Songs of Ambivalence
Performative Reading / Lecture Performance
Duration : 45 mins
The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.
“Songs of Ambivalence” looks into the politics and poetics of ambivalence, a subtle but key vein in Serene Hui’s two works in the exhibition “trust & confusion”. The performative reading formulates the untold and tells a story about the negative space of the works: the background anecdotes, phenomena, and premise. In part poetry, song, whispers, pedagogy, and bedtime story, the performance attempts an intimate conversation with the audience. It utters both cries and spoken words, sense and nonsense, noise and lullabies, endeavouring to communicate and dis-communicate. It forms a stream of consciousness where the artist emulates a wandering spirit in different narratives, bodies, and voices. To be is also to be against; being something requires the presence of the opposite—silence and communication, individual and togetherness, visibility and invisibility. As Giorgio Agamben puts it, “The search for the voice in language, this is what is called thought.” This special event is dedicated to the aesthetic, performative, and political significance of the voice — the voice that is fundamentally difficult to grasp.
Full Moon Special Programme as part of the Exhibition Trust and Confusion. Commissioned by Tai Kwun Contemporary.
Photo by: Felicity Wong