a n t i p l a y g r o u n d
project series
2021
Sound Installation
Symphony of Situations 1
Installation
31 Songs
Performance Cabaret
antiplayground cabaret
The cross-media exhibition work, antiplayground, is created by sound artist and composer Alain Chiu and researcher and writer Ho Ying Yi. Funded by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, the work seeks to assemble a roomful of playthings assimilated with entertainment facilities in an amusement park and playground. The project is built upon continuous contemplation: What constitutes a playground? The word “anti” challenges the norms or conventions of spaces designated for creating joy, questioning presumed boundaries of reality and artificiality. The work, consists of a two-week exhibition and a series of music performances and lecture performances, will form a cross-disciplinary narrative to delve into the subject matter.
This work is made possible by the support of Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong and Hong Kong Arts Centre.
Note:
Gestalt
1-1 I am not particularly fond of places designated for fun-making. Not because I distant myself from joy, I am just not fond of the dooming destiny of departure. By extension, I have a complex relationship with: picnics at places far from the city on Sundays/ Sundays/ dawns/ last day of a vacation. My innate antipathy towards any boundaries or departures drove me to create something boundless.
1-2 antiplayground is a modest exercise to dig out, destroy, and reorganize my memories. The act of disassociating myself from the archive, however, (and somewhat indescribably) drove me closer to my past.
1-3 Balls: they form a boundless sculpture in this enclosed space. With fortune, they will roll off the streets, creating memories for others.
1-4 “anti-” doesn’t represent a dissent from fun-making places. By nature, antispaces are elastic, ever-changing, boundless. Ridding the boundaries of spaces will hopefully alleviate the sadness from the dooming destiny of departure.
2-1 31 songs: I’ve collected 31 objects and sounds during Aug - Dec, placing them in vacuum-sealed bags and observing their changes. They contain inaudible “sounds” (as the tapes are destroyed in the process), playthings, or artifacts. Treat each of these vacuum-sealed objects as a song.
3-1 Symphony of Situations consists of music or sounds that I’ve collected or composed. It is an endless loop of an ever-changing soundscape. I replaced compositional counterpoint with sonic-spatial counterpoint of interplaying dynamics, heights, depths, and movements. The influx/ efflux of sounds forms a cathedral of distant memories. It is still, inert, cold, piercing. It’s also a space devoid of memories and references. Sometimes I just don’t like identifying a feeling, but I want to bathe in it. And now you are bathing in a sonic version of that.
This is the prototype of an antiplayground: devoid of a definite space, boundless, formless, “like a rabbit hole with different entry and exit points.”
A concept.
A heterogeneous, morphing antispace.
Alain Chiu