This musical collaborative art project, Four Rooms, aims to consider extended notion of music and sound through collaborative work with a musician, a video artist and two performance artists. Contemporary art incorporates different arts forms destroying the limitations of material and technique to expand the method of expression and artistic boundaries. Western classical music has also tried to extend its expression and limits through drastic changes such as breaking the rules of tonality, the basis of western music since the Baroque period. Many musicians after the 20th century, including John Cage, have endeavoured to break the stereotype in music, and considered the notion of sound and music through the various experiments with the material of music. However, it is still difficult to escape the traditional boundaries in music, such as melody and tempo.

 

Perhaps these limits can be overcome when a composition breaks the mould of ‘music’ as a ‘genre’ and extends the boundary of sound which forms music; eventually, music may be liberated from the limited views on genre, broadening the presentation of ideas through active collaborations and combining other forms of art. This project tries to expand the notion of sound and music through merging traditional Eastern music, MIDI sounds, residential noise and voice sound and so on through the collaboration with four artists.

 

 

Artists’ Biographies

Zhang Ansheng (Erhu)

 

Zhang Ansheng is one of leading traditional musicians in China, who started to play Chinese traditional music since he was 7 years old. He has been engaged in playing and teaching the Erhu, Banhu, Pipa and many other Chinese folk instruments. During the period he served as the Dean Instrumental Department at the College of Music of Capital Normal University, and as the Head of the Youth Folk Orchestra of China. Now, he is a visiting professor in Confucius institute at Goldsmiths University

Shakti

received a Professional Dance Diploma from the Laban, Institute of Contemporary Dance and a Diploma in filmmaking at Westminster College, and graduated from a Performance Making MA at Goldsmiths University. She is a performance and visual artist with strong emphasis on projects of inclusive and hybrid nature. Her work attempts to create a situation where reality itself extends and becomes a questionable point, where possibilities can be open up. She also formed a performance group, ‘Moon 28’ with Sulhui Lee.

 

 

 

 

Sulhui Lee

received her BA in Music (in vocal studies) from Kosin University and graduated from with a MA in Performance Making at Goldsmiths University. She developed an interest in the nature of performance while working as a stage manager in the Seoul Arts Centre; of how body and mind interrelate on the stage. After studying performance making, as a performance artist, her interest became cemented on breathing, the voice, body and identity, themes which became the basis of my practical work. She is a member of ‘Moon 28’.

 

Youngshin Jeon

 

is studying BFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, with evident intrigue in small discourse of the society and breaking the boundary among people, society and hierarchy through her various works. She recently contemplated communication on the social network through performance work using Facebook and began to have interest in media work after her document work about North Korean Defectorswho settled in London.

 

Curated by Yuri Lee

 

e-poster design by Yeonchang Sung

Translation (Chinese) by Wan Shuyu

Special thanks to Jane, Sun, Lin, Chang Chang