Breaking Barriers Of Solitude: "Sonic Cure"

As Covid-19 induced closures and cancellations of art institutions and events become common—essentially a cultural lockdown—the likes of Beijing's Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) have adapted. UCCA’s “Sonic Cure,” an online concert part of Siyuan Chinnery's 2019–20 exhibition at the center, “Voluntary Garden,” was streamed live on the app Kuaishou. Chinnery's multimedia project wove together disparate musical scores to form a hybrid composition highlighting the complexities of contemporary music in China. In the online presentation, nine musicians with different approaches performed a propagative sequence of improvisations that crisscross between traditional and electronic instruments, following the pattern of the 2019 edition that generated the source material for “Voluntary Garden,” with each soloist building upon the previous piece. Often sterile, the internet is rarely a substitute for live experiences, but this event transported the audience into quirky interiors dotted around the globe. The vertical-screened platform offers a tightly cropped view which elicits feelings of an intimate conversation.

• China