Nathan Davis, a drummer and DJ who performs tomorrow at the Nanhai Gallery (南海藝廊), was enjoying an experimental concert at last November's City on the Move Art Festival when he overheard the following discussion.
Guy: "I mean, what am I supposed to do with this?"
Girl: "You just have to kind of let go and don't think about it."
PHOTO COURTESY OF JO HUANG
Guy: "Yeah, but I just don't get it."
Girl: "I don't think you're supposed to get it."
A lot of people have probably been having similar conversations recently in Taipei, home to a growing sound art community and festivals like City Fables, Weather in My Brain (腦天氣影音藝術季) and last weekend's TranSonic at the Guling Street Avant-Garde Theatre (牯嶺街小劇場).
The scene thrives to a large degree because of city and central government funding for the arts - not ticket or album sales. While some practitioners like electronica collective KbN (凱比鳥) and pop star-turned-DJ Lim Giong (林強) might make what the ordinary listener would call "music," there's a lot of stuff going on - such as putting microphones in water and sampling the sound lights make - that most people would just register as "noise."
"I guess it's like a lot of things," says Davis, who sat down for an interview Wednesday night at Salt Peanuts cafe in the Shida (師大) neighborhood, where he deejays on Friday nights. "You probably really like it or you really don't."
Tomorrow's show, called Meditations, could serve as a useful introduction for anyone who wants to learn more about sound art or experimental music. It's also a good excuse to get acquainted with the Nanhai Gallery, which hosts avant-garde performances in a cafe-like setting on Friday and Saturday nights. The gallery serves inexpensive coffee, tea and Heineken, and is a short walk from The Source bar.
Also at Nanhai tomorrow, Andre van Rensburg, a South African alternative musician-turned professional avant-garde composer, will play a live solo set with an acoustic guitar.
"Anything bizarre, mystical and out of the ordinary attracts me," Van Rensburg writes under the Influences section of his MySpace page. His music, he says, sounds like "John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Arvo Part, John Cage, David Lynch, Derek Bailey, Marcel Duchamp, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Gorecki, Harry Partch, the world around you, ancient music, future music, industrial spaces … ."
Davis - who has also played with KbN and visiting musicians like Austin, Texas, world music group Atash - will do an acoustic set using a djembe hand drum and, possibly, a drum kit and/or some "random objects." He will improvise on the drums and run the beats through his Macbook Pro laptop computer. It's hard to describe exactly what this will sound like without using abstract words like "textural," "dynamic" and "Minimalist."
"I'm going to basically sample myself live," says Davis, who performs under the name (Sounds) In Transition. "Most people who didn't know what it was would probably use the word 'weird' to describe it."
So what is the uninitiated listener supposed to do?
"As lame and cliched as it sounds, I guess just experience this."
Nanhai Gallery is located near the CKS Memorial Hall MRT station. Leave from exit number 2, then walk west on Nanhai Road (南海路) past a Starbucks and a police station. Lane 19 will be on your right.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
Mongolian influencer Anudari Daarya looks effortlessly glamorous and carefree in her social media posts — but the classically trained pianist’s road to acceptance as a transgender artist has been anything but easy. She is one of a growing number of Mongolian LGBTQ youth challenging stereotypes and fighting for acceptance through media representation in the socially conservative country. LGBTQ Mongolians often hide their identities from their employers and colleagues for fear of discrimination, with a survey by the non-profit LGBT Centre Mongolia showing that only 20 percent of people felt comfortable coming out at work. Daarya, 25, said she has faced discrimination since she
RSS