Osage Residency Artist Presents Cross-Medium Performance Installation
Various, 
Why We Recommend it
US composer, sound artist and vocalist Ken Ueno curates a series of 3-night events, merging site-specific installation performance, music and scholarship and improvisation to reflect on the combination of space and sound under Osage Art Foundation’s platform, HKACT! (Hong Kong Art, Culture and Technological Innovation).
Description
On the first night, entitled Vessel, Ueno presents several recent works, including a 3-channel video installation and a solo percussion and electronics work, the highlight of which is a new site-specific installation performance work featuring custom-built feedback circuit bowls, to be installed in the long gallery of Osage. The vocalist, known for having developed his own extended vocal techniques, will vocalise in a manner to accentuate the resonance and resonant frequencies of the long gallery.
On the second night of the residency a panel discussion will offer a theoretical counterpoint to the exhibition, rather like the second of a three-part trajectory. Ueno’s art practice will provide the context for a discussion of time and space in today’s sound arts. Taking a cue from the piece premiered at Osage on the previous night, the panelists will discuss how Ueno’s practices “instrumentalise” architectural space. The discussion points ahead to questions about engaging communities both local and global, anticipating elements of the group improvisation Ueno has curated for the following night.
In the third night, Bread, Ueno will lead a group of experimental musicians in a site-specific structured improvisation. To showcase the acoustic features of the Osage space, the musicians will perform at different locations. Hong Kong-based musician Shane Aspegren and electronics artist Fiona Lee will be stationed in the large terrace. Aspegren, known for playing drum kit, will introduce a new setup using a small resonant string instrument, electronics, and percussion. Lee will play an array of her DIY electronics. Stationed at opposite end of the long gallery, will be Hui, known for bringing viscerality into electronic performance. Kung, playing violin and indigenous flutes, and Ueno, armed with his voice and megaphone, will be mobile and traverse through and between the spaces.
A recipient of the Rome Prize and the Berlin Prize, Ueno currently is a Professor at UC Berkeley, where he holds the Jerry and Evelyn Hemmings Chambers Distinguished Professor Chair in Music.
