A Sound Journey To Freedom

Moving image and audio

By Thoughtform & Miedo Total

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"SCRYERS is a collaborative audiovisual film between Miedo Total and Thoughtform as part of 'A Sound Journey to Freedom' Exhibition. Inspired by imagery of tarot and alchemical concepts, the video series features Death (Nigredo), Judgement (Albedo) and World (Rubedo) to mark the transitional journey from a state of chaos to birth of a new paradigm."

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Thoughtform also known as ZUNE is a multidisciplinary designer and visual artist, working across physical and digital media. She graduated from Lasalle College of the Arts, Singapore with BA (Hons) in Design Communication and has been working as a designer, art director and 3D artist ever since. Immensely inspired by nature, science fiction and mythology, she conjures fantastical landscapes of the unfamiliar and unknown through evocative visual narrative in the form of 3D art, motion graphics, and live projections. Traversing across different mediums, her bodies of work range from graphic art such as album artworks, publications and logo identities to designing spaces in both physical and virtual forms existing as film sets and exhibition spaces. Currently, she is exploring virtual spaces and creative coding, and drawing occassionally.

Miedo Total is a moniker of Alexander Comana, a Welsh/Italian multidisciplinary artist and musician based in London, UK. His work focuses on imagined spaces and rituals, exploring how these can inform emotions and affectations in our lived reality. Under the Miedo Total moniker, he has released music on Jerome Worldwide, Amen and Until Riots. He hosts a monthly residency on Internet Public Radio that focuses on experimental music. Currently, he also works as a composer and has created work for institutions such the Barbican and Wales Millenium Centre, as well as developing theatre and performance art.

Three framed drawings

By Miedo Total
 

“The Scapegoat is a work of fictional ethnography, in the form of folk-tale/prose, that personifies the modern phenomenon of the scapegoat. Borrowing elements from a wide range of religious practices and stories, primarily the idea of passing sin on to animals, objects and other people, the text explores man’s historical relationship to blame. 

 

The tale is displayed as a triptych; as three framed drawings, each visually representing certain stanzas from the text. The images also act as fictional records for the imagined story. In addition, the piece will be accompanied by a small shrine, made up of elements that are featured in the story.” 

Miedo Total is a moniker of Alexander Comana, a Welsh/Italian multidisciplinary artist and musician based in London, UK. His work focuses on imagined spaces and rituals, exploring how these can inform emotions and affectations in our lived reality. Under the Miedo Total moniker, he has released music on Jerome Worldwide, Amen and Until Riots. He hosts a monthly residency on Internet Public Radio that focuses on experimental music. Currently, he also works as a composer and has created work for institutions such the Barbican and Wales Millennium Centre, as well as developing theatre and performance art.

Sculpture and six hanging artworks

By Gaspard Casimir

 

“Tales From The Sticks is made of old bed sheets, cut and stained with young bramble leaves. A first layer of silkscreen printing has been applied to all six pieces of fabric. This image was used as a base and background or playground to paint on, and interact with it, in different ways. From interacting with this scenery, emerge possibilities of inhabiting and occupying a land to be built.”

Gaspard Casimir was born in 1993 in Paris. He lives and works in Rezé, Paris, Rennes, and on the road too. He graduated from the 75 Fine Arts School in Brussels in 2016 with a BA in printmaking. Then he taught himself traditional wood working skills before obtaining a carpentry degree in 2019. Gaspard has developed a practice where art and craft meet and interact in order to tell fictional narratives. Characters explore worlds that reflect our own, dystopian futures reveal truths about current struggles and loopholes. 

Three framed artworks

By Kim Macari

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“In Solidarity celebrates the power of protest song and of civil disobedience. Taking three periods of protest from the Scottish Crofters Rebellion and the Highland Clearances in the 1880s to the Iraq War in the 2000s and finally the 2021 military coup in Myanmar, the work uses three works of protest song in their native language along with instructions and phrases translated across all three languages for improvisers to use. The three songs are Òran Beinn Lì (credit Màiri Mhòr nan Òran), Painted It White (credit: Karine Polwart) and A Yay Kyi Pyi (credit: Htoo Ein Thin) translated by Maighread Stiubhart, Pinky Htut Aung and Musica Htet.

 

Collaborators and audiences will all have their own version of the works; there are very few, if any, people who are fluent in Burmese, English and Gaelic and so I hope something within people will rise to meet the work. Use of three languages encourages a democratisation and unity - a shared experience of understanding and of ignorance.”

Kim Macari is an artist-activist immersed in the world of improvised music and graphic scores. Her work often centres around political, ethical and environmental themes and she is particularly interested in both ekphrasis and data sonification. The belief that art can be a powerful force for change and that creative expression is vital for individual empowerment underpins all that she does.

Installation, audio and app

By Kam Seng Aung, Joshua Weitzel & Sam Tsao

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“Tan Bone သံဗုံး (Sound Pot) is a collaborative exhibition project by sound artists Kam Seng Aung, Joshua Weitzel and Sam Tsao. In February 2021, the military in Myanmar seized power and has since been waging a bloody war against its own people. The population protests against the military dictatorship and for the return of democratic government by banging pots and pans. This form of acoustic protest has been used around the world for decades and is also known by the Spanish name "cacerolazo”.

 

Tan Bone (v2) presents five original pots from Myanmar that were used in the protest against the military. The owners of these pots were murdered by the military in the course of the protest. Their names are listed below. The work presents the objects as museum pieces of acoustic protest that tell a tragic story. These pots are contrasted as silenced objects by a stereo loudspeaker installation. An app developed by Sam Tsao provides background information, sounds, and the opportunity to take something of the exhibition home with you and further engage with the topic.”

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Kam Seng Aung, a native of Bhamaw, Kachin in Myanmar, is a composer, improviser, sound artist and violinist. With his music, he advocated for the international audience in Europe about the impacts of the ongoing civil war on indigenous lives by performing his compositions at music events in Germany. In February, 2018, he performed and presented about the state of music education in IDP camps and since the military coup, he’s organised the ‘Peaceful Musicians’ group to protest in front of Embassies in Myanmar.

 

Joshua Weitzel lives and works in Kassel, Germany. He is mostly interested in the social aspect of art, developing the majority of his works in collaboration with other artists. His practice encompasses conceptual and electroacoustic composition, improvisation, Jazz, field recordings, sound installation, inter-media projects and curating. In 2020, he was awarded the Culture Prize of the City of Kassel (Kulturförderpreis) for curating the concert series “Chamäleon”. He is currently artistic research associate for sound art and sound research at the University of Mainz.

Sam Tsao is a Malaysian digital media artist and new music pianist. Their works are varied, combining playful interactivity and improvisation with simple shapes and vibrant colors. Coming initially from the world of classical music, they also collaborate with composers and performers to create audiovisual works. They are currently based in Saarbrücken, Germany.

Graphic score

By Musica Htet

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“This notation activity is based on experiential music game idea. This is an exchange game for artists from the UK & Myanmar. Artists choose words based on their freedom of speech. Words from short sentences will be displaced and move around according to the artists’ will. Each dissembled part will be assigned to different types of sonic texture.”

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Musica Htet was born in Yangon and works as a recording engineer, experimental music producer, and researcher in Southeast Asia. He studied Contra Bass extended technique and experimental music under Brian O’Reilly with further studies in speaker management and sonic texture development in sound art. Musica began his solo practice at Yangon Gallery in 2014 and released his first track overseas with other Southeast Asian experimental artists under the album name NOT YOUR WORLD MUSIC. He co-founded Noise in Yangon with Slyne Non (Crazy Eel Society) in 2017, an experimental community of energetic young musicians from different backgrounds that puts on performances, workshops, and other social activities.

Musical score

By Kam Seng Aung

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“deine Wunderhand…

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Kam Seng Aung, a native of Bhamaw, Kachin in Myanmar, is a composer, improviser, sound artist and violinist. With his music, he advocated for the international audience in Europe about the impacts of the ongoing civil war on indigenous lives by performing his compositions at music events in Germany. In February, 2018, he performed and presented about the state of music education in IDP camps and since the military coup, he’s organised the ‘Peaceful Musicians’ group to protest in front of Embassies in Myanmar.

Moving image

By Kyee Nyo.Gabriel Htoo

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“Looking for Calling… the Spirit That Killed Me and Running Away…"

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Kyee Nyo.Gabriel Htoo is a photographer and filmmaker with a unique style. Interested in light and nature, her work focuses on human emotion and expressive storytelling. She works as a sound designer in the film industry and has been performing and supporting the Noise in Yangon community for three years as a VJ artist.

Graphic score

By Anton Lukoszevieze

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“Ordinary Music is a score in 8 parts, created as photograms on gelatin silver paper. Each page is a collage containing visual, musical and graphical material. The visual images are taken from found photographs of ordinary Burmese people in the 1930’s. 

 

8 pages, individual pages may be performed alone, or in series, the order is free. Each page can last between 1-5 mins, performers to decide on the duration of a page. Each page may be performed by any instruments, objects, voices, with or without electronics.

 

4 environmental field recordings may be made and inserted into a performance of the work. Each one should be 20-40 seconds in duration.”

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Anton Lukoszevieze, born 1965, is an interdisciplinary artist, composer and musician. His work has been shown at Tate Modern, CAC Vilnius, Kaunas Biennial, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, ICA, London and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid. He is the founder and director of the group Apartment House.

Moving image and audio

By Moe Myat May Zarchi aka P.O.E.M & Benjamin Oliver

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“This audiovisual collage work juxtaposes two situations - the first time mankind landed and planted the US flag on the moon and when Myanmar women first used their skirts (longgyis) as flags high in the sky to revolt against the men-led military coup. Explored in a rebellious glitched mashup manner, the two concepts stimulate questions about revolution, freedom, claiming spaces, victory, colonisation and outdated patriotism. A malfunctioning version of the American national anthem, ‘Star Spangled Banner’, is pitted against the revolutionary chants of Burmese women with the atmospheric sonic background of recordings from the NASA moon landing.”

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Moe Myat May Zarchi is a film director and a lens-based multidisciplinary artist. She works with a vast range of media such as photos, video, sound, and installation. She founded ‘3-ACT’ in 2018, a cinema magazine, a film education hub and an independent production house. Recently, she co-founded an artist-run interdisciplinary arts initiatives called ‘MATTER audiovisual lab’. She also makes experimental pop music under a pseudonym "P.O.E.M."

 

Benjamin Oliver is a composer, conductor and jazz pianist. His music has been performed internationally and broadcast on BBC Radio 3. His  ‘Loop Concerto for jazz trio and large ensemble’ was nominated in the Contemporary Jazz category of the British Composer Awards 2017. Ben is Associate Professor in Composition and current Head of Music at the University of Southampton.

Graphic score and installation

By Pinky Htut Aung

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“A visual story about what came upon a beautiful land…” 

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Pinky Htut Aung is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist and experimental artist. She has always dabbled in painting as a kind of therapy to overcome her social anxiety. Pinky’s first visual art exhibition in 2018, Cloud are Thoughts, encouraged her to further explore her visual arts practice. She has been actively painting for social movements and participating in group exhibitions as an emerging artist ever since. Pinky is also an active member of Noise in Yangon and a  band called Bouhinga.