Lingnan University Digital Commons @ Lingnan University Lingnan Theses and Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 3-10-2020 Conditions of enablement of sound practices in Hong Kong and Manila Dayang Magdalena Nirvana Tamanio YRAOLA Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.ln.edu.hk/otd Part of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, and the Music Performance Commons Recommended Citation Yraola, D. M. N. T. (2020). Conditions of enablement of sound practices in Hong Kong and Manila (Doctor's thesis, Lingnan University, Hong Kong). Retrieved from https://commons.ln.edu.hk/otd/98/ This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Digital Commons @ Lingnan University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Lingnan Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Lingnan University. Terms of Use The copyright of this thesis is owned by its author. Any reproduction, adaptation, distribution or dissemination of this thesis without express authorization is strictly prohibited. All rights reserved. CONDITIONS OF ENABLEMENT OF SOUND PRACTICES IN HONG KONG AND MANILA YRAOLA DAYANG MAGDALENA NIRVANA TAMANIO PHD LINGNAN UNIVERSITY 2019 CONDITIONS OF ENABLEMENT OF SOUND PRACTICES IN HONG KONG AND MANILA by YRAOLA Dayang Magdalena Nirvana Tamanio A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Cultural Studies Lingnan University 2019 ABSTRACT Conditions of Enablement of Sound Practices in Hong Kong and Manila by YRAOLA Dayang Magdalena Nirvana Tamanio Doctor of Philosophy While sound practices in Hong Kong and Manila operate separately, they are interlinked by various factors that have enabled their practices, respectively. This research is a study of such connection. In particular, I claim that sound practices in Hong Kong and Manila share distinct characteristics that allow inter-referencing to be adopted as an effective tool in approaching the problem at hand. Sound practice for both Hong Kong and Manila is uniquely located in the interstices of music and art—a location where their distinct form, history, and ethics are entangled with those of music and art. I argue that this unique location of sound practice is brought about by the conditions that have enabled it. Among these conditions are the earlier encounters between Hong Kong and Manila—through artist exchanges and events or gatherings such as exhibits, festivals, and conferences since the 1960s. With these encounters, direct relations are traced to the current sound practice by virtue of organizational, conceptual, or ideological affinity. Thus, I propose that sound practice should be understood not as an autonomous art movement, but one that is a product of the society where it emerges from. Besides the historical connection, this study will expound on the three factors that enable the sound practices at issue: technological movements, DIY culture, and art institutions. Technological movements or technological developments enabled the evolution of forms and the development of different sound projects. DIY culture gave sound practitioners inspiration on how to organize themselves as communities in relation to or despite the prevailing art market. Meanwhile, various discourses in the contemporary art world in Asia, concerning both music and visual arts, gave rise to conditions where sound projects can be understood as a tradition, expression, representation, or commodity, among others. Specific manifestations and interventions of these three factors, from early 1990 until the mid-2010s, are identified and analysed vis-a-vis the current conditions of the practice. This research will show that it is within the constellation of these three enabling factors that the sites of practice are shaped and the ethics of the practice moulded. In conclusion, I will discuss how sound practice may continue to grow and further develop. DECLARATION I declare that this is an original work based primarily on my own research, and I warrant that all citations of previous research, published or unpublished, have been duly acknowledged. ______________________________________ YRAOLA Dayang Magdalena Nirvana Tamanio Date: CONTENTS Preface iii Acknowledgments vi CHAPTER I: Existing Conversations: Where do they come from? 1 A. Research Background 1 1. Sound practices on interstice of music, visual arts, performing arts 2. Characterisation in the art world B. Conceptual Framework: Conditions of Enablement 23 1. Ecology of sound practices 2. Factors enabling the practice C. Research Method 44 1. Gathering from the inside 2. Two Asias (Asia as Method) 3. Chapters of the thesis CHAPTER II: Before Sound Practices: A Genealogy 54 A. Shared Contextual Current 59 B. Project of Internationalisation 64 1. Urban Musicscape: Popular, Academic, and In Print 2. Asian Art: Hong Kong and Manila Art Exchange 3. Experimental film, video workshop, conceptual and media art C. A Genealogy of Sound Practices 81 1. Musical Lineage 2. Arts Lineage Summary and Conclusion 94 CHAPTER III: Ecologies of Sound Practices 97 A. Sites of Practice: Porous Borders, Nodal Juncture 98 1. Circles 2. Networks 3. Scenes B. Ethics of Practice 171 1. Pakikipagkapwa-tao: membership through camaraderie 2. Bayanihan: unity and unison 3. Tensions and Negotiations Summary and Conclusion 183 CHAPTER IV: Enabled Conditions: Creating, sustaining 187 A. Technology: Creating forms, projects and programs 189 1. Processes of production 2. Typology of forms and staging B. DIY Culture in Sustaining the Practice 205 1. Initiatives and Exchanges 2. Compounded Roles 3. Further entanglement: urban art movements C. Subjecting to Discourse/s: Sound Practices in the Art World 220 1. Sound practice as a school/ university program 2. Curating sound in museums and galleries 3. Art market, art fairs and commercial galleries Summary and Conclusion 239 i CHAPTER V: Concluding chapter: Where it continues to resonate 242 A. Summary of study 242 B. Obstacles, Limitations and Directions of this research 254 APPENDIX 1: List of sound events in Manila 258 APPENDIX 2: List of sound events in Hong Kong 294 APPENDIX 3: Main interviews 314 Bibliography 316 ii PREFACE: The Art That is Sound Practice As a practitioner in this field, particularly as an archivist and a curator, my primary motivation for mapping out sound practice is to understand “groupings”, which, since the beginning, has been a term to cover connotations including “network”, “community”, “scene”, “group”, “organisation”, “collective”, and “band”, etc. I am further interested in knowing how individual practice came about, how individual practice became connected to groupings, how these groupings are connected with each other, how they relate to the rest of the art world or the rest of the society that hosts them, and how they figure in the production of artistic sound works. In other words, I would like to find out what the art that is sound practice is all about. In this thesis, these questions are called “conditions of enablement”. The term was suggested during a consultation with Tejaswini Niranjana early on in the research. My desire to learn about these conditions of enablement is premised on two encounters: first, with sound practices, which include sound art and experimental, electronic, digital, and noise music from Southeast Asia, Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in my curatorial practice; and second, with the literature from Europe and Americas that included histories of the forms I have encountered in my practice. It cannot be assumed that what is within this category called “sound practice” is already a given. The use of “sound practice” instead of “sound art practice” was initially suggested by Anson Mak during an interview, also in the early stage of the research. Since this field is relatively new and constantly evolving, choosing what terms to use requires thorough assessment as it may have a lasting effect in future and further studies. In the case of Manila, while the term “sound art” has been used since the late 1990s, its meaning has varied depending on how, when, and who uses it. According to Wire Tuazon, a Filipino artist and founder of Surrounded by Water (SBW), a pivotal site of sound practice in Manila, he did not even iii know that there is something called “sound art”. 1 When he organised the Sound Art Festival in SBW, he used the term simply to refer to “sound made by artists”. Tuazon comes from the scene I am most familiar with—1990s in Manila, artist-run space driven scene, which hosted experimental and non- conventional art that had no space in the galleries or museums.2 In this scene, those who made sound works came from the fields of visual arts, alternative music, and film, among others. Sometimes, they used “sound art” in their promotional materials, as Tuazon did, although none of them then labelled themselves as sound artists. The course of organising the materials for this research coincided with the 2017 Feedback Forum, a forum attached to WSK: The Festival of the Recently Possible, an artist-initiated festival of new media art, held in Manila since 2004. In 2017, I was invited to be the convenor for the forum, which focused on a rapportage of sound practices in Asia. Merv Espina, my co- convenor, and I agreed not to use the then default term “sound art” for the forum, and instead, used “sound practices” as an umbrella term to include sound art and all “other musics”. On the one hand, sound art now has its own canonical definition, albeit new, with the influx of literature, particularly from the West. On the other hand, the term “sound practice” does not pre- determine what and what is not sound art or other musics; it is inclusive as it enables us to include in the discourse soundscape, sound engineering and other sciences, sound anthropology and other sound sociations3, sound archiving, etc. What is central in this discourse is practice, with sound as its subject and medium, and art as its intended space of articulation.