A Feast of Sound. Nguyễn Trinh Thi in Conversation with Hùng Dương

Let me begin with a disclaimer.

 This essay is an exercise in listening to artist Nguyễn Trinh Thi, to her sound practice, and to her installation A Murmur in the Trees, to Note (Not Loud Enough, for Wind) at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo. For Thi, listening is akin to relinquishing her ego, an opening to multiple modes of perception, and the exploration of new potentials for sound-making. For me, listening is an act of letting go of my role as an authority, to merge my voice with that of the artist, to co-create a textual rendering of our fragments of thought.

 All texts in italics are mine, while Thi’s is regular type. But as you read, the boundaries between our respective thoughts may blur – and that is okay. What we wish is for you to read this text and want to listen more. Not only to the sounds in Thi’s installation, but to the other sounds, often overlooked in your life, as well. Listen away, and let your subconscious rise to meet you.

My first encounter with Nguyễn Trinh Thi’s work was at a live music pub in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City. Her essay film Letters from Panduranga (2015) was selected as part of the 2016 experimental screening ‘OUT OF FRAME’, organised by young film aficionados and supported by ZERO Station. Made in the form of a letter exchange between an anonymous man and woman, the film was inspired by the Vietnamese government’s plan to build the country’s first two nuclear power plants in Ninh Thuan Province, formerly known as Panduranga – the ancient Kingdom of Champa and the spiritual heart of the Indigenous Cham people, threatening the survival of this two-thousand-year old matriarchal Hindu culture. Crossing documentary and fiction, the film shifts audience attention between foreground and background, between intimate portraits and distant landscapes, offering reflections around fieldwork, ethnography, art, and the role of the artist.

 I still recall my puzzlement as I sat in that dark, cramped bar, eyes glued to shifting faces and landscapes on screen. Unlike traditional documentaries that mine for stories, Thi presented a montage of silent faces:  in her film stare intensely at her camera, unblinking, tight-lipped, a tinge of discomfort colouring their resolution.  ––as the Cham language and way of life slowly vanished, their sovereignty usurped. Just eyes staring grimly, questioning, at the artist and her lens. Weight of representation. Burden of responsibility by association. Unspoken pain. Thi, who voiced the female counterpart in the narrating duo, uttered a sentence that stuck in my head for many years after, ‘I don’t even know what I am doing here anymore.’ Thi’s relationship with the visuals seemed wrought with tension, caught between the desire to construct meaning and the burden of possessing such power…  

… even though I work with film, a medium usually associated with the visual, I always question, even resist, the power of images. If you have seen enough of my films, you will be aware that I have done this quite extensively. The power of the artist, the camera’s ability to frame a story, or the power dynamics between the camera holder and the subjects: I resist those imposing temptations of the image, photography, and film in my works. It always circles back to the question of representation. I do not wish to bear such a burden; at least, I want to lessen its impact on my films.

That was how I became interested in working with sound.

When working with moving images, I have always enjoyed the role of sound. However, in film production, sound usually comes after the image – mainly during the editing process when I have to think about how to pair the soundtrack with the visuals. It wasn’t until 2010, when I started creating filmic and mixed-media installations, that I had a chance to amplify the presence of sound and play with its potential through spatial interception. Everyday’s the Seventies (2018), first presented at Osage Art Foundation in Hong Kong, marked the first instance when I consciously factored sound into an installation as a distinguished component. Mixing footage from 1980–90s Hong Kong movies, wire service footage of the  War and the Vietnamese refugee crisis in Hong Kong from the late 70s until 1997, and an interview with the owner of Paul’s Records in Hong Kong, I explored gaps, holes and disconnections between personal memory, personal history, and other kinds of collective narratives. While there was only one visual channel (a single screen), I included four distinct sound channels. Depending on which speaker the audience sat next to, they would hear a different sound: news announcements, recorded noises from Hong Kong refugee camps, or the music from record players in Paul’s shop. Thus, the audience’ perception of the film was altered by the specific sonic mediation they experienced.

When I began working on How to Improve the World (2021), the initial inspiration came from a 1930s French semi-documentary – whose title I have forgotten – about the Central Highlands in Vietnam. The film had no soundtrack, just piano music accompanying the scenes. I remember wanting to recreate that film, yet with a soundtrack composed of local sounds from the highlands. Still, I also did not want to solely use Indigenous music. I am more interested in sound and sonic perception than music. I tend to avoid – or only cautiously include it – music in my work.

Hanoi, winter of 2021. Inside Manzi’s darkened space, shrouded from the Old Quarter’s clattering light and noise. Two screens, placed in diagonal opposition. The eye vs. the ear. The same film, unfurling. Flickered scenes of Jarai churchgoers, hymnals, the choreographies of a gathering, smartphones vs. gong music. A Jarai man, reminisces of sounds that come to him in his dreams. Hands clasped on his ears. I don’t dream anymore, can’t remember my dreams. How do we improve this world, so addicted to images? How do we remain aware of sonic phantoms and reattune our perception to their formlessness? My memories – are they mostly images or sounds? How different would I understand the world, if my vision became impaired, and I had to rely on sounds and other non-visual sensorial modes to navigate this world?

 As our globalised and westernised cultures have come to be dominated by visual media, I feel the need and responsibility as a filmmaker to resist the narrative power of visual imagery. I seek instead a more balanced and sensitive mode of perceiving the world by paying more attention to aural landscapes, in line with my interests in the unknown, the invisible, the inaccessible, and in potentialities. That is the ethos behind How to improve the world. However, I was still dissatisfied with the limited role of sound in a moving-image format, in which sounds remain subordinated to the image. The film felt didactic, as if I was still lecturing people about the necessity of sound, convincing them that we need to listen more. I wanted to create works where people just listen directly without any imposition.

In my recent works at documenta fifteen – And They Die a Natural Death (2022) – and at the 3rd Thailand Biennale – Ri s̄eīyng’ (Sound-Less) (2023) – I have tried to move away from the imposing tendency of the ego in how I work with sound. I do not wish to be a sound composer. Instead, I want the sounds to come from an invisible force, which can be natural or spiritual. I am interested in animism, in the existence of entities that dwell on the fringe of rational thought. Thus, I seek to create a mechanism that remains open toward the unknown, allowing these unpredictable forces to enter and activate things. Imagine a house with all doors and windows wide open, inviting humans and non-humans alike to transit through and unfold sonic potentialities.

Another concept informing this approach is the Buddhist idea of a meditative moment in which one is fully present. I experienced such moments when I participated in a Jarai bỏ mả ritual – a joyous rite that serves as the last farewell between the living and the deceased, before they move into the ancestral realm. To be in that space, listening to the music, embodying the spiritual energy with all my senses, such an experience is indescribable. After such moments, I found my work shifting: away from concept and analytics, and towards immersion and the full embodiment in a present moment, mediated through the senses.

A light clink. A subterranean sound. Footsteps, treading on the wooden floor. A whisper. The sounds of the Mekong, pushed, pulled, tinkered, its whim deciding the behaviours of the instruments. The echo of an unnamed insect. My childhood house, sweltering summer, where I took refuge in a cool spot in the attic. The gnawing sound of termites’ jaw crunching wood. The flutes sighed. Another soundless tap on the Ranad (ระนาด). How long is a silent note? How do we measure memories through sound? Tap, click, tick, schink, pop. My childhood self dissolved into the stream of data, of the Mekong, of unfiltered sounds. How do we hold a sound? With our ears, our hands, our tongue? The flutes fell silent. No signal. No presence. Only silence prevailed in this house of the gods.

This mechanism emerged in Ri s̄eīyng’ (Sound-Less) at the Thailand Biennale. During my second site visit, when I was told that my work would be situated inside the Haw Kham – a traditional Lanna teakwood architecture at Mae Fah Luang in Chiang Rai, Thailand, that houses ritual objects and artifacts. I immediately decided that only sounds would be appropriate for such a space. Images would be too imposing in such a spiritually-charged space. I then travelled to the Mekong School in Chiang Khong to set up a water turbine fitted with sensors, hydrophone and a Wi-Fi system, to collect real-time data of water flow. Through a coded system, the data of the water flow triggered the Haw Kham installation of Ranad Ek – Thai xylophones – and bamboo flutes which played an automated series of musical percussion instruments – a live performance played by the river itself. This automated mechanism allowed my ego to retreat into the background, inviting forces beyond my control to emerge at the forefront and interact with the instruments. As they were dictated by live data, changing constantly, the sounds produced by the instruments were never fixed. Unlike the polished and static film soundtrack, the sounds transformed the sacred space inside the Haw Kham into a living organism, constantly breathing, performing. You could not anticipate which flute might sound, or what pitch the Ranad might strike. This sonic indeterminacy required full presence in the moment, in order to experience the space’s ambience.

One thing that I have learned from observing Indigenous communities across Vietnam play their instruments – and which have been incorporated in both installations at documenta and the Thailand Biennale – is that each person plays only one note on a single instrument. In contrast to the individualist figure of the Western composer, Indigenous music players cannot create melodies by themselves. This requires them to listen to one another and orchestrate their tunes collectively. I find this a compelling metaphor for community building; only when a balance between manifestations of the ego and collective coordination is reached can music be created.

These days, I think of my work as a confluence of multiple relations – a reflection of both my worldview and Buddhist teachings. Everything is interconnected and inseparable. I have come to see sound as a form of relationship between human and nature. Within sound, one can perceive a plurality of back-and-forths: between human and non-human, and presence and absence in nature. For A Murmur in the Trees, to Note (Not Loud Enough, for Wind), the work that I am envisioning for 36^th São Paulo Bienal, I want to further unpack our complex relationship with nature by combining different potentialities of sound-making.

We craft instruments from natural materials, to emulate the sounds we hear in nature. Yet, the materiality of sound is rarely mentioned. This is why I have always been drawn to natural acoustics – to how sound is physically produced and how it directly interacts with its surrounding space. To emphasise this sonic rawness, I refrain from manipulating sound through digital filters or with electronic tools such as recorders, speakers, or amplifiers. For both Kassel and Chiang Rai, I also used the space where the work is installed itself as part of the sound-making mechanism, which acts as a resonating chamber for sounds to echo.

For the work in São Paulo, I am incorporating a vast array of automated instruments, including string, percussion, and wind. Some of them will be brought from Vietnam; others will be locally sourced in Brazil. I may even include some DIY instruments I’ve created myself! I also have a preference for used instruments – objects with a history – as I am intrigued by their spiritual past lives and what ‘sonic memories’ they might produce. I also want to expand the range of sound-making that an instrument can accommodate. For example, how can I nudge a guitar to produce the sound of a zither? Or encourage a drum to mimic the sound of a xylophone? I want to return to the materiality of sound production, that is to the functional structure of instruments and their possibilities – something that I believe transcends cultural boundaries.

With regards to the melodies these automated instruments will collectively generate, I draw from eclectic sources. It can be the ritualistic music from an Akira Kurosawa film, an excerpt of Gao Shan Liu Shui [High Mountain, Flowing Water; 高山流水] played on a guqin, or a flute piece by the anti-French mandarin Tôn Thất Thuyết. In the process of listening to understand the orchestration of the instruments in the creation of these works, I also learn which combinations I like, and I will adapt them into my installation at São Paulo. The melodies will be a hybrid between natural and composed sounds, but the instruments are also coded to respond to one another. This will produce a contingent network where one shift in an instrument will trigger a domino effect across all the others. I am thinking  of coding them in a way so that the sounds they produce correlates with the biological rhythm of the human body! Thus, the sounds in the room will always remain unpredictable.

The instruments are not only contingent on one another; they are also responsive to the audience’s presence and behaviour. If the public remains still, the instruments will continue making sound. However, if the sensors on the instruments detect even the slightest movement, the instruments stop playing, silence taking over until stillness is restored. In this silence, the audience may tune their ears towards other sounds in the room, things that they have not noticed before. Through sound, we can perceive how our behaviours and manners shape our ecosystem, and vice versa.

I also like the idea that space itself is never static – that it shifts throughout the day in a continuous fluctuation between nature and culture. The camera obscura is placed there with this in mind. In Kassel and Chiang Rai, the physical space of the installation has a direct impact on the audience’s body and mind, which I think is crucial to the experience. So when I knew that the work at Sao Paulo would be in a white cube, I knew I had to find a way to intervene and channel something outside in. The camera obscura will act as a portal through which light, images, and time from the outside can infiltrate the white cube, bridging inside and outside, nature and culture. The camera obscura’s dim light also works well with the space, as I want to limit light exposure to encourage the audience to listen deeper and focus on the sounds. In the dark, one’s attention shifts away from sight towards sound.

And the conversation rolled on, as I listened to the sound of Thi’s voice, through zoom, describing the dancing sounds inside her mind. Outside my balcony, traffic buzzed. A rare cricket trilled. When was the last time I heard an insect in this city? A leaf quivered. Water dripped from the hose. The earth curled and folded over itself. My eardrum palpated. The sound of my internal ears gesticulating.

The screen was black. Only Thi’s voice – sharp and clear – came through the speaker, talking to me as if in an echo from generations ago…