Shanghai Futurism IV: Polyexpressive Symphonies
Shanghai Futurism IV with Mai Mai (aka Asthma Writers Union), Jun Yuan, and Xu Cheng of Torturing Nurse
Time: Saturday, June 6th, 8:30 pm, 2009
Following the success of Inner Noise organized by Yan Jun, Arthub continued to provide promotional support to PERFORMA’s Futurism-related seminars in Shanghai, in collaboration with multitude venues. The following session took place at MoCa Artlab.
Polyexpressive Symphonies – a session of experiments in cinema and music
Music performance by Mai Mai (aka Asthma Writers Union) and Jun Yuan. Live soundtrack to Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (1927) by Walter Ruttmann.
Music performance by Xu Cheng of Torturing Nurse. Live soundtrack to Thais (1916) by Anton Giulio Bragaglia.
The Italian Cultural Institute in Shanghai and PERFORMA continue to celebrate the centenary of the publication of The Futurist Manifesto, this time with Polyexpressive Symphonies – a tribute to the Futurist art movement rendered in film and music. (Worth noting: The Futurist Manifesto was published in Shanghai in 1921 and had a vast influence on the artists and musicians of the period.)
As Futurism deeply influenced Shanghai’s ‘20s and ‘30s aesthetics, as it reached China through Japan, the United States, and Russia, PERFORMA and ICI invited Shanghai-based musicians Mai Mai, Jun Yuan and Xu Cheng to find inspiration in Futurist Cinema Manifesto (1916).
One must free the cinema as an expressive medium in order to make it the ideal instrument of a new art, immensely vaster and lighter than all the existing arts. We are convinced that only in this way can one reach that polyexpressiveness towards which all the most modern artistic researches are moving. Today the Futurist cinema creates precisely that polyexpressive symphony…
The artists were asked to create a live music performance that explores the unexpressed potential of moving image through minimalist sounds and noisy symphonies.
Asthma Writers Union is a solo side-project by Muscle Snog’s guitarist and principal vocalist Mai Mai whose focus is the experimental, noise-producing capabilities of the electric guitar outside of a traditional band context. In this project, Mai Mai and Jun Yuan (sax player from MTDM jazz band) interpret the liveliness of a Berlin’s day, by playing live minimalist soundtrack to the famous Ruttmann’s movie. Xu Cheng is the talented maestro of sound and a member of Torturing Nurse.
Polyexpressive Symphonies is a continuation of the research on Futurism’s influence in China that was begun in March 2009 by PERFORMA’s Defne Ayas with the discussion Graphic Design and Typography in China as part of the Shanghai International Festival, where panelists Lynn Pan, Ou Ning and Pan Jian Feng elaborated on the challenge of capturing ideas for visual record and provided an overview of 100 years of design history in China, and continued with Inner Noise from New Asia, an evening of noise music that used The Futurist Manifesto and The Art of Noises, as a reference point and featured new work by performers from different parts of Asia (Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M, FEN and Shanghai’s Asthma Writers Union and MTDM).
Futurist Visions in Architecture for Shanghai, a study seminar on architecture, speed, motion, and urgency took place in May 2009 and featured speakers including Shanghai Expo 2010 Dutch Pavilion designer and artist John Körmeling, visual artist Alicia Framis, artist-architect collective Speedism, architect Koon Wee and Dynamic City Foundation’s Neville Mars.
Organized in collaboration with MoCa Artlab.
