is the calling of a thorough investigation of the independent music scene and the social condition in Hong Kong that nourished and failed different musical spaces. While I’m empirically limited to my own participation in one particular live house, in the last decade, spaces like XXX, Beating Heart, Backstage, Musician Area, and Strategic Sound (the last two operated in Kwun Tong industrial buildings), just to name a few, had the potential to flourish but they ultimately disappeared for different reasons. The story of Hidden Agenda has been featured relatively widely in both the local and international popular press (Cheung 2018; Ives 2017; Lord 2018 among others), and the rest of the vanished spaces are not mentioned as much as they deserved, if not completely forgotten.

An Art Village Born in an Industrial Zone I lived in the Kwun Tong industrial district for over ten years. Kwun Tong is located on the east side of the Kowloon peninsula and is a factory and warehouse district lined with more than 300 industrial buildings developed under large-scale city planning in the 1960s. The area was once a

150 

A. C.-k. Wong

centre of Hong Kong’s industry, transportation and commerce, but starting in the late 1980s, as the manufacturing industry gradually moved to mainland China, industry hollowed out and declined. Then in the 1990s, young artists, musicians, and cultural workers—myself included—were attracted by cheap rent and large spaces; we experienced this cultural autonomy when government and real estate investors did not have plans for these vacant buildings. Since then, Kwun Tong industrial district has formed a unique urban community with a variety of spatial practice, including culture and arts, but also small-scale business such as traditional candy factories, wrestling gyms and indoor soccer stadiums, and collective illegal housing for workers. These diverse and heterogeneous communities could be called the “Kwun Tong’s Industrial Art Village”. In 2013, I collaborated with Hong Kong music researcher Dr Anson Mak Hoi-shan on an online/publishing project called “From the Factories” (Mak 2015), which surveyed thirty-five art and cultural spaces scattered around the industrial district, and conducted interviews with operators (covering the purpose, the rent, the area, what problems they face, etc.). Also, in “Rethinking Poverty and Art: A Decade in Kwun Tong’s Industrial Art Village”, I describe the life in the factory unit “Yeung 58”1 where I have lived (Wong 2014). I focus on the use of the space of the people who settled in the building, their lives, their labour, and the mutually beneficial relationships they are engaged in. For example, a relationship between young musicians and an elderly woman who regularly visited the building to collect waste. For the woman, who came to collect empty cans, the young musicians who lived in the building gave her large quantity of beer cans regularly, the building guards kept watching her carts and other personal belongings, and the printing workers provided her with cardboard boxes. In these small daily exchanges, there was a network of mutual aid to counterbalance the hard life in Hong Kong. We called artists who moved to an industrial building and worked in shared studios “factory artists”, and they became vital for this unique cultural system within emptied out industrial buildings.

 Yeung 58 referring to the unit on the eighth floor of Yeung Yiu Chung No. 5 Industrial Building.

1

11  From Indie to Underground: The Hong Kong DIY Rock Scene… 

151

Cultural Revitalisation as Social Cleansing The industrial building enjoyed this autonomous character from the 1990s to 2010s. In Hong Kong, it is illegal to live in an industrial building, and the activities happening there are often, from a legal perspective, in a grey area. Legally, industrial buildings are defined as places for “manufacturing goods” and are not residential spaces. However, since the late 1980s, due to the relocation of the manufacturing industries in China, the landlords were happy to have any kind of tenants with whom they could work a tacit contract. In the event of periodic inspections by the Lands Department, however, most of the landlords could terminate the contract to avoid being fined. As a result, the tenants often had to relocate on short notice. And even if the tenant’s business wasn’t flagged by the government, the expensive and fluid real estate market could lead to a very steep rent increase after the usual two years lease term ended. Like squatters (illegal occupants) occupying factory buildings in North America and Europe, we occupied the premises illegally, and we paid rent (albeit lower compared to rent in commercial buildings). Within this period, various cultural spaces were created in industrial buildings, while the government considered illegal to use these buildings to other ends than “manufacturing”. In other words, for the authority, arts and culture were not considered as “manufacturing”, which I found paradoxical. How could the government treat arts and culture as the new cash cow, naming them—like in many other global cities—the “creative industry” (Hong Kong Ideas Centre 2009), but at the same time declare illegal use of industrial buildings by artists who occupied these spaces for making art? The relationship between the industrial buildings and arts and culture development has changed further since 2010. That year, the Hong Kong government launched a redevelopment project called “Industrial Building Revitalization Scheme”2 and in 2012, the Hong Kong

 Industrial Building Revitalization Scheme was announced by the government of Hong Kong in 2009. According to the authority, the aims of the scheme are to provide more floor spaces for suitable uses in order to meet Hong Kong’s changing social and economic needs. The scheme was implemented since April 1, 2010. 2

152 

A. C.-k. Wong

Development Council launched “Energizing Kowloon East”3 specifically for the Kwun Tong region. What happened here was actually a large-scale redevelopment of Kwun Tong. The residential areas, traditional markets, and communities besides the industrial area were being wiped out in the name of “revitalisation of the local community”. In the 2010s, the postindustrial urban theory of Richard Florida (Florida 2004) enjoyed a large popularity in the urban policy circles and “creativity” could be branded as a new force powering the global neo-liberal market. The large-scale redevelopment of Kwun Tong was positioned as the second biggest central business district (CBD) project, right after Central, already among the most unaffordable business district in the world. By supporting cultural, artistic, and other creative industries, the project of redevelopment could then raise the real estate value of the entire district and attract further investments. Under the leadership of the Hong Kong Development Council, various cultural projects and art events were planned in Kwun Tong, as well as dozens of mural painting project by graffiti artists. Ironically, the local, original Kwun Tong creative hub’s survival gradually came under serious threat. The less financially stable artists who made up this grassroots hub did not benefit from the “revitalisation” scheme and also got gradually pushed away due to rent increase, stricter regulations, and various legal crackdowns.

Hidden Agenda (2009~2017) Hidden Agenda is a live house4 that emerged, grew, and disappeared in Kwun Tong as the redevelopment around this industrial building was happening. It was created in 2009 by independent music lovers who lived in Choy Lee Industrial Building. In the beginning, it was only a shared space for rehearsal, gathering, and communal living. But due to the fact that it was spacious, local musicians would bring their own music equipment into the space and used it for organising public performances.  Energizing Kowloon East scheme is to advocate the transformation of Kwun Tong into the second central business district (CBD) in Hong Kong, after Central. 4  Live house is a term originated in Japan, meaning music venue featuring live music. In this chapter, live house is a general term I use to describe music venues in Asia. 3

11  From Indie to Underground: The Hong Kong DIY Rock Scene… 

153

Overnight, it became a live house. The venue relocated three times over the course of its existence, each time expanding in size, until it closed permanently in 2017. At first, I was a local audience and performer that benefitted from this informal live house. I got more seriously involved with Hidden Agenda after it was first evicted, and became part of its operating “crew” in phases 2 and 3 (between approximately 2010 and 2015). My main role was dealing with the police and government bureaus. The Hong Kong police have a “Police-Citizens” Affairs Section’ as a crowd control unit and police public relations promotor. I was considered to be in charge of the “Citizens-Police Affairs Section” in Hidden Agenda. In Hong Kong, it is necessary to obtain a business licence or a liquor sales licence to operate a live house, but Hidden Agenda continued to operate without any permits. If the legal and facility standards required for business licences were to be met, we could only start our business in a commercial building. The rent and expenses would have been much heavier, and it would have been impossible for Hidden Agenda, geared towards the smaller end of the independent music scene, to survive without being turned into a commercial venue. The first eviction was due to the sale of the building where Hidden Agenda was located. After moving to the next location, we were forced to move out by the government due to a licensing issue. In 2010, we led a media campaign against excessive regulation and skyrocketing rents, pointing at the deleterious effects of the government-sponsored redevelopment project. In addition to several demonstrations and petitions, we launched the “RIP (Revitalisation Independent Partnership)” project, which sought to reach out to the public through publications, help the victims of evictions, meet with officials, and organise regular tour for the public to understand the thriving creative community in Kwun Tong. The project also put into question the use of the term “revitalisation”. Semantically, the term revitalisation involves that part of the city lost its vitality. In Kwun Tong, there was already an independent cultural community that was very much alive and that depended on industrial buildings, and the majority of its members felt that a top-down revitalisation through government and corporate intervention was not necessary. One argument that could be made in this context is that the term “revitalisation” (much like “gentrification”) dissimulates speculative large-scale

154 

A. C.-k. Wong

redevelopment whose goal is to get rid of potentially less desirable existing communities. The 2010 “Revitalised While Being Alive” demonstration (生勾勾被 活化大遊行), carried out by the RIP project, was the first action that brought together groups and individuals from Hong Kong who had previously worked in different areas—from art, music, and drama to civic movements—to collaborate on the common issue of “redevelopment”. This was the beginning of a sustainable cooperative relationship and led to a sustained articulation between cultural expression and social movements in Hong Kong. The demonstration, which was attended by about 500 persons, featured a large number of artists marching to the Art Development Council, singing, dancing, playing drums, and giving speeches as they headed towards the office buildings. Members of Hidden Agenda were carrying the front door that was disassembled from the closed venue in Choy Lee Industrial Building. This front door acted as a portable shrine and was brought to the council’s representatives covered with the petition by supporters. The Art Development Council was asked to take care of the door until Hidden Agenda found a permanent place to resettle. Interestingly, the door was displayed at the Hong Kong Pavilion of the Venetian Architecture Biennale in 2012. Hidden Agenda’s music activities were mentioned in the exhibition plan, which also promoted the notion of creative and cultural aspect of Kwun Tong, but the struggles and anti-development activism were never mentioned to the international media. In order to send a message to the world, a documentary called Hidden Agenda the Movie (Hidden Agenda Live House 2015a, b, c) as produced with some of the funds received from taking part of the Biennale. The documentary was presented together with the torn entrance door, and numerous screenings have been organised around the world. It is now on YouTube for free viewing. The second relocation site also faced problems with its entertainment licences, and as a result of our high-profiled media campaign, it became widely known to the public. It became so famous that the mainstream media was calling it “Hong Kong Coliseum for independent music”.5 I  The Hong Kong Coliseum, commonly known as the Hung Hom Coliseum, is the most popular stadium for local mainstream popular music known as “Cantopop”. 5

11  From Indie to Underground: The Hong Kong DIY Rock Scene… 

155

left in 2015 because I found Hidden Agenda’s fame and its continuous growth problematic. In the end, Hidden Agenda moved to a fourth location, it was the biggest version of this live house. It closed permanently due to multiple reasons in 2017 (Wong 2017). Although Hidden Agenda was a relatively small live house, its activities shed light on a variety of social and cultural issues, conflicts, and contradictions in Hong Kong beyond the realm of independent music. The case of Hidden Agenda highlights issues with the city’s industrial building’s “revitalisation” scheme, entertainment permits, fire safety speculation, migrant workers, noise issues, gentrification, governmental bureaucracy, spatial justice, notion of the creative class, top-down cultural policies, liquor permits, copyright licence for live music, and the legalisation/ criminalisation of recreational drugs.

The ‘Post-Hidden Agenda’ Era After more than ten years of campaigning for cultural rights of the “Kwun Tong art district”, and many years of struggle operating an unlicensed live house, I would like to conclude my experience with the following metaphor. I called this Hong Kong’s political and social deadlock as a “Red Light Situation”: a crosswalk signal that remains red the whole time. While pedestrians aim to go forward, the traffic system limits their movement. These pedestrians have pointed to the crosswalk signal being stuck in red for a long time, but it has so far not been fixed. Some people keep complaining, while some others just turn around and give up. However, some pedestrians just take risks, crossing the road when they see fit. Some will be caught by the authorities and prosecuted for violating the traffic code. I met Hong Kong’s current Chief Executive Carrie Lam once, in the legislative council while she was head of Development Council. She told me that if I cornered any government officials, they would tell me that I was operating an illegal business, but as long as I could keep on playing in the “grey” area and no one would interfere actively. This did not turn out to be the case. In the context of an expansion of “control of economic, cultural and political frontiers” by the Chinese authorities in

156 

A. C.-k. Wong

Hong Kong (Cheng 2016, p. 391), Hidden Agenda did continue to face issues with the Hong Kong administration afterwards. At the same time, however, I would like to stress that under Hong Kong’s “hybrid regime” (ibid.), autonomous cultural developments such as Hidden Agenda have continued to strive. After the demolition of the biggest “organic” cultural hub in Kwun Tong, many artists and musicians relocated to other parts of Hong Kong and developed their own culture. It was during my participation to the music event I described in the opening of this chapter that I realised an important cultural turn had begun. After the demise of Hidden Agenda, the music scene fragmented into around ten new venues, all of which were illegal without business licences. In addition to performances, these spaces have multiple functions such as meetings, study sessions, screenings, exhibitions, and so much more. Rather than being open, these spaces were semi-closed to the public and could only be visited by friends via word-of-mouth networks. If Hidden Agenda’s permanent closing represents the end of an era, I would like to conclude with four characteristics of a new chapter in the Hong Kong DIY music scene. First is the increasing decentralisation of the independent music scene. Take, for instance, New  York’s squatted music scene. Individual spaces might be vulnerable to police crackdowns, but the scene is strong due to the fact that numerous people are willing to open new spaces after the scene loses space. Instead of consolidating all activities and attention in one central location, as in the case of Hidden Agenda, several different small spaces are scattered throughout the city and are organically connected to each other, thus creating a decentralised cultural network. The spaces allow activities of multiple genres coexisting, and there is no specific stand-out live house anymore that symbolised a cultural movement. In such a context, the important thing is not to be confined to one specific space, but to disperse in space. Participants are contributing directly, organically to a nascent scene, yet they are not grouped around a place the media would a priori label as being part of a scene. This contributes to the second characteristic: a move away from “do-it-yourself ” (DIY) mentality towards “do-it-together” (DIT) or “do-­ it-­with-others” (DIWO) practice which emphasises the collaboration between different participants. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, the DIY approach to independent music has been largely analysed by

11  From Indie to Underground: The Hong Kong DIY Rock Scene… 

157

scholars from various fields. However, the terms “DIT” and “DIWO” are relatively new. In academic scholarship, it has been examined in relation to how new technologies can further support and enhance participation in DIY cultures (Collins 2015; Galewicz 2017). The term “DIWO” was first mentioned by an internet-based art group named Furtherfield in 2006 as an extension of the “DIY” ethos into early net art (Furtherfield 2006). DIWO’s emphasis on non-competitive cultural networking and mutual aid are directions that could become essential in the current cultural turn in Hong Kong. To my understanding, while the differences between DIY and both DIT/DIWO may not be carefully articulated, it is a timely calling for a conceptual “review”. The notion of DIT/DIWO allows us to re-think decentralised networks of cultural organisation. “Guerrilla gigs”, which are free events organised by performers in public spaces where participants bring their own musical equivalent and organise their own protection from police crackdowns and clean-up, are good examples of DIT culture. The third characteristic of the “post-Hidden Agenda era” is the transformation from an independent music to an underground music scene. Earlier in this chapter, I argued that these terms have specific meanings under specific parameters of state control, and that the transformation into an underground scene is a way of responding and adapting by some actors  to Hong Kong’s  felt change in politics. Historically, the Hong Kong underground has not been characterised inherently by  political activism, and the mutation I describe here from independent/underground to literal underground is partly a reaction to this evolution. Many commentators have contended that the large demonstrations following the extradition bill proposal in Hong Kong are due to the mishandling of the situation by the city’s current administration. More generally, this points to the wide-spread perception among people living in Hong Kong that the city’s everyday life has become politicised to a whole new level; a level which involves musical activity. On October 24, 2019, a busker was surrounded by police and violently interrupted from performing the “anthem” of Hong Kong’s recent protest—“Glory to Hong Kong” (MingPao, October 2019). A week later, several musicians were arrested with the same reason, although later on police clarified that the reason for the arrest was suspicion of drug trafficking (MingPao, November 2019).

158 

A. C.-k. Wong

These developments and a music scene such as the one described in this chapter going from “indie” to “underground” operational modes might be responses to changes that the actors in the scene perceive to be more authoritarian. In such a context, these cultural actors no longer believe that the governing authorities acted in their interests, which has meant that fewer music advocates have been willing to establish dialogue with the government regarding an essential infrastructure that nourished part of Hong Kong’s independent music. Operating under-the-radar prompts a new approach to participation, which is the final characteristic in my conclusion: underground venues generate stronger participatory agency. People patronising these cultural hubs are not only customers (even if the event is monetised), they are conscious of being in a relationship creating a scene together. The forms of customer participation and engagement in such contexts are more proactive, they can feel a duty to help protect and sustain the venue, and information about these performance spaces tends to spread by word-of-­ mouth or text messages. Simple act like taking Instagram pictures, for instance, could already put the venue in danger. To summarise, the “Hidden Agenda era” represents a time in which cultural activist tried to engage dialogue with government representatives, hoping to find resolution on how independent music culture could flourish. Cultural activists tried to report the perceived flaws of old policies, lobbying for what they considered a better cultural environment. The “post-Hidden Agenda” era signals a cultural turn after the actions taken by a government that have appeared to some grassroots cultural actors to offer little to no possibility of dialogue. A greater number of cultural activists have started to open their own cultural spaces in ways that are literally hidden. The perception of changes to Hong Kong’s cultural and industrial landscape and to its hybrid regime as they have applied to musical activities may have given birth to a new era of underground music scenes.

11  From Indie to Underground: The Hong Kong DIY Rock Scene… 

159

References Bourdieu, P. (1996). The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field (trans: Susan Emanuel). Cambridge: Polity Press. Cheng, E. (2016). Street Politics in a Hybrid Regime: The Diffusion of Political Activism in Post-colonial Hong Kong. The China Quarterly, 226, 383–406. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741016000394. Cheung, K. (2018, January 23). Embattled Indie Livehouse Hidden Agenda Announces New Venue, Rebrands as “This Town Needs.” Hong Kong Free Press HKFP. https://hongkongfp.com/2018/01/23/embattled-­indie­livehouse-­hidden-­agenda-­announces-­new-­venue-­rebrands-­town-­needs/ Collins, J. (2015). Doing-It-Together. New  York: Routledge. https://doi. org/10.4324/9781315769882. Florida, R. L. (2004). The Rise of the Creative Class: and How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books. Furtherfield (2006) DIWO Do It Others Resource. Furtherfield. URL (Consulted December 2018): http://archive.furtherfield.org/projects/ diwo-­do-­it-­others-­resource Galewicz, O. (2017). Do It Yourself or Do It Together?. Emergence of Participatory Culture Through Co-creating Interactive DIY Skateboarding Spaces. Master Thesis. University of Oslo. Graham, S. (2012). Notes from the Underground: A Cultural, Political, and Aesthetic Mapping of Underground Music. PhD Thesis. London: Goldsmiths College. Graham, S. (2016). Sounds of the Underground. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Harris, K. (2000). “Roots?” The Relationship between the Global and the Local within the Extreme Metal Scene. Popular Music, 19(1), 13–30. Hesmondhalgh, D. (1997). Post-Punk’s Attempt to Democratise the Music Industry: The Success and Failure of Rough Trade. Popular Music, 16(3), 255–274. JSTOR. Hidden Agenda Live House. (2015a, February 3). Hidden Agenda – The Movie Part 1. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=X8GtZiY6DC4 Hidden Agenda Live House. (2015b, February 6). Hidden Agenda – The Movie Part 2. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8t 0hMpOeFU&t=1006s

160 

A. C.-k. Wong

Hidden Agenda Live House. (2015c, May 2). Hidden Agenda – The Movie Part 3. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=BciIwTUJf8o Hodkinson, P. (2002). Goth: Identity, Style and Subculture. Oxford: Berg. Hong Kong Ideas Centre. (2009). Turning Hong Kong into a Creative City. Retrieved April 6, 2020, from http://www.ideascentre.hk/wordpress/wp-­ content/uploads/2009/02/creative-­industries-­study-­5-­oct1.pdf Ives, M. (2017, July 9). Crackdown Chills Hong Kong’s Indie Music Scene. The New  York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/09/world/asia/hong-­ kong-­live-­music.html Kruse, H. (2010). Local Identity and Independent Music Scenes, Online and Off. Popular Music and Society, 33(5), 625–639. https://doi. org/10.1080/03007760903302145. Lord, R. (2018, June 11). Can’t Keep Us Down: Music Venue Hidden Agenda Back in Business. South China Morning Post. https://www.scmp.com/culture/ music/article/2150173/hong-­k ong-­i ndie-­m usic-­venue-­h idden-­a genda-­ returns-­ttn-­and-­it-­plans Mak, A. (2015). “From the Factories”, Hypermedia Web-Site on Artists Studio in Factory Buildings in Kwun Tong Area Was Published in July, 2015. http:// aahsun.com/wp/portfolio/from-­the-­factories/ 「後Hidden Agenda」時期香港本地音樂生態初探. MingPao, 17/5/2019. Niyaz, K. (2017, November 2). Prominent Uyghur Musician Arrested Amid Ideological Purge in Xinjiang. Retrieved from https://www.rfa.org/english/ news/uyghur/musician-­11022017162302.html Reuters. (2019, March 7). Singapore Bans Swedish Death Metal Band on Religious Grounds. https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2019/03/07/singapore-­bans-­ swedish-­death-­metal-­band-­on-­religious-­grounds.html Strachan, R. (2007). Micro-independent Record Labels in the UK: Discourse, DIY Cultural Production and the Music Industry. European Journal of Cultural Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549407075916. Wong, A. C. K. (2014) Relinking Poverty and Art: A Decade in Kwun Tong’s Industrial Art Village. In A. H.-S. Mak (Ed.), From the Factories (pp. 64–81). Kaitak, Centre for Research and Development, Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University. Wong, B. S. (2017, October 15). Music Club Hidden Agenda to Close by End October. South China Morning Post. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-­ kong/law-­crime/article/2115455/hong-­kong-­music-­club-­hidden-­agenda­confirms-­closure-­end

12 The Transformation of Indie Music in Hong Kong Stella Lau

While the putative division between art and commerce has long been in debate (Frith and Horne 2016), it appears to be further breaking down in the current postmodern period (Negus 2004; Longhurst 2007; Wilkinson 2017). The term ‘indie pop’ is increasingly used in local and international media in the coverage of popular music. This chapter aims to discuss the cultural implications of such breakdown of boundary between so-called pop and indie music in the contemporary popular music context in Hong Kong. In order to expound on some observations of musical cultures, valuable views were collected from four significant music practitioners in Hong Kong by email and phone interviews, including a musician/curator, a radio DJ, a music critic and a lyricist in October 2017.

S. Lau (*) Kowloon, Hong Kong © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. Charrieras, F. Mouillot (eds.), Fractured Scenes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6_12

161

162 

S. Lau

The emergence of ‘indie pop’ as a generic category can be traced back to the early 1980s after the punk movement shook the Western world1 (Hebdige 1979; Savage 2005; Dunn 2016). Independent (indie) record labels were formed alongside the punk movement partly in response to the flamboyant rock styles and image which were made possible by the big investment of major record companies in the 1970s. These indie record labels were established with the aim to challenge and provide an alternative to the commercially driven stances adopted by major record labels. The indie artists and bands working with those labels were characterized by non-mainstream musical styles and adopted a “do-it-yourself ” (DIY) approach which did not depend heavily on the financial and media support from the majors. Historically, major record labels have been more concerned about market dominance and asserting some degrees of control over music making, whereas indie record labels have been perceived as more aware of and receptive to new sounds (Negus 1996, p. 42). In other words, in the dichotomy between commerce and creativity characteristic of the recording music industries, indie record companies have often been able to find, record, produce and sell new types of music made by indie artists (ibid.). Hesmondhalgh and Meier have highlighted the importance of the punk movement to the development of an indie aesthetic in their discussion on the concept of the alternative in contemporary capitalism: “According to punk thinking, rock had lost its power, partly because its stars had become rich and out-of-touch with the vernacular vitality that gave popular music its energy and legitimacy. Musical independence was essential to restoring that vigor” (2015, p. 3). But this indie aesthetic did not remain confined to punk. Soon after the punk explosion, a wave of indie labels formed in the early 1980s and started releasing various forms of indie music, ranging from punk/post-­ punk to metal, alternative rock and indie pop. “Indie pop” exists in close but nevertheless sonically distinct relation to these genres. Whereas, broadly speaking, “indie rock” may be often defined in sonic terms as being abrasive and angst-filled, ‘indie pop’ acts2 often borrow a more  The development of the punk movement has indeed evolved beyond its original centres, namely New York and London, and become a transnational phenomenon (Gunckel 2018). 2  Examples of more well-known indie pop artists include Belle and Sebastian, The Cardigans, Yo La Tengo, Foster The People or Elliot Smith. 1

12  The Transformation of Indie Music in Hong Kong 

163

­ ellow and melodic sound from mainstream pop, while articulating its m own ‘indie’ position by working with independent record labels. However, the so-called indie bands and record labels cannot be disassociated from the mainstream completely and independent-major label relationships are more complex than it seems. As Keith Negus points out: “There are many types of independent company and numerous relationships have been established between small companies and major corporations” (1996, p. 43). The interdependence between major and indie labels emerged and became more obvious towards the late 1980s and early 1990s. Furthermore, the examples that Kruse provides in her book Site and Sound: Understanding Independent Music Scenes (2003) include major label-owned independents, signing independent label bands to major labels and indie labels’ dependence on major record companies in terms of distribution and scouting. Kruse further elaborates the blurring of boundaries between indie and pop by highlighting the rise of originally independent acts such as Nirvana and REM to mainstream stardom. In Hong Kong, the rise of “indie” music occurred later than within European and North American music industries. Such phenomenon coincided with the decline of Cantonese pop (also known as ‘Cantopop’3) at around the turn of the twenty-first century. The late Hong Kong-based veteran songwriter James Wong marks the time of handover of Hong Kong from Britain to mainland China as the fall of Cantopop (Wong 2003; Chu 2007, 2017). According to Wong, decreasing Cantopop record sales in Hong Kong in the late 1990s4 were caused by the economic downturn of the city, the prevalence of pirate CDs in the market and a lack of musical originality (Cantopop by that point had largely become standardized to satisfy a huge market demand for Karaoke-­ friendly songs). The opening of the Mainland Chinese market and the rise of Mandarin pop, of course, also had a part to play in the decline of  Cantopop is a unique hybrid of Chinese and Western music styles blended with colloquial Cantonese and standard Chinese (Chu 2017: 3). The term was first used by a Billboard music journalist Han Ebert in 1978 to refer to the locally produced popular music in Hong Kong (ibid.: 1). 4  Based on the statistics provided by The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the figures of record sales dropped from HKD 18.53 million in 1995 to HKD 9.16 million in 1998. 3

164 

S. Lau

Hong Kong popular music. By contrast, Hong Kong indie pop artists5 have been on the rise since the turn of the century in correlation with the mass digitalization of music production, distribution and consumption characterized by the common use of the Internet, social media, crowd-­ funding platforms, legal downloads and streaming service providers. Below are some insights shared by four important music practitioners in Hong Kong who have worked with “indie pop” artists in Hong Kong. Three of them have played decisive parts in the development of Hong Kong ‘indie pop’ in their roles as (1) a mainstream radio DJ, (2) a music critic of a trendsetting indie music website, (3) a curator of major indie pop music events, and (4) a lyricist for indie pop and mainstream artists.

Insights from Insiders When asked if the upsurge of indie pop6 is related to the wide use of social media in music marketing for both indie and pop artists in Hong Kong, nearly all of the interviewees agreed on the impact of social media in blurring the boundaries between the two genres. According to one respondent, “The boundaries are getting more blurred after digitalization…Positively, people gotta know more music in terms of genres. But at the same time, there are more mixed and sometimes confusing concepts. . . . Niche music genre/artist of a place can be transformed into a global niche or pop name theoretically and potentially”. Another interviewee commented that social media (Facebook, Instagram, Sound Cloud, etc.) definitely helped to promote non-mainstream music which embraced artistic integrity. One of the respondents agreed that it is now  In terms of instrumentation, Hong Kong indie artists usually make use of instruments of a simple band set—guitar, bass and drums. Sometimes, electronica sounds are added by the use of laptop computer along with MIDI controller. The sonic texture is raw and is less polished as compared to the pop sounds in the mainstream. When compared to Cantopop in the mainstream, these indie artists do not rely on mainstream media for marketing. Instead, they rely heavily on social media and sometimes crowd-funding platforms to promote their works. 6  In keeping with the definition of ‘indie pop’ in relation to Western popular music markets outlined above, the working definition of Hong Kong ‘indie pop’ in the rest of this chapter is music released under an independent label but with the mellow and easy-listening features of mainstream pop music. It is a fusion of contemporary rock and Cantopop’s easy listening melodies combined with Cantonese lyrics. 5

12  The Transformation of Indie Music in Hong Kong 

165

much easier to bypass the mainstream music recording industries as the production cost of music making is much lower than that of the 1980s. The relatively low production cost may be due to the prevalence of music production software which is easily obtainable for people from all walks of life. Simultaneously, easy access to the Internet and social media makes music marketing relatively cost effective nowadays. A music critic, on the other hand, commented that it was the oppositional attitude behind the music that defined indie music even in this digital age. Among Hong Kong indie pop practitioners, attitude seems to be a recurrent theme in relation to indie music. In response to the question “how to be a ‘popular’ band while maintaining its ‘indie’/‘alternative’ credibility?”, most of the interviewees highlight that the key is an attitude that is not easily influenced by commercial needs of the market, that is an attitude that prioritizes creative authenticity over commercial gains. A music curator who was interviewed argued that popularity should not be the first priority of a band. Yet, popularity is a relative concept. The rock group Radiohead can be regarded as very popular by some music fans but their popularity in terms of record sales pales when compared to very mainstream artists, such as Madonna. Another interview, a radio DJ, suggested that it was a matter of maintaining the initial mindset and dedication as well as a passion to keep what the band believes and to practise without being easily distracted by the market needs. In this regard, the number of “likes” on social media could be deceptive at times, according to him. A music critic referred to the anti-establishment attitude in the punk movement as he discussed how a band could retain its indie credibility. The above informants suggest that an anti-capitalist or anti-­ establishment attitude helps artists retain “indie” credibility. A lyricist, however, stated that even music that was originally considered to be “alternative” could become mainstream once it became more popular in the music market with regard to record sales or amount of streaming. He does not see the boundary between indie and pop as necessary. If the musicians create music with a genuine heart, they should not care too much about what the media say. Kruse claimed that indie music should not be defined only by its musical styles or the type of record labels musicians are signed to but also by

166 

S. Lau

where its practices are located and are not located (Kruse 2010, p. 628). For example, indie acts in Hong Kong can usually be found at events like major yearly festival like Clockenflap (promoting all forms of international hybrid mainstream and indie genres) or venues such as Freespace (a space specifically dedicated to alternative music forms at the newly developed multimillion-dollar West Kowloon Cultural District)—music events where indie artists perform predominantly. But indie acts can hardly be found on mainstream TV channel TVB and its events. This claim is however complicated in the context of Hong Kong where there is a scarcity of music venues and broadcasting outlets. This is a situation in which venue owners and various music promoters are pushed to be “generalists” rather than focused on a specific music style or genre. A music practitioner interviewee indicated that venues like the MacPherson Stadium7 in Mong Kok host performances of both mainstream and indie artists. Another interviewee agreed that indie music should be defined in a holistic way but also pointed out that mainstream radio stations such as Commercial Radio also promoted indie/pop crossovers. He provided the example of the indie band movement led by CR 903, a popular radio station among young people in the 1990s. The movement was an offshoot of the radio programme Quote Zone which aimed at promoting indie music from Hong Kong, mainland China and the West. One of the highlights included a 1994 concert featuring a few indie rock artists from Mainland China at the Hong Kong Coliseum, the largest indoor performance venue at the time. The aforementioned music curator made an extremely insightful point when debating this question and mentioned that the idea of “indie” could be interpreted on two different levels: operation and musical style. This observation points to the similarity of indie music in both Hong Kong and other global contexts. But “indie operations” and “indie music style” are not necessarily combined by all artists. An “alternative-sounding” band can be signed to a major label whereas a “pop-sounding” artist can be signed to an independent record label. Another respondent  An indoor stadium that plays a significant role in the development of youth recreation in Hong Kong. Located at a high population density area in Hong Kong, it attracts both mainstream and indie artists to hold concerts. 7

12  The Transformation of Indie Music in Hong Kong 

167

mentioned a similar dilemma and elaborated with a good example. Very pop-sounding artists like Kylie Minogue and Rick Astley were signed to an independent record company PWL back in the 1980s. Could these two artists be considered to be “indie” then? A similar case in Hong Kong is Summer Gold City (夏金城), an independent singer-songwriter whose music style is not necessarily associated with an “indie” edge by music audiences but who released a number of albums without the support of a major record label. Can he be categorized as “indie” then? In order for an artist to be regarded as authentically ‘indie’ by practitioners, audiences and organizers, three criteria seem to be quintessential in the Hong Kong context: (1) signing to an independent record label; (2) alternativesounding musical style that is different from that of mainstream artists; (3) an appeal to the youths. According to indie music fans and practitioners, Summer Gold City’s (夏金城) music may not be regarded as authentically ‘indie’ since his music can be described as relatively mainstream pop, and he generally fails to appeal to Hong Kong youths.

Lyrics in Hong Kong’s Indie Music Given the blurring of boundaries between “indie” and “pop” in terms of both marketing and musical style, is Hong Kong indie music better defined by its lyrical content? For indie artists, there is less pressure to please the mainstream market and so they can sing songs that convey anti-establishment views, for instance, discontent towards the government’s political stance, calling for social justice or any topics that are regarded as ‘taboo’ in the mainstream music market. For two respondents, lyrics should however not be the only criterion to be used to define indie music in Hong Kong. One of them suggested that more mainstream bands like Supper Moment8 and RubberBand also  Supper Moment’s “Endless” (「無盡」) was often sung by protestors in the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement in 2019 given the mention of “revolution” in the lyrics although the song was written long before the social movement. The chorus of this song was often sung by the protestors because of its inspiration for young people to dream big—“Embark on this endless journey/Who can identify your ugliness and beauty/Take a step/Broaden the runway/Pray with ten pairs of hands/Dream of a revolution in life that will never age”. For many young protestors, the “revolution” is to realize their dream—the ideal for a democratic Hong Kong. Apparently, the 8

168 

S. Lau

sing about taboos and have made bigger impact than that of the “purely indie” acts, because they are successful in various pop music charts in the Hong Kong mainstream media. When asked about a perfect example of a Hong Kong band that writes “outside of the box”, two interviewees simultaneously pointed to My Little Airport as a group that epitomized the voice of the local youths. Their lyrics are not necessarily anti-government but they reflect local youth culture poignantly. Their well-known numbers “Who Invented the Concept of Work?” (「邊一個發明了返工?」) and “A Certain Romance in Kowloon Tong” (「浪漫九龍塘」) question the meaning of work and describe the perceived ‘rat race’ faced by many young working adults in Hong Kong, and portray candidly the complexity of dating relationships with the story of a young couple’s visit to a love motel.9 The topics in their lyrics are merely daily issues faced by young people in everyday life but are rarely found in mainstream pop music. According to a respondent, anti-government lyrical themes are not necessarily the best criterion to define indie music because some song-writers may just use them as a tool to seek attention from the media; sometimes song-writers who do not have a clear political stance for elections, for instance, Roland Li with a stage name Angry Man Singer (怒人) may just present a persona that shows great concern for the society and politics and yet this may be taken as ‘fake’ by some music fans. The contentious notion of authenticity indeed plays an important role in the discourse of indie music.

The Fall of Cantopop and the Rise of Indie Pop With the relative freedom enjoyed by indie artists in terms of lyrical content, can the “fall” of Cantopop in the new millennium really be seen as the “rise” of indie music in Hong Kong? Beyond Wong’s perspective, youths interpret the song in their own way as an encouragement to themselves in the social movement. 9  The culture of going to “love motels” is specific to Hong Kong youths because many young people live with their parents for cultural and financial reasons; couples do not tend to live together until they are married, and therefore need to go to hotels to have moments of intimacy in their dating relationships.

12  The Transformation of Indie Music in Hong Kong 

169

Hong Kong’s handover to mainland China in 1997 was a key moment in the evolution of messages conveyed by Cantopop. The handover, however, motivated Hong Kong popular artists to embrace the concept of “harmony” and use music to spread the political message of joy over reintegration with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Hong Kong people consent to this publicly expressed message promoting patriotism in their songs, a message which is operational and measurable through the Special Administrative Region’s, i.e. Hong Kong's (SAR’s) control of market forces and other public institutions (Ho 2000, p. 350). Before 1997, songs with political undertones such as “Queen’s Road East” by Luo Dayou could top the local pop charts. Coincidentally or not, commercial success for this type of songs has not been the same after the handover. As suggested in the above quote, mainstream pop artists or song-writers may react to political incentives and avoid or embrace specific political messages as a result. The perception that creative freedom might have been declining in Hong Kong is often cited in local media. A reporter of South China Morning Post makes the following claim in a discussion on the putative erosion of artistic freedom in the former British colony: But there are fears the good days will not last. The Chinese Communist Party, which censors anything perceived as a threat to its rule, has adopted an increasingly hardline approach towards Hong Kong. Many artists say a gradual erosion of artistic freedom has either begun or is inevitable, even though Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” model of governance enshrines the freedom of expression. (Tsui 2017)

Compared to Cantopop artists, Hong Kong indie musicians do not need to appeal to the local mainstream media—such as Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) and Commercial Radio (CR)—as much and can sustain themselves online via social media,10 crowd-funding platforms. Indie artists can write more freely lyrically and musically in an era when Cantopop must contend with commercial and political elements.  For example, on YouTube, videos which have acquired a certain number of views, advertisements would be fed into the time of viewing. The artists may then gain an income from the advertisers. 10

170 

S. Lau

An often discussed example is that of Denise Ho (何韻詩)—a mainstream Cantopop singer who took part in the social movement termed the “Umbrella Movement” in 2014. In this political event for “genuine” universal suffrage in Hong Kong, Ho took a leading role in supporting the movement by speaking for it in public and participating in protests in the Admiralty neighbourhood where the main roads were occupied by protestors. When the movement came to an end, she left the mainstream record company that she was signed to and has been banned from performing in mainland China ever since (Bloomberg QuickTake News 2019). The decline faced by Cantopop in the past two decades and the city’s unsettled social and political climate of recent years have indie music appear all the more significant in Hong Kong. In line with these changes, the founding of various music events that feature local bands—like Wow & Flutter, HK Street Music and Freespace Outdoors11—the development of indie music, in all of its stylistic hybridity with more mainstream forms of popular music, appears to have been more pronounced than that of mainstream Cantopop in recent years. Conjointly, indie music has also increasingly influenced Cantopop. As an indication of this shift, one responder highlighted that Cantopop star Andy Hui has been working with indie acts such as Chochukmo in his recent recordings and live performances. In this sense, indie artists have infused creative energy back into mainstream pop. This last aspect also points to the limits of the “downturn” narrative in Cantopop. The lyricist interviewed for this research also highlighted that the 1980s were only a so-called golden age for Cantopop in economic terms due to the high record sales in those years. One may posit that Cantopop of the 1980s was actually quite stale creatively. A specific evidence of this aspect is the fact that most Cantopop of that period were cover versions of Japanese and Western pop tunes with Cantonese lyrics. Such an observation goes in line with the global music corporations’ formulaic stardom-making which valorizes commercial stability over musical originality. This contention is reminiscent of a point mentioned by  Wow & Flutter, HK Street Music and Freespace Outdoors are music festivals and events that feature many popular independent artists in Hong Kong. 11

12  The Transformation of Indie Music in Hong Kong 

171

Anthony Wong Yiu-Ming, the leader singer of renowned Hong Kong pop duo Tat Ming Pair.12 In other words, if taking into consideration the aesthetic diversification brought to Cantopop by various forms of indie music influences, the post-1997 era of Cantopop may well be that of a creative “upturn”. Like in many other regions, Hong Kong local popular music is potentially getting more diverse because the Internet has helped new and talented musicians reach audiences without relying on mass media (as shown in this volume, e.g. in relation to post-genre electronic music). Social media and crowd-funding platforms have helped independent musicians cultivate their niche markets and sustain themselves without the support of major record companies. These musicians may not be as rich or as famous as the Cantopop artists of the 1980s or early 1990s, but they enjoy a relatively higher level of autonomy in their own artistic worlds and face less pressure to give in to the demands of the mainstream market. Someday, they may become the force that injects originality back into the local pop scene. With this development in mind, indie pop warrants much more attention in academic research.

References Bloomberg QuickTake News. (2019). Banned by China, Hong Kong Singer Denise Ho Takes Anti-Extradition Fight to UN. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=eAuTrrOWGUI. Accessed 22 Aug 2020. Chu, S. (2007). Before and After the Fall: Mapping Hong Kong Cantopop in the Global Era (LEWI Working Paper Series No. 63). Hong Kong: David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies. Chu, S. (2017). Hong Kong Cantopop: A Concise History. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Dunn, K. (2016). Global Punk: Resistance & Rebellion in Everyday Life. New York: Bloomsbury. Frith, S., & Horne, H. (2016). Art Into Pop. New York: Routledge.

 His comment was made at ‘The Taste of Localism in Hong Kong Music’ event—a seminar held at Hong Kong University’s Chong Yuet Ming Cultural Centre on 17/11/2016. 12

172 

S. Lau

Gunckel, C. (2018). Defining Punk: Queerness and the LA Punk Scene, 1977–1981. Journal of Popular Music Studies, 30(1–2), 155–170. Hebdige, D. (1979). Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge. Hesmondhalgh, D., & Meier, L. M. (2015). Popular Music, Independence and the Concept of the Alternative in Contemporary Capitalism. In J. Bennett & N. Strange (Eds.), Media Independence: Working with Freedom or Working for Free? Abington/New York: Routledge. Ho, W. (2000). The Political Meaning of Hong Kong Popular Music: A Review of Sociopolitical Relations Between Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China Since the 1980s. Popular Music, 19(3), 341–353. Kruse, H. (2003). Site and Sound  – Understanding Independent Music Scenes. Bern: Peter Lang. Kruse, H. (2010). Local Identity and Independent Music Scenes, Online and Off. Popular Music and Society, 33(5), 625–639. Longhurst, B. (2007). Popular Music and Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Negus, K. (1996). Popular Music in Theory. Cambridge: Polity. Negus, K. (2004). Between Corporation and Consumer: Culture and Conflict in the British Record Industry. In S.  Frith (Ed.), Popular Music: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies. London/New York: Routledge. Savage, J. (2005). England’s Dreaming: The Sex Pistols and Punk Rock. London: Faber & Faber. Tsui, E. (2017, June 20). How Has Art Fared in Hong Kong Under China’s Rule? The Scene Is Thriving, but Some Artists See – Or Fear – Censorship. South China Morning Post. Wilkinson, D. (2017). Agents of Change: Cultural Materialism, Post-Punk and the Politics of Popular Music. In K.  Gildart, A.  Gough-Yates, S.  Lincoln, B.  Osgerby, L.  Robinson, J.  Street, P.  Webb, & M.  Worley (Eds.), Youth Culture and Social Change: Making a Difference by Making a Noise. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Wong, J. (2003). The Rise and Decline of Cantopop: A Study of Hong Kong Popular Music (1949–1997). Doctoral Thesis. Hong Kong: HKU.

Seminar The Taste of Localism in Hong Kong Music (「香港音樂中的本土味道」), HKU Chong Yuet Ming Cultural Centre, 17/11/2016.

13 Underground Club Music After Social Media: A Study of Hong Kong Underground Club Music Scene Through Absurd TRAX from 2016 to 2018, A Personal Perspective Alex Yiu

Within the body of academic literature on underground club music culture, East Asia—specifically the contexts of both Mainland China and Hong Kong—have so far been underexplored. Recent and rapid technological changes have had a profound impact on the role and practices of musical actors such as audio engineers, music producers, and DJs. All these new roles in music have created new possibilities for musicians with all sorts of musical backgrounds (Brewster and Broughton 2012; Katz and Katz 2003; Moorefield 2010). Considering myself a classically trained musician/composer, I am one such musician who unexpectedly developed a career in underground club music through these technological changes. In simple terms, I could describe myself initially as an outsider to this transnational underground scene, gradually becoming involved as a musician and performer through some of its infrastructure A. Yiu (*) School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. Charrieras, F. Mouillot (eds.), Fractured Scenes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6_13

173

174 

A. Yiu

in Hong Kong. My first experience was in 2014 at the locally respected and now defunct underground music club XXX in Hong Kong, right after the club moved to Sai Ying Pun, in the West end of the Hong Kong Island, where I went to check out the UK DJ and producer Bok Bok’s performance booked by my friend Domine Ting. After this first event, I started going to the club regularly. Around the same time, I began searching for new music as a potential answer to a personal life crisis I was undergoing at the time, and I encountered Gavin Wong, Davy Law, and Sam Chan, three local underground electronic actors who would go on to play central roles in my musical career. Gavin Wong had co-founded the Hong Kong Community Radio (HKCR) with Davy Law, himself the founder of local micro-independent label Absurd TRAX and co-founder of the online blog Absurd Creation. In this chapter, I reflect on the Hong Kong underground club music scene—specifically in relation to both its transnational and digitally networked nature—from my perspective as a participant-observer by providing a preliminary overview of some of the scene’s key infrastructures founded by Wong, Law, and Chan.

Background: The ‘Deconstructed Club’ Music In what ways can we understand the meaning of “underground club music”? While it is a common term to describe music, the meaning of “underground” depends on who/what interprets it. Stephen Graham defines the term “underground” as signifying “something of artists’ aesthetic, or cultural, or personal, or indeed all of the above, separation from mainstream practice, without pinning down the precise register or degree of that separation” (Graham 2012, p. 15). The practice I analyse in this chapter fits this definition broadly through an embeddedness in an online translocal “scene” and related “subcultures” in specific geographical locations such as Hong Kong (Thornton 1996). Yet this “translocal” scene seems to involve collectives that reflect such a diversity of interests and musical styles that it is almost impossible to categorize all of them into a specific definition of the underground. Across these undergrounds many music  producers draws inspiration either from their regional genres or from global music genres. The article Under-the-Radar (Meier 2017) in

13  Underground Club Music After Social Media… 

175

Fact Magazine uses “underground dance music” or “underground club music” interchangeably to feature the latest club tracks ranging from selfreleased “bangers” on SoundCloud to bootleg tracks of established singers/rappers. Musical genres such as SoundCloud rap (Beaumont-­Thomas 2018) have new rappers coming out almost daily, and streaming services such as Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist suggest new music through its algorithm every week based on their users’ listening habits. While underground club music labels such as PAN Records releases some of the club tracks by mainstream producers such as Objekt and Amnesia Scammer, they also release music from experimentalists such as Florian Hecker and Eli Keszler among many others. Precise terminology to describe this music is difficult to come by, and its definition is contested. Although it is not widely accepted by labels and producers, the term “deconstructed club music” has circulated and gained currency within the online community by word of mouth. For example, the term appears on rateyourmusic.com, a significant online collaborative platform where music of all genres is being catalogued, rated, and reviewed by listeners. Such websites ultimately lead to further influence on taste-building on the internet. Even though journalistic media like FACT magazine, AQNB.com, and TinyMixTapes.com started using terminology such as “deconstructed beat”, “underground club”, “post-club”, and “post-genre” interchangeably (Kay 2012; Lubner 2018; Welsh 2018), there are no clear definitions of this music. In spite of these lexical imprecisions, a significant underground electronic music scene (broadly conceived) that circulates primarily through social media has emerged. To quote from rateyourmusic.com: “Deconstructed club music has spread mainly through internet networking, finding expression among netlabels and collectives” (“Deconstructed-Club” 2018). This definition is, however, controversial. I personally know producers who have refused to describe their music as “deconstructed”, and the description according to which the sound of the genre is “aggressive, frantic, post-industrial sound design featuring metallic or staccato sounds such as samples of glass smashing, gunshots” might not necessarily apply to all music that happen to be in this catalogue. To say the music is “deconstructed club music” is perhaps just another way of saying it is quite undefinable musically. For many DJs and producers who are associated

176 

A. Yiu

with the scene, the term has come to refer to their cross-genre DJing in which New  York hard techno meets baile funk, and where breakcorebased bootleg tracks combined with big commercial tunes blend with underground industrial beats. In a way, it is also a call to challenge the audience on the dance floor, a practice DJ Total Freedom called “disorienting” (Carolus 2017). As a musical genre, “deconstructed club” favours sounds that are not conventional like previous club music styles, and producers have been exploring different forms of rhythmic patterns and sonic textures, departing from previous genres and indeed disorienting audiences expecting four-on-the-floor techno/house or “amen breaks” in drum’n’bass. Producers nowadays draw inspiration from musical genres such as reggaeton, baile funk, Jersey club, trap, grime, bass, gqom, trance, ballroom house, industrial, techno, hardstyle, ambient, and even plunderphonic music (Bucciero 2018).

 here It Could Have Begun: Collectives, W Labels, Social Media Platforms, Music Festivals, and Club Networks Considering the genre-blending DJing and the refusal to genre-label by underground music producers themselves, it might be more faithful to consider this practice as a post-genre. In Robin James’s terms, a post-­ genre is a kind of music that not only “rejects an older practice’s claim to exclusivity” but also “marks the preference for incorporating all differences into one heterogeneous mix over sorting different phenomena into internally homogeneous segments or subgroups” (James 2017, p.  22). Due to the post-genre nature of current underground club music, it is difficult to define it through mere classification, but we can still associate the music with specific labels and collectives. In 2010, the music artist Venus X from New York City founded the label and club night called GHE20GOTH1K.  Venus X identifies herself as queer and champions fluidity, and GHE20GOTH1K features mostly marginalized artists  – gay, lesbian, trans, black, brown and throws parties blending together different genres of music such as ballroom house, jersey club, and R&B

13  Underground Club Music After Social Media… 

177

bootleg tracks. It is not an exaggeration to say that GHE20GOTH1K has been one of the pioneers of post-genre club music, and has defined the spirit of underground electronic music until now. One of their long-­ time collaborators, Miami-based DJ Total Freedom aka Ashland Mines, is known for his unique blend of musical genres and sound, mashing music from American Trap and Contemporary R&B to Latin American beats and even sound effects. In an interview published in DAZED magazine, he declared: “Sometimes I want to fill the floor with broken glass and just leave a (microphone) on, feedbacking through the PA for an hour, but sometimes I want to just play R&B” (Carolus 2017). Specific music labels have long established privileged or exclusive relationships with music genres and subgenres. Particular labels might even represent a school of genre or subgenre (McLeod 2001). Like many other underground music practices, deconstructed club music has been associated with specific music labels across the globe from the beginning. From Night Slugs and Fade to Mind (in the early mid-2010s) to PAN Records, Halcyon Veil, Genome 6.66Mbp, and Janus Berlin, these labels have built a foundational repertoire of music and artists, representing the diverse sound of deconstructed club music. If these labels bring us the music, then a network of internet-broadcasting platforms are the electric wires that connect the music to their audience. Services like SoundCloud, Mixcloud, and Bandcamp provide a platform for audiences to stream this online underground music from their computers and mobile devices. Additionally, the broadcasting platforms also serve as platforms for radio DJs who curate playlists of music, as well as for producers to appear as guest DJs presenting a pre-recorded set or a live set of music. Live-­ streaming as a way of presenting music has become a predominant format starting from the 2010s. Party organizer and live-streaming platform Boiler Room has become well known in the underground electronic music scene with its worldwide series of live-streamed parties.1 In the same way that individual brick-and-mortal clubs are sometimes associated with particular genres of electronic music (e.g. techno with Berghain,  However, Boiler Room does not only focus on the latest underground electronic music acts. Instead they also feature established underground producers and DJs who take a large portion of their streaming channels. 1

178 

A. Yiu

and acid house with The Haçienda), “offline” spaces such as music festivals and physical venues have also become connected to the genre of underground online electronic music (Brewster and Broughton 2012). The online underground is also therefore associated with a global scene of clubs and music festivals such as CTM Festival in Berlin and Sónar in Barcelona, among others. It is, however, important to note that these festivals tend to be very Eurocentric in terms of both line-up and locations. Many of these festivals take place in European countries (some are even funded by European institutions), and for reasons of geographical proximity, they have so far prioritized European and Europe-based artists in their bookings. By contrast, it is a network of clubs in East Asia—rather than festivals—that provides a home for local artists and audiences and a transnational platform for East Asian underground electronic music artists to tour in the region. These clubs include WWWβ in Tokyo, Cakeshop in Seoul, Dada in Beijing, XXX in Hong Kong, Loopy in Hangzhou, All in Shanghai, and Oil in Shenzhen. Many of these clubs also organize different underground electronic music genre themed nights. This is particularly significant as many veteran underground electronic venues in Europe (e.g. Fabric and Ministry of Sound in London, as well as Tresor and Berghain in Berlin) do not normally feature post-genre club music.2 In other words, this post-genre club music does not have specific clubs associated with it in Europe and America. We might therefore argue that—due to the presence of the aforementioned clubs as well as respected and well-known labels (such as Chinese labels Genome 6.66mbp and Do Hits)—the scene has stronger roots in East Asia and particularly in China. The rest of this chapter focuses on the following questions: In what way does post-­ genre club music find its space in China, and specifically in Hong Kong? How does it relate to the current Chinese club culture? In this article we focus only the case of Hong Kong.

 It is only in recent years that Berghain has expanded its internal spaces, and now features not only techno but also post-genre club music. 2

13  Underground Club Music After Social Media… 

179

 he Case of Hong Kong: From XXX, HKCR T to Absurd TRAX I use the term “translocal scene” as a way to describe the network connecting distant local scenes (Bennett and Peterson 2004). In Hong Kong, this network can be said to have been rooted primarily with three institutions: XXX, the Hong Kong Community Radio, and the record label Absurd TRAX. The following analysis is based on my auto-­ethnographical experience as a participant in the translocal underground electronic music scene through the HKCR, the Absurd TRAX label, and in the underground club music scene in Hong Kong.

XXX In spite of its self-proclaimed marketing title as Asia’s World city, Hong Kong is definitely not known for its underground or club music scene. As discussed in other chapters in this volume, high rents and unfriendly licence policies to music venues are some of the factors that have contributed to locally based artists’ and promoters’ prolonged suffering from lack of opportunities and lack of physical spaces to develop their skills. The Hong Kong electronic club scene is characterized by a majority of venues located in the entertainment district—known as Lan Kwai Fong— situated in Central, the financial core of the city. These venues typically play mainstream electronic dance music with a few clubs—such as Oma and Basements—occasionally showcasing relatively more underground club music among their routine. In this landscape, XXX stands out as a pioneering venue for underground club music in Hong Kong. Opened in 2011 by San Francisco transplants Cassady ‘Enso’ Winston, operations manager James Acey, aka DJ Yao, and business manager Bo Hui, XXX was first located on Wing Lok Street in the neighbourhood of Sheung Wan, west of Central. XXX was known for eclecticism and held numerous parties whose music ranged from drum’n’bass, acid house, local trap, and vaporwave, to experimental music, performing art, and even classical music.

180 

A. Yiu

Since its closure in January 2018, no club in the city has replaced XXX’s daring programming, although many underground club music events—club nights and alternative parties mainly—have scattered around the city across numerous temporary venues, and even country parks, and while commercial music festivals that promote alternative (though less underground) electronic music such as Sonár Hong Kong (2017), ALTN8 (2017), Shi Fu Miz (2016), and Road to Ultra (2016–2018) have begun to make an impact in the city’s music landscape, these events have not organized regular underground electronic music in the way that XXX did. Given this context, it would not be implausible to say that there is no regular space or audience for underground electronic music in Hong Kong. Yet, several other significant infrastructures for the creation and promotion of underground electronic music exist.

HKCR As outlined earlier, the internet has become a significant part of underground music cultures and various Hong Kong online platforms have helped people exchange information and promoters and musicians reach their audiences. The Hong Kong Community Radio (HKCR)—an online radio that models itself after similar radios such as the Berlin Community Radio, NTS Radio, and Seoul Community Radio—is run (along with Absurd TRAX) by Gavin Wong and serves as a platform where visiting and local artists can present and exchange music. Wong is the primary contact for international touring artists and promoters of underground post-genre club music in Hong Kong. HKCR invites both local acts and visiting artists to play live sets that are broadcasted on social media such as Facebook and Youtube. Sound recordings of these performances are subsequently uploaded to online platforms such as Mixcloud and SoundCloud. I had presented music on HKCR since its opening in 2016 until I got more involved with Absurd TRAX, the label Wong founded at the end of that same year. For example, in one of our shows called “9點整歌” (making tracks at 9  pm), local acts such as myself (under the moniker

13  Underground Club Music After Social Media… 

181

Alexmalism), Kelvin T, Fotan Laiki, and Teeda Lee collaborated with Dis-Fig from USA to make tracks of music using video samples provided by the online audience (Wong 2019). Additionally, several international artists such as Laurel Halo and Jlin, as well as many local acts such as Yung Takeem, Nerve, Kelvin T, Fotanlaiki, ASJ, and many others, have presented their music through the HKCR. In 2018, HKCR received the winner prize of Best Online Radio Station in Asian Pacific/ME/Africa catalogue by Mixcloud.

Absurd TRAX Absurd TRAX (initially Absurd Creation) first emerged as a series of underground electronic music dance parties taking place at various locations across the city—mostly but not exclusively in XXX3—before evolving into a record label at the end of 2016. The very first Absurd TRAX concert was held on 18 February 2017.4 Since then, the Absurd TRAX concert series has featured artists from all over the globe, including Lao (Mexico), Flora Yin-Wong (UK), Tzusing (Malaysia), Osheyack (Shanghai), GAIKA (UK), Soda Plains (UK), Dis Fig (Berlin), Abyss X (Greece), Tzekin (f.k.a. V Kim) (Australia), Kane West (UK), KINNIE (Singapore), Matt Tescon (Canada), Thegn (Canada), Aïsha Devi (Switzerland), Air Max ’97 (Australia), H E 4 A R T B R O K E N (Belgium), 破地獄 Scattered Purgatory (Taiwan), dj sniff (Japan), Rainbow Chan (Australia), x/o (Canada), ENDGAME (UK), Organ Tapes (UK), Yanoyanoh (UK), coucou chloe (France), ptwiggs (Australia), JS Aurelius (Canada), Howell (Shanghai), and MIIIN (South Korea).5  MOM Livehouse (Hong Kong), Videotage (Hong Kong), Foo Tak Building (Hong Kong), Gallery Exit (Hong Kong), SaiCeong (Hong Kong), Focal Fair (Closed, Hong Kong), and Oil Club (Shenzhen) also acted as hosting venues. 4  While the Facebook page of Absurd TRAX was launched on 16 December 2016, before their very first gig under this name, Absurd TRAX has also held two gigs under Absurd Creation, where they had booked foreign artists such as Meuko! Meuko! (Taiwan), 食品まつりa.k.a foodman (Japan), Achun (Macao), mobilegirl (Berlin, Germany), Schintii (Shanghai/Taipei, China), Damacha (Shanghai, China), and local artists such as Kelvin T feat. Cooking Bitchess, Just Bee, and Nin Chan alias Tsalal. 5  An exhaustive list of artists having worked with Absurd TRAX can be found at the following link: https://www.facebook.com/pg/absurdTRAX/events/ 3

182 

A. Yiu

While HKCR serves as the main window of visibility for Hong Kong to exist on the map of the current international translocal online underground scene by featuring both international and local artists, and the Absurd TRAX concert series which has helped connect international underground club music artists and their Hong Kong counterparts, the record label Absurd TRAX aims to promote and represent specifically Hong Kong artists including Kelvin T, ASJ, Alexmalism, Tsalal, and designer Suze Chan, artist Anna Chim, and Gavin Wong himself. Built upon the network established through releasing music and social media networking, Absurd TRAX represents local artists on the international map of the underground post-genre electronic music scene. Since the release of Kelvin T’s first EP “Sedative” in 2017, Absurd TRAX’s recorded music has become highly associated with the post-genre club music scene, and its releases have attracted a global audience on SoundCloud, and recognition on streaming platforms such as Bandcamp.6 As of June 2019, Absurd TRAX is available in different formats including digital files, cassettes, and USB drives. The released artists include Meuko! Meuko! (Taiwan), Kelvin T (Hong Kong), ASJ (Hong Kong), Anna Chim (deceased, Hong Kong), Alexmalism (Hong Kong), 空蝉Cicadas Shell (Japan), and emamouse (Japan) & Nicolò (Italy). In July, Absurd TRAX will also release one more album愛の響き [AT-009] by Japanese artist Kenji.7 While some of the releases such as Kelvin T’s and ASJ’s EPs could be considered as club bangers, the other releases include a wide range of sound including plunderphonic collage (Kenji) to experimental ambient tracks (emamouse & Nicolò). While many of the artworks of the releases are designed by Absurd TRAX’s in-house artists and friends such as Suze Chan aka shealwaysappears, Anna Chim, and K Ying Wong, the mastering of these releases is also done by international artists active in the scene such as Ptwiggs (Australia), Alexis Chan aka Soda Plains (UK), Dizparity (Taiwan), and Jesse Osborne-Lanthier at H Studios (Canada) and their in-house producer Alexmalism. Remixes and collaborations of Absurd TRAX’s music has also been done by international artists such as Felix  https://daily.bandcamp.com/label-profile/absurd-trax-feature  While all these releases are available as digital files for purchase on Bandcamp, some of them such as Meuko! Meuko!’s About Time 關於時間 EP and ASJ’s The Road to Become One are also available as cassettes. The latest release by emamouse & Nicolò is even available as USB drive. 6 7

13  Underground Club Music After Social Media… 

183

Idle aka WA?STE (Japan/Australia), Sonia Calico (Taiwan), Lujiachi (Taiwan), and Thegn (Canada). Considering that the transmissibility of online platforms such as SoundCloud and Bandcamp is limited by its own network of followers, Absurd TRAX has also collaborated with numerous independent online media blogs and platforms such as Lynn (Chicago, USA), PW-Magazine (Vienna, Austria), AQNB (Brussels, Belgium), and SBVRSV.press (Toronto, Canada), to announce and release singles exclusively on those platforms.

Conclusion The Hong Kong post-genre scene is still evolving, but through the activities of the infrastructures described earlier, it is possible to see how it connects with other local scenes through different layers of networks, capital, and culture. The cases of XXX, HKCR, and Absurd Trax point to the ways in which a local scene is emerging through different aspects including physical space, the internet, and individual artists. If the global underground club music scene is a forest of many grown trees, the Hong Kong local post-genre underground club scene is perhaps a lucky seed which has just germinated. As Gavin Wong posited in an interview, “I think Hong Kong is in this state of rebuilding [and] transitioning, so small venues are exactly what we need to start everything again from ground zero. . . . I feel that there is a need for a physical community that exists locally, versus just purely being a virtual entity, and Absurd TRAX is [here] to facilitate that. … We are from Hong Kong, so there’s really no such urge for us to further enforce or justify the identity. It’s already intrinsic to us” (Feola 2018).

References “Deconstructed-Club”. (2018, June 27). Retrieved from https://rateyourmusic. com/genre/deconstructed+club Beaumont-Thomas, B. (2018, 2018/04/05/T11:00:47.000Z). Lil Xan: Total Xanarchy Review  – Moronic Rap to Make You Feel Old. The Guardian.

184 

A. Yiu

Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/apr/05/lil-­xan-­ total-­xanarchy-­review-­moronic-­rap-­to-­make-­you-­feel-­old Bennett, A., & Peterson, R.  A. (2004). Music Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Brewster, B., & Broughton, F. (2012). Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey (Updated and revised ed.). New York: Grove Press. Bucciero, J. (2018). Album of the Day: Seth Graham, “Gasp”. Bandcamp Daily. Retrieved from https://daily.bandcamp.com/album-­of-­the-­day/seth-­ graham-­gasp-­review Carolus, E. (2017). How Total Freedom’s Devastating DJ Sets Changed Club Music. Dazed. Retrieved from https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/34275/1/total-­freedom-­influence-­interview Feola, J. (2018). In a City of High-Rises, Hong Kong’s Absurd TRAX Builds from Ground Zero. Bandcamp Daily. Retrieved from https://daily.bandcamp. com/label-­profile/absurd-­trax-­feature Graham, S. (2012). Notes from the Underground: A Cultural, Political, and Aesthetic Mapping of Underground Music. (Doctoral). Goldsmiths: University of London. Retrieved from http://research.gold.ac.uk/8050/ James, R. (2017). Is the Post-in Post-identity the Post-in Post-genre? Popular Music, 36(1), 21–32. Katz, B., & Katz, R. A. (2003). Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Kay, J. (2012). fLako’s ‘Eclosure’ EP Reviewed. atractivoquenobello. Retrieved from https://www.aqnb.com/2012/12/18/flakos-­eclosure-­ep-­reviewed/ Lubner, R. (2018). Interview: Zora Jones & Sinjin Hawke. Tiny Mix Tapes. Retrieved from https://www.tinymixtapes.com/features/zora-­jones-­sinjin-­ hawke McLeod, K. (2001). Genres, Subgenres, Sub-subgenres and More: Musical and Social Differentiation Within Electronic/Dance Music Communities. Journal of Popular Music Studies, 13(1), 59–75. Meier, G. (2017, 2017/08/06/T09:18:43+00:00). 10 Under-the-Radar Club Tracks You Need to Hear in August 2017. Retrieved from https://www.factmag.com/2017/08/06/10-­radar-­club-­tracks-­need-­hear-­august-­2017/ Moorefield, V. (2010). The Producer as Composer: Shaping the Sounds of Popular Music. Cambridge: Mit Press. Thornton, S. (1996). Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Subcultural Capital. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press.

13  Underground Club Music After Social Media… 

185

Welsh, A. C. (2018, 2018/03/04/T15:47:04+00:00). How Underground Club Music in China Is Thriving Against the Odds. Retrieved from https://www. factmag.com/2018/03/04/underground-­club-­music-­china/ Wong, G. (2019). HKCR on Facebook Watch. Retrieved from https://www. facebook.com/hkcrlive/videos/vl.1378792185608053/ 458542914763945/?type=1

Part Three: Interfaces

14 Radical Participation: The Politics of Performance in Chinese Punk-Rock Concerts Nathanel Amar

On December 30, 2012, the Beijing punk live venue School Bar organized a New Year punk concert with an impressive line-up, including some old and respected punk and skinhead bands—as Misandao 蜜三刀 or Ouch 哎吆—and younger bands like Gum Bleed 牙龈出血, Discord or Hell City. The old ska-punk band Ouch was the last to perform at 2 A.M. The audience was sparse and drunk; the skinheads were still excited after the performance of Misandao and were shouting in front of the stage. The band Ouch began to play, and immediately pogos began to form. Misandao’s late singer Lei Jun took the microphone from the stage and began to sing, audience members invaded the stage and disturbed the musicians, but everybody seemed to enjoy themselves, and the concert was only interrupted when the drummer began to vomit on his shoes. The band apologized, saying that it was too late, the drummer was drinking all night long and could not continue to perform. Even if Ouch performance was interrupted, the audience and the band considered the N. Amar (*) French Centre for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC), Taipei, Taiwan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. Charrieras, F. Mouillot (eds.), Fractured Scenes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6_14

189

190 

N. Amar

concert a success. Concert audience participation is an essential component of the punk performance. The band is not only performing a song that the audience listens to, they create a unique sonic experience together, one in which the audience and the musicians are separated neither physically nor symbolically. This is of course not specific to China, many other punk communities around the world function in the same fashion. Punk was originally conceived as a way to negate the professionalization of rock musicians and to assert the right for everyone to “form a band”, as it was stated in the punk fanzine Sideburn in 1977, or that “even ugly you can still play”, as Joe Strummer famously said (Hein 2012, p. 21). But in the Chinese case, punk communities have to deal with an authoritarian state that still controls popular cultural expression (Jones 2010; Baranovitch 2003). The way these communities organize and play concerts is in total contradiction with the way concerts are officially organized in China. Audience participation at live music events is indeed something that the Chinese authorities aim to prevent, as evidenced by the management of official concerts by the Chinese police. Through a description of various punk concerts in different spaces, both in underground and official live venues, this chapter will show how the radical participation of the audience during punk concerts is creating alternative spaces of cultural and political expression in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This chapter is dedicated to live performances in the PRC, whose social, political and economic situation is very different from other regions of the Sinophone world. In Hong Kong, for instance, the struggle for some underground music communities to find proper spaces to perform is often linked to real estate price levels, political tensions or the Lands Department bureaucracy which grants public entertainment licenses. The Hidden Agenda, a legendary live venue discussed elsewhere in this book, has epitomized these issues.

Creating a Scene in a Hostile Environment The history of Chinese punk rock, which emerged in the mid-1990s, has to be replaced in the longer story of the Chinese underground musical communities in general, and the Beijing rock community in particular.

14  Radical Participation: The Politics of Performance in Chinese… 

191

In the early 1980s, the first Chinese rockers had to find spaces to rehearse and perform, in universities or international hostels where they could organize rock parties (Capdeville-Zeng 2002). They also took advantage of the public spaces opened by students and intellectuals in the wake of the democratic movement of 1989 (Béja 1992). After the Tiananmen crackdown of 1989, prominent Chinese rockers were banned from performing in official venues in Beijing (Campbell 2011), and the rock community had no choice but to perform in unofficial parties, in bars newly opened by Beijing rockers such as Li Ji 李季, the singer for Bu Dao Weng 不倒翁, one of the first Chinese rock bands (Xue 1993). In 1995, Liu Yuan 刘元, a saxophonist playing with China’s most prominent rock musician Cui Jian 崔健, opened the CD Café, a bar located in the Chaoyang 朝阳 district of Beijing. If Chinese rock was marginalized after the Tiananmen crackdown, pirated albums from Hong Kong and Taiwan, but also dakou 打口 (“saw-gashed”) CDs and tapes,1 fostered a new generation of Chinese musicians. In the mid-1990s, newly formed punk and indie bands began to play in the alternative spaces opened by Chinese rock musicians, sharing the stage with more traditional rock bands. At that time, it was not uncommon to see concerts featuring punk and garage bands alongside older rock acts such as Dou Wei 窦唯, Cobra 眼 镜蛇 or Cui Jian. As mentioned in David O’Dell’s memoirs, an American exchange student who witnessed firsthand the emergence of the Chinese punk-rock movement, Beijing punks had also to create their own rehearsal spaces, like the one set up by the Gao 高 brothers (members of one of the first Chinese punk band UnderBaby 地下婴儿) in their parents’ roast duck restaurant (O’Dell 2011). In the late 1990s, bars specifically dedicated to the punk community began to appear in Beijing and other Chinese cities, like the Scream Club 嚎叫俱乐部 or the Happy Paradise 开心乐园, but they all had to close after a couple of years of activity for financial issues or due to administrative pressure, replaced by new bars and live venues, which have to constantly negotiate their existence with local authorities.  A term which refers to unsold Western tapes sent to China to be recycled but sold on the black market throughout the 1990s for a fraction of the original price. For more, see De Kloet (2005) and Amar (2018). 1

192 

N. Amar

While the origins of punk live events in the PRC were predicated upon a kind of parasitic relationship to more traditional rock venues, the specificities of punk aesthetics and practices gradually made such relation increasingly uneasy for Chinese punks. Sharing the stage with other alternative music communities also fostered resentment and tensions inside the punk community, which often accused rock live venues of voluntarily marginalizing their performances and not sharing fairly the revenues of the shows. As pointed out by the singer of street-punk band Discord after a concert at the old MAO Livehouse in Beijing, “the manager of the bar decided by himself the line-up of the concert, we performed at the very end, after all the rock bands. Then, the manager fled with tonight tickets’ money, we had to threaten him in order to get our share. And it was less than the other bands”.2 Other bands also criticize rock venues for not showing them enough respect, a claim based on the perception that these venues typically provide less free alcohol to punk musicians before their shows. Additionally, the spatial arrangements of these rock venues were ill-suited for punk performativity. These spaces generally consist of an elevated stage for the band and a lower pit for the audience with these two relatively distinct areas usually being separated by a barrier. As a result, audience members and musicians are not on the same physical level, and it is rather complicated for the public to invade the stage— except during stage-diving, when a member of the audience jumps onto the crowd from the stage. Within rock venues, audience participation revolves mainly around pogo, circle pit and stage-diving, practices shared by many alternative music communities such as the hard-rock or metal fans. But these kind of performance spaces are not entirely suitable for punk shows, which need a more interactive spatial setting: punk audience members often invade the stage in order to sing with the band, thus actively participating in the performance itself—sometimes voluntarily disrupting the concert by taking the microphone or the instruments away from the musicians. Resentment toward and tensions with more rock-­ oriented event organizers and their venues as well as physical space limitations in these concert spaces encouraged the Chinese punks to open their own venues in order to manage their performances by themselves. Spatial  Z., Y. (2013, April 19). Personal interview.

2

14  Radical Participation: The Politics of Performance in Chinese… 

193

infrastructures are crucial for the formation of a viable punk community. As O’Connor (2002) points out, the creation of a “punk scene” is only possible when bands find venues to play, perform and live cheaply.3 Thus, Chinese punks had to stop relying on the already existing rock community to create spaces where they could set their own rules (Image 14.1).

The Politics of Pogo Dancing When Spike, the singer of the punk band Demerit 过失 decided to open a live venue dedicated to punk rock in Tongzhou 通州4 in 2013, his project was linked to the marginalization of punk music in Chinese rock festivals. In 2013 for instance, the Strawberry Music Festival 草莓音乐

Image 14.1  The space of a Chinese rock live venue

 As pointed out by O’Connor: “When punks use the term ‘scene’ they mean the active creation of infrastructure to support punk bands and other forms of creative activity. This means finding places to play, building a supportive audience, developing strategies for living cheaply, shared punk houses, and such like” (2002, p. 226). 4  A suburb located in the Eastern part of Beijing. 3

194 

N. Amar

节, created by the independent record label Modern Sky 摩登天空,5 did not schedule any punk band, even though the festival was organized in Tongzhou where a lot of Beijing punks live due to cheap rents and the proximity of the Beijing Contemporary Music Academy 北京现代音乐 学院. Spike thus decided to organize his own punk festival, entitled “Strawberry Fucktival” in Tongzhou, which led the foundation to the first punk bar in Tongzhou, the DMC (Dirty Monster Club). Between 2013 and 2015, the DMC was a major site of punk experimentation, where local punks could manage their own performances, and share the money generated by the concerts equitably. In this space, the organization of concerts was also thought as a kind of democratic process, as opposed to the way Beijing rock bars traditionally organize their group line-ups. While live venues managers generally decide themselves which band will start and close a concert, the punks at the DMC decided to organize a beer competition between the bands with the fastest drinker choosing the line-up (Image 14.2). The beer competition is not the only example of a punk style of management at a live venue like the DMC. The space of the concert itself is

Image 14.2  The beer competition at the DMC. (Photo by the author)  Modern Sky is also known for having participated in the commercialization of indie rock music in the 1990s; see Steen (2000). 5

14  Radical Participation: The Politics of Performance in Chinese… 

195

designed to welcome a punk show, during which the audience participates actively to the performance. Indeed, in lives venues managed directly by the punks—such as the DMC in Tongzhou, the School Bar in Beijing or the Wuhan Prison in Wuhan—the stage is not separated from the audience by a barrier. The public often storms the stage, and the musicians also often invade the audience’s space to play among them— except for the drummer who has to stay on stage because of the weight of the drum kit. Members of the audience frequently take the microphone from the singer to sing their favourite songs, play with the guitar or the bass and sometimes disturb the concert violently by jumping on the singer.6 Punk dances include the “pogo”, but also “slamdancing” or “moshing”, which “brought increased body contact to the original pogo” (Tsitsos 1999, p.  405), “headbanging” or stage-diving.7 These dances have been analysed as political “assertions of individual presence” (p. 407) in the punk scene and as an opposition to the mainstream, allowing “punks to present the threat of chaos while still maintaining unity among themselves within the pit” (ibid.). While violent in appearance, these dances also show solidarity between participants of the pogo, since everyone who falls is quickly lifted and taken care of (Image 14.3). Like the pogo, an apparently violent and non-aesthetic dance, audience participation during a punk concert is not only an expression of ritual violence, it is first and foremost a way to negate the traditional distinction between the audience and the musicians. Punk concerts are a political expression of radical equality between members of a punk community, whether they are musicians or audience members, and therefore implicitly state that everyone can, and in fact has to, participate in the creation of a punk show. The radical democratic experience of a punk show is not specific to China of course and can be found in many other punk communities worldwide (see Baulch 2007, Wallach 2008, and  See, for instance, a 2007 concert of the punk-rock band Joyside at the D22 in Beijing, where an audience member jumps on the singer: https://youtu.be/8gxhmIkAQbM 7  “Pogo” refers to a famous punk dance in which the dancer jumps up and down. “Slamdancing” (or “moshing”) is a variant of pogo dancing in which participants push each other forcefully. According to Tsitros, it “brought increased body contact to the original pogo” (1999, p.  405). “Headbanging” means shaking one’s head vigorously following the rhythm of the music. To “stage-­ dive” means jumping into the audience from the stage. It is often associated with “crowd surfing”, when a person is passed overhead during a concert. 6

196 

N. Amar

Image 14.3  The space of a punk show and the interactions between the musicians and the audience

Kürti 2012). However, this way of organizing a concert by involving the audience is in total contradiction with the management of concerts by the Chinese authorities. To understand the political implication of a Chinese punk concert, we have to analyse how the Chinese authorities envision the management of a concert, and the conflicts it generates with the audience (Image 14.4).

 isciplined and Punished: The Visible Hand D of the State During Punk and Rock Performances Official suspicion toward audience participation during a concert is not something new in China. Baranovitch describes how, in 1986, the Chinese authorities had to violently intervene during a concert of the surf-rock American band Jan and Dean in Shanghai, as “some members of the audience started to dance in the aisles, and some even jumped onto the stage. The security people present at the concert, who were

14  Radical Participation: The Politics of Performance in Chinese… 

197

Image 14.4  Invasion of the stage during a Demerit concert at the Wuhan Prison on September 1, 2018. (Photo by the author)

completely unfamiliar with this kind of spontaneous and ‘undisciplined’ audience participation, tried to arrest one of those who took part in the dancing” (Baranovitch 2003, p.  35). This incident eventually led to a student demonstration after the arrest and beating of a student from Jiaotong University during the concert. These kinds of incidents did not stop over time, and it is still rather frequent to witness police or security guard interventions during concerts when the audience tries to actively participate. In September 2018, a scandal erupted after a concert of the English pop singer Dua Lipa in Shanghai when videos of security guards beating members of the audience were uploaded on the internet. Some fans were forcefully removed for waving an LGBT flag, and others for dancing or simply standing up.8 Police intervention can also take a more humoristic turn, for instance, during the Rocket Music Festival 火箭音  See the video online: https://youtu.be/D5Xkx3DR_Qk

8

198 

N. Amar

乐节 in Jinan 济南 in September 2018, when a police officer came on stage during rocker Xie Tian Xiao’s 谢天笑 performance to warn the audience to stop “throwing water” or dancing the pogo,9 and threatening to cancel the performance because of the recent “crackdown on crime to eliminate evil” (扫黑除恶). However, instead of feeling threatened, the audience laughed at the policeman, and Xie Tian Xiao himself made fun of him while translating the policeman’s words into acceptable conditions for the public (“what our uncle policeman [警察叔叔] said, it’s just for your security”). Chinese authorities’ management of music festivals has taken a more drastic turn in the past few years. Local police now closely manage rock festivals and try as far as possible to monitor the space of the performance. For instance, the Midi Music Festival 迷笛音乐节, organized on December 30 and 31, 2017, in Shenzhen 深圳 was heavily controlled by the local police, from the entrance—with bag checks, facial recognition software and ID scan of each spectator—to the stage. The management of the performance space was, in this respect, paradigmatic of a Foucauldian panopticon: the “pit” for each stage was divided into different areas separated by steel barriers. In each area, a policeman was seated in a highchair, monitoring the audience from above, while other policemen, on the ground, were armed with a metal rod that allowed them to single out any suspect individual. This sort of disciplinary mechanism was famously described by Foucault in Discipline and Punish, where he analyses Bentham’s Panopticon as an “enclosed, segmented space, observed at every point, in which the individuals are inserted in a fixed place, in which the slightest movements are supervised, in which all events are recorded” (Foucault 1995, p. 197). The spatial position of the policeman during the concert is similar to the panopticon supervisor, which can monitor each individual. During the two days of the festival, pogo and stage-diving were criminalized by the police, allegedly for the safety of the audience. Every time a member of the audience stage-dived, a squad of policemen ripped through the crowd to seize them violently and bring them to the ground. This gave rise to acts of solidarity between the members of the audience against police authority: once a stage-diver was  See the video online: https://youtu.be/u5juMIj1bnA

9

14  Radical Participation: The Politics of Performance in Chinese… 

199

Image 14.5  A policeman in his monitoring highchair during the Shenzhen Midi Music Festival, December 31, 2017. (Photo by the author)

brought to the ground by the police, audience members spontaneously placed themselves between the stage-diver and the police, giving the former enough time to escape and disrupting the disciplinary structure of a working panopticon during rock festivals (Images 14.5 and 14.6). The Wuhan punk band SMZB 生命之饼 was the last band to perform during the Shenzhen Midi Music Festival on December 31, 2017, in front of 10,000 people. The police were particularly on edge, since SMZB is supposed to be the most political punk band in China. The concert was sprinkled by numerous incidents involving the audience and the police, pogos and stage-diving. The tension was so tangible that the band itself had to intervene several times, asking the police to stop harassing the

200 

N. Amar

Image 14.6  The stage setting during the Shenzhen Midi Musical Festival, December 2017

audience. Eventually, the microphone of the singer was shut after he sang a song that was not approved by the authorities. The space of the music festival combines elements of Foucauldian discipline—with its own version of Bentham’s panopticon—and security governmentality. While the space of the concert is managed by the police through disciplinary methods, the space of the festival, with the profusion of security apparatuses including scanners and facial recognition devices, is typical of another strategy of governmentality, studied by Foucault in a lecture published under the title Security, Territory, Population (2007). Unlike discipline, which tries to manage the body and behavior of individuals, security apparatuses try to discriminate between good and bad circulation and eliminate dangerous elements. Against this new modality of governmentality, Foucault tries to identify strategies of resistance, which he names “counter-conducts”, “in the sense of struggle against the processes implemented for conducting others” (p.  201). In the case of contemporary punk concerts in China, pogos and stage-­diving represent small acts of counter-conducts that challenge the intervention of the police during a rock festival.

14  Radical Participation: The Politics of Performance in Chinese… 

201

Conclusion If the space of rock festivals like the Shenzhen Midi Music Festival is filled with security apparatuses and discipline mechanisms, we can analyse the space managed by the punks as yet another Foucauldian concept, heterotopia, or “other spaces”. Heterotopias are according to Foucault “something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted” (Foucault 1986, p. 24). The Chinese punks themselves recognize the utopian component of the space they create. The DMC, opened by Spike, is also known as “the utopia of Tongzhou” 通州乌托邦, since the punks manage the bar which functions in a radical democratic way themselves. In Wuhan for instance, the punk guitarist Mai Dian 麦颠 opened an “Autonomous Youth Centre” named “Our House” 我们家, inspired by European squats (Amar 2016), where anyone can come, stay, eat and have discussions with each other. All these experiences have a similar goal: trying to find another way of living and collectively participating in an authoritarian state that usually manages the conduct of the individuals strictly. In their own way, Chinese punks are experiencing radical democratic way of organizing themselves in the spaces they create, while dealing with the authorities and the market when they perform in a rock live venue or in a music festival. At the same time, the disciplinary space of the music festival created by the police is disputed: people challenge the authorities by continuing to stage-dive, mosh, smoke, drink alcohol and escape the police. These punk concerts, even under the supervision of the authorities, remain a small and conflicted heterotopia. In the context of contemporary China, punk performances produce new kinds of social relations between the musicians and the audience that are both antiauthority and egalitarian.

202 

N. Amar

References Amar, N. (2016). Drunk with City. Usages de la ville par les punks de Wuhan. Urbanités. Retrieved from: http://www.revue-­urbanites.fr/ drunk-­with-­city-­smzb-­drunk-­with-­city-­smzb-­2004-­usages-­de-­la-­ville-­par-­ les-­punks-­de-­wuhan/ Amar, N. (2018). The Lives of Dakou in China: From Waste to Nostalgia. Études Chinoises, 37(2), 35–60. Baranovitch, N. (2003). China’s New Voices: Popular Music, Ethnicity, Gender, and Politics, 1978–1997. Berkeley: University of California Press. Baulch, E. (2007). Making Scenes: Reggae, Punk and Death Metal in 1990s Bali. Durham: Duke University Press. Béja, J.-P. (1992). Regards sur les ‘salons’ chinois. Embryons de société civile et sphère publique en Chine (1978–1989). Revue française de science politique, 1, 56–82. Capdeville-Zeng, C. (2002). Les spectacles de musique rock en Chine. Du yin et du yang. L’Homme, 161, 123–148. Campbell, J. (2011). Red Rock. The Long, Strange March of Chinese Rock & Roll. Hong Kong: Earnshaw. De Kloet, J. (2005). Popular Music and Youth in Urban China: The Dakou Generation. The China Quarterly, 183, 609–626. Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, M. (2007). Security, Territory, Population. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Foucault, M. (1986). Of Other Spaces. Diacritics, 16(1), 22–27. Hein, F. (2012). Do It Yourself! Autodétermination et culture punk. Paris: Le passager clandestin. Jones, A. (2010). Like a Knife. Ideology and Genre in Contemporary Chinese Popular Music. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kürti, L. (2012). Twenty Years After: Rock Music and National Rock in Hungary. The Region, 1(1), 93–129. O’Connor, A. (2002). Local Scenes and Dangerous Crossroads: Punk and Theories of Cultural Hybridity. Popular Music, 21(2), 225–236. O’Dell, D. (2011). Inseparable. The Memoirs of an American and the Story of Chinese Punk Rock. Portland: Manao Books. Steen, A. (2000). Sound, Protest and Business. Modern Sky Co. and the New Ideology of Chinese Rock. Berliner China-Hefte, 19, S40–S64.

14  Radical Participation: The Politics of Performance in Chinese… 

203

Tsitsos, W. (1999). Rules of Rebellion: Slamdancing, Moshing, and the American Alternative Scene. Popular Music, 18(3), 397–414. Wallach, J. (2008). Living the Punk Lifestyle in Jakarta. Ethnomusicology, 52(1), 98–116. Xue, J. 雪季. (1993). Yaogun mengxun. Zhongguo yaogun shilu 摇滚梦寻. 中国 摇滚乐实录 (Searching for Rock and Roll. The Archives of Chinese Rock). Beijing: Zhongguo Dianying chubanshe. Z., Y. (2013, April 19). Personal interview.

15 An Underground Music Venue in Beijing: fRUITYSPACE Edward Sanderson

Having lived in Beijing for almost a decade, from 2007 until 2018 after which I moved to Hong Kong for my PhD, I was fortunate to experience the ecosystems for non-mainstream music and sound practices there in some depth. Over that period, I found myself visiting certain venues on a regular basis, venues that had a reputation as amenable to such practices. But venues like this are few and far between, most hosting a more or less eclectic range of events to attract a wider audience as a pragmatic approach to their businesses. This text is about one such venue which is characterised by its focus on non-mainstream culture – fRUITYSPACE. While I was living in Beijing, I would go there pretty much every week, sometimes multiple times a week, particularly to experience the various types of experimental music or sound performance that it hosted. fRUITYSPACE is noteworthy because of its attention to non-mainstream culture, but also because it E. Sanderson (*) Hong Kong Baptist University Academy of Visual Arts, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. Charrieras, F. Mouillot (eds.), Fractured Scenes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6_15

205

206 

E. Sanderson

has managed to survive in an environment that has generally not been supportive of independent spaces, as evidenced by the short-lived nature of similar spaces in the same area. Therefore, in this essay, I will analyse this space and its environment in order to understand its place within the general ecosystem for non-­ mainstream performance in Beijing, and what fRUITYSPACE can tell us about effective responses to such environment. I will try to show how a DIY approach to its daily activities and to the development of its programme is central to its sustainability. Due to its (relative) longevity, fRUITYSPACE can also provide evidence of how social conditions influence the appearance of non-mainstream communities in Beijing, particularly those related to sound and music. This text is based on interviews I conducted with the founder Zhai Ruixin and his business partner Caodi,1 as well as with the musicians Zhu Wenbo and Zhao Cong. These interviews are supplemented by my own on-site observations at the venue that provide an account of the space and the activities associated with it, as well as suggest their significance. In order to investigate the wider ecosystem that fRUITYSPACE has developed within, I will outline Zhai’s background and the history of fRUITYSPACE, his vision for the space, and its development in response to the local conditions. Accounts of two events that took place while I was there will provide observations on the space and its use, and the audiences attracted to such events. Zhai’s plans for the future development of the space will show his expectations and the realities for the development of such independent spaces in Beijing (Image 15.1). fRUITYSPACE is a small basement live-house founded by Zhai Ruixin in 2016. It has an audience capacity of around 100 people and is situated within the 2nd Ring Road area in the centre of Beijing. Beyond its main activity of hosting music concerts and performances of various types, fRUITYSPACE has developed  over the years an infrastructure around these activities. This has included the on-site visual art gallery space, the Space Fruity Records record label that has published a number of vinyl

 The interview took place in May 2018. I am also indebted to Caodi for providing the interview translation. 1

15  An Underground Music Venue in Beijing: fRUITYSPACE 

207

Image 15.1  Portrait of Zhai Ruixin of fRUITYSPACE

releases by local artists, and a print publishing arm, fRUITYPRESS, that has produced an eclectic array of artist books. The venue has become popular with musicians and artists who work with non-mainstream sound and performance. As a result of my own visits, I got to know many other like-minded people who were also regulars at the venue. In particular I regularly bumped into the couple Zhu Wenbo and Zhao Cong, who were there either as audience members or as performers (I will provide more information about them below).

208 

E. Sanderson

Recently, when I asked them for their thoughts about fRUITYSPACE, they were adamant that “it was the only place … for this kind of performance, even until now!”. Zhai was born in Beijing in 1980 and has been a practicing musician since the early 2000s, well known in the experimental music community in China. His musical style is self-described as “ambient” and his first CD of music was self-released in 2003 under his artist name of me:mo. Since then, he has released four albums on labels such as Modern Sky’s Guava sublabel and Shanshui (both important local and independent labels for disseminating experimental music in China). From 2014 to 2016, before opening fRUITYSPACE, Zhai had co-­ managed a space called fRUITYSHOP in Beijing with another colleague (the name fRUITYSHOP was  borrowed from the title of Zhai’s first demo release). Zhai and his colleague at fRUITYSHOP had met when the latter ran another small-scale underground vinyl store called Strange Fruit, which ran from 2012 to 2014 on Qianliang Hutong nearby. fRUITYSHOP was located in Dongsi Toutiao Hutong, not far from the present location of fRUITYSPACE (it has since moved elsewhere). fRUITYSHOP functioned as a vinyl record store by day, but Zhai’s involvement led to its development into an irregular performance space in the evenings. In the end the owner of fRUITYSHOP and Zhai had different visions of how to run the space, and Zhai decided to open his own space: “I wanted a bigger place, that could be a professional live musictype of place, where we could set up the equipment in an ideal manner.” fRUITYSPACE was opened in its present location in 2016 (Image 15.2). fRUITYSPACE is located in a basement commercial space on the Meishuguan Dongjie, a busy road running North-South around the corner from the National Art Museum of China. If you stand on the street outside its entrance on the opposite side of the road you can see several large commercial buildings and a hospital constructed within the last 30 years or so. On their side of the road, the buildings are older and usually no more than two stories high, with street frontages predominantly occupied by small restaurants and some convenience stores. Punctuating this road small alleyways known as “hutong” give access to the interior of this city block where traditional residential buildings make up its bulk.

15  An Underground Music Venue in Beijing: fRUITYSPACE 

209

Image 15.2  The entrance to fRUITYSPACE

As a local, it was Zhai’s familiarity with the area that led him locate fRUITYSPACE there (Image 15.3): I live nearby and one day in 2016 I found that this place was for rent, and I thought a basement space like this would be a good option. I thought it might be a good chance to just set up a separate live house altogether, where I can do things more freely, closer to my own ideas and not work together with somebody else. That is fRUITYSPACE.

210 

E. Sanderson

Image 15.3  Inside fRUITYSPACE, the view from the stage area towards the entrance

Entering the space, you pass through a doorway in the street frontage shared with a restaurant, below an illuminated sign showing the fRUITYSPACE logo. This leads to a stairway down to the basement, at the bottom of which are some seats which serve as an informal smoking area (smoking not being allowed within the venue). The space itself is effectively one long room with various open and closed-off areas divided off along one side. It originally housed a noodle shop and Zhai added glazed divisions for a merchandise room and the entrance, as well as repainting everything and adding a bar, while retaining the distinctive impastoed plaster ceiling from its previous life. The main space has the performance area at the far end, and the entrance and sound desk are at the rear. On the right-hand side when facing the performance area, moving from front to rear, is an open space for equipment storage, then the open gallery/ lounge space, followed by an enclosed merchandise room, then a bar area by the entrance parallel with the sound desk, and finally a toilet lies at the very rear of the space behind the entrance. The audio system is what Zhai describes as: “a standard mini live house setup”. Zhai’s original intention in opening a new space was to improve the quality of the music events he was experiencing in China. As a musician,

15  An Underground Music Venue in Beijing: fRUITYSPACE 

211

Zhai was dissatisfied by the many concerts which included artists without any stylistic relationship. He felt this was unsatisfactory for both the artists and the audience: I wished there could be places that only presented one style. I was interested in organising gigs that had a specific style and focus – not mixing rock ‘n’ roll with folk in one event [for example]. I like a clean cut, focused show.

In fRUITYSPACE, Zhai worked to fulfil this wish to make a stronger experience for the audience. Zhai used the words “underground” and “DIY” at various points in our conversations to describe the nature of the activities that took place in fRUITYSPACE, and it is worth analyzing what is implied by these terms and how Zhai understood and realised them. “Underground” as a form of culture, conventionally implies a practice existing in opposition to mainstream culture and society (Graham 2016). In the early 1990s in China, as the initial flowering of rock music in the 1980s was suppressed following the events of 1989, and, as it was co-­opted into the officially sanctioned mainstream, its previous adversarial meaning was lost. From this point on, the term “underground” was  used to designate cultural practices outside the mainstream, applied to anything outside of the sanctioned norms. These practices were automatically considered unacceptable by the cultural gatekeepers in the media or government and were not allowed to appear in front of a mainstream public. With the promotion of the capitalist economy and mindset in China from the 1980s on, some of these forms of “underground” performance could find some commercial success in China as private enterprises – witness the independent record labels Modern Sky and to a lesser extent Maybe Mars, the development of large-scale music festivals, and electronic music and its attendant club culture. By and large, however, the developments of alternative rock, indie music or punk lacked any official support and had to make their own way under continual threat of suppression, and at least initially could be considered “DIY” (Jones 1992; Karkowski and Yan 2009; de Kloet 2010; Groenewegen 2011; Yan 2017; June Wang and Chen 2019).

212 

E. Sanderson

In Europe and America, the concept of “DIY” can be said to have originated in the mid-1970s with the punk scenes. In his discussion of the development of DIY practices in East Asia, Jian Miaoju (2018) identifies a similar approach of a “withdrawal from the logic of the corporate mechanism and its commercial operations”. Despite being a withdrawal in certain respects, DIY is as much a pragmatic approach for the survival of non-mainstream activities under the conditions of capitalism and has been applied to a broad range of activities associated with the securing of a livelihood without losing independence (Bennett 2018, p. 146). The operations of fRUITYSPACE reflects such an urge towards independence while remaining pragmatic in its economics. Zhu Wenbo and Zhao Cong characterise fRUITYSPACE as different from the more commercial venues because it places little emphasis on creating a luxurious atmosphere in which inflated prices of tickets, drinks or merchandise might be equated with a sense of value or exclusivity. The simple interior of fRUITYSPACE and the accessible presentation of its events leads to what they feel is a “comfortable” environment. The interior walls are finished as bare brick or rough plaster, the equipment and fittings are evidently well-used, and the seats and tables are not fixed in position, all of which gives the space what they consider to be a relaxed atmosphere. Another factor that promoted a sense of accessibility for Zhu and Zhao is that the stage area is not raised, which would have separated the artists from the audience.2 In the realisation of Zhai’s vision for fRUITYSPACE, references to “DIY” or “underground” relate as much to the general make-do sensibility of the space and the quality of the events that he wishes to host, as to a history of genre or styles of music in China or elsewhere. In this way he is not restricted to nominally “experimental” music events, but the “DIY”  Although beyond the scope of this essay, an analysis of theatre architecture in general (Bergner 2013, p. 39) and of live music venues in particular points to a lack of separate stage area as creating a strong relationship between the audience and performance. Overell (2010, p. 91), in her discussion of the Grindcore scene in Melbourne, Australia, suggests that this is an “affective” relationship (her references to “affect” stem from Brian Massumi’s introduction to Deleuze & Guattari’s A Thousand (Plateaus (1988/ 2011)). On this subject, Overell also cites Thrift (2007, p. 142) who “suggests that bodily proximity is more conducive to affective encounters than mediated contact” (Overell 2010, p. 91). See also Wang Jing (2016) for an account of affect in relation to experimental music in China specifically. 2

15  An Underground Music Venue in Beijing: fRUITYSPACE 

213

and “underground” sensibility in general gives him access to a range of events that are not beholden to satisfying mainstream expectations and open up possibilities for avant-garde creative expressions. For instance, these have included hip-hop battles, indie music gigs, comedy nights, film screenings and community markets. Zhao Cong pointed out that she was particularly happy about these community markets, describing a scene in which people came and informally spread out their unwanted things on tables or the floor. She felt that these events provided a focal point for the community associated with fRUITYSPACE, and that the DIY nature of these events reflected Zhai’s personality and his approach: “They are totally not commercial!”, she told me. Zhu then suggested: “I don’t think there are many things sold. They just give things away. It’s a social party, not a real market”. The schedule for fRUITYSPACE also reflects this approach as Zhai limits events to only two or three each week, and at times there may be none for a whole week. He tells me that his desire to focus on non-­ mainstream performances means that there is a limited supply of artists who would be appropriate to appear at fRUITYSPACE: “When the schedule is empty, I’m not just going get anyone to perform here simply to fill the space”. But in the evenings, even when there are no events, the space will still usually be open. Zhu Wenbo’s own experience gives him insight into Zhai’s approach to the programming of the space. Zhu has been a promoter of experimental music in Beijing and China for many years, having worked first at the famous Beijing live venues of D22 (open from 2002 to 2012), and its successor, XP (2012–2015), and he is also a musician in his own right. In contrast to fRUITYSPACE, Zhu felt that D22 and XP had felt the need to fill their schedules every night. But because they were always open, they became known more as places to socialise, shifting the focus away from the performances themselves. Over the period of my research, there were two music performance events that can provide a good illustration of the forms of performance at fRUITYSPACE as well as the different kinds of audiences appearing there. On my first day at fRUITYSPACE (a Thursday), it was open but without any particular event taking place, and I sat with Zhai and Caodi in the venue’s main seating area to interview them. Over the three hours we

214 

E. Sanderson

spent talking together, there was only one visitor, a woman who appeared to be a curious passer-by who tentatively came down the stairs to take a look around but left after less than five minutes without speaking to us or buying anything. I can imagine this might demonstrate how the space can be daunting for a lone visitor to enter. Caodi told me that groups do sometimes enter at random: “They just come in and have a drink and a laugh. Maybe they have got off from some meeting nearby, they fancy going somewhere to have a drink and then they are just gone”. Over the following two days, I sat in on scheduled music performances in the evenings. The doors officially opened at 9 pm and the events ended around 11 pm (although the venue remained open until later), and the ticket price being 50RMB (c.7USD) both nights. On the Friday, there was a music concert titled “Reverse Standard” by the three-man group Spontaneous Ensemble, joined by the guitarist Zhang Jiuyi. Their music was built around song-forms with improvised sections. This was a quiet night with just eight people in the audience (including myself ). They were divided equally between friends of the band and others whose reasons for coming to the space were unrelated to the performance. One audience member in the former group was apparently working with the band to make a video recording of the event, and she was accompanied by another person. I spoke to a man in his mid-20s, who told me he was visiting Beijing from Sichuan Province. He was a musician but played mostly blues and dub music. He had not been to fRUITYSPACE before but had heard about the event through a friend. While he was in Beijing, he had previously only visited some jazz bars around Houhai lake (near the Forbidden City in Beijing, an area known for its live bars frequented by tourists). I also spoke with two women in their early-20s, who were sophomore and freshman journalism students at Beijing Foreign Languages University. They told me that they did not usually go to music concerts, but their teacher had read about this event on the Douban social media website and tasked them to write a report about it; they therefore also reciprocally interviewed me about it. The last person I spoke to was another woman who lived close by to the venue. She told me she was an interaction designer, with her own company. She had also not been to fRUITYSPACE before and had just been passing by and decided to have a look inside the venue on a whim. The remaining

15  An Underground Music Venue in Beijing: fRUITYSPACE 

215

audience member I did not speak to – this was a man who spent most of the evening checking his phone, so it was difficult to judge his engagement with the band (Images 15.4, 15.5, and 15.6). The following night (Saturday) was more popular with about 30 people in the audience. This was another music concert titled “From the Noise to a Piece of Light”, including performances by the three-person group Kaoru Abe No Future [KANF] (members Zhu Wenbo and Liu Lu on electric guitars and vocals, with Zhu also playing a tin whistle and Liu also playing a drum, Zhao Cong on electric bass and woodwind recorder). They were followed by the duo of solo laptop musician and singer sourtower and laptop VJ yayeci. I might characterise KANF’s performance style as displaying a self-absorption and lack of audience interaction that has been seen as typical of indie-rock performances (Fonarow 2006): while they performed in the regular stage area, they did not interact with or face the audience, who maintained a certain distance from the performers, and themselves appeared less engaged with the performance. One audience member sat on the ground, but most stood up or were sitting on chairs. The group’s self-absorption would seem to contradict Zhao Cong’s comment above in which she disliked the distance created

Image 15.4  The audience for a performance in fRUITYSPACE

216 

E. Sanderson

Image 15.5  Performance in fRUITYSPACE: Kaoru Abe No Future

Image 15.6  Performance in fRUITYSPACE: sourtower and yayeci

15  An Underground Music Venue in Beijing: fRUITYSPACE 

217

by a raised stage, favouring sharing the same space as the audience to establish what I interpreted as an affective relationship with them. However, if an affective relationship can be marked by uneasiness, this was then reflected in their style of music which favoured disjointed rhythms and an unpolished delivery. The following group was comprised of sourtower and yayeci. Sourtower also performed an indie style of music, while yayeci projected abstract patterns on the wall behind them during the performance. Unlike KANF, both performers stood facing the audience, and although their interaction with the audience was limited, they were not as deliberately self-­ absorbed as KANF.  The audience reacted more positively to their performance, crowding the edge of the performance area and vocally expressing their appreciation after each song. Inevitably, audience numbers at fRUITYSPACE and their engagement with performances vary. Over the years I have been to events there with as few as one or two people attending, while for other events the space has been filled to its capacity of around 100 people. The reasons for this are not obscure, or necessarily random (the popularity of the performers; the style of performance; external factors such as competing events on the same night; and prosaic concerns such as the day of the week, the weather, etc.). Factors affecting the popularity of the second night’s performance that I described above may be that each of the members of the group KANF are already well-known representatives of a Beijing lo-fi music scene, producing music that exists at the more experimental end of “indie” music, straddling a gap between the recognisable song structures and performance styles of indie-rock music and performances that depart from these to enter less categorisable experimental works. Because of this I believe they have an established audience who know what to expect. Sourtower and yayeci, on the other hand, are relative newcomers to the music scene (only performing for the last two years) but nevertheless they seem to have already developed an enthusiastic following. Based on my observations, each group had their own set of fans distinct from the other’s, and each set of fans responded in different ways to the groups – aloof for KANF’s more experimental/difficult performance and engaged for sourtower/yayeci.

218 

E. Sanderson

Pressures on Zhai’s Vision for fRUITYSPACE The above accounts give some idea of the internal dynamics of the venue, but the larger geographical context within which fRUITYSPACE sits also plays an important formative role. Establishing a music venue puts one in a dynamic spatial environment where social and geographical realities must be negotiated. Non-mainstream music events in particular often push boundaries of “acceptability”, particularly in terms of noise levels and content. A common source of problems is related to proximity to neighbours. Zhai thinks that the music he wanted to host “fitted quite nicely [in the neighbourhood], since usually it’s not too loud”. Nevertheless, he recognises that this has not always been the case. For instance, when he first opened the space, there were a number of concerts by noise musicians which resulted in angry visits by the neighbours: At first, I wanted musicians of all genres to come here and play. But some of the louder groups cannot play here because of the noise, so it’s hard for them to keep coming. Therefore, the noise problems might affect my original vision; there’s always some compromise.

In some cases, the neighbours have called the police. Interestingly, Zhai feels that the police themselves are not the major problem for him, as he thinks they do not really care about the noise but are just going through the motions by checking on the venue. For Zhai, the main problem is when the neighbours come to the venue themselves and affect the atmosphere: The neighbour comes in here and screams at us. He knows the police don’t care, so he comes instead. This makes me very annoyed; every time it happens it creates a bad feeling during a gig. So I don’t want that neighbour coming around here. If he keeps complaining, and the police come here often, it’s never a good thing.

In the context of Beijing as a city undergoing rapid mutations, the two most evident local pressures are forms of gentrification and government urban policy. The most visible symptom of this process is the local

15  An Underground Music Venue in Beijing: fRUITYSPACE 

219

government programme to rectify3 the hutong areas that surround fRUITYSPACE. (‘全市开展安全隐患大排查大清理大整治_关注_ 新京报电子报 [Launch of Citywide Safety and Hidden Dangers Major Investigation, Major Cleaning, and Major Rectification]’, 2017) This process has been going on for many years in various forms, but over the last five years or so has specifically seen the demolishing of illegal structures and the filling in of unauthorised openings in the alley walls, both of which had been officially tolerated for decades. This has led to the eviction of many of the small businesses and organisations in these areas, as well as a number of cultural organisations that had exploited these spaces. Such a process occurs in many situations around the world, although China and Beijing will display certain local specifics (Chew 2009a, b). A detailed analysis of this process would be enlightening, but beyond the scope of this article. Zhai claims that the general mood amongst the businesses and organisations in these areas is not positive with respect to their future developments. He is well aware of the fragile situation fRUITYSPACE finds itself in: “The general mood of the city scene is not so good because of the government’s decision to rezone the city. It affects here as well, but somehow this basement has slipped past, but just barely”. As a result of these pressures over the last few years, Zhai has seen other cultural organisations disappear and artists leave the city. Zhai makes an interesting distinction between the ability of locals and non-locals to cope with this situation. He points to the example of another experimental musician Ding Chenchen, originally from Xuzhou in Jiangsu province, who was for some years a mainstay of the experimental music community in Beijing. In 2018, Ding left Beijing and moved to Yunnan Province:

 The word “rectify” (整治) has appeared over the last decade in relation to the periodic clean-ups of the hutong areas. In unofficial discourse, the word is often used ironically, as the process described tends to efface an organic street culture, leaving sterile (but historically-correct in the eyes of officialdom) environments. https://www.cecc.gov/publications/commission-analysis/campaign-of-forced-evictionsin-beijing-contravenes-international http://epaper.bjnews.com.cn/html/2017-11/20/content_702298.htm?div=0 3

220 

E. Sanderson

[Ding Chenchen] is an example of a musician who was originally from outside of Beijing finding it hard to keep living here and doing what they used to do. Some of them decide to leave simply because the pressure is too much, the rent is too high, they are underpaid, or they can’t find any full-­ time work or a job. It doesn’t really bother me though, as I am a Beijinger and I live here. Ever since I was a child, I know that every year, all the time, the government makes big trouble for people. I’m used to it. I don’t know about other people, but I don’t find it surprising.

Another problem for music venues in Beijing is the presence of drugs and the consequent police attention. Although police drug raids occur intermittently at other music venues in Beijing, and particularly in the clubs, Zhai has not experienced these at fRUITYSPACE. He feels this is probably because he maintains an environment that is not conducive to the development of a drug culture in the venue, a policy that is most visibly apparent in the sign that hangs over the heads of the audience spelling out: “No drugs; no smocking; no fight [sic]” (Image 15.7). Despite these problems and compromises, Zhai is satisfied with how fRUITYSPACE has developed, as well as the image he feels that people

Image 15.7  “NO DRUGS, NO SMOCKING, NO FIGHT”, sign above audience area in fRUITYSPACE

15  An Underground Music Venue in Beijing: fRUITYSPACE 

221

have of it. With the development of Space Fruity Records and the fRUITYPRESS publishing organisations, he feels he has largely achieved his vision: [fRUITYSPACE] acts as a foundation to build upon. … Space Fruity Records happened naturally after I opened fRUITYSPACE. All kinds of musicians come here and play, and sometimes you get a band that I like and naturally we would just discuss about making something together.… For the books, Caodi used to work with someone in the independent publishing area. I was also interested in publishing interesting things with fRUITYPRESS, including the catalogues for all the art exhibitions we have here, so again that was quite natural. Actually, in my plan the music in here is only 50% of our activity. The other half is the books and the art exhibitions.

In the future, Zhai will expand the possibilities for fRUITYSPACE by collaborating with other spaces, to provide him with a larger space where the problems that the original space suffers from may be resolved. At this point, he is collaborating with a gallery space in Beijing’s Sanlitun area [a shopping and embassy district in Beijing], calling the space “经常合作 Frequent Collaborative”. Zhai points out that, “it has a better location for louder events and gigs … although it’s in the embassy district, it’s isolated from the neighbours”. In this text, I have provided an account of how one music venue in Beijing has developed in relation to understandings of underground and DIY practices. While the non-mainstream approaches implied by these terms place the venue in what may appear to be a precarious position, fRUITYSPACE has nevertheless survived longer than other Beijing venues in similar situations. In part this may be attributable to its strong engagements with a community of artists and their audiences through the activities it chooses to host. This is a relatively small group of people, as reflected in the limited number of events hosted by fRUITYSPACE and the often-small audiences attending. In what is a rare occurrence for a non-mainstream venue in Beijing, fRUITYSPACE seems to have achieved a balance between pressures stemming from its surroundings (including the official environment, and the economics of running a

222 

E. Sanderson

space) and the creative and financial returns, creating a sustainable proposition. Acknowledgements  My immense thanks to Zhai Ruixin, Caodi, Zhao Cong and Zhu Wenbo; to Dr. Mak Hoi-shan, Dr. Cédric Maridet and Professor Leung Mee-ping at the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University; and to Dr. Damien Charrieras and Dr. François Mouillot. The author gratefully acknowledges that this research was made possible through the financial support of the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong.

References Bennett, A. (2018). Conceptualising the Relationship Between Youth, Music and DIY Careers: A Critical Overview. Cultural Sociology, 12(2), 140–155. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975517750760. Bergner, B. A. (2013). The Poetics of Stage Space: The Theory and Process of Theatre Scene Design. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Chew, M. M. (2009a). Decline of the Rave Inspired Club Culture in China: State Suppression, Clubber Adaptations and Socio-cultural Transformations. Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture, 1(1), 22–34. https:// doi.org/10.12801/1947-­5403.2009.01.01.02. Chew, M.  M. (2009b). Research on Chinese Nightlife Cultures and Night-­ Time Economies: Guest Editor’s Introduction. Chinese Sociology & Anthropology, 42(2), 3–21. https://doi.org/10.2753/CSA0009-­4625420200. de Kloet, J. (2010). China with a Cut: Globalisation, Urban Youth and Popular Music. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2011). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (B.  Massumi, Trans.; Repr). Continuum. (Original Work Published 1988). Fonarow, W. (2006). Empire of Dirt: The Aesthetics and Rituals of British Indie Music. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Graham, S. (2016). Sounds of the Underground: A Cultural, Political, and Aesthetic Mapping of Underground and Fringe Music. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Groenewegen, J. (2011). Tongue 舌头: Making Sense of Underground Rock, Beijing 1997–2004. Riga: LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing.

15  An Underground Music Venue in Beijing: fRUITYSPACE 

223

Jian, M. (2018). The Survival Struggle and Resistant Politics of a DIY Music Career in East Asia: Case Studies of China and Taiwan. Cultural Sociology, 12(2), 224–240. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975518756535. Jones, A. F. (1992). Like a Knife: Ideology and Genre in Contemporary Chinese Popular Music. Ithaca: East Asia Program, Cornell University. Karkowski, Z., & Yan, J. (2009). The Sound of the Underground: An Overview of Experimental and Non-academic Music in China (M. Dahl & J. Moar, Eds.; X. Wei, Trans.). Sub Rosa. Overell, R. (2010). Brutal Belonging in Melbourne’s Grindcore Scene. In N.  K. Denzin (Ed.), Studies in Symbolic Interaction (Vol. 35, pp.  79–99). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1108/ S0163-­2396(2010)0000035009. Thrift, N. (2007). Non-representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect. Hoboken: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Wang, J. [王婧]. (2016). Affective Listening as a Mode of Coexistence: The Case of China’s Sound Practice. Representations, 136(1), 112–131. https:// doi.org/10.1525/rep.2016.136.1.112. Wang, J., & Chen, L. (2019). Geography of Chinese Rock and Roll: Cultural, Political and Economic Forces Intertwined. In R. Yep, J. Wang, & T. Johnson (Eds.), Handbook on Urban Development in China (pp. 202–218). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781786431639. Yan, J. (2017). RE-INVENT: Experimental Music in China. In C.  Cox & D.  Warner (Eds.), Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (Revised ed., pp. 345–352). New York: Bloomsbury Academic. 全市开展安全隐患大排查大清理大整治_关注_新京报电子报 [Launch of Citywide Safety and Hidden Dangers Major Investigation, Major Cleaning, and Major Rectification]. (2017, November 20). 新京报 The Beijing News. http://epaper.bjnews.com.cn/html/2017-­11/20/content_702298.htm?div=0

16 History of Sound in the Arts in Japan Between the 1960s and 1990s A Report on the Progress of My Study on the History of “Sound Art” in Japan Katsushi Nakagawa

Introduction This article outlines the history of sound in the arts in Japan between the 1960s and 1990s. I will outline the important topics, artists, and musicians related to sound-based artwork, new visual art using sound, and new experimental music (hereinafter “sound art”) of each decade in Japan. This article aims to give the reader a general idea of the history of sound in the arts in Japan between the 1960s and 1990s. It is a contribution to the assessment of sound art and experimental music in Asian countries.1

 This paper is based partially on a presentation I made at the WSK Festival, Manila. I have added the topics of Post Mono-ha in the 1970s and Kankyō Ongaku in the 1980s. 1

K. Nakagawa (*) Yokohama National University, Yokohama, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. Charrieras, F. Mouillot (eds.), Fractured Scenes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6_16

225

226 

K. Nakagawa

The history of the development of this genre in Japan remains largely unexplored. Ikeshiro and Tanaka (2019) wrote a survey paper on sound art in Japan but no systematic history of Japanese sound art has been produced to date. The term “sound art” appeared in Japan during the 1980s, though some artworks, which would be retrospectively labelled as “sound art,” appeared as early as the 1950s.2,3 One of the most prominent examples is Bell (1955) by Atsuko Tanaka of the Gutai group, which can be described as one of the oldest sound installations in Japan. This can be regarded as one of the oldest sound art in Japan, but the main focus of this work seems to be not the fun of moving sound but the creation of the atmosphere of confusion in a museum which should be quiet.4 I will divide this article into two sections: (1) the 1960s and 1970s, when there was no term called “sound art” and (2) the 1980s and 1990s, which saw a gradual increase of the term “sound art.” The following analysis is mainly based on my research on one of the most popular art journals of Japan Bijutsu Techo [Journal for Fine Art], complementary references (some of them in English), and interviews with key figures in Japanese sound art.5

 According to Cluett (2013), the situation is similar to the situation in the US and Europe about a decade ago, as exhibitions of sound-based artwork began to flourish in Western culture since the latter half of the 1970s, such as “The Record as Artwork from Futurism to Conceptual Art” at The Fort Worth Art Museum (1977), “Sound” at PS1 (1979), and “Für Augen und Ohren” at Akademie der Künste Berlin (1980). 3  MAVO (1923–25), the Japanese avant-garde artist group, which made sound poetry in the Taisho period (in the 1920s) (Weisenfeld 2002), could be included in the history, although they were nothing but exceptional. 4  This work was exhibited in the first Gutai Art Exhibition at the Ohara Kaikan hall in Tokyo and has been reworked many times after that. Tanaka connected twenty electric bells to a switch and installed them throughout the first and second floors of the exhibition space. The viewers were given a card that read “Please feel free to push the button, Atsuko Tanaka” and activated the mechanism, so that the bell made a big sound in the room of the museum (Tanaka et al. 2004). 5  Including interviews with the artist Akio Suzuki, the scholar and the organizer Shin Nakagawa, and Yoko Yoshimura, the widow of the composer Hiroshi Yoshimura, among others. 2

16  History of Sound in the Arts in Japan Between the 1960s… 

227

Before “Sound Art”: 1960s and 1970s 1960s: Experimental Music and Environmental Art In the 1950s, following World War II, various types of avant-garde art and music were imported into Japan.6 In the 1960s, experimental music and sound-based artworks began to be introduced by critics and composers. Kuniharu Akiyama, a music critic, published many writings and organized several Fluxus concerts; Toshi Ichiyanagi, a composer who met John Cage while he stayed in NY (1954–57), followed by “Cage Shock” in 1962 (Tone and Kaneda 2013). Inspired by the experiments of John Cage, the exhibition “Musical scores by four composers: Toshi Ichiyanagi, Toshiro Mayuzumi, Yuji Takahashi, and Toru Takemitsu,” showcasing the musical scores by four representative Japanese avant-garde musicians, was shown at the Tokyo Gallery (April 16–26, 1962). The exhibition “new musical scores in the world” was shown at Minami Gallery (November 10–30, 1962). At the time, Bijutsu Techo published the following analysis: “Music and visual art must approach each other if both mean to be avant-garde art. As there is ‘visual art’ which makes the performer speak something on the stage, there is also ‘music’ which constructs and shows objects to be seen” (BIJUTSU TECHO 215 Jan 1963: 101, my translation). It could be said that both exhibitions laid the foundations for the attention to the visual factor in music but remained as the advancement of music rather than the birth of new art genre. Also important in the first half of the 1960s was the activity of Group Ongaku [Music Group] (1958–62), which included the important Japanese avant-garde artists Takehisa Kosugi, Yasunao Tone, Mieko [Chieko] Shiomi, and a few others. This was a collective improvisation group well ahead of other similar groups in the world at the time, namely Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV) in Italy (1966–) and AMM in the United Kingdom (1965–). The activity of Group Ongaku was the vanguard of  Jikken Kōbō [Experimental Workshop], a cross-disciplinary, intermedia art collective active in 1951–57 in Tokyo, would be the most important avant-garde movement in postwar Japan. I have not mentioned their activity in this article because they were out of the scope of this study. 6

228 

K. Nakagawa

the experimental music in Japan to explore music practices from new conceptual perspectives. Group Ongaku could be said to be one of the finest representatives of the Japanese avant-garde. Their spontaneous handling of sound and their emphasis on the spatial concept of sound were highly praised (Labelle 2015, pp. 38–44). Their core members went to the United States and began to operate and influence others not only in Japan but also outside of Japan after the 1960s after the Group’s dissolution. The recording “Music of Group Ongaku” in 1960/61 was issued on the label HEAR Sound Art Library in 2011. This recording was widely circulated through the Internet and initiated a regain of international interest in Group Ongaku. In the latter half of the 1960s, environmental art appeared in Japan and introduced the use of sound in visual art throughout the 1970s, especially during Expo ’70 (Japan World Exposition, Osaka 1970, often referred to as “Osaka Banpaku”). The exhibition “From Space to Environment”, which was held in Matsuya Department Store from November 11 to November 16 1966, was a milestone for environmental art in Japan. It included thirty-eight participants (fine art practitioners, graphic and industrial designers, musicians, art critics, architects, and photographers). In conjunction with the exhibition, an event was held under the same title at Sōgetsu Kaikan Hall on November 14, featuring the artists Mieko [Chieko] Shiomi and Toru Takemitsu. Analysing this exhibition, Tsuji (2016) argues that in the context of Japanese avant-­ garde influenced by the approach of A. Kaprow, the term “environment” “came to signify the interactive relationship between the entity of planning and design and the residents and audiences who were its recipients” (Tsuji 2016, p. 284). ‘Environment’ refers here not to a kind of artwork but to the coexistence of different kinds of artworks blurring the traditional borders between fine art, design, music, architecture, criticism, photography. For example, the object created by the composer Ichiyanagi made a sound when visitors approached it; it stood next to the plastic cube by the graphic designer Mitsuo Katsui which had a silkscreen printing of an abstract pattern and hung down from the ceiling. The audience experienced these artworks at the same time. It could be argued that the attention towards the environment allowed the use of sound in the

16  History of Sound in the Arts in Japan Between the 1960s… 

229

context of visual art and led to some artworks involving sound in the 1970s as we will see in the following section. Furthermore, the latter half of the 1960s saw the appearance of Sound Sculptures of the Baschet brothers (François Baschet and Bernard Baschet). They were first introduced in Japan in the mid-1960s (BIJUTSU TECHO 262 Jan 1966), and were analysed in depth in an article of Bijutsu Techo in 1969 (BIJUTSU TECHO 317 Sep 1969). This paper was adapted from Baschet’s own article about new musical instruments (Baschet 1963). Sound Sculptures of the Baschet brothers appeared in the Osaka World Expo in 1970. Because the Baschets’ Sound Sculptures had a sophisticated outlook and a mechanical sound-making function, one could not only play them as a musical instrument but also exhibit them as visual artworks. That is why many artists working in Japan during the 1970s and 1980s came to consider the Baschets’ Sculptures as they heralded the symbol both of visual art using sound and of music focusing on the visual element (an experimental musical instrument). The project of restoring the Sound Sculptures of the Baschet brothers which was exhibited at the Expo of 1970 is currently under way in Japan (Tokyo University of the Arts Crowdfunding Program 2017).

 970s: Post Mono-Ha, Proto-Sound Art, 1 and the Distinguished Trio in the Avant-Garde Sound World In the 1970s, a diversity of interests for sound in the arts emerged, especially in the Post Mono-ha context. Moreover, this decade saw the emergence of artists who consistently focused on sound and music from their early days. Kazumichi Fujiwara called his sound sculpture “On-gu,” which means “sound object” or “sound instrument” in Japanese. His On-gu can be regarded as one of the earliest examples which focuses mainly on sound outside the context of music. Atsuko Tanaka also created Bell (1955)

230 

K. Nakagawa

outside the context of music and did not care much about the problems concerning sound and music.7 Certain Post Mono-ha artists, such as Hiroya Hori, Ken-ichiro Ina, Hitoshi Nomura, Naoki Hikosaka, Saburo Muraoka, Tatsuo Kawaguchi, and Sadaharu Horio, used sound reproduction technologies in their artworks (Nakazawa 2014). Even if they used sound, music and sound reproduction technologies, these artists did not seem to be interested in the questions surrounding experimental music. For example, in “The city and the memory,” where Hori recorded the environmental sound on a train while reading out the words on billboards visible from the train, his main concern was not about the issues around sound and music. One art critic explained in an article of Bijutsu Techo that “this work means only to transform the visible phenomenon into sound” but that this work constitutes “a parody of visual art that still revolves around visual art” (BIJUTSU TECHO 378 Feb 1974: 34–35, my translation). Hori’s work was evaluated not as a sound-based artwork but as a variation of visual artwork.8 Perhaps the critic thought that the artwork using sound is a second-rate visual art (a parody of visual art). Furthermore, this anticipates the lack of interest in sound and music by Bijutsu Techo in the 1980s. Anyway, this movement of Post Mono-ha artists using sounds needs more extensive research and Kaneko Tomotaro emphasizes the contributions of sound-based artworks by these Post Mono-ha artists in this decade through his article and his Japanese Art Sound Archive (Kaneko 2018 and Kaneko n.d.). Some pioneering exhibitions for sound-based artworks were held in the 1970s as the artists who consistently focused on sound and music from their early days increased in this decade. Hojo (2017) listed three exhibitions: (1) “Sound Design” by Toshi Ichiyanagi exhibited at the Sony Building from February 17 to April 30, 1972; (2); “The Joy of  One of his On-gu is “a pair of large pieces of wood that were erected in a deep hole” in the mountain in the middle of the night and “made only a faint and dull sound that was rubbing against one another” through the night (BIJUTSU TECHO 346 Sep 1971: 29). His On-gu is the tool for making not musical sound in any sense but just sound. 8  Though not yet fully examined, I assume these artworks would come under the heading “energies in the arts” as they did not care about the problem around sound and music but about the energy (= what is not visible) (Kahn 2019). This is just an assumption. 7

16  History of Sound in the Arts in Japan Between the 1960s… 

231

Vibration” by Keijiro Sato exhibited at Minami Gallery from March 22 to April 2, 1974; and (3) “Akio Suzuki’s World: Objects of sound & sound instruments [on-gu]” by Akio Suzuki exhibited at Minami Gallery from January 19 to January 28, 1976; Hojo considers them as “proto-­ sound art” exhibitions as the use of the term “sound art” became popular in the 1980s. Ichiyanagi, who remains to this day a leading figure of contemporary music in Japan, began to exhibit his musical scores in the gallery in the 1960s. Sato was an ex-member of Jikken Kōbō [Experimental Workshop], and Suzuki is widely regarded as a pioneering sound artist in Japan (Suzuki n.d.). Hojo (2017) describes “the process by which a musician, whose main medium of expression is sound, has changed his/her style of publication of artworks from the performance on the stage such as concert hall to the exhibition supposed to belong mainly to visual art” (Hojo 2017, p. 64). These three exhibitions are the result of that process. Takehisa Kosugi (1938–2018) was another sound artist from the 1970s. As the founding member of Group Ongaku, he left Japan for New York in 1965 and worked there with John Cage, several Fluxus artists as well as with Merce Cunningham Dance company and he gained an international notoriety. In Japan, he worked with Taj Mahal Travellers, the collective improvisation group, from 1969 to ca.1976 and he brought to the field of visual art an awareness towards sound. He also encouraged the crossing of artistic disciplines such as music and visual art. In the latter half of the 1970s, Takehisa Kosugi, Akio Suzuki, and Hiroshi Yoshimura (the composer we will see in the next section) often performed and created artworks together. They were known as the distinguished trio in the avant-garde sound world.9

 Based on a personal conversation with Suzuki on September 16, 2017.

9

232 

K. Nakagawa

After “Sound Art”: 1980s and Beyond 1980s: Kankyō Ongaku and the Exhibitions Though the interest in sound and music in Bijutsu Techo began to decline in the first half of the 1980s, the visual art journal featured Laurie Anderson (as a performance artist rather than a musician) as well as Brian Eno as the champion of ambient music and a multimedia artist who used both light and sound. This interest in Brian Eno’s ambient music and multimedia art coincided with the import of the theorization of soundscape by R. M. Schafer and contributed to the development of Kankyō Ongaku [environmental music] in the 1980s. According to my research, some exhibitions for sound-based artworks appeared in the latter half of the 1980s (though almost none of them were  featured in any issue of Bijutsu Techo). It is debatable whether Kankyō Ongaku [environmental music] of this period should be included in our history of sound in the arts as it may also be considered as the extension of traditional contemporary music, such as minimal music. However, Kankyō Ongaku brought a new perspective about music in Japan along with a new attitude towards works of art most noticeable in a new trend called Nyū Aka [New Academism].10 One of the prominent figures of Japan who was engaged in Kankyō Ongaku was the composer Satoshi Ashikawa (1953–83). In 1975, he began handling the music selection at the Art Vivant (a famous store specializing in art books and records) in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. After leaving the shop in 1982, he founded the label Sound Process and released two records on environmental music: Hiroshi Yoshimura’s “Wave Notation 1 Nine Post Cards” and his own “Wave Notation 2 Still Way.” He influenced the avant-garde sound world in Japan not only through his music but also as a curator of LPs and as a writer. His record selection at Art Vivant received wide acclaim, and he promoted environmental music in Japan through his writings. His posthumous writings were released  And Kankyō Ongaku [environmental music] of this period is noteworthy because in recent years they have been reevaluated in the stream of Japanese City Pop reevaluation. Some albums, such as “Through the Looking Glass” by Midori Takada and “Music for Nine Post Cards” by Hiroshi Yoshimura were reissued from the label based in the US. 10

16  History of Sound in the Arts in Japan Between the 1960s… 

233

through the anthology “Wave Notation,” co-edited and published in 1986 under the subtitle “what is environmental music?” (Ogawa et al. 1986). This anthology proved to be very influential on the understanding of environmental music in Japan. Some of the co-editors of this anthology translated R. M. Schafer’s classic “The Tuning of the World” (1977) and published the Japanese edition in December 1986. In the 1980s, the idea of soundscape by R. M. Schafer, Brian Eno’s ambient music and Kankyō Ongaku [environmental music] in contemporary music influenced each other. This conjunction laid the groundwork for exhibitions such as the series Sound Garden 1–6 (1987–94).11 These exhibitions were curated by the composer Hiroshi Yoshimura in collaboration with younger visual artists. Each exhibition featured about twenty artworks and performances and a total of fifty-three artists participated. The exhibited artworks consisted of sound sculptures, experimental musical instruments, and sound installations. Yoshimura explains that he developed his musical intention and interest towards space rather than elaborating the temporal relationship between sounds on the score and began to make “sound art” where he could control the relationship between sound and space (Nakagawa 2019). Various exhibitions for sound-based artworks emerged during this time, such as “The Discovery of Modeling” (1986, 1987) at the National Children’s Castle (Kodomo-no-Shiro) and “Moments Sonores” (August 13 to September 24, 1989) at Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts. At these exhibitions, not only did musicians create visual art, but many visual artists created sound-based artworks as well. Sound in the arts in the 1980s saw the emergence of a new trend in the avant-garde sound world, which continued throughout the 1990s, of which “The Space in the Sun” (1988) by Akio Suzuki (1941–) is a prime example. This was a legendary “self-study event.” One day, Suzuki thought of listening to environmental sound all day while sitting in the middle of the mountains of Amino-cho, a northern countryside of Kyoto prefecture. With some assistance from the local village, he began making homemade bricks and took them to the top of the mountain to make a place for listening. However, the artist experienced this environmental sound 11

 For a detailed discussion about this exhibition, see Nakagawa and Kaneko (2017).

234 

K. Nakagawa

without any audience. This listening artwork is difficult to situate within the history and the context of sound art, but this work is very important because it constitutes the first example of a certain branch of “sound art as the art of listening.”12 After this event,13 Suzuki moved to Amino-cho, invented OTO-DATE (a kind of soundwalk event) in the 1990s and has been working actively till now.14

1990s: The Term Popularized In Japan, while the term “sound art” appeared only sporadically in the 1980s, it seems to have been popularized in the 1990s possibly because some art/music journals featured sound-based artworks that were explicitly labelled as “sound art.” Several notable events for sound-based artworks and experimental music were held during this period. I will describe here the contributions of some specific examples of this period. My recent research on sound art in Japan15 shows that the term “sound art” was often used by artists and critics in the 1980s (Nakagawa and Kaneko 2017). I sometimes found occurrences of the term on printed material, such as the leaflet for a small exhibition, the ephemera of a small concert, and some private letters. But my research shows that the term became more widely used only in the 1990s. The first volume in Japan to feature “sound art” was Music Today, number 19, issued in 1993. This volume covered sound art both in theory and in practice, introducing more than twenty artists, such as Max Neuhaus, Alvin Curran, Rolf Julius, Peter Vogel, and Felix Hess, who made sound sculptures and explored the art of sound after experimental music inspired by John  This may be one of the logical conclusions after experimentations inspired by John Cage, but this point would require more extensive research. 13  It is unfortunate that the remains of that performance space were demolished in 2017 before its thirtieth anniversary (The Wire 2017). 14  He has been invited several times to Hong Kong to perform these soundwalk events (e.g. in 2010 by the art organization Soundpocket). 15  The desk research, the archival work, and the interviews with key figures around this field, including the artist Akio Suzuki, the scholar and the organizer Shin Nakagawa, Yoko Yoshimura the widow of the composer Hiroshi Yoshimura among others. Part of the research results have also been published in Japanese. 12

16  History of Sound in the Arts in Japan Between the 1960s… 

235

Cage. Further, Bijutsu Techo featured “sound art” in 1996 and 2002; the subtitle of Bijutsu Techo 734 Dec 1996 is “Sound/Art” and the subtitle of Bijutsu Techo 821 June 2002 is “The Enhancement of Sound x Art.” I would like to highlight two elements linked to Bijutsu Techo during this period. First, the prominent figure in Bijutsu Techo in this period was Yukio Fujimoto, an artist who called himself a sound artist since the early 1980s. This artist and promoter was key in the development of sound art in Japan, and the history of sound in the arts in Japan after the 1980s should be reassessed with a focus on this great artist who became famous for his artworks using a music box. Second, some of the artists featured in the magazine during that period were interested in the description of nature rather than in sound or music. Minoru Sato aka m/s and Toshiya Tsunoda, who both ran the label WrK (1994–2006) (Sato n.d.), were key in the emergence of what the genre “Onkyō” or “Onkyokei” [reverberation of sound] would come to be.16 The artists of WrK are interested not only in sound but also in frequencies in general. For example, they made use of the vibration of fluorescent light or the sound of an electronic circuit that causes a contact failure. We could perhaps say that they went beyond the genre of sound art. Several notable events comprising sound-based artworks and experimental music were held in this period. The archival work and interview I conducted were limited mainly to the Kansai region (the southern-­central region of Japan’s main island Honshū). Nevertheless, I will list four events here that took place in the Kansai region: (1) “The International Contemporary Music Forum of Kyoto” was held nine times from 1989 to 1996; some of the invitees were Bill Fontana (1989, 1990, 1993), Alvin Lucier (1989), José Maceda (1991), and Akio Suzuki (1995). Professor Shin Nakagawa, based at Osaka City University, organized countless “sound art” events, performances, and sound installations, wrote many books and articles, and was one of the prominent promoters of “sound art” in Japan. His influence over the avant-garde sound world has not yet been fully assessed. (2) “SoundCulture” was successively held in Sydney (1991), in Los Angeles (1992), and in Tokyo (1993), with artists Mamoru Fujieda, Alvin Curran, Paul DeMarinis, and Rodney Berry.  For a description of this genre, see Hosokawa (2012).

16

236 

K. Nakagawa

According to one of the organizers, Professor Toshie Kakinuma (the translator of “Silence: Lectures and Writings” by John Cage) proposed the term “sound art” for the title of this SoundCulture; she is also one of the prominent promotors of “sound art” in Japan. (3) Xebec Hall in Kobe organized many events related to sound art (and other music genres) and gathered a diversity of talents, including Mamoru Fujieda, Yukio Fujimoto, Yoshihiro Kawasaki, and HACO. Xebec Hall published a periodical named Sound Arts in the early 1990s which was one of the earliest examples featuring “sound art” in Japan. (4) “Festival Beyond Innocence” at Osaka Bridge was organized by Kazuhisa Uchihashi between the mid1990s and the mid-2000s. Many artists and musicians participated in this festival, including “phenomenologists” (see conclusion) and other experimental musicians. However, since the events were held in the early days of the Internet, the exact date and performers of the festival are unknown, though it was held less than only twenty years ago. Various prominent avant-garde sound movements were initiated in Japan during the 1990s for instance, Ryoji Ikeda of the artist collective Dumb Type; see also Novak’s landmark studies of noise art in Japan (Novak 2013)—but to be precise, they should be considered as inflected towards musical practices and not as sound art proper.

Tentative Conclusion: 2000s and Beyond Since it is too soon to give a comprehensive picture of the 2000s and beyond, I will evoke only one of the important movements that began in the 2000s: The activity of the “phenomenologist.” Here “phenomenologist” does not mean the philosophical pupils of Husserl, but the kind of artists who have explored the intersection between visual art and music. This name was suggested by David Toop (Toop 2017), and even if the term is not widely used, it fits these artists in Japan. Some of the representative artists of this movement are Tetuya Umeda, Yuko Mohri, Ryoko Akama, Kanta Horio, Makoto Oshiro, Elico Suzuki, Takahiro Kawaguchi, Rie Nakajima, among others. They emerged in the twenty-first century and “are in and out of what we think of as music, art installation, sound art or performance” and “focus on the slow intensifications of process,

16  History of Sound in the Arts in Japan Between the 1960s… 

237

movement, the sounds that emerge when forces are set in motion” (Toop 2017, p. 38). When they perform, these artists create a kind of installation work onstage in real time, an operation that constitutes their performance (mostly at live houses, not at the officially acclaimed venues such as concert halls). The audience observes the artist building their installation, enabling its elements to move, emitting sound and/or light. Toop may summarize what the audience watches as the phenomenon (hence the term “phenomenologists” to characterize the artists deemed part of this movement). We may also use the term “performative installation,” but the phenomenologist does their work without being bound to the contexts of music, visual art, and performance. Maybe one day, the diversity and hybridity of practices will make obsolete any study of the intersection between “music” and “visual art” or the exploration of what “sound art” is. As the first step to such a day, this article outlines the history of sound in the arts in Japan. The history of contemporary art has blatantly obliterated  the element of sound and music, while the research on the history of sound in the arts in Japan has remained mostly unexplored until now. I hope this article contributes to highlight the importance of sound art in the field of contemporary art and encourages further research in this field.

References Baschet, F. (1963). New Musical Instruments. New Scientist, 337, 266–268. Cluett, S. A. (2013). Appendix A: Sound as Curatorial Theme 1954–Present. Loud Speaker: Towards a Component Theory of Media Sound. Ph.D.  Diss. Princeton University: 110–124. Hojo, T. (2017). History of Proto-Sound Art in Japan: Artworks Using Sound from 1950s to 1970s. In Y. Mori (Ed.), After Musicking (pp. 61–91). Tokyo: Tokyo University of the Arts Press. Hosokawa, S. (2012). Ongaku, Onkyō/Music, Sound. Working Words: New Approaches to Japanese Studies. UC Berkeley: Center for Japanese Studies: 1–22. Retrieved September 13, 2019, from https://escholarship.org/uc/ item/9451p047

238 

K. Nakagawa

Ikeshiro, R., & Tanaka, A. (2019). Sound in Japan: Silence, Noise, Material, and Media. In P.  Weibel (Ed.), Sound Art: Sound as a Medium of Art (pp.  654–667). Karlsruhe/Cambridge, MA/London: ZKM/Center for Art and Media and The MIT Press. Kahn, D. (Ed.). (2019). Energies in the Arts. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Kaneko, T. (2018). Sound Technology in Japanese Contemporary Visual Art After Environmental Art: Focused on the Generation of Bikyoto (Bijutsuka Kyoto Kaigi [Artists Joint-Struggle Council]) in the Early 1970s. Hyosyo: Journal of the Association for the Studies of Culture and Representation, 12, 169–183. Kaneko, T. (n.d.). Website of Japanese Sound Art Archive. Retrieved September 13, 2019, from https://japaneseartsoundarchive.com/en/ Labelle, B. (2015). Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (2nd ed.). New York: Bloomsbury. Nakagawa, K. (2019). Why Did the Composer Begin to Make Visual Art?: The Ambient Music and Sound Art of YOSHIMURA Hiroshi. In Proceedings (CD-ROM) of the 21st International Congress of Aesthetics, Faculty of Architecture, Belgrade, Serbia, July 2019, 1244–1252. Nakagawa, K., & Kaneko, T. (2017). A Documentation of Sound Art in Japan: Sound Garden (1987–1994) and the Sound Art Exhibitions of 1980s Japan. Leonardo Music Journal, 27, 82–86. Nakazawa, H. (2014). Gendai Bijutsushi Nihonhen: senkyūhyakuyonjūgo nisenjūyon. English Translation by Emily Wakeling and Manabu Matsushita. Tōkyō: ĀtodaibĀ. Novak, D. (2013). Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation. Durham: Duke University Press. Ogawa, H., Shono, T., Torigoe, K., et  al. (1986). Wave Notation. Tokyo: Jiji Press Ltd. Sato, M. (n.d.). Website of Minoru Sato. Retrieved September 13, 2019, from https://www.ms-­wrk.com Suzuki, A. (n.d.). Website of Akio Suzuki. Retrieved September 13, 2019, from https://www.akiosuzuki.com/en/bio/ Tanaka, A., Ming, T., & Kato, M. (2004). Electrifying Art: Atsuko Tanaka, 1954–1968. Vancouver: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. The Wire. (2017, November 23). = Akio Suzuki’s Space in the Sun Has Been Demolished. The Wire. Retrieved September 13, 2019, from https://www. t h e w i r e . c o . u k / n e w s / 4 9 0 4 7 / a k i o -­s u z u k i -­s -­s p a c e -­i n -­t h e -­s u n -­ has-­been-­demolished

16  History of Sound in the Arts in Japan Between the 1960s… 

239

Tokyo University of the Arts Crowdfunding Program. (2017). Tokyo University of the Arts Restoration Project of Baschet Sound Sculpture. Retrieved September 13, 2019, from https://readyfor.jp/projects/geidai2017baschet/ announcements/56754 Tone, Y, & Kaneda, M. (2013). The ‘John Cage Shock’ Is a Fiction! Interview with Tone Yasunao. Post: The Museum of Modern Art’s Online Resource. Retrieved September 13, 2019, from https://post.at.moma.org/content_ items/178-­the-­john-­cage-­shock-­is-­a-­fiction-­interview-­with-­tone-­yasunao-­1 Toop, D. (2017). [Wire 400] Can Sound Sit on Chairs? The Wire 400 (June 2017), 34–38. Tsuji, Y. (2016). From Design to Environment: “Art and Technology” in Two 1966 Exhibitions at the Matsuya Department Store. Review of Japanese Culture and Society, 28, 275–296. Weisenfeld, G. (2002). Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905–1931. Berkeley: University of California Press.

17 “Like the Apocalypse Is Imminent by Guys Who Could Barely Play Guitar”: Performing Amateurism in the Garage Rock Underground of Tokyo José Vicente Neglia

Introduction This chapter explores the performance and poetics of amateurism in underground rock in Japan. The concept of the amateur concerns questions of both style and production, of aesthetic and ethics. It manifests in terms of sound and musical performance, but also as a particular modality of work—a form of musicianship—which entails the practical and material endeavors of musicians, organizers, and audiences to hold events, produce albums, and forge musical careers among a variety of other productive activities. The genre at hand, garage rock, presents an apt site to investigate amateurism in popular music, in so far as the virtues of DIY and “grassroots” music making are paramount in this genre of rock. In this chapter, I ask, how is amateurism performed in the Tokyo

J. V. Neglia (*) University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. Charrieras, F. Mouillot (eds.), Fractured Scenes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6_17

241

242 

J. V. Neglia

underground rock scene? And, how might we understand amateurism in the case of garage rock in the context of underground culture in Japan and around the world more generally speaking, particularly with respect to those music cultures that trace their lineage through punk and alternative rock in North America and Europe?

 arage Rock and the Revival of 1960s Rock G and Roll As a generic category, “garage rock”1 refers to a genre of rock music rooted in the sound and style of American rock and roll of the mid-1960s. Popular definitions of garage rock cite 1960s bands like the Sonics, Questions Mark and the Mysterians, the Standells, and the Seeds as exemplars of the genre—bands that embody a dance-oriented, blues-­ based style of rock and roll. Garage rock, however, was not a recognized genre in its supposed heyday of the 1960s, but rather came to be a genre in retrospect: that is, what we now call “garage rock” was only identified and defined as a distinct genre in the 1970s by record collectors and critics, who retrospectively applied the term to refer to certain strains of 1960s rock and roll, especially its more obscure and marginal variants. For these critics and fans, the lesser-known, knock-off bands of the mid-­1960s represented a more raw, unpolished rock and roll sound than the mainstream hit-makers of the era—that is to say, a more authentic, grassroots style of rock and roll by bands that had been mostly overlooked or forgotten to popular music history. This resurgence of interest in mid-1960s rock and roll—what is popularly referred to as the “garage rock revival”—notably resonated with the budding punk movement, for whom garage rock constituted an antidote to the pretension and excess of arena rock and progressive rock that so dominated rock’s mainstream by the early 1970s. From the 1980s, live music scenes of garage rock took root in major urban centers in North America, Europe, and in places like  I use the term “garage rock” and “garage punk” interchangeably throughout this chapter. Notably, the Tokyo scene tends to identify with the latter over the former. Perhaps the most accurate catch-­ all would be “garage rock and roll,” but I use “garage rock” as a shorthand to include all variants of garage, including the more hard-rock and punk sounds as well as styles more aligned with pop and psychedelic rock. 1

17  “Like the Apocalypse Is Imminent by Guys Who Could Barely… 

243

Japan, where a scene emerged in Tokyo by the end of the decade. The Tokyo scene continues to flourish today as a particular niche within the Tokyo rock underground, with regular live music events and a committed following of fans and participants, who organize shows, make music, buy and sell goods, and forge relationships with fans and musicians across the transnational garage rock scene.2 Genres are highly elastic conceptual categories, for which clear-cut definitions are usually elusive and contested (Holt 2007; Drott 2013; Brackett 2016), but one defining feature of garage rock is its embrace of the ideal of the amateur. The descriptor “garage” derives from the more general term “garage band,” which in itself is a metaphor for an amateur rock band. The term evokes a particular time and place in the American postwar imagination, when suburban youth—mostly white, teenage boys—were forming rock bands and jamming in the automobile garages of suburban North America. But the ideal of the amateur, and its attendant fetishization of DIY ethics and low-budget production values, is a recurring trope in Anglo-American popular music, and one that is common in punk, alternative, and folk musics, among other genres and styles. But what does it mean to refer to amateurism as an ideal in rock music culture? How might we understand amateurism as something more than mere non-professionalism or unremunerated work?

Ama-chua-rizumu (Amateurism) in Japan Before answering the above questions, I begin by clarifying several analytic and emic terms that are commonly deployed in English and Japanese to mean related, if sometimes vaguely defined, concepts in rock music culture—not least of which the term “amateur” itself. One notes a family resemblance of terms that ranges from “DIY” and “amateur” to “independent” and “alternative” to the spatial metaphor of “the underground.” None of these terms are interchangeably alike, although their usage often blurs from one to the other. While these terms are widely used in popular music in Japan and abroad, they are imprecise and often unclear—and  The Back From the Grave event, for example, has been a regular, ongoing garage rock event since 1989, for which it just marked its 30th anniversary in the fall of 2019. 2

244 

J. V. Neglia

even contradictory in some cases. In Japanese, these terms have currency similar to their counterparts in the Anglo-American world, usually borrowing from English the equivalent loanword in Japanese. For example, “amateur” and its opposite “professional” are amachua and purofesshonaru in Japanese, or more simply ama and puro in popular parlance. Likewise, the loanwords indīzu (indie), andāguraundo (underground), and orutanatibu (alternative), are commonly deployed terms in underground rock in Japan. Miyairi Kyouhei (2008) characterizes the Japanese “livehouse” musician as falling into three categories of socioeconomic status: professional, amateur, and independent, with the vast majority of the bands in the live music scene being amateur.3 He notes, unsurprisingly, that these terms often blur in practice, and that they are loaded with layers of meaning; for example, to be a “pro” usually infers a certain position and authority vis-à-vis the amateur, while the label “amateur” refers more generally to hobbyists and committed fans. Miyairi (2008, pp. 62–95) further details how professional, amateur and independent musicians in Japan assume different identities and attitudes about the live music scene in general, with amateurs more specifically defined by a leisurely commitment to music making and a general disinterestedness in material gain. While the distinction between professionals and amateurs can be characterized in economistic terms as the difference between wage-earners and hobbyists—with independent or “indie” musicians occupying a space somewhere between the two extremes—one notes a web of meaningful associations that revolve around the concept of the amateur in rock culture, from leisure and play to notions of commitment, pleasurability, and autonomy. Although the term “indies” similarly connotes economic and artistic independence, often on the fringes of the popular music markets, amateurs in Japan are more closely identified as fans, often marked by their indifference to the business or career aspects of music making—a point that notably overlaps with ideals of anti-commercialism and skepticism towards the music industry, a common trope in rock music. Similarly, it  The word “livehouse” (pronounced raibuhausu) in Japanese refers to a music venue or a club that features live music. It is a compound of the English language words “live” and “house.” The livehouse system in Japan has its own cultural logic that sets it apart from the way live music venues work in North America or Europe, hence, I use the term “livehouse” throughout the chapter. 3

17  “Like the Apocalypse Is Imminent by Guys Who Could Barely… 

245

follows that labels of “amateurism” and “independence” assume positions of identity and status, to be owned and disowned, contested and asserted. As Minamida Katsuya (2001, pp. 17–18) makes clear, discourse on amateurism in popular music works within a wider discourse of marginality and outsiderness in rock culture that figure in contests over cultural legitimacy. These terms are thus performative, and it follows that their meaning and usage should be understood within particular hierarchies of value. Indeed, among musicians in the Tokyo scene these labels are problematic. While a handful of performers fit the definition of professional musicians (for example, the garage rock musician, Guitar Wolf, had a long-term relationship with Ki/oon Records, a subsidiary of Sony), the vast majority fall uneasily between “amateur” and “indie.” From my interviews and conversations with participants in the scene, it is clear that few bands have professional career aspirations. That is, while many musicians in the scene are committed performers, there is general acceptance of the limited potential for market access, especially for a genre of music that is so firmly entrenched in obscure or largely forgotten musics of the past. One event organizer, for example, explained to me matter-of-factly that no one in the garage rock scene makes money from gigging. Still, while professional status as full-time performers is outside of the norm for garage rock musicians, the idea of garage rock as mere hobby can be problematic too. One musician put it to me this way: “We are not like salarymen4 who ride motor bikes on the weekend, just to refresh themselves, then work Monday to Friday…. it’s not a hobby. We can’t live off this, but our attitude is different compared to salarymen bikers” (Little Elvis Ryuta, interview with author, July 2010; emphasis added). The degrees of commitment do range, however, and other musicians are more casual about their music and performance than the above quote might suggest. To generalize, however, one can say that the garage rock scene is driven by networks of committed musicians, organizers, and fans, who regularly attend events, organize shows, and produce albums among other activities that sustain the scene. If terms like “professional,” “amateur,” and “independent” are flexible and performative, we can at  The term “salaryman” (pronounced sararīman) is a pseudo-loanword in Japanese that refers to white-collar workers. It is a compound of the English language words “salary” and “man.” 4

246 

J. V. Neglia

least characterize the main bands that frequent the scene as outside the purviews of the entertainment industry and major label recognition. These participants exude the fannish devotion and indifference to career and industry characteristic of the stereotypical amateur, while investing in alternative systems of circulation and production that are more typically defined as “indie.” In a material, ethical, and practical sense, then, the distinction between these categories is too awkward to be useful in the case of the Tokyo garage rock world. Put another way, navigating the conceptual categories of “indie” and “amateur” is not a question of either/ or but rather both/and for musicians and fans in the Tokyo rock underground.

“Fuzz-Mongering No-Names” and the Amateur Sensibility These overlapping and blurred slippages of identity and language are further complicated in the case of garage rock, where the amateur ideal is rendered iconically in sound. In popular texts on garage rock, for example, one sees countless references to amateur musicianship as a unique sensibility—as an aesthetic ideal. For example, a Japanese web review for the 1998 box-set release of the Nuggets album, a celebrated garage rock reissue compilation, refers to the music thusly: The miscellany of bands compiled on Nuggets are of a vulgar charm. For me, I’d express it in a few simple words as simply the “the triumph of amateurism.” It’s something that feels right when you hear it, the straightforward way they fling whatever they want at their microphones, as is. In other words, it’s a sound made without any cheap gimmicks.…” That is to say, whereas professionals have their performing techniques, their fully decked recording spaces, produced with a mass marketing mindset … [sic] or whatever counts for “sophistication” in the music business. So it’s a real shock to still now hear that [amateur] attitude that is so diametrically opposed to all that. (“Nuggets: Various Artists” 1999, paras. 7–8)

17  “Like the Apocalypse Is Imminent by Guys Who Could Barely… 

247

The reviewer concludes by describing the Sonics’ recording on the 4-box set as “the most radical” in its amateurism, in which “frantic, screaming vocals, are expressed with bias-free emotion.” Likewise, he complements other tracks in the album for the “power of their unskilled amateurism.” The linguistic cues that describe garage rock amateurism in terms of affect and style—the “bias-free emotion” of unsophisticated musicianship—recur again and again in garage rock, in Japanese and in English. Musician and writer, Craig Daniels, uses similar language to describe the genre: As diverse as ‘garage’ music is, it’s united by a raw, primordial energy that drives the music and gives it an intense sense of immediacy.… Originated by mid-‘60s bands like the Sonics, the Fabulous Wailers and countless other pimply-faced, out-of-tune, fuzz-mongering no-names. These were primitive songs played like the apocalypse is imminent by guys who could barely play guitar. (Daniels 2000, paras. 1–2)

Daniels refers to the sounded qualities of “raw, primordial” music making and the “intense sense of immediacy” that garage rock engenders in its listeners, while playfully describing garage musicians as “out-of-­ tune, fuzz-mongering no-names,” and “guys who could barely play guitar.” Such statements suggest an associative link between amateurism as an aesthetic sensibility and the notion of amateurism as authentic, unfiltered musicianship. Here, the particulars of language present an opening into the sonic, sensate realm of garage that is less easily accessed in musical terms, where notions of immediacy and visceral pleasure are invoked through a variety of metaphors. Language of this sort speaks to the affective presence of garage style— the immersive and intuitive realm of sound and movement in pleasurable, somatic time. These terms work across a chain of metaphorical and descriptive language to explain the garage sound as “immediacy,” “intensity,” “the here-and-now.” More generally, this folk terminology connotes the aesthetic of immediacy in garage: as Craig Daniels puts it, a “raw, primordial energy…an intense sense of immediacy.” Immediacy here is defined as that which lacks an intervening or mediating agent, which

248 

J. V. Neglia

correspondingly foregrounds notions of immanence, directness or connectedness. In garage terms, an aesthetic of immediacy rejects the interposing agencies of stagecraft and industry in favor of live, local, amateur performance: it foregrounds the intimacy of the small-scale over the mass-produced “hit”, the local over celebrity, the personal over the impersonal. It is an iconic overlap between the immediacy of the garage sound (the affective, intensity of experience rendered in sound as groove, noise, movement) and the immediacy of the local, intimate, and personal.

 mateurs at Work: Cultural Production A and the Livehouse Scene I turn now to a brief overview of the work of organizing a typical show in the Tokyo underground. This account is based on fieldwork conducted in the Tokyo scene since 2010, including a two-year period in which I lived in Tokyo and attended weekly garage rock events from 2011 to 2013. First, what is a typical garage event? There are dozens of garage rock events that take place in any 12-month period, on average about one event per week. This includes regular garage events like the Back from the Grave Returns series, which takes place once a month, as well as less frequent event series (bi-monthly or a few times a year) and even one-off shows. A typical event will feature four or five bands in a given night, usually performing 30–45-minute sets, and will almost always include deejays, and sometimes other performers such as burlesque dancers. Usually a typical show will last about five hours, beginning in the early evening and ending in time for audience members to catch the last train sometime around midnight. Attendance at an average garage rock show will number in the dozens, maybe up to a hundred people or even more on highly attended shows. One notes first the work of performance. This concerns the physical and emotional labor of performing to an audience, but more generally entails the work of running a band in the Tokyo underground. An active band in the Tokyo scene will normally perform once or twice a month on average. Most band members that I have interviewed have told me that

17  “Like the Apocalypse Is Imminent by Guys Who Could Barely… 

249

they also usually rehearse once a week. Add to this the work of producing albums, which entails composing and arranging music and frequenting the recording studio. And, of course, that leaves out other kinds of work involved in gigging and developing an audience, including organizing events, promoting shows, building websites, making videos, and organizing events and tours. Besides the work of the performers, however, there are still other kinds of work that go into producing events. Event organizers, for example, have to coordinate with bands and livehouse managers, as well as engage in promotional activities, such as making posters and online materials. For example, organizers are normally expected to make and distribute flyers (called chirashi in Japanese). In the world of the Japanese livehouse, musicians and organizers typically distribute flyers during and after the shows; for example, usually at the end of an event a throng of people will line up around the entrance of the livehouse to distribute flyers to attendees as they stream out of the club. Normally one would arrive home after a night at the livehouse with a wad of flyers for upcoming shows. More recently, social media has become a standard means of event promotion, but the person-to-person communication of flyer distribution and general word-of-mouth remains primary in the Tokyo underground. Thus far, I have mentioned only the work of performing and organizing. Other kinds of work include the waged labor of the livehouse staff, for example, working at the cash register, tending bar, managing and booking events, and sound engineering. At most shows, also, bands or local shop owners would set up a booth in the vestibule to sell goods. Generally speaking, the manager would coordinate with the event organizer to arrange shows, promote events, and coordinate the performers during the event. The only ones, however, that are guaranteed remuneration are the livehouse employees. With the exception of the livehouse staff, the vast bulk of the work expended in the production of events is voluntary and unremunerated. Notably, the livehouse system in Tokyo is pay-to-play, with rare exceptions. Bands in the Tokyo garage scene make little or no money and they normally pay a quota to the livehouse, which places the onus on the bands to sell tickets, promote shows, and organize events. From my interviews and conversations with musicians and participants, it was made

250 

J. V. Neglia

clear to me that few bands realized any profits from gigging. In some cases, if the livehouse management were on friendly terms with the musicians and/or organizers, the quota would be waived, so that any extra profits would be doled out to the musicians at night’s end—albeit only if there were sufficient attendance. One manager of a livehouse that did this, however, expressed to me concern that this would lessen the pressure on bands to actively seek out audiences. For the livehouse manager, it upsets the logic of the quota system, which is meant to put the burden of organization and promotion largely on the bands. Nonetheless, the majority of live music shows in the Tokyo underground are pay-to-­ play gigs.

Immediacy, Excess, and Garage Performance If amateurism could be understood as merely non-professionals laboring passionately outside the pressures and routines of formal (i.e., waged) labor, then the above account would suffice to cover the bare essentials in terms of the kinds of amateur and voluntary work that are expended in the production of garage rock events in the Tokyo underground. Still, what about the work of performance? How do musicians and other participants work to make events eventful, so to speak? The many productive relationships that extend beyond the event, that coalesce in shared commitments of work and participation (promises to attend and perform at each other’s shows, the face-to-face exchange of chirashi, the shared work of organizing and producing gigs) are reinforced and instantiated on the dance floor in the spatial proximity of the live music event. To explain the point, I turn to two examples of live music performance from my fieldwork. The first example is of the garage rock duo, d/i/s/c/o/s, who have been active in the Tokyo scene for about a decade (although they are mostly on hiatus at the time of writing), and the second example is that of “trash rock n’ roll” combo, Ed Woods.

17  “Like the Apocalypse Is Imminent by Guys Who Could Barely… 

251

d/i/s/c/o/s represent a uniquely stripped-down, raw style of garage rock musicianship.5 A guitar and drums combo, d/i/s/c/o/s are unusual in that they forego the standard livehouse equipment in favor of their own instruments, microphones and small portable speakers, which they arrange on the dance floor rather than the stage, looking more like a pair of street buskers than a typical livehouse band. The audience forms around them in a circle, face to face with the musicians and their instruments, swaying and rocking to the sound of the riff-driven guitar, muffled vocals, and crashing drums. The result is a blurring of the very divide between audience and performers. If  garage rock seeks to bridge that divide, to pare down rock to its essentials, then d/i/s/c/o/s take it to the extreme, eschewing any of the features that distinguish the performer from the audience: from dress (they wear unremarkable, casual clothing) to banter (they avoid patter between songs) to lighting (they play in the dark of the dance floor at Heavy Sick) to the very stage itself. The band seemingly forego spectacle altogether—or at least strip spectacle of anything beyond the bare fundamentals of a collective coming together in sound and bodies. A video of a d/i/s/c/o/s performance from a 2012 show makes the point (tokoro akihiro 2012)6; we can see audience members freely move in and out of the musician’s performance space, up close, fists pumping in the air, punctuating the music with shouts and sung verses. The music itself is dense, built on distorted power chords in the guitar that contrast with the alternating patterns of crashing cymbals and snare licks in the drums—a densely layered, coarse sound that renders lyrics mostly unintelligible; this is music that invites participation, revels in noise, dissonance, and distortion. It is iconically primitive rock and roll in ways that exemplify the amateur ideal; after all, anyone can make noise, sing off-­ key, scream into a microphone—in principle, at least. The example of the video evokes what Feld (1988) describes as “in-synchrony while out of phase … the overall feeling is of togetherness…. Yet the parts are also “out-of-phase,” that is, at distinctly different and shifting points of the  I have seen d/i/s/c/o/s perform live about a dozen times in the Tokyo area, and my description is of a typical show for them. 6  Watch from the 3:40 point to the end, See here at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaDKvMJrptA (accessed February 27, 2020). 5

252 

J. V. Neglia

same cycle or phase structure at any moment” (p. 82, italics in original]). As the video shows, the audience members freely interject themselves into the performance, with pumped fists, shouting, raised beer cups, and other playful gestures and bodily movements. d/i/s/c/o/s exemplify garage rock at its most makeshift and raw—the aesthetic of immediacy in its full-on rejection of even the smallest items of spectatorial mediation beyond the sound devices themselves (the instruments, the speakers, microphones). At the opposite end of the performance spectrum is the trash rock and roll band, Ed Woods. Whereas d/i/s/c/o/s dispense with costumes, patter, staging, Ed Woods channel their brand of raw, trash rock and roll in different ways: their onstage persona revolves around B-movie film culture (hence the band’s name after the American B-movie film legend, Ed Wood), replete with zombie makeup, fake blood, and otherwise trashy getups that include jeans, trucker hats, and bandanas. Their set is theatrical and spectacular, including a drawn-out introduction in which the band members take the stage to the surf rock strains of Jack Nitzsche’s “The Last Race” (from the soundtrack of the 1965 sci-fi B-movie Village of the Giants). Unlike d/i/s/c/o/s, Ed Woods make full use of the stage lighting, with bright bursts of light that accent the music as it goes along. The movie references, though, are more than mere schtick, but an integral aspect of their “trash rock and roll” aesthetic. As they describe themselves, “Bad taste trash! Looking like something straight out of a grindhouse cinema or a 70s horror movie!.… On the Ed Woods stage, brutal tension, and an anguished state of excitement are mixed together to make one big SEXY HORROR SHOW!” (“Profile” 2013).7 In an interview for the film Livehouse: A Documentary (Mcgue 2009), vocalist Billy of Ed Woods explains the band name, “I really love how Ed Wood was so into filmmaking. I think we are bad at playing our instruments, but we want to play music. Ed Wood was bad at making films, but that is what he wanted to do. So we borrowed Ed Wood’s name for the band.” Like their  This line is from their profile page on their website, ED WOODS New Official Homepage, accessed September 1, 2013, http://edwoods.s2.bindsite.jp/pg112.html. The website is inaccessible as of July 1, 2017. A similarly worded biography is available on other promotional materials; see for example, “ED WOODS/WILD CREW RULES/Diskunion.net PUNK ONLINE SHOP”, accessed February 27, 2020, http://diskunion.net/punk/ct/detail/1007247737 7

17  “Like the Apocalypse Is Imminent by Guys Who Could Barely… 

253

namesake, the band assumes the stance of amateurs: passionate devotees to their craft who claim indifference to success, talent, or industry. They explain: “The power of performance is such that whether a lot of people show up at our shows or none at all, it matters none to us because we’ll be there spewing forth on stage, going full-throttle like Leatherface on a murderous rampage”8 (“Profile” 2013). If d/i/s/c/o/s epitomises rock and roll at its most barebones, Ed Woods make full use of the spectacularity of the event, immersing the audience in the sights and sounds of excess. Gael Sweeney (1997) describes the cultural logic of excess thusly: “Excess is meaning out of control. It inundates the ‘needs’ of the dominant ideology and control, spills its tackiness out into the open and refuses to be ignored. Excess aggressively calls attention to itself, the excessive body refuses to be ignored…. Trash is always ‘garbage’: the excess at the margins of society” (p. 255). Sweeney’s aesthetics, rooted in semiotic and Bakhtinian analytics that emphasize the transgression and inversion of hegemonic norms and values, notably bridge the concept of trash in popular culture with its logical extension, namely, stylized excess. Zygmunt Bauman (2001) echoes Sweeney’s words, stating: “To be ‘in excess’ means to be too many, or too much…. ‘Too’ signals that something is not really necessary, desirable or pleasing. ‘Too’ means redundancy; uselessness; waste” (pp. 85–86). For Ed Woods, excess is style: a way of doing things in sound and performance that seeks to overload the senses, push the limits of coherence, and immerse the body in the here-and-now of spectacle. Excess for Ed Woods has less to do with transgression than with a heightened state of experience. Excess here is of the same pedigree as the slasher horror films on which the band draws inspiration, or the B-movie cinema that revels in cheap thrills and kitschy effects. To be sure, this is neither irony nor camp (which assume a cool, detached, and knowing stance), but rather a fannish commitment to homage that fellow trash rock and roll enthusiasts understand viscerally. The trio features guitar, drums, and standup bass—the latter a common instrument in rockabilly and derivative genres. Their closing routine is especially noteworthy. For all of their shows, the band will end their set with the song “Trash Rock and Roll Everywhere,” which is mostly  Leatherface is the main antagonist from the 1974 film, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

8

254 

J. V. Neglia

improvised. The lead vocalist, Billy, shouts lyrics and patters over repeating lines in the guitar and drums, wherein he will intone to the audience “trash rock and roll, everywhere/trash rock and roll, everywhere” over and over. As the momentum picks up, Billy sets down his bass, and proceeds to undress down to his underwear while the audience eggs him on, yelling and fist-pumping into the air until he descends onto the floor, pours shampoo and water over his head (and/or sometimes beer) and lathers himself up, and then dives head first onto the dance floor, slipping and sliding across the room as the audience screams and cheers wildly. After several slides across the floor, he grabs the microphone and the bass and sets up in the middle of the audience, surrounded by cheering fans, upon which he rejoins the band in mid-song, continuing on until the final cadential scream concludes the set (Image 17.1). We can see an example of this in a video taken in 2010 (ElevenColors 2010)9; the video follows a slightly different order of performance than what I describe above, but the example is especially interesting in several

Image 17.1  Ed Woods at the end of their set. Note that the singer, Billy, is lathered in shampoo. (Photo taken by Miles Wood)   Watch from the 3:40 point to the end, available watch?v=V1BxosG2h1A (accessed February 27, 2020). 9

at

http://www.youtube.com/

17  “Like the Apocalypse Is Imminent by Guys Who Could Barely… 

255

respects. First, note how the audience responds wildly—dancing, cheering, shouting, and even yelling into the camera. One audience member follows Billy’s lead and dives onto the floor himself (he is a musician from another band that presumably played earlier that night, hence the semi-­ nude getup); another audience member jumps onto the stage and grabs the mic, yelling “happy new year” at the crowd. More generally, however, audience members are cheering from the dance floor as Billy whirrs across the room. For example, when he calls out on the stage, audience members are in his face, gesturing at him aggressively; and when he touches down on the dance floor, bass in hand, audience members let out an emphatic cheer. After lathering himself up, he ambles back to the stage, grabs the mic, and sets up on the floor, and then proceeds to engage in more shouting patter with the audience, who circle around him, punctuating each shout with raised fists and yells. In the video Billy also undresses fully, tearing off his underwear, and throwing it onto the stage (the video helpfully obscures his nudity); on other occasions, I have seen him wear layers of underwear, which he theatrically tears off one-by-one. The music notably follows the lead of the action on the floor according to Billy’s improvised performance, which in turn follows the rhythms and interactions between performer and audience—a performance feedback loop that is dynamic, exaggerated, and revels in the excess of the moment. Like d/i/s/c/o/s, Ed Woods exemplify how garage performance blurs the divide between performers and audience. Over the course of the performance audience members are transformed from mere spectators to active participants and collaborators. The result is an affective feedback loop, where the band’s sonic, visual, and bodily gestures serve to compel audience members to cheer, dance, and sway in the groove of the event, who in turn charge the event with its affective energy, transforming the spectacle and space of the performance into a collective site of frenzied and visceral pleasure. The tendency to see Billy’s antics in terms of its supposed shock value, especially on account of its nudity, is to miss how fans and regulars in the Tokyo underground experience the show. For one, Ed Woods’s fans would know and expect Billy to perform the routine, thus rendering the shock of the performance moot. Moreover, it is not especially unusual for rock bands in the Tokyo underground to incorporate nudity into their act (although it is almost always male performers).

256 

J. V. Neglia

Rather, the spectacle of Ed Woods’s performance exemplifies stylized excess, where the trash aesthetic takes on an almost literal dimension as the performer immerses himself in the filth of the dance floor, covering his body in grime, dirt, and spilled beer, while screaming (almost) incomprehensibly into the microphone. It is in the excess of performance that Ed Woods immerse themselves and the audience in the immediacy of the event, rendering the spectacle an intimate, participatory experience.

Conclusion The above account of garage rock amateurism in the Tokyo scene, however brief, hinges on two related points. The first is to emphasize that amateurism is a value laden aesthetic and ethical concept. It manifests in production in terms of the material and organizational endeavors of fans to produce events, but also in terms of style and performance—in the immediacy of participation and pleasure that is realized on the livehouse floor among musicians and fans, whether in the stripped-down stylings of a d/i/s/c/o/s show or the “trash rock and roll” excess of an Ed Woods gig. An understanding of how the amateur concept is made meaningful to practitioners, fans, and musicians, entails a careful account of how particular modalities of work—for example, unremunerated labor, DIY ethics, and so on—intersect with matters of musical form, aesthetics, and style. This intersection is crucial: amateurism is something greater than merely non-professionalism or unwaged labor, but rather entails certain ideals about musicianship, and how they manifest in practice as refracted through the parameters of genre and style. The second point is that it bears repeating the importance of genre in any such analysis in order to make a broader argument about studying underground musics in Japan and Asia. A genre like garage rock is a transnational form of popular music, in so far as the Tokyo scene is part of a transnational network of garage rock bands, fans, record labels, and so on; likewise, the cultural lineage of the Tokyo garage rock scene extends across time and space, with deep roots in related genres in North America and Europe, most particularly, punk—as noted above. It is to these particularities of genre and form as historically situated cultural formations

17  “Like the Apocalypse Is Imminent by Guys Who Could Barely… 

257

that we must attend to in our analyses. That is to say, there is no amateur ideal that can be understood as particular to Japan or to the underground music scene in Tokyo per se, but rather can only be understood in the context of specific genres and their histories. This necessitates a careful attention to the garage rock genre as a transnational and historical phenomenon, but also requires ethnographic analysis of how the particulars of genre and style are made manifest in situ—in the unique space of the Tokyo scene.10 The flow-on from this, notably, is to suggest some skepticism of the notion of “the underground” as something that can be defined by a set of shared features across genres that are otherwise only tangentially related. To understand genres as diverse as, say, the experimental onkyou (noise) scene and the thriving electronic dance music (EDM) scene in Japan alongside garage rock as interconnected under the broader umbrella of “underground music” is problematic in so far as it generalizes across disparate cultural formations in ways that often elide the historical and cultural specificities of these genres. Rather, the question that matters is how the practitioners within these particular scenes value notions of “undergroundness” as a way to distinguish their unique practices as somehow distinct from supposedly less “authentic” pop cultural forms. For garage rock fans and musicians, whether in Japan or abroad, amateurism is one particular aesthetic and ethical concept that figures in a network of stylistic features and practices that serves to define and distinguish this musical form from other styles and genres in the vast landscape of contemporary popular culture.

References Bauman, Z. (2001). Excess: An Obituary. Parallax, 7(1), 85–91. Brackett, D. (2016). Categorizing Sound: Genre and Twentieth-Century Popular Music. Oakland: University of California Press.

 Notably, my approach here recalls Ian Condry’s (2006) notion of “genba globalization”, which prioritizes “the sites of actualization” as a way to conceptualize how the local and global flows of popular culture intersect in practice. See also Milioto Matsue (2011, p. 65). 10

258 

J. V. Neglia

Condry, I. (2006). Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization. Durham: Duke University Press. Daniels, C. (2000, July 1). Garage Rock. Exclaim.Ca. http://exclaim.ca/music/ article/garage_rock Drott, E. (2013). The End(s) of Genre. Journal of Music Theory, 57(1), 1–45. “ED WOODS/WILD CREW RULES”. diskunion.net PUNK ONLINE SHOP. (n.d.). Retrieved February 28, 2020, from http://diskunion.net/ punk/ct/detail/1007247737 ElevenColors. (2010, January 4). #378 Countdown to 2010 with Ed Woods [Video File]. Retrieved February 27, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=V1BxosG2h1A Feld, S. (1988). Aesthetics as Iconicity of Style, or “Lift-Up-Over Sounding”: Getting Into the Kaluli Groove. Yearbook for Traditional Music, 20, 74–113. https://doi.org/10.2307/768167. Holt, F. (2007). Genre in Popular Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mcgue, K. (2009). Live House [Documentary]. Milioto Matsue, J. (2011). Making Music in Japan’s Underground: The Tokyo Hardcore Scene. New York/London: Routledge. Minamida, K. (2001). Rokku myūjikku no shakaigaku [The Sociology of Rock Music]. Seikyūsha. Miyairi, K. (2008). Raibuhausu bunkaron [Livehouse Culture]. Seikyūsha. Nuggets: Various Artists. (1999, November 3). Watega Mimini Nagashikomu Onbantachi (18). http://www.ne.jp/asahi/beef/heart/onban/mimi18.html “Profile.” (2013). ED WOODS New Official Homepage. http://edwoods.s2. bindsite.jp/pg112.html Sweeney, G. (1997). The King of White Trash Culture: Elvis Presley and the Aesthetics of Excess. In M. Wray & A. Newitz (Eds.), White Trash: Race and Class in America (pp. 249–266). New York/London: Routledge. tokoro akihiro. (2012, February 8). d/i/s/c/o/s 2012/01/21 Live@横須賀 FuckYeah! [Video File]. Retrieved February 27, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaDKvMJrptA

18 Conclusion: Notes on Cities, Undergrounds and Closed Upper Rooms Will Straw

The Sociable Spaces of Culture This book is one outcome of a one-day workshop/symposium on “Underground Music-Making in Hong Kong and East Asia,” held at the ACO Bookstore and Cultural Outreach centre in the Wan chai District of Hong Kong in December of 2018. It did not go unnoticed that this event, devoted to “underground” culture, was held on the fourteenth floor of a multi-purpose building. The venue exemplified the familiar, even stereotypical ways, in which Hong Kong’s cultural life claims place within the verticality which is one of the city’s most distinctive features. The invisibility of these spaces within the visual landscape of the city is in marked contrast to the ubiquitous illuminated signs signalling commerce and entertainment which were, for a long time, an equally emblematic and stereotypical feature of Hong Kong (Fernandez 2018).

W. Straw (*) Urban Media Studies, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. Charrieras, F. Mouillot (eds.), Fractured Scenes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6_18

259

260 

W. Straw

In the weeks before I travelled to Hong Kong, I had become interested in the “upper rooms” which have been one kind of space for cultural ferment. I had found myself deep in readings of the history of what, in France, are now called “sociabilités littéraires” (literary sociabilities). This term encompasses the ways in which social life organizes itself around particular cultural forms (in this case, literature), and the characteristic places and event-forms in which this sociability will unfold. Admittedly, much of the scholarship on these sociabilités is about France exclusively, and is concerned with cultural life in Paris in the nineteenth century (contexts far away in time and place from those of twenty-first-century Hong Kong). Nevertheless, the space in which the Underground Music-­ Making workshop was held evoked, for me, the closed, upper rooms which were one of the first sites of Parisian literary exchange. In the history of these sites, as recounted by Glinoer and Laisney (2013), the closed, upper room (or cénacle) hosted private meetings of writers and their followers, in which new work was read aloud and commented upon. Membership in these meetings was limited, and by invitation, and these closed rooms were invisible to the world outside. We know about what transpired in them only because a few members wrote about them in their diaries or their letters. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the cénacle largely been superseded by what was called the salon, a term which then, as today, may designate both a particular kind of room (typically, in contemporary houses, the “living room”) and a distinctive kind of event (the sociable gathering of those interested in culture or ideas). Parisian salons were often organized by women, for whom they offered opportunities to engage in a cultural life otherwise closed to them. At a salon, writers might read their work, but the overall tone was much more casual and conversational than that of the cénacle. The salon was more likely to encourage gossip, the trading of news and the cultivation of a network. Then, by the end of the nineteenth century, both the closed room and salon began to lose their centrality within Parisian culture life. More and more, artists—painters, musicians, writers—began to meet in public, commercial establishments: in bars, cafés, cabarets and so on. There were several reasons for this move out of closed rooms into the public spaces of the city. Electric lighting made cities both visually

18  Conclusion: Notes on Cities, Undergrounds and Closed… 

261

interesting and more hospitable at night. The heterogeneity of social types and identities meeting in these new public spaces was itself viewed as an embodied form of information about urban cultural life, and artists increasingly felt the imperative to observe and participate in that heterogeneity. If I have dwelt so long on the rarified atmosphere of nineteenth century Parisian literary life, it is because the distinction between these kinds of spaces—between the closed room, the salon, and the bar or cabaret— remains with us in the present moment. The closed room (whether “upper” or not) may be simply the space of snobbish or professional exclusion, like dj booths in well-known dance clubs of the past, as described by Tim Lawrence (2016), or the back room at Max’s Kansas City in New York, in the 1970s. We might ask whether the music studio is like the closed room or cénacle, or whether the backstage area at concerts is something like the salon, with its open but controlled accessibility. In the life of art gallery openings and literary festivals, likewise, we may distinguish been closed and open spaces—between those in which entry and sociability are tightly controlled and others in which they are more open, looser. The challenge of alternative musical cultures, of course, is that of managing the passage of music between these kinds of spaces: between (a) the closed space in which innovation is possible under conditions of isolation, (b) the more open but controlled private space in which ideas may be tested and discussed; and (c) the public, sociable space in which underground music may connect with the broader energies of city life. The risk of remaining in the first is that your little group leaves no traces, has no transformative effect on the broader culture. (This, alas, has been the fate of so many late-night jam sessions in different musical genres.) The challenge of the second is resisting the absorption of culture within a generalized group sociability whose own logics supersede the project of moving culture along. And one risk of the third, which joints creative activity to the broader buzz of urban life, is that music becomes instrumentalized, by city tourism boards or others who want to turn cultural production into a simple token of urban effervescence. The closed room also has a prominent place in the history of insurrectionary movements, like underground political parties. (A museum in

262 

W. Straw

Belgrade memorializes the secret room which hosted a printing press used by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia during the Axis occupation of the country in the 1940s.) We may wish to think a little more about the benefits of enclosure and invisibility in the current political climate. In his powerful contribution to this volume, Ahkok Wong points to the way in which variously authoritarian regimes—not only in Hong Kong, but, we might add, in other places, like Brazil or Poland, which find themselves under the shadow of resurgent fascism and right-wing populism—have produced a new urgency for those engaged in making and experiencing culture. In this urgency, the simple idea of an alternative culture, marked by small-scale activity and a bohemian resistance to commercialism, has receded. It has retreated, perhaps, in the face of the genuine need for culture, which is underground, invisible to the powers in place and linked to other forms of radical social struggle. Culture is driven to become underground, Wong writes, when it must be concerned with its own self-protection. In such situations, it may be the case that underground culture must give up the fight for visibility which has marked its politics in different moments. For a half-century, at least, from the “semiotic warfare” described by Dick Hebdige (1989) and others in relation to the first wave of punk, through to the struggle for a “intimate publicness” which David Verbuč (2017) sees as underlying the politics of American DIY musical culture, cultural politics has been conceived as the movement of radical impulses into public arena which they will in some way alter. In my own, perhaps tendentious reading of Ahkok Wong’s analysis, it evokes the second condition offered by Davis and Raman to explain those social contacts in which protest does not assume the forms of public visibility: When public squares are not routinely occupied, however, we also know something about citizenship. Either there is no claim-making, and the status quo is not under fundamental challenge, whether literally or figuratively; or, conversely, the depth, critique, and extent of citizen dissatisfaction with existing power structures is so great that claim-making and negotiation are bypassed and efforts are directed towards more rebellious and unconstrained insurgent action. In such settings citizens will turn not to the public squares but to the streets or the underground. And in this sense,

18  Conclusion: Notes on Cities, Undergrounds and Closed… 

263

while citizenship and insurgency both have a physicality, they suggest a different spatiality: the former is more likely to be enacted in public squares and other physically bounded spaces that are recognized by states as appropriate sites for claim-making, while the latter unfolds in interstitial, marginal, dispersed, and less easily controllable spaces where the state’s power and authority is less easily wielded. (Davis and Raman 2013, p. 62)

The building of an invisible, underground culture within “interstitial, marginal, dispersed and less easily controllable spaces” is going on now in multiple places of the world, in which LGBTQ+ or other non-­conforming populations find themselves facing threats both longstanding and unprecedented in their oppressive brutality. As Davis and Raman suggest, a radical politics once organized around the choice between engagement and autonomy has shifted, to become a politics focused on the spatialities of insurgency.

Spaces of Culture, Spaces of the City As I complete this brief Afterword, in March of 2020, the steady scaling up of concern over the COVID-19/coronavirus has significantly (if temporarily) altered the way we talk about the role of place and territory in relation to  musical culture. In China, the live-streaming of “bedroom concerts”, on-line festivals and internet-only “club events” (Raghav 2020) is followed with interest by international media. These sorts of events have moved the “closed room” of the bedroom concert into the broad spaces of social media, just as they have made the bedroom internet connection a gateway to the broad sociability of the on-line festival or club event. One part of these developments exemplifies the movement towards what Amy Catania Kulper has called “ubiquitous domesticity”, “. . . a phenomenon in which the horizon of domesticity is indiscriminately extended into the public realm. Its defining feature is the evocation of a single standard or interest–in this case the intimacy associated with the domestic setting–in order to construct ‘the social’, which, paradoxically, deforms society” (Kulper 2008, p. 111).

264 

W. Straw

These developments have also revived the discussion of “virtual scenes” which was prominent in discourses on music in the first decade of this century. Across Europe, the massive cancellations of concerts and festivals threaten a resurgent live music economy organized around big events. This is occurring even as the closure of bars and night clubs, in the name of ensuring “social distance”, has compounded a nightlife crisis whose initial causes were the ongoing gentrification of cities like Berlin (Worden et  al. 2020; Hawthorn 2020). People are speculating on social media about a permanent, radical re-structuring of broad segments of social and cultural life, in which the co-presence of bodies in space or face-to-face interaction would give way to remote communication and transmission. We have heard these prophecies before, of course. Since the early twentieth century, the arrival of each new communications or entertainment media has been seen as causing the death of a place-based culture organized around the co-presence of performer-artist and audience-consumer. The same effect has been ascribed to traumatic events of all kinds, from pandemics to the attacks of September 11, 2000. These are seen as causing a retreat from public spaces and a withdrawal into worlds offering the dual securities of domestic intimacy and distant, mediated participation in cultural life. And yet, as anyone involved in politics of culture over the last decade will quickly acknowledge, urban physical space has become central to these politics. This has happened to an extent one might not have predicted twenty years ago, when the key logics of cultural change seemed to be those of virtualization and globalization. At the level of both policy and politics, I suggest, the key struggles around culture have been “urbanized”: cities have emerged as the key sites in which cultural identities are elaborated, and citizenship is increasingly felt and lived as an “urban” citizenship. As cultural policy and politics have been urbanized, they have, as well, become spatialized. Policy and politics are increasingly about the distribution, protection or transformation of space, actions which unfold in relations of complicity or antagonism with logics of capitalist expansion and administrative governance. In this respect, as the French architect and urbanist Federica Gatta notes, invoking the philosopher Michel Lussault, we have moved from the class struggle to the struggle over place. (My English translation sacrifices the rhyming symmetries of the original

18  Conclusion: Notes on Cities, Undergrounds and Closed… 

265

French, “De la lutte des classes à la lutte des places.”) Gatta continues: “Faced with the weakening of national economic spaces, as a result of the mobility of international firms, the city offers itself as one of the principal places for the spatialization of economic power” (Gatta 2018, p. 37). This spatialization of economic power has directly confronted cultural spheres who imagine their purpose more in more in terms of the spatial relations of the city: the building of spaces of being-together, of collaboration, of experimentation and transgression. Not very long ago, in the face of conservative national governments in much of North America and Western Europe, one could speak of what Joan Subirats (2018) called the “redistributive” role of cities. Subirats was speaking, in particular, of those cities whose governments were more progressive than those of the nation-states which surrounded them. (A casual way of referring to this was as the “Bad Presidents, Cool Mayors” phenomenon.) In the face of national austerity regimes, cities might institute local policies which softened the impact of national politics – through local minimum wage laws (as in Seattle), the protection and expansion of public housing programs (as in Vienna), or the legal acceptance of things like same-sex marriage (as in Mexico City). If “Cool Mayors” were often seduced by the fashionable doctrines of the creative city, waterfront regeneration and entertainment districts, at their very best they might invest in culture as a means of softening forms of social division which national governments either ignored or were too willing to exploit for their own preservation. If the era of the “redistributive” local government marked the first decade of this century, the second has witnessed something very different. The municipality has become the political level at which the violence of contemporary economic life is felt and enacted most strikingly. Gentrification is one word for a whole set of transformations which encompass the growth in homelessness, the destruction of neighbourhoods, the growing gap between rich and poor, the diminished aspirations of younger generations, and, with particular pertinence to this volume, the disappearance of spaces of alternative or underground culture. In the “redistributive” city, the heterogeneity of urban places was seen as an antidote to the levelling uniformity produced at the level of the

266 

W. Straw

nation or region by global trade agreements and national capitulation to them. “But if that is partly true,” Subirats suggests, we can also observe the growing importance of ‘place’, of those spaces which accumulate capacity, resources and opportunities. Cities, many cities, are still privileged spaces in which things happen which do not happen elsewhere (or at least not in the same way) in other places. At the same time, they are spaces in which conflicts and social contradictions both old and new come together. (Subirats 2018, p. 13)

The way in which urban spaces condense histories, possibilities and contradictions, is, of course, one of the things that has made them central to ideas of cultural politics, even as such spaces have become the ground level for transformations which we might judge to be oppressive and restrictive. Subirats adds: “Cities are also places for experimenting with, and upgrading, the structures for new dynamics that we might call those of an extractive collaborative economy” (p.  13). What is Air BnB, for example, but a system for the further extraction of value from places already embedded in the capitalist markets for housing and urban infrastructure? In her introduction to a 2018 issue of the Lisbon-based magazine Contemporanânea: Cronicas de Arte/Art Chronicles, editor Antonia Gaeta suggests one way of conceptualizing a city—as “a container for relationships, actions, words and memories” (Gaeta 2018, pp.  4–5). The cold functionality of “container” here is offset by the warm, human-centred character of those things that a city contains. At the workshop which inspired this book, there was lively talk of “relationships, actions, words and memories”, but there was recognition, as well, that these are not enough to guarantee the kind of cultural life we might want. The things in Gaeta’s list need to be “contained”, not simply in cold material structures, nor in the abstraction of the city as unitary form. Rather, they must find their place within those forms of collective life in which cultural expression unfolds: in scenes, undergrounds, networks, social circles, subcultures and political movements (to name just a few). These forms are themselves containers, at a lower level: they mould the elements in Gaeta’s list into more-or-less coherent mixes of act and affect.

18  Conclusion: Notes on Cities, Undergrounds and Closed… 

267

Here is another definition of city, from the British geographers Ash Ami and Nigel Thrift: “Cities are spatial radiations that gather worlds of atoms, atmospheres, symbols, bodies, buildings, plants, animals, technologies, infrastructures, and institutions, each with its own mixes, moorings and motilities, each with its own means of trading, living, and dying” (Ami and Thrift 2017, p. 5). Here, the human is all but absent, gathered up with other kinds of bodies and animals, in a list that exemplifies the currently fashionable decentering of the human in favour of other kinds of materiality, both physical and social. The spaces of cultural expression, we might guess, find their place amidst these elements, in the interstices of insurgency, perhaps, or in those points of convergence in which solidarities reveal themselves. They are distributed within those “spatial radiations” which Ami and Thrift see as the defining form of the city. At the risk of sounding platitudinous, we might conclude that we need both visions of the city: one focused on “relationships, actions, words and memories” and another respectful of the material and biological variety within which these things find their place. Cultural undergrounds are places of exchange and connection, but they are also life forms which struggle to survive amidst the “mixes, moorings and motilities” (Ami and Thrift 2017) of the contemporary city.

References Ami, A., & Thrift, N. (2017). Seeing Like a City. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Davis, D.  E., & Raman, P. (2013). The Physicality of Citizenship: The Built Environment and Insurgent Urbanism. thresholds 41, Spring, 60–71. http:// web.mit.edu/ebj/Desktop/ebj/MacData/afs.cron/group/thresholds/www/ issue/41/t41_davis_raman.pdf Fernandez, E. (2018, July 25). Hong Kong’s Fight to Save Its Neon Shimmer – A Photo Essay. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2018/ jul/25/hong-­kong-­neon-­lighting-­threat-­chinese-­regulations. Accessed 25 July 2018. Gaeta, A. (2018). Editor’s Note. Contemporanânea: Cronicas de Arte/Art Chronicles, 2, 4–5.

268 

W. Straw

Gatta, F. (2018). (Contre)Pouvoirs Urbains? Eléments pour une critique anthropologique de l’urbanisme participatif. Paris: Editions donner lieu. Glinoer, A., & Laisney, V. (2013). L’âge des cénacles: Confraternités littéraires et artistiques du XIXè siècle. Paris: Fayard. Hawthorn, C. (2020, March 11). Berghain Cancellations Lead Berlin Club Scene’s Coronavirus Response. Resident Advisor. https://www.residentadvisor. net/news/72227. Accessed 12 Mar 2020. Hebdige, D. (1989). Hiding in the Light: On Images and Things. London: Comedia. Kulper, A. C. (2008). Private House, Public House: Victor Horta’s Ubiquitous Domesticity. In V.  Di Palma, D.  Periton, & M.  Lathouri (Eds.), Intimate Metropolis: Urban Subjects in the Modern City (pp. 110–131). London/New York: Routledge. Lawrence, T. (2016). Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980–1983. Durham: Duke University Press. Raghav, K. (2020, February 13). Under Lockdown and Quarantine, China’s Punk Rock Bands Are Taking the Mosh Pit Online. Hyperallergic. https:// hyperallergic.com/542468/under-­lockdown-­and-­quarantine-­chinas-­punk-­ rock-­bands-­are-­taking-­the-­mosh-­pit-­online/. Accessed 25 Feb 2020. Subirats, J. (2018). Les villes au coeur de la redistribution ? Le nouveau municipalisme, antidote à l’Europe de l’austérité et des États dans l’impasse. Mouvements, 94, 11–23. Verbuč, D. (2017). Notions of Intimate Publicness and the American Do-It-­ Yourself Music Spaces. Communication and the Public, 2(4), 284–304. Worden, M., Barrionuevo, L., & Cantor-Navas, J. (2020, March 10). ‘No More Nightlife’: With Italy on Lockdown, Europe’s Music Industry Enters ‘Uncharted Water’. Billboard. https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/ international/9331795/europe-­music-­industry-­coronavirus-­impact-­italy-­ france-­live-­sector. Accessed 10 Mar 2020.