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Arts & Communication Sound and cross-cultural art in China since 1980s

with distinctive personal styles and sound esthetics. The sound, linking the internal space of the body with its
2005 exhibition Sound Imagination: Sound Installation external environment.
Exhibition denotes a key example. This informal The China Sound Art Exhibition (Shanghai) of 2013
exhibition was organized by Yao at the China Academy represented another notable event of this period: RPM:
of Art. The exhibition was hosted on campus and featured Sound Art China (2013) followed the informal sound art
artworks created by students from the New Media exhibition of over 30 Chinese artists at Colgate University
Department. Among the exhibited pieces, Jiang Zhuyun’s and became the first official domestic sound art exhibition
Sound of Temperature (2005) represents this younger in China. According to Dajuin, this exhibition reflected,
generation of artists. The artist’s half-naked body was examined, and archived the emergence and evolution of
exposed to the cold wind in an open-air space in which sound art in China. The exhibition’s theme of Revolutions
the temperature approached 0°C. Jiang Zhuyun utilized a Per Minute was borrowed from the New York sound art
contact microphone to capture the sound frequencies of exhibition and referenced the unit of rotational speed for
his chattering teeth and to convey his body’s physical and sound carriers such as phonographs and record players.
psychological responses to the extreme environment to The recording and playback of “sound bodies” largely
the surrounding visitors (Figure 14). This work sought to enabled the occurrence and advancement of sound art. The
evoke an affect in the viewers (who were also listeners): it term “revolutions” metaphorically alluded to the speed of
was conceptually rooted in Baruch de Spinoza’s discourse historical progress and symbolized the rapid development
on the body that revealed the intimate associations of Chinese sound art within the short span of 10 years.
between emotions and bodily forces. 12 3 However, this was not the first exhibition of Chinese sound
In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze defined affect as art. Ou Ning curated a sound project titled Awakening
a point of contact between the body and the world, Battersea at the Battersea Power Station in London as early
surpassing individual psychology to emphasize the as 2006. That exposition in London featured the artworks
dynamism, intensity, and physicality of emotion as a means of dozens of Chinese avant-garde artists with diverse styles
of understanding the field of experience, including bodily and content.
experience. Deleuze’s explorations aimed to transcend the Notably, the 2013 exhibition in Shanghai was convened
paradigm of representation (such as Barthes’ semiotics). 13,14 in four massive oil tanks that formed part of the former
Jiang’s work exemplifies this theory: he transforms the industrial remains stationed along the Shanghai waterfront
internal sounds of the body into electromagnetic signals (Figure 15). As previously mentioned, early Chinese sound
through his performances, transmitting them to the art may have originated from underground rock culture
individuals in his vicinity. The environment, temperature, with numerous displays assembled in informal spaces.
radio waves, and body are all interconnected through These oil tanks represented non-traditional exhibition
spaces (unlike museums and galleries) and provided a
3 The closest Chinese term to affect is probably “感兴” pioneering and experimental venue for the presentation
(ganxing), which may be construed as an inner emotional
and inspirational response triggered by external stimuli or of sound art. Wang Jing observed that “The oil tanks
circumstances and emphasizes the sense of resonance or are a listening space without focus; everyone inside is
connection between people, nature, and work. simultaneously a listener, a musician, and a performer.”
Her description perfectly captured the advantages of the

Figure 15. Shanghai Tank Art Center, photograph courtesy TANK
Figure 14. Jiang Zhuyun, Sound of Temperature, 2005. Copyright©Jiang Shanghai. Reprinted with permission from Shanghai Tank Art Center.
Zhuyun. Copyright© 2022 Shanghai Tank Art Center.

Volume 3 Issue 3 (2025) 9 doi: 10.36922/ac.4669