An Autonomous Grammar of Listening: Sound Practices in China

This month the GOLEM newsletter contains a single article, which began as research in the spring of 2025. Over the past few years, the group that runs this space behind the scenes, together with people close to us such as Federico Fiori, has grown ever more interested in the practices and dynamics of a scene, located mainly in China, that brings together acoustic or electroacoustic improvisation, performance art and a strong questioning (perhaps not always a conscious one?) of the term ‘music’ as the West is accustomed to conceiving it. Hence the need to concentrate this issue into one long article, which retraces methodically the spaces and times in which this scene formed and developed across three generations, in an attempt to create an ‘ethnography from afar’, with interviews with artists who, among others, move through this scene, acknowledging the limits of those who observe from a distance and with a different cultural background.

Enjoy the read.

###### Underpass concert, Photo: Edward Sanderson

Over the past two decades, an independent, diffuse and informal sound landscape, in constant transformation, has emerged in China. It is an ecosystem that is neither centralized nor formalized, and that escapes both Western aesthetic categories and any unified internal narrative. We are talking about experimental music, noise, electroacoustic improvisation and hybrid practices that are hard to fit under a single label, often named after the fact more out of critical or curatorial convenience than as shared self-definitions. It is not a “scene” in the strict sense, but a rhizomatic constellation of situated practices, developed in spaces lateral to the music industry, the academic world and institutionalized art. Places, times, instruments and languages have taken shape in response to concrete constraints: urban logistics, shifting permit regimes, the cost of rent, accessible technologies, semi-open digital infrastructures. It is within these limits that an autonomous grammar of listening has been built, founded on proximity and adaptation.

Sound in China has ancient roots, inscribed in ritual, philosophical and cosmological practices. In Confucian texts such as the Yue Ji (Record of Music), music is conceived as a reflection of the cosmic order and an instrument of social harmony: regulating sounds meant regulating political and moral life. A distinction was made between “correct” music (yayue) and “profane” music (suyue), underscoring how listening was also a matter of government and discipline. In imperial practice the twelve lü — sound tubes that tuned instruments and calendars — served as a measure of time and of the cosmos. In Taoist thought, silence, emptiness and qi become aesthetic principles; in the Buddhist tradition, sound — from bells to ritual chants — is a vehicle of transformation. This background does not directly determine contemporary practices, but it constitutes a cultural sedimentation that resurfaces in the centrality given to listening. The liubai (留白, “leaving blank”), a painting technique that values empty space, and the Ba Yin (八音) system, which classifies instruments by their materials, also belong to this perspective. These are elements that help us think about the relations between sound, space and matter, in contrast with critical categories often developed elsewhere.

From historical and philosophical sedimentation we move to a decisive political fracture: 1989. After the repression at Tian’anmen, access to public spaces narrowed and many communities took refuge in private places, where intimacy became a necessary condition for cultural survival. An underground environment thus began to form, made of small communities and informal practices, which would become fertile ground for new sonic experiences. In the mid-1990s, a seemingly marginal technical and commercial event had a decisive impact: the arrival of the dakou (“cut”), Western cassettes and CDs imported as waste and resold in informal markets. For a generation, these objects were the way into sonic worlds untouched by the media, from mainstream rock and pop to marginal forms of jazz and non-commercial music, marking what has been called the dakou generation. In the years immediately following, the spread of the Internet opened a further channel to the outside, intertwining physical sources with new flows of sounds, texts and contacts. It is in this context that figures such as Yan Jun emerge, a poet and musician active in Beijing since the 1990s, destined to become central to the development of sound practices as the founder of the Sub Jam platform and as an organizer of festivals, concerts and publications. In a 2011 interview, Yan Jun describes the early 1990s as a “gray and introverted” period of independent cultural production.

Around the year 2000 the first attempts to bring sound into the contemporary art system appeared. In December 2000 Sound opened, an exhibition curated by Li Zhenhua at the China Contemporary Art Gallery in Beijing, considered the first show in China devoted to the sonic element. The works on display — including installations by Shi Qing, Wang Wei and Zhang Hui — began to recognize sound as an autonomous aesthetic dimension. In July 2001, with Sound 2, again curated by Li Zhenhua together with Qiu Zhijie, sound became the focus of the exhibition: works such as Wang Wei’s Close Contact, which turned the space into an acoustic labyrinth, or Li Yong’s Happy Drum Beats, which generated sounds from the movements of an animal suspended in a cage above a bass drum, bear witness to a growing interest in the materiality of sound. These were pioneering gestures, but the vitality of sound finds more solid roots elsewhere: in independent spaces. In 2003 the festival Sounding Beijing, curated by Dajuin Yao at the Cang Ku Art Space in Beijing, marked a turning point: for the first time Chinese and international artists were brought into dialogue around sound understood as an experimental and critical practice. The event placed the Chinese scene within a horizon of transnational exchange and consolidated Yao’s role as a mediator between local practices and international circuits. From the mid-2000s, sound practices found fertile ground in independent urban spaces, where more solid forms of continuity began to take shape. In Beijing a practice took form based on two principles: proximity and seriality. Proximity is not only physical but also affective and perceptual: small rooms, low volumes, minimal devices, with the audience a few steps from the performers. Seriality is not repetition but a method of learning: regular appointments that allow fragile practices to consolidate, audiences to refine their listening and languages to transform over time. Between 2005 and 2010 this dynamic took concrete form in the Waterland Kwanyin series, hosted at the club 2 Kolegas and organized by a group of friends in which Yan Jun played a central role in curating and running the nights. With its 167 evenings, many of them documented by Sub Jam, it was not merely a container for concerts but became a weekly routine capable of shaping a stable community. Alongside Waterland Kwanyin, the Miji concerts series took shape in 2011 and is still active today, one of the most enduring experiences. Born as an aesthetic turning point — from dense sounds to more concentrated ones, from a predominantly emotional dimension to an attention to sonic material — Miji experiments with intimate and regular formats and reached two editions of the Miji Festival (2013–2015), which opened the series to wider networks and international collaborations. Miji is also a record series on Sub Jam. Meanwhile, between 2005 and 2010 Yan Jun curated Mini Midi, a section devoted to noise and improvisation within the large Midi Festival rock event, turning a radical fringe into a curatorial gesture visible to a mass audience. In 2010 the practices of Sub Jam also found space in an institutional context, with the SubUCCAJam concerts hosted by the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. These experiences show how Sub Jam knew how to move between clubs, festivals and museums, maintaining a coherence of intent and consolidating seriality as a crucial infrastructure of musical life.

###### Zoomin’ Night, Photo courtesy of Zhu Wenbo

In 2009 Zoomin’ Night was born, an initiative of Zhu Wenbo, a musician and central organizer of Beijing’s DIY scene. The series began at the club D-22 (2009–2012), continued at XP (2012–2015) and, after the latter’s closure, carried on as an independent label. Unlike other experiences, Zoomin’ Night is structured as a micro-infrastructure that ties together concerts, small-run productions and self-documentation, proving decisive in the spread of experimental practices and in the creation of a shared lexicon, often closer to “non-music” than to fully recognizable genres. The event Open Matrix: Zoomin’ Night at Five Years (2014) symbolically marks the passage from D-22 to XP, while the closure of the latter in 2015 sealed the end of a cycle and the start of more diffuse and decentralized practices. Between 2008 and 2015 the festival Sally Can’t Dance, founded by the owner of the club D-22 and tied to the label Maybe Mars, established itself as one of the most radical platforms for improvisation and noise. Born with a communal character and based on rotating curatorship, the festival took place mainly at D-22, with some later editions hosted in other cities, and involved dozens of artists until it became a translocal gathering. Over the course of its editions it maintained an openly anti-academic stamp, encouraging exchange between Chinese musicians and international guests. Among the protagonists stand out Li Jianhong, one of the most influential noise guitarists in China, who arrived in Beijing bringing the experience gained in Hangzhou with the 2pi Festival (2003–2007), and VAVABOND (Wei Wei), a radical improviser often in duo with Li Jianhong: their practices, based on saturation and instability, trace a way of making sound that does not seek a defined form but lets itself be transformed by the conditions in which it happens. Alongside festivals and regular series, many experiences developed in marginal or temporary spaces, when fixed venues became unsustainable or inaccessible. Emblematic is Raying Temple, a rented space in the Tongzhou area on the outskirts of Beijing, which in the mid-2000s and early 2010s was turned by the local noise community into a legendary venue for extreme-volume concerts. In one of its most active moments, Raying Temple also occupied an indoor fish farm that was still in operation, temporarily turned into a performance space, testifying to the mobile, adaptive and informal character of the project. The collective Nojiji, active from 2004 to the early 2010s, also found a home here, bringing together musicians such as Li Yangyang, Zhang Zhongshu, Yang Xiu, Ma Xiao and others, organizing performances and record releases in a completely independent way. Starting in 2015, Zhu Wenbo inaugurated the Underpass Concerts series beneath the Sanyuanqiao overpass: acoustic events without electricity, amid the rumble of traffic and long reverberations, which turn the urban infrastructure into an extension of the sonic experience. In parallel, Wang Ziheng and Fu Xiuliang created the open-air festival Nowhere Festival (Huangyinji 荒音祭), which brings noise into outdoor and unconventional contexts, further expanding the use of marginal spaces as performance environments.

In the heart of the city, fRUITYSPACE established itself, opened in 2016 by Zhai Ruixin (aka ME:MO) in a basement near the National Art Museum of China. Born as an artist-run space, it combines underground cinema and concerts, with a program that favors rock bands but remains open to a great variety of practices. Besides live shows and screenings, it also hosts a record/book shop and the micro-label Spacefruity. Though hidden in a basement, it soon became a stable reference point for the scene, with a packed schedule and a loyal community, until its closure in 2025. The progressive closure of independent and semi-institutional spaces accentuates a trend already underway: the continuity of practices passes more and more through light and temporary formats, able to adapt quickly to available places, logistical constraints and urban conditions. In recent years, labels such as Aloe Records, founded by Sun Yizhou and Zhang Cai in Beijing in 2022, have relaunched these trajectories with essential means: small-run DIY productions and a careful, minimal design. Since 2023, the Aloe On-site series, curated by Sun and Cai, has brought sets to courtyards, parks and urban interstices, where the time of day, the season and ambient sounds become an integral part of the listening experience, and essential technical conditions — sound systems reduced to a minimum, portable equipment, continuous adaptation to places — become part of the parameters with which the performance is modulated. Alongside outdoor contexts, many activations have also moved to places such as Xiaoye Space (小野空间), a dance studio active for several years.

###### fRUITYSPACE, photo: Edward Sanderson

Beijing is not the only node. In Shanghai, sonic trajectories intertwine with performative practices and an abrasive attitude. Here emerges Torturing Nurse, a noise group founded in 2004 by Junky and Misuzu, known for physically extreme performances and a radical aesthetic. Around Torturing Nurse, in the mid-2000s, the collective NOIShanghai took shape, which does not limit itself to organizing noise and experimental concerts but acts as a mobile platform, able to weave Chinese and international artists into a network of transnational exchanges. In 2023 the Shanghai Oscillators Group was formed, developed from an oscillator workshop led by Mai Mai. Gathered around sets based on simple oscillators and an informal approach, musicians such as Jia Xiao, Jin Guo, Wu Jiali, Yifan, Yu, Zhao Xiaoxiao and Mai Mai himself have created a shifting collective, where radical improvisation coexists with an inclusive dimension. More than a band in the strict sense, it is a temporary community that explores experimentation as a shared social practice. Since 2023, Mei Zhiyong has launched the A Bunch of Noise Festival, continuing the work begun with his label Fuzztape and consolidating the vitality of Shanghai’s harsh noise side. In Hangzhou, in the early 2000s, the experience of 2pi Records and the 2pi Festival (2003–2007), founded by Li Jianhong together with Chen Wei and Jin Shan, represents one of the first attempts to bring sonic experimentation out of the central hubs of Beijing and Shanghai. Interweaving improvisation, noise and electroacoustics, the festival involves Chinese and international artists, opening a process of geographical decentralization that makes Hangzhou a node of exchange between academic circuits and DIY practices.

In this broader picture, the work of Li Jianhong and VAVABOND (Wei Wei) on “environmental improvisation” takes improvisation out of conventional spaces, into natural contexts and everyday life. In Guangzhou, between the mid-2000s and the early 2010s, a small but vital DIY ecosystem developed, made of informal gatherings, initiatives tied to performance art and a few self-organized collectives. Rather than around single spaces, this network is structured around labels and micro-communities such as Full Label and, later, Qiii Snacks Records, born in 2015 as a continuation of earlier local DIY experiences. Although not strictly focused on noise or experimental practices, Qiii Snacks became one of the most active hubs of underground music in southern China, connecting musicians from Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and other areas of the southeast through cassette releases, lathe-cut editions and collaborative projects. In Shenzhen, experimentation is tied to maker culture and to a chain of spaces and institutions. The OCT-LOFT cultural district, born from the redevelopment of former factories, hosts B10 Live, a reference concert hall for free jazz, traditional music, noise rock and krautrock. Since 2014 the Tomorrow Festival, held annually at B10 itself, has become one of the most consistent platforms in China for these forms, connecting local and global circuits, while keeping a strong focus on lines derived from rock and improvisation rather than on sonic experimentation in the strict sense. Also in Shenzhen, in the Shekou district, operates Old Heaven Books, an independent bookshop and label that serves as a meeting point for the local scene.

On the institutional side, a crucial moment came in 2013, when Dajuin Yao curated the project RPM within the West Bund Biennale, offering one of the first large-scale historical perspectives on experimental sound and media art practices in China. In 2015, OCAT Shenzhen (Overseas Chinese Town Contemporary Art Terminal) hosted the exhibition Schizophonia: Sonic Alienation, again curated by Yao. A key figure in the spread of experimental sound in China since the 1990s, Yao was among the first to introduce the term sound art (聲音藝術, shengyin yishu) into the Chinese context and curated fundamental projects such as the first Sounding Beijing (1996), which preceded the 2003 festival version. In Schizophonia, critically drawing on Murray Schafer’s concept, Yao reconstructs local and transnational genealogies, highlighting the potential but also the limits of the musealization of sound. The very introduction of the category of “sound art” into the Chinese lexicon occurs largely through these institutional and curatorial contexts, rather than as a self-definition emerging from independent spaces: it is a frame that arrives from above and only partly intercepts the way musicians and organizers define their own work. In May 2023 the Sound Art Museum opened in Beijing, the first in China entirely devoted to sound. The complex hosts permanent and temporary exhibitions, sound archives, artist residencies and educational programs. In 2024, in Shanghai, the Duolun Museum of Modern Art hosted Listening Paths: Contemporary Sound Art Practices in China, curated by Yin Yi, with works by Chen Wei, Sun Wei, Wang Changcun, Yan Jun, Yang Jiahui and Zhang Anding. In September of the same year, the West Bund Museum presented I Never Dream Otherwise than Awake: Journeys in Sound, an exhibition created in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou as part of the Croisements 60 festival.

These developments mark an important passage: sound, from ephemeral and communal spaces, enters a stable museum framework. The question remains, however, of how institutions can relate to genealogies born in independent contexts: between the possibility of amplifying their visibility and the risk of attenuating their experimental and relational charge — a tension that does not concern China alone, but accompanies, globally, the entry of sound practices into the large museum containers.

The scenes of Shanghai, Hangzhou and other cities have never replaced Beijing, but have broadened its trajectories. Part of them then developed abroad as well: from Beijing a network has radiated that involves artists now active in Europe and North America — including Li Song and Zheng Hao in London, Shuoxin Tan and Jia Liu in Germany, Mengting Zhuo also in London — but also others who at different times choose to move without severing ties with their context of origin. For those who move between China and other contexts, distance does not simply produce a comparison between two scenes, but a dual perceptual condition: a gaze turned toward what one comes from and, at the same time, toward what one passes through. It is a misaligned listening, in which cultural coordinates never fully coincide. This tension does not generate a separate identity, but a lateral perspective that enriches practices and makes their positioning more complex.

In parallel, a younger generation has begun to redefine the landscape from within China. In Beijing, initiatives such as You and Me, a non-profit festival started in 2023 and curated by the very young musician Zhao Ziyi together with a group of peers, bring together experimental music, performance art and moments of collective gathering in informal spaces and outdoor contexts. Completely self-organized and sustained by pay-what-you-want contributions, You and Me shows how a new, very young generation continues to build its own infrastructures with minimal means, maintaining a strong focus on the communal dimension. In this context — and more generally in the practices that have emerged in recent years — the recurring presence of artists coming from performance art contributes to making the boundaries between concert, gesture and action porous, accentuating the situated, bodily and processual character of many contemporary sound practices. Similar energies emerge in spaces such as Xiaozu, in performance-related organizations such as Cement Park or Feichuan, and in projects such as the free jazz festival Cadance, where an equally young generation experiments with formats that blur the boundaries between concert, hangout and sociality. These micro-contexts do not merely extend earlier genealogies, but rearticulate them under new material and generational conditions, in a time marked by economic precarity, limited institutional support and forms of visibility that are heavily mediated.

This set of practices and trajectories opens questions that exceed the strictly sonic sphere. Some theoretical perspectives offer useful tools for reading what is happening in China not only as a chronicle of events and scenes, but as part of a broader reflection on technique, aesthetics and relation. In his works (On the Existence of Digital Objects, 2016; Recursivity and Contingency, 2019; Art and Cosmotechnics, 2021), Yuk Hui develops the notion of cosmotechnics: technology not as a universal instrument, but as the situated expression of a culture. This key makes it possible to interpret practices such as Zhu Wenbo’s Underpass Concerts or the Aloe On-site series not only as contingent solutions, but as technical forms that embody specific urban and social conditions. The minimal use of instruments, the choice of marginal places and the valorization of the acoustic context reveal a situated relation between technique, space and culture. In this sense, even the technical precarity that characterizes many experiences can be read as a form of cosmotechnics: what is possible to do with sound depends directly on the materiality of the contexts in which it is practiced. With In the Blink of an Ear (2009), Seth Kim-Cohen shifts attention from sound itself to the networks of discourse, writing and politics that envelop it. From this point of view, the experience of Sub Jam appears less as a music scene and more as a discursive process: regular series such as Miji or the SubUCCAJam concerts produced not only sounds, but also narratives, documentation and critical frames. Sound thus becomes a pretext for activating practices of writing and curating that help reformulate the very meaning of an artistic community. In Half Sound, Half Philosophy (2021), Wang Jing proposes the concept of affective listening, in which listening is an implicit contract between performer and audience, an aesthetic and at the same time social act. This perspective illuminates dynamics such as the proximity of Waterland Kwanyin or the intimacy of Zoomin’ Night and of other concerts in minimal spaces, where the distance between those who play and those who listen shrinks until it builds a shared affective dimension. Listening is not only reception, but co-presence and participation, which makes fragile practices able to last over time.

In 2025 the exhibition It Always Sounds Somewhere. Sounding Sound Practice in Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong Since the 1990s, presented at the Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum and curated by Edward Sanderson, offers a broad museum historicization of all these trajectories. Based on more than a decade of research on the relationship between sound and space, the exhibition includes almost sixty works by fifty-seven artists and collectives — among them Yan Jun, VAVABOND & Li Jianhong, HY Kwan, Zhao Cong, Zhu Sining, Nerve — conveying the continuity of practices born in informal contexts and showing how, for over thirty years, unofficial spaces have acted as permanent laboratories of sonic experimentation.

Seen up close, this history does not yield a single line, but a weave made of proximity, continuity and transformation. In China — and with particular density in Beijing — sound works as a fragile but persistent infrastructure, able to hold together vulnerable practices through temporary spaces, flexible formats and everyday decisions. This text does not intend to offer an exhaustive map: it proposes a situated reading, recognizing how these practices have built their own genealogies, autonomous operating logics and an implicit politics, within and against the given conditions. Every list remains inevitably incomplete, and every choice of what to recount also implies omissions. The interviews that follow will try to measure in the field a simple and radical question: what does it mean, today, to listen from China? More than a definitive answer, what remains is the awareness that every attempt to describe these trajectories produces only a partial image. Perhaps it is precisely in this provisionality that the sense of listening lies: accepting transformation as a permanent condition.

How would you describe the sound scene in the context where you live today? What conditions - material, social or institutional - make it possible, and which ones hinder it?
When people, especially young people, have neither jobs nor money, then they have a lot of time.
Some simply stop attributing value to things that used to have it, aesthetics included. What we do concerns our lives, not aesthetic value. And it doesn’t concern the history of art or music either.
Today it happens that more young people come to “kill time” with our music. Maybe they are touched by the absurdity or the boredom of what we do. Or they accept our stupidity as they accept their own.

There is no funding. Paid concerts are extremely rare. When I say “more audience,” I mean more than six people. We do what we really want to do. In this kind of life experiment there are risks: you can lose the boundary between personal life and art, or between the private and the public sphere. Instinct doesn’t always work if there is no strong structure beneath it. And instinct can be a myth, just like liberation.

Have there been places, encounters or communities that changed the way you think about sound?

In 2000, a traffic jam in downtown Beijing changed the way I perceived the ocean of noise. In 2009, at Tokuzo in Nagoya, a distorted Yamaha loudspeaker changed the way I think about feedback. In 2021 Li Qing and Li Weisi invited me to take part in Ghostmass and, during rehearsals, I had to scream against a wall of sound without a microphone. I unlocked a new ability of the voice.

When you work with sound, what guides you in the process? Are you oriented more toward relation, perception, gesture, or something else?

In a live concert I work with the whole. Sound is a small part. I think it has to do with the present, with existence, or with nature. Sometimes the same sound arrives with different faces, and then it is different. The faces are not the point: the present as a whole matters. You can dance, stay still, or even not appear on stage, and it still counts. And this isn’t achieved simply by performing. It is a matter of understanding, and of living in this way.

When I work in the studio, with a computer and speakers, I still think it is not only a question of sound. Of course, I care about “beautiful sound” or “the right sound in the right situation.” But I’m not a hi-fi person.

Do you ever perceive distances or misunderstandings between the Chinese scene and the international one?

There are always distances between scenes. And that’s not a bad thing.

The most absurd thing is when someone writes to you saying they are a friend of a friend and want to do a tour in China. You reply with a long email, with all the information, explaining that you can’t babysit — always him, never her. And then he disappears.

The Western notion of silence — or the Cagean one — doesn’t exist in China. It is more a “Platonic” notion than a Japanese Zen one. For me an important thing is to insist on saying “no sound” instead of “silence.” And emptiness too does not stand in a classic dialectical position. But how can I speak of a “Chinese mind”? I can’t even control the qi in my own body… ok, let’s try. I would say that qi is not the Western notion of energy. It is not an object and cannot be objectified. I believe qi belongs to no one, but anyone can work with it. I like it, even though I know very little about it.

What does it mean to you, today, to listen from China? How does this perspective shape or enrich sound practices?

It is a matter of white noise: that of traffic and electrical transformers. And also of people’s mental situation. Why do people cry? Why do they insult each other? Why do they talk continuously to (not “about” or “inside”) social media? China is one of the many conditions of being human. And this is the one that surrounds me. I’m not good at explaining it. But one thing I’m sure of is that the price of speakers has shaped many of my performances. Sometimes even the grounding of the electrical system. And then there is an ethical question behind it. About which it’s better that I stop here.

With Sub Jam, Waterland Kwanyin and Miji you created places where sound also became community. Looking back, how do you think these experiences changed the way of listening — yours and other people’s?

About twenty years ago I dreamed, for years, of having a small silent space for concentrated listening. At the same time I felt guilty, because the people around me preferred more open, livelier, free and unregulated environments.

It was also an ethical conflict. A silent room could be a radical revolution, but it could also become a bourgeois greenhouse.

Thinking back on it now, and thinking also of the radical turn of 2009 and 2010, I’d say it was a life experiment. I’m glad we did it.

In your practice, writing, performance and curating seem to be parts of a single process. How do they intertwine?

Speaking of “dimensions”: in everyday life we don’t perceive a two-dimensional world separate from the others. There are more important things than the difference between writing and performance. Of course, they require different rhythms and even different daily routines. But the most important thing is to keep life simple. And to sleep well. And today I no longer work as a curator. There are many very good people who curate. I did too much of it, and now I have fewer emails, less babysitting and fewer coffees with influential people.

How would you describe the sound scene in the context where you live today? What conditions - material, social or institutional - make it possible, and which ones hinder it?
Actually, I have doubts about the word “sound scene.” And I have doubts about “sound art” or “sound performance” too. Mmm… For me, the scene around me, or the people involved in this interview, are still inside a music scene. We can use “experimental music,” although I think we are also something different from what that term normally means.

For this small scene in China, I would say it is a shift away from so-called experimental music. Attention to acoustic instruments, to objects that are not properly instruments and to the acoustic environment has taken a central role, not only because we often play in small spaces or outdoors, and sometimes without using amplification systems. But it is still music, because we give concerts and release records. One of the obstacles is that it is very hard to make a living from this kind of music alone. It’s not like in Europe, where there is public funding you can apply for. Here there is no funding or support. Maybe it is similar to Japan or America, but in worse conditions. You have to have another job to support what you do artistically, and this takes a lot of energy and time. Then there is another limitation of a political kind: in China all the main internet channels are blocked, including YouTube, Instagram and Bandcamp. You have to use a VPN to access them. So if you upload something there, the Chinese audience can’t see or hear it. Of course, there are local platforms that can replace YouTube or Instagram, but there is nothing comparable to Bandcamp. It is very difficult to receive feedback at the local level. Limited exposure and the lack of outside support end up feeding each other, in a vicious circle. In recent years I have also noticed another change: more and more people from other scenes, especially from performance art, have started to appear at the same events, festivals or collaborations. I think this happened after 2020; before it wasn’t like that. Sometimes an experimental music performance includes sets with performance art elements, and some performance art events invite musicians to take part, although there we usually do something very different from a normal concert. People who do performance art don’t think too much about sound, and most don’t work directly with sound. For me, performance art focuses above all on experience, not only on looking or listening. But music works the same way too, no? Only the record, instead, is made solely to be listened to.

Have there been places, encounters or communities that changed the way you think about sound?
For me, everything I know about experimental music and sound I learned by organizing the weekly performance series Zoomin’ Night, starting in 2009. At the time I had just started playing in some rather strange bands, and I really didn’t know much.
Organizing events forced me to learn more: where the music of certain artists came from, what made a certain genre specific, how their instruments or the devices they used worked.
If you really want to understand it, there are many questions: you search online, you try similar things on your own. I learned everything that way, by practicing.

A few years ago, in 2023, I took part in a performance art festival and realized there is a lot of overlap between performance art and experimental music or improvisation. I think this too is part of the answer to this question.

When you work with sound, what guides you in the process? Are you oriented more toward relation, perception, gesture, or something else?
For me, materials and instruments are the most important elements from the very beginning. First I have to decide what I want to use, then come the questions about what to do and how to do it.
Sometimes I set limits for myself from the start. With limitations you can find more possibilities.

And sometimes I don’t know what I want to do, but I know fairly well what I don’t want to do: if it’s something too specific and I know that other people have already done it, then I don’t do the same thing. But if it’s something “normal,” I like to try it. Maybe from something ordinary a new experience can emerge. And what guides me, then? I don’t know. I like finding musical elements in things that are normally not music, or removing musical elements from a performance that would normally be music.

Do you ever perceive distances or misunderstandings between the Chinese scene and the international one?
The first question, on this subject, would be: what is the international view of the Chinese experimental or sound scene? I actually have no idea. So I can’t say whether there are misunderstandings, seen from the outside.

As for distance, I think it exists. I believe that in Europe there are more “professional” experimental musicians or sound artists than in China, and that many people want to become “professional” in some way. But is that really a better thing? I have reservations. I hope every place is different, because it is precisely difference that creates a local scene, no? A bit like culture, language, food. If there is no distance, you don’t even feel like discovering. I do want to add, though, that I have traveled a lot, and many people I met left deep impressions on me. I believe they are as active as music enthusiasts in China, even though in China the number of people involved is much lower.

But I am Chinese and I grew up in China. My habits and behaviors are deeply influenced by it. I don’t need to “think about it.”

What does it mean to you, today, to listen from China? How do you think this perspective shapes or enriches sound practices?
I don’t know how to answer. It is a fact, and I can’t escape or avoid it. I have never really thought about it. It is simply something that happened to me, and I find myself doing things in this situation.

Over time, has the way you think about your practice changed? Are there things you now avoid, or seek out more consciously?
To tell the truth, I am always reflecting on my practice. Even if sometimes I forget what I think, some impression remains, and little by little it changes me.

I don’t think too much about concepts or ideas, they are perhaps too big. I prefer to change in a natural way.

Lately I’ve been thinking of not using so many sharp or high-frequency sounds. But I still have to practice it.

Looking back, what was the Chinese sound scene like when you started? What has changed and what has remained?
It was 2009. I believe that back then in China there was nobody doing the things we do today. Many people used instruments, pedals and computers, and the sounds were very rich.
The word “sound art” was already used by some computer music or ambient musicians to describe themselves or others.

There were already important names at the time, such as Li Jianhong or Torturing Nurse, who still today play a fundamental role in the Chinese experimental scene and continue to encourage new generations. In 2009 Yan Jun organized in Beijing the concert of FEN and Sachiko M. It was two days of events, sold out. One of the best experimental events of that year. One can say that today the people involved in this interview are in some way heirs to that history, even if not all of them took part in that event. But, to tell the truth, I still prefer the days that came after. Back then, though, it was truly rare to have places where you could perform experimental music. Yan Jun had already been organizing a Tuesday series in Beijing for a few years, and in 2009 I started another one in another venue. Both were in rock bars. Apart from that, opportunities were very few. A noise community organized something every now and then in a very distant area of Beijing. In Shanghai, Torturing Nurse organized events but not in a fixed place. MaiMai started around those years in Shanghai, but maybe with one concert every three months. In other cities there were no places to do it, and no audience. So, at that time, if you made experimental music and didn’t live in Beijing or Shanghai, you had to pay for the train and go to other cities to play and meet other artists. I didn’t experience this directly because I lived in Beijing, but I believe it was really hard to keep going. Life is hard. Now, instead, there are more people and small communities in different cities. Especially around Shanghai and Guangzhou, there are many smaller cities where it is possible to do small tours, with different people and venues in each place. Even if everything is DIY, and many places still live under economic pressure, it is still a network. I believe all this was built slowly over ten years, and exploded in the last two.

How would you describe the sound scene in the context where you live today? What conditions - material, social or institutional - make it possible, and which ones hinder it?
I am sitting at my desk while writing this interview. Before starting, I turned on the studio monitors and noticed a slight background noise coming from them. I don’t want to pay attention to it, and it seems impossible to eliminate it completely. I have been listening like this for two or three hours straight. Sometimes it is hard to tell whether this background noise was intentionally chosen by an artist on a record, or whether it simply comes from the speakers. This is the reality of the soundscape in front of me.

In Beijing we all live under different kinds of invisible pressures: cultural, economic, political. Because our political system is different from the Western one, it can easily influence the first two. It is like Beijing’s smog: it floats in the air, the dust settles, and it is constantly present in our lives. I believe, however, that this pressure also gives us the drive to create small things, and at the same time a form of resistance that allows us to keep going. A state that, sometimes, I can still enjoy.”

Have there been places, encounters or communities that changed the way you think about sound?
I entered this scene toward the end of 2018. After high school, I started performing more formally in 2019.
At the end of 2018 I took part in a workshop by Yan Jun in a large museum. There, I and more than a dozen other participants cracked sunflower seeds, a traditional Chinese snack.

After that workshop I started going to the Miji concerts organized in Yan Jun’s private studio and to the Zoomin’ Night events at fRUITYSPACE, which has now closed. I miss that non-music-scene very much, which influenced my current concert series Aloe on-site. Before the pandemic, everyone kept a certain distance, and the performances felt a bit muted, boring, indifferent. Few people applauded after the concerts. Many pieces were improvised or composed from a musical point of view. Several foreign musicians also came to perform, with a frequency that was just right.

When you work with sound, what guides you in the process? Are you oriented more toward relation, perception, gesture, or something else?
I don’t have a systematic direction, but live performance has always been what I do. Performance is made up of a series of fundamental elements, and the changing relationships between these elements make the performance something tangible. They are also the same elements I work on when I develop them into a piece.

At first they were fleeting motifs that emerged from improvisation, then they turned into a solo, into a nameless piece. For example, the IKEA chairs and I myself in the performance at NUB looked like a slice of frozen time, placed there for everyone to see. All the people present are important. Sometimes my attention is completely on the table: a broken machine, a misused electronic device, and so on. Other times I use my body to work with the machines, in a coldly humorous way. I like cold jokes. They work like a mirror: they send the image back. This too is a kind of feedback.

Do you ever perceive distances or misunderstandings between the Chinese scene and the international one?
Politics is undoubtedly a factor behind sound. A world without visas or visa fees would be wonderful. I believe that different scenes hold different visions and beliefs, and I think that is a good thing.

But, as for my limited experiences in Europe and other countries, if we compare them with some big cities, noise music can have a history of about a hundred years, if we go back to The Art of Noises. Sound art? Maybe twenty or thirty years. The Beijing scene mostly addresses itself or a small group of like-minded friends. This also means that the Beijing scene is very fragile. A single person can hold many identities at the same time: musician, label manager, organizer, curator, sound technician, and more. Beyond its own production and circulation of information, the scene lacks wider feedback and real documentation, such as articles, interviews or criticism. This goes beyond the capacities of a single person, or even ten.

Have elements of Chinese musical or philosophical tradition — such as the relationship with silence, energy (qi), emptiness or time — ever influenced the way you think about sound or work with it, even just as a cultural background to embrace or question?
This may shatter some fantasies, but the culture we have absorbed is fragmented. What shaped a generation may have been rock or the da-kou from the West, that is, surplus Western audiovisual products, imported as plastic waste, but that concerns the previous generation, not mine.

This fragmentation is present in everyday life and shapes my way of understanding improvised music. It is not so much a matter of Chinese tradition. I appreciate some Chinese paintings and some architecture, but when I work I have to be careful not to create according to the logic of contemporary art, when tradition is involved.

What does “listening from China” mean to you today? How does this perspective shape or enrich sound practices?
Since I am inside this perspective, I don’t really know what it means. Maybe it only serves to affirm a reality. China is enormous, and cultural scenes vary greatly from city to city, as do the ways of understanding music. I can’t even speak from an “overall” Chinese perspective.

In today’s Beijing there are different groups of young people, from different backgrounds, without a long history of sound practices behind them and at the same time in economic difficulty, who find themselves together. Most are amateurs or performers who use cheap devices or objects for their performances. There are no events funded by public money, nor private funds for cultural exchange. This has led to extremely quick organization and to the spread of DIY concerts, held in spaces with poor PA systems or no PA at all. Now it is slightly better: two venues have Yamaha monitors, although in one of them they have already broken twice. Subwoofers are still not possible. The smallest venue can hold six people at most, musicians and audience together, all standing squeezed in. It doesn’t matter whether it is experimental music or performance art, and in the end it doesn’t matter to anyone. Sometimes, in these places, you can even feel quite comfortable.

How does Aloe Records reflect — or perhaps contradict — what you experience in the Beijing scene and in the environments you frequent?
At the moment Aloe Records is a collaboration between me and Zhang Cai. It began during the pandemic. Besides record releases, we now also organize regular concerts, workshops and a limited number of interviews. Organizing these concerts is, in practice, our way of giving something back to the Beijing scene.

To be honest, I don’t really like organizing events, and I don’t think I’m a good organizer, or a good guy (laughs). As for the releases, sometimes I put out records by international musicians I like, mostly as a way to bring different music into the Beijing scene. At the same time, this also brings some lesser-known Chinese music to Europe and the United States. Sometimes I contact Chinese musicians to collaborate for the first time with Asian or international artists, recording in Beijing. For example, the recent album by Zhao Cong and Kevin Corcoran. In short, Aloe Records only releases work by people we have a connection with, because it is a small, personal thing, not a big label. I hope it can take root and improvise with whatever happens.

How would you describe your sound practice and its relationship with the spaces in which it takes place?
Like a light in a room, vanishing in an instant.

How would you describe the sound scene in the context where you live today? What conditions - material, social or institutional - make it possible, and which ones hinder it?
This scene, or this circle, is not big. Everyone knows each other directly or indirectly, and it’s pretty wild.
For various reasons, such as censorship and the economic slowdown, venues struggle to stay afloat, even though in recent years some new small spaces have emerged.

As a result, the places where we play have become more varied and more open. Besides bars and art spaces, we also play in underpasses, parks and other outdoor spaces. On the other hand, the government offers no funds to support music, unlike many European countries, so musicians have to have other jobs to support themselves. Conditions are tough.

Have there been places, encounters or communities that changed the way you think about sound?
I would definitely say Zoomin’ Night. Not the current cassette label, but its earlier version, a series of weekly performances held on Tuesday nights. It started in the summer of 2009.
At first it was focused on unconventional rock performances, a bit strange, a bit noisy, a bit experimental. At that time I was following no wave and noise rock a lot, so I went to Zoomin’ Night every Tuesday.

Later, the direction of Zoomin’ Night gradually shifted toward experimental music and improvisation. A group of regular performers became friends, and band members started pursuing various parallel projects. Musical tastes and styles changed over time, giving the sense of a shared growth. My perspective on sound changed along with the development of Zoomin’ Night.

When you work with sound, what guides you in the process? Are you oriented more toward relation, perception, gesture, or something else?
What interests me most are the materials and the way of producing “sound.” For me it is important that it be interesting and fairly “new,” both to me and to the outside world. I try to avoid repetition as much as possible.

Do you ever perceive distances or misunderstandings between the Chinese scene and the international one?
For the kind of music we make, in many parts of the world, such as the United States, Japan and several European countries, there is a history of development spanning several decades. Many musicians have an academic training.
In China, by contrast, this kind of music has developed only in the last ten or twenty years. The great majority of musicians are self-taught, without the same degree of professionalization as in international scenes.

I find this very interesting. Differences are a good thing.

But I think my personality, my logic and my way of doing things are nonetheless influenced by the fact that I am Chinese and have lived in China for over thirty years.

What does “listening from China” mean to you today? How does this perspective shape or enrich sound practices?
It is hard to say. I can’t imagine what specificity arises from being in China. There must be something, but, being inside this situation, it is really hard for me to sum it up.

Your work fuses sound, body and gesture. How do you think about this relationship when you perform or create?
In the early years, when I had just started making music, I avoided performances that were too self-referential, or too visual.

In recent years, however, this has changed. My creations are very tied to hand movements. When I was building the structure of a performance, I thought that, if I tried to create “strange and unusual” sounds using things familiar to everyone, adding some visual elements could strengthen the audience’s perception of those sounds and make the performance more complete.

But I believe my body movements came about naturally.

Have you encountered specific challenges or expectations as a woman in the sound scene in China or elsewhere?
No, I haven’t had any particular perceptions about this.

Perhaps also because I don’t give much weight to my female identity (within the sound scene).

How would you describe the sound scene in the context where you live today? What conditions - material, social or institutional - make it possible, and which ones hinder it?
I have lived in Cologne for about five years, I have just started the sixth. So I can speak mostly about what it is like here. Cologne has a very rich cultural, artistic and musical history. What I perceive is that people try to maintain a sense of equality and freedom in many areas, and this includes music too.

Of course Cologne is an important place for “New (classical) Music” in Germany, but that scene is something that has long been called into question. It can be conservative, complicated, and part of what is considered “high culture.” That said, as a person who comes from another country, without a musical training or a family background here, this is an environment I love very much. I have found my own small connection with the city. This kind of equality is something I don’t currently feel in China. As for obstacles, I would say language, and everything that comes with it, such as ways of thinking or communicating. I moved here during the pandemic, so this has had an important weight. I am still trying to figure out how to relate to this environment in a more natural and friendly way.

Have there been places, encounters or communities that changed the way you think about sound?
I would say it was the “non-place” that changed my perception of sound: spaces like libraries, cemeteries, railway platforms or museums. Foucault described places of this kind as “heterotopias.” They are spaces of flow, where past and present run together. They exist in reality, but seem somehow detached from everyday life. There you encounter something — or, more often, yourself — in a condition of uncertainty.
When you work with sound, what guides you in the process? Are you oriented more toward relation, perception, gesture, or something else?
If I think about it, the motivation behind my work is often conceptual in nature, but the process itself is completely intuitive. If I try to understand what guides it, I would say it comes from an inner energy, a kind of need to communicate.

Whether it is my solo computer music pieces, in which algorithms can determine the temporal course, or improvisations with other musicians, both processes help me give shape to this desire for connection. I have the feeling that the audience often understands it very well: they tell me so, they really feel this connection.

Do you ever perceive distances or misunderstandings between the Chinese scene and the international one?
Yes, of course, there has always been a certain distance or incomprehension. Many people here have a very strong image of Asian culture, sometimes even a kind of admiration, but often accompanied by rather rigid stereotypes.

The experimental music scene is a bit different, though. In a certain sense, the Chinese experimental scene was “taken” from here, but it never really built a system of its own. Some close friends have told me that, for many young people who grew up in Europe, Chinese experimental music has become almost a myth.

Have elements of Chinese musical or philosophical tradition — such as the relationship with silence, energy (qi), emptiness or time — ever influenced the way you think about sound or work with it, even just as a cultural background to embrace or question?
I don’t think I can really enter into this discussion in a clear way. Those elements have certainly influenced my work, but I’m not sure that this influence comes directly from Chinese philosophy itself.

Perhaps it is a more indirect influence. I perceive it through my experience and my reflection on classical Western philosophy, and on the history of postmodern aesthetics that calls it into question. Through this process, somehow, I sense a kind of reflection of Eastern philosophy.

What does it mean to you, today, to listen from China? How do you think this perspective conditions or enriches sound practices?
For me it is something completely tied to nostalgia. I listen to Chinese pop songs every day.

In German there are two beautiful words: Heimweh, which means homesickness, and Fernweh, which indicates the longing to go far away. For me, listening from China — or listening to Chinese music — is like living both at the same time. It is like the palm and the back of a hand: they face opposite directions, but grow from the same root.

How do you choose the materials and instruments you work with? Do they have a practical, sensory, symbolic meaning for you?
Since this year I have started using everyday objects in my work. This allows me to introduce more uncertainty and a feeling of instability when I improvise with other musicians. I haven’t, however, started building acoustic instruments of my own, nor buying special objects specifically for this.

I don’t think I have a real fetish for particular materials (ok, I collect papers and envelopes…), at least not yet, as far as I know. Sometimes I simply take a few things from my room before a performance and bring them with me. Over time, some of these objects have become things I use more regularly.

Are there aspects of your sound practice that have transformed since moving to Germany?
Of course! It has definitely transformed in these five years. In the early days my approach was very critical, especially toward myself. But this year I have started to accept myself more. Now I simply let the work become what it wants to be. There is no right or wrong: it is just what I have inside. And I would like the people who listen to my music to be able to perceive it.

English translation of the Italian original. Read the original →