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Music

Abandoned Bunkers Become Unlikely Recording Studios

Talking to Samson Young, the artist recording an eerie nursery rhyme along Hong Kong's historically catastrophic Gin Drinker's Line.
Images courtesy the artist

He once hooked up musicians to brainwave sensors in an audiophiliac hackathon of Beethoven’s Opus 132, and has re-programmed 1989 Game Boys to spit out haikus. But multimedia artist Samson Young’s current project sees him exploring the Gin Drinker’s Line—the defense system intended to stall the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in 1941—and recording an eerie Cantonese nursery rhyme within the abandoned tunnels and bunkers, which you can listen to here. The Creators Project sits down with the artist to talk about Pastoral Music (But It Is Entirely Hollow):

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(This conversation has been edited for clarity.)

The Creators Project: The recordings for Pastoral Music are creepy and moving, full of these silent histories.

Samson Young: That’s precisely the beauty of sound as a medium, isn't it? Songs put us in the midst of things. As sound moves from its source—my voice—and toward a listener, my ear but also yours, it does not forget all the surfaces, bodies, and other sounds it brushes against. It exists in a network that teaches us how to find a place, as well as to drift.

Why did you choose the song "Of Forests and Pastures"? 

Because of the image of the naive, idealized landscape that is implicit in the title of the song. These sites are in stark contrast with their violent histories which, over time, are concealed by nature. And then there’s the last line: "My dear friend, what is on your mind?" I was imagining what it must be like to fight inside of these underground tunnels: you can't really see and so you anticipate your enemy’s next move by thinking his thoughts and hearing what he hears. For a brief moment, you and him are connected experientially, and that connection—despite the circumstances—is really very beautiful.

Are you choosing to romanticize warfare in this way?

Those of us living in large cities are very insulated from the realities of war. While I am dealing with issues of warfare and conflict in this work, the title and the choice of the song are also very frank acknowledgements of the fact that I am also in a way romanticizing warfare—but let's not pretend that we've lived in warzones or could ever understand the lives of those who are living in places where violent conflict is their daily realities.

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In the note Lest I Forget on your site, you write: “Stop telling me to stop dichotomizing the East and the West…stop delegitimizing my site of resistance.” Pastoral Music seems to tie back to your idea of ‘lines’ of resistance and colonization conflicts.

I get really angry at people who keep insisting that identity politics is out of vogue, that we need to move on because we are all essentially transnational now. Transnational impulses emphasize mobility and fluidity, but ignore the rich contradictions and external forces that activate these movements in the first place. My lived, physical reality is still anchored in some specific places unless I am pushed or pulled—and this is especially true for those who can't afford to split the year between several cities. Nobody lives literally on a plane, and a yearning for grounded-ness will never go out of fashion. There will always be lines of all sorts that separate, they are part of what make us distinct as individuals. But an acknowledgement of difference does not automatically make the ‘other’ your enemy.

Samson Young will present a solo show in New York City’s Team Gallery later this year. See and hear more of his work on his website. Listen to Pastoral Music (But It Is Entirely Hollow) here.

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