AGUNGAN: ReSounding South
2018
Multi-media archival installation
Dimensions variable
Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation
Courtesy of the UP Center for Ethnomusicology
Notes:
Through the archival facilitation of media art historian Dayang Yraola, AGUNGAN: ReSounding South (2018) examines the practice and scholarship of the late Filipino ethnomusicologist and composer José Maceda within the soundscape-landscape of Muslim Mindanao. The project reflects on the metaphorical place of the gong, a percussion instrument that is present in a variety of indigenous cultures in Southeast Asia. Maceda’s mediation extends the possibility of playing and experiencing its sound beyond the rituals and territories of Muslim Mindanao.
Informed by the attitude and field work of José Maceda, this work portrays a history of place and its people in four modules. The first module depicts the relationship of music with the universe and the power of music in Mindanao, and the second shows the making and playing of gong in the daily lives of four distinct groups (Badjao, Maguindanao, Maranao, Yakan. The third presents a production of Maceda's Agungan, a composition of new sounds based on the technology and tradition of native musical invention, while the fourth collates documented performances of gong.
Central to the installation is Maceda’s 1966 composition Agungan, through which he first introduced his experiments in ethnomusicology, Western composition, theory and practice. Yraola presents Agungan through the lens of Maceda’s field work in southern Philippines with images of gong production and daily performances of gongs.
Part of "Tripoli
Agreement" an exhibit for the Air Arabia Curator-in-Residence.
Exhibit July to September 2018 at
Gallery 4 Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah, UAE
(curator: Renan Laru-An)
(curator: Renan Laru-An)
http://sharjahart.org/sharjah-art-foundation/people/yraola-dayang
https://www.esquiremag.ph/culture/arts-and-entertainment/uae-art-exhibit-features-filipino-artists-tackling-the-mindanao-problem-a1521-20180805-lfrm
https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/art/sharjah-art-foundation-s-new-show-is-a-rich-cacophony-of-interlocking-cultures-1.751493
https://www.artinamericamagazine.com/reviews/a-tripoli-agreement/