The worst pandemic of a generation has given birth to a range of novel social rituals: the coming together of the hands for sanitisation at entrances, the masks that are worn like talismans, the hesitant elbow bump. What used to be a ritualised exchange of pleasantries (‘I hope you are doing OK’) has taken on new weight. Even when pleasantries are just that – casual, routine, ritualised remarks – they are still important in that, like prayers or talismans, they point to a world that could have been under better circumstances.

Music is related to ritual in at least two important ways: its musical form resembles the structure of ritualised actions and music itself is integral to many rituals. Music’s meaning, like that of a ritual, is social in the sense that it is never created by the performer alone.

In May and June of 2020, the Hong Kong Arts Centre and the sound art non-profit organisation Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong (CMHK) co-presented a mini-festival of works by composers and sound artists who have taken on the challenge of responding to the new reality of social distancing. Over two weekends, the mini-festival appropriated this new reality and turned it into an opportunity to create intensely intimate exchanges at close proximity. In these performances, each artist was performing to only one audience member and all works were experienced via headphones, in real time, in the presence of the artist who created it.

For MUMA ONLINE, the Out Of Our Head festival artists have re-imagined their presentations and adapted their works for listening / viewing online via headphones. Artists include Alain Chiu, Alex Yiu, Cheuk Wing Nam, Edwin Lo, Fiona Lee, Larry Shuen, Lee Cheng, Michael Chi-hin Leung and Vvzela Kook.

Online Concert I:
Social Contracts

The first program of all new works focuses on notions of distance and proximity. From literal chains to virtual synchronicity, from a whispered conversation to the poetic intimacy of shared lost time and the clinical distance of a scientific experiment – the artists in this concert and their works call into question our assumption of what might be considered ‘too close for comfort’.

Alex Yiu: I Have Done It Again
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Edwin Lo: Time Regained (Music for lost time)
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Larry Shuen: Conversation Errors
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Chi-hin Leung: Sync
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Vvzela Kook: Baseline Test
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Online Concert II:
Go beyond, go completely beyond

This program explores the idea of travel and motion in times of movement restrictions. Forward motion, repetition in-loop, entry and exit, emergence and disappearance – the artists in this concert and their works remind us that journeys – actual or fictitious, directed or aimless – are all potentially transformative.

Alain Chiu: Fictitious Entry
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Cheuk Wing Nam: Corona Can’t Stop Me
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Fiona Lee: in a loop, how far we could go beyond
Listen

Lee Cheng: Where have all the _____ gone?
View

Samson Young is a Hong Kong-based artist whose exhibition Real Music opens at the Monash University Museum of Art in the coming weeks. He recently curated the performance series Out Of Our Head (OOOH): Mini Festival of Personalised Listening which was presented in May–June 2020 at Hong Kong Arts Centre and featured works by composers and sound artists who have taken on the challenge of responding to the new reality of social distancing. For MUMA ONLINE, the festival artists have re-imagined their presentations and adapted their works for listening / viewing online via headphones.

The MUMA ONLINE design identity draws on the formal parameters of standard screen resolution and two-point perspective to suggest an exchange of both physical and online pages. Design: Ella Sutherland

MUMA acknowledge the Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation on whose lands Monash University is located. We pay our respect to their Elders, past, present and emerging, and celebrate the rich, ancient and continuing art cultures of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia.