No One’s Island is the title of an upcoming album that FEN is going to release under the Russian label, Mikroton Recordings. Four Asian musicians move in the irrational space determined by geopolitics, giving themselves as materials for experiments in contemporary culture. The idea that “no one is (not) an island” accompanies them in the development of an expanded social network (or rather that of countless vacancies and loopholes?). Artists and musicians meet at the periphery of the mainstream world, forming temporary alternatives that are different from the models of ocean and island. This is a stage for the various voices of people, and a mandala for us all.
On the first night, FEN will perform with 8 Taiwanese musicians in different combinations, as duos, trios, quartets…like the aimless flow of movement and changes in nature. The second night will start with artist Hsu Chia-Wei’s video artworks, Marshal Tie Jia – Turtle Island and Marshal Tie Jia - Jingsi Village, followed by FEN’s performance with Nanguan musician Huang Chun-Li, and closes with the collaboration with foley artist Hu Ding-Yi in a fictive sound narrative: a speculative encounter between the reality of simulated sounds and the physical reality of sounds themselves.
Day 1: FEN will co-exist with 8 Taiwanese musicians in different combinations, not unlike an aimless flow of mobility and changes in nature.
Day 2: A screening of Hsu Chia-Wei's documentary Marshal Tie Jia – Turtle Island and Marshal Tie Jia – Jingsi Village, followed by FEN's interlocution with Nanguan musician Huang Chun-Li and foley artist Hu Ding-Yi.
This event is co-organized by Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-LAB) and Taipei Performing Arts Center (TPAC), as part of the 2019 Taipei Arts Festival "I (do not) Belong To You."
Dates:8.28 (Wed) 19:308.29 (Thu) 19:30
Notice:- Free admission but every participant needs to sign up for a ticket (suitable for 12 and above). To sign up, please contact C-LAB 02-8773-5087.- Audience can move around while watching. There is no seating arrangement. Latecomers and re-entry subject to discretion.- May contain loud sounds and flashing lights. No flash, food or drink.
Ticket Information:- Tickets are available from 8.24 (Sat) to 8.27 (Tue) between 12:00-18:00 until the tickets are all taken. Events run out of ticket will be posted on to the homepage of Taipei Arts Festival as well as the homepage and the Facebook fan page of C-LAB- Box Office’s Location: i Center of C-LAB (No. 177, Section 1, Jianguo South Road, Daan District, Taipei)- Each person shall only apply for 2 tickets for each event. Repeated application is not allowed- Queuing Information will be released by announcement and staffs’ instructions on the spot- Late-released tickets will be available at 19:00 on the day of the performance at Chung Cheng Auditorium of C-LAB- Entry starts at 19:00 and the performance starts at 19:30. Please be punctual- If vacancies exist after the start of the performance, the audience on the waiting list will be led in to the auditorium by staffs. (If the auditorium is full, there will be no entry for the audience on the waiting list.)- No reissue shall be done for lost tickets- Please call C-LAB on 02-8773-5087#206 for more information. (Open hours: weekdays, 10:00-18:00)
Artists ||
FEN - Far East Network
FEN is an improvised music quartet. Comprising Otomo Yoshihide (Japan), Yuen Chee-Wai (Singapore), Yan Jun (China) and Ryu Hankil (Korea), FEN was formed in 2008 in Marseille. The initial intent of forming FEN was not based on a particular pursuit of any specific form of musical aesthetic, but rather to develop and deepen the improvised music networks of Asia.The music of FEN has been described as a combination of noise, random occurrences, rock, jazz and the likes, in an improvisational rigour without any prior communicated agreement. Each member is free to change and choose their musical instrument and methodology of performance.
Otomo Yoshihide / Japan
Born in 1959 in Yokohama, Japan. Otomo is a guitarist, turntablist, composer, film score composer and record producer. As a teenager, he spent time in Fukushima. Staying independent, he has consistently composed a wide range of music from improvisation to noise music and pop, and his music talent has spread all over the world. He has a successful career as a film score composer and has produced more than 70 movie soundtracks. In recent years, he has produced special type of concerts and musical works in collaboration with other various artists under the name of “ensembles”. In addition, one of his priorities is producing musical workshop projects involving handicapped children. In 2011, after the Great East Japan Earthquake, he started PROJECT FUKUSHIMA! along with people in various sectors. He has been active beyond the music scene and this is the reason that he has attracted a great deal of attention. In 2012, he received the Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts in the category of Promotion for PROJECTFUKUSHIMA! In 2013, he received various prizes including the Japan Record Award for his accomplishments, such as composing the theme music for the TV drama Amachan.
More Info: otomoyoshihide.com
Yuen Chee Wai / Singapore
Born in 1975. Musician, artist, designer based in Singapore. Often inspired by ideas drawn from philosophical and literary texts, and perspectives glimpsed through the filmic eye and photographic lens, Yuen’s stylistic oeuvre in improvised music is marked by internalised reflections on memory and loss, invisibility and indeterminacy. In 2008, he teamed with Otomo Yoshihide (Japan), Ryu Hankil (South Korea), and Yan Jun (China) to form FEN (Far East Network). FEN focuses on the continuing multifaceted networks and collaborations between Asian countries. Since its inception in 2014, Yuen is part of Ensembles Asia as Project Director for Asian Music Network, to which he co-curates the annual Asian Meeting Festival (AMF) in Japan. He is also a member of the avant-rock band The Observatory (Singapore), with whom he plays guitar, synth and electronics. With nine albums to date, including the most recent August is the cruellest (2016), The Observatory has also conceived a vanguard of initiatives such as the annual festival Playfreely, which gives artists new creative avenues for performing and working together. Both FEN and The Observatory continue to tour extensively, performing in Europe, America and Asia regularly, and has presented in MIMI Festival, Lausanne Underground Music and Film Festival, All Ears Festival and Ftarri Festival.More Info: asianmusic-network.com ／ theobservatory.com.sg
Yan Jun / China
Born 1973, Yan Jun is a musician and poet based in Beijing. He works on improvised and experimental music. He has been touring and performing extensively over Asia, Europe, America and Australia. His sound works, performances and installations were presented at Nuit Blanche, Shanghai Biennale, Documenta, Transmediale, Louis Vuitton Foundation and more. He has released a few dozens of CDs on labels around the world. He has been awarded in Ars Electronica. He has done residency programs in DAAD Berlin, ACC in New York and CCA in Singapore. As a poet and writer, he has attended the Rotterdam International Poetry Festival and Berlin International Poetry Festival. He has published more than 10 books of writings on music, essays and poetry in Chinese and translations in English, French and German. He is a member of FEN and Tea Rockers Quintet, andfounder of music label/publishing house/organization Sub Jam.More Info: yanjun.org
Ryu Hankil / Korea
Ryu Hankil is a musician, born in Seoul, South Korea in 1975. He was interested in finding an alternative musical structure possessed by abandoned objects like clockworks, typewriters. After discovering the instrumental possibilities of a typewriter, he started a collaboration project called A.Typist with lo wie and Taeyong KIM. He has also been a member of FEN (Far East Network) since 2008. From 2015, as a different approach from his past works, he started various projects of fictional aspects of digital synthesis. He premiered his new solo work titledSocioFrequency and The Envelope Demon - The Quotes of Professor Nak-Jin Paik in 2018.
Collabarating Artists
8.28(Wed.) 19:30
Li Jiun-Yang | Taiwan
Born in Taitung, Taiwan, Li Jiun-Yang grew up in a family of movie billboard painters. At a young age, he acquired skills in billboard painting temple art, puppet theatre design, and puppet carving. His work draws on a wide range of media, including painting, wood carving, wire sculpture, installation, performance, graffiti, puppet theater production, and experimental theatre. He is known for appearing in TV commercials and popular theatre programs, and for his single-handed construction of an entire temple! He pursued his own unique path in the arts at a time when American culture was gaining influence over Taiwanese art. Rather than look abroad, he drew inspiration from the local handmade arts to express the intangible ideals of Taiwan's folk culture.
Nigel Brown | Australia/Taiwan
Nigel Brown has been working in the field of sound and experimental music since 2004. His range of interests have led to working in improvised performance, recording for publication, gallery-based installation, and sound design for dance and theatre. He has performed extensively in Australia, Europe and East Asia in events ranging from festivals to independent gigs. His is focused on exploratory approaches to physical materials; finding unexpected sonic possibilities in existing instruments or other objects. Nigel completed an MFA at RMIT University in 2006, and a Bachelor of Arts (Media Arts) in 2004, specializing in sound.More info: nigelbrownsound.com, tingshuostudio.org
Hung Tzu-Ni | Taiwan
Space and sound, sound and body, body and machine, machine and ritual, ritual and poetry, poetry and space.In a social landscape filled to the brim with busy work, Hung Tzu-Ni seeks to create a setting or an environment where a listener or viewer might enter into a dream state, momentarily isolated from the outer world, and in that space be able to more intensely perceive one’s frame of mind & body. Her installations explore the reciprocal relation formed between light as it is constructed and sound as it is embodied in a space, as well as the environments where they are interactively engaged.
Xu Chia-Chun | Taiwan
Born in 1997, Xu set out performing and producing harsh noise under the alias “Berserk” since 2015. Initially, he focused on playing rough feedback from handmade instruments and synthesizers before carrying on specializes in no-input effects. Influenced by Japanoise, Death Metal, Hardcore Punk, his live performance is known for highly intense physical energy and massive volume. In 2017, he turned to combining various equipments including no-input pedals/mixer and shortwave radio to session with free improvisation musicians and folk narrator. Different to Berserk’s harsh noise approach, his works as Chia-Chun Xu emphasize more on the interaction between sounds, space, and the others. Besides working on his projects, he also runs the music label, MKUltra Productions, promoting Taiwanese and worldwide noise and experimental musicians.More info: https://mkultraproduction.bandcamp.com/, https://soundcloud.com/jared-xu-berserk
Dino | Taiwan
Dino is a sound artist and a guqin maker based in Taipei. Once a bassist of the Clippers Band, he is a seminal figure in the second wave of the noise movement in Taiwan during the late-1990s. He uses simple analogue equipment to create electronic sound with no input, which is known as ‘recycle music’, by generating loops from circuitry noise, static, or microphone feedback. In recent years, Dino participates in experimental films and live music production for the theatre. He was awarded Best Sound Effects in Taipei Film Festival (2003). More info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wnx6iFy75Yk
Lu Yi | Taiwan
Lu Yi is a noise artist. Since 2011, she and Fujui Wang - who has played a key role in establishing sound art in Taiwan – have been executing projects under the name Soundwatch Studio. Beyond Soundwatch Lu Yi has also been organizing and executing workshops, sharing her knowledge and experience around sound art and electronics with students young and old, within Taiwan and abroad. She also collaborates with French visual artist Sébastien Labrunie under the name Sondes. She has performed at Digital Art Festival 2015, Onsite 2014 and 2016, Taipei Art District Festival 2017, Lacking Sound Festival “Listen 100” and “Listen 103”, NTCH 30th Party “Electric Indigo”, Nuit Blanche Taipei 2018 and etc.
Betty Apple｜Taiwan
Based in Taipei, Betty Apple comes from a younger generation of avant-garde artists in Taiwan. Graduated from School of Theatre Arts (BA) and New Media Arts (MA), Taipei National University of the Arts. She focuses on live art and sound art, while also engaging in video art, behavioral art, electronic music producing, DJing and art curation, as an expression of her thoughts on body politics. Her work has been invited to Playfreely Festival Singapore, Mutek Japan Festival, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Polythinking in Melbourne, Asian Biennale, Taipei Biennale 2018, Taipei Arts Festival and C-LAB. In 2017, she created music for dance company MeimageDance's New Paradise of Silent Island, and for choreographer Lee, Chen-Wei’s Known Face.
Jyun-Ao Caesar｜Taiwan
The idea of Jyun-Ao Caesar’s music borrows from both Eric Cordier and Otomo Yoshihide and can be described as an approach toward the composition of Pan-Musique Concrète as proposed by Dajuin Yao. His experience with signal processing, analog amplification, and field recording, as well as his knowledge of space and time led to his adoption of the instrument. He is also a member of Saint Sloth Machine with the impro-percussionist Lala Reich, guitarist Pillof Yau and bassist Weiting Huang. His compositions for the group aim to represent a certain contemplation of humanism and modernity in a non-realist way.More info:http://saintslothmachine.wixsite.com/maze,https://soundcloud.com/carquois42
8.29(Thu.) 19:30
Hu Ding-YI | Taiwan
In 1975 Hu Ding-yi first came to the Central Motion Picture Corporation as a member of the third class of film technicians. As a foley artist, he has participated in over 300 films, including several that were nominated by Golden Horse Awards for Best Sound Effects, such as Strawman (1987), Banana Paradise (1989), Green Green Leaves of Home (1993). He was awarded Outstanding Taiwanese Filmmaker of the Year by the 54th Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival.
Huang Chun-Li | Taiwan
Since 1998, a member of Nanshan Society in Tainan, Taiwan, and toured with the society to Quanzhou (China), Philippines and Japan. Chun-Li specialized in several Nanguan instruments, including xiao (flute) and erxian. Graduated from Dept. of Traditional Music, Taipei National University of the Arts (MA). He is currently teaching in Dept. of Traditional Music, TNUA, Nanguan Society of Nanning Senior High Tainan, and Tainan Community College.
Video Artworks
Hsu Chia-Wei | Taiwan
Graduated from Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains, France, Chia-Wei Hsu stresses specifically on the actionability underneath image creation when comes to the practice of art, while linking up the relationships of humans, materials, and places omitted in the narrative of conventional history through establishing the incidents beyond the camera. Hsu has thrown solo exhibitions including MoNTUE, Taipei, Taiwan (2019), Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan (2018), Industrial Research Institute of Taiwan Governor-General’s Office at Liang Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan (2017), Huai Mo Village at Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei, Taiwan (2016) that was recognized by the Annual Grand Prize of the 15th Taishin Arts Award, Huai Mo Village Project at Art Basel, Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Hong Kong, China (2016), and Position 2 at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands (2015). He has participated in exhibitions such as Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2019), Biennial at Shanghai, Gwangju, Busan and Sydney (2018), 2 or 3 Tigers at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany (2017), Taipei Biennial at Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan (2016), HUGO BOSS Asia Art at Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2013), and The 55th International Art Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia: This is not a Taiwan Pavilion at Palazzo Ducale, Venice, Italy (2013). He is also the curator of Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition at Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei, Taiwan (2018) and THAITAI: A Measure of Understanding at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Bangkok, Thailand (2012). He's currently co-curate the 2019 Asian Art Biennial with Ho Tzu-Nyen.
Scenographer
Liam Morgan | Canada/Thailand/Taiwan