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Flower Echoes
Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner
The hum of a city is seemingly inescapable, that unnatural hovering electrical fog that invades every space, and as if in defeat, all we can do is mask it, neutralising it through the use of televisions, radios, CD players, at battle with a force seemingly beyond us. The Asia region is recognised for its extreme noise levels, indeed apparently more than 30 percent of people are exposed at night to noise that seriously damages their sleep, but is there something in here that we can learn about the city, its sound, its people and how this pollutant can be engaged with as a positive factor?
The Sound And The City initiative of the British Council – a search for music in the sound of the streets instead of that of the concert hall – was a positive step in a creative way with which to reconsider our cities, our relationships to them and how noise can equally operate as an affirmative dynamic.
I was offered the chance of creating a work in Guangzhou, a port on the Pearl River, with a population of around 13 million, making it the most populous city in the province and the fifth most populous in China. Through trade and industry it has earned a series of nicknames: Wuyangcheng (City of Five Rams); Yangcheng (City of Rams); Huacheng (City of Flowers); or Suicheng (City of Wheats). It was the penultimate name here that was to offer the inspiration for my project.
For a research period I visited the city and. with the engaging company of a select team of assistants, guides and associates. I was offered a compressed view of this colossal metropolis. Experiencing the city by foot, taxi and even an airlift across the mountains, I was able to take in a compacted understanding of the geography of Guangzhou, visiting Ren Min Park; the exquisite flower market in Fang Cun; the railway station with its constant rush hour; Chen Clan Temple; Nan Hai Temple; Qing Ping Market; Sha Mian; Er Sha Island; the playfully titled Village in the City; Yue Xiu Park; Teem Plaza; Beijing Road; the tranquility of Baiyun Mountain and naturally countless busy restaurants and markets that specialised in electronics, clothing, shoes, tea, jade, and my firm favourite, the toy market, an area of the city saturated in colourful toy shops.
From my earliest experiments with sound, using found voices and environmental recordings of my locality in London, I’ve been interested in the cityscape. For me, zooming in on the spaces in between – between language and understanding, between the digital fallout of ones and zeros, between the redundant and undesired flotsam and jetsam of environmental acoustic space – led towards an understanding and reading of the environment and city in a fresh manner. If an accent of someone suggested a certain class, age or attitude, then how suggestive was the raw acoustic sound around these conversations, how influential was the location where each conversation was held? Could the listener ‘read’ the location through this aural perception and how would they judge the overall picture of this sound through the detail. If I were to play back recordings of Guangzhou to a listener outside of this locale how would they respond? Could this noise heavy ambience teach them anything about the place? Would it be possible to create a work that could filter this into something striking and beautiful?
During my stay I also gave presentations, performances and ran workshops at a series of locations, from the formal and institutionally led to the more independent and adventurous, at South China Normal University, Guangdong Foreign Language and Arts College, Youth Palace Cinema, Beijing Road and Park 19 Art Space, opening up conversations about how people listen and what they listen to, making cultural connections between China and the UK. I was struck by the wealth of interest, with capacity crowds pushed to the doors, attentively listening and responding, with an overall positive atmosphere.
I wanted people to consider how their environment acoustically operates. Sound is ever present, sometimes as a constantly shifting whirr, as a damp grain of footsteps, as the drone-like spangle of distant traffic, or as the seemingly motionless air that ripples past our ears, as the elegant stuttering trill of a bird overhead. How influential is this common envelope of space, the environment in which we consume sound and music? How does one define the spaces between music and sound? When we listen to an iPod or Walkman, how do we distinguish between that which is intended – the sound carrier – and that which is incidental: passing traffic, the roar of a plane, the screech of a train door, your own footsteps? It’s here, in this virtual space, that we are each free to explore the sonorous and acoustic strata of what is an intimate yet global expression of space, a simple translation of the social transformations wrought by new technologies.
With recordings I made whilst in Guangzhou I returned to the confines of my London studio and created the finished piece.
With such a clear awareness of ancient history throughout the city, Flower Echoes uses place names and street names as memory triggers. Rather than simply use a street name as a reference point, a designation for a meeting or rendezvous, readings of the titles in Cantonese and Mandarin throughout the work suggests a sense of political, economic, educational and cultural significance. These voices can be heard in unison with recordings made in the mountains, restaurants, streets, and shops of Guangzhou. In so doing the work also explores the collision between physical space and the human mind.
Some place names have an immediate understanding, Baiyun Mountain and the Er Sha Island clearly from a geographical perspective, Village in the City and Tian He’s central business district from a developing city, whilst others demonstrate a more poetic use of language, Xi Guan, Shang Xia Jiu, Zhuang Yuan Fang. Embracing both the cultural and the historical, the city and the wilderness, this work appraises and celebrates the geographies people inhabit, visit, defend, destroy – and overlook.
I chose to press a freely distributed CD of this work to present it to as many people as possible, so 35,000 copies of Flower Echoes were pressed up and made available through the British Council, the local newspapers (Guangzhou Daily, Yang Cheng Evening Post, etc) and mail requests. Launching the project as part of the Second Guangzhou Triennial curated by Hou Hanru, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Guo Xiaoyan at the Guangdong Museum Of Art, I also installed an adaptation of the project in one of the main corridors of the building, a passageway through which every visitor had to navigate through the exhibition. Local musician and artist Wang Lei and I then performed together at the grand opening, beside the Pearl River at Xingyi International on Bright Garden Square, a very public space where sonic arts morphed into the new rock and roll with thousands of cheering people and a row of security guards circling the stage.
Flower Echoes offered a distillation of the sounds of the city, a focus through a narrow lens, a reading through the ears of an outsider. At the same time it has opened up a conversation with local artists, music lovers and a global audience regarding cultural links and associations, strengthening bonds and connections between China and the UK.
And was it ever possible to finally find silence? Well, the closest I came to locating silence was in my hotel room, towering over the city, balancing on the 42nd floor, with its airtight double-glazed windows. However when a spectacular storm broke out one night and I was drawn to recording this immense force, I struggled to open the ultra-secure window and instead had to resort to a speedy race to the lift, descend to ground level at dizzying speedy and experience the full strength of this mighty natural beast, microphone battered by winds and rain, my clothing immediately wrapped around me as if fully dressed in the shower. Ah, the sound of silence.
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