Ten Thousand Things

Description:

Ten Thousand Things was a reading by Hamish Ballantyne, S F Ho, and Tiziana La Melia, organized by artists-in-residence Julian Hou, Prince Nifty, Eddy Wang, and Fan Wu. Expanding into the hybrid territory of drone/poetry and quadraphonic sound, the reading was named for The Ten Thousand Things (萬物), a concept in Daoist cosmology that signifies a vastness that metaphorizes into an uncountable infinity. Throughout the evening, the audience was encouraged to move around the Grand Luxe Hall. Cushions were set up on the floor near the centre of the room to allow for a heightened experience of the spatialized audio.

Ballantyne opened the event with a twenty-minute set featuring work drawn from his chapbook Blue Knight (2022). Then, Ho performed selections of a poem that explored linguistic and abstract forms of negation. Reading on the floor of the Luxe, Ho was backed by the Wounded Healer houseband that featured Hou (electronics), Nifty (electronics), Wang (keyboard), and Wu (vocals/percussion) alongside Amy Gottung (flute), Kasper Feyrer (shruti box/percussion), and Marco Muñoz (guitar).

To close the evening, La Melia performed a selection of poems including “Juicy” and “Cup of Tears & Walking Towards Soma Tropika” (2022) with musical accompaniment. In addition to their instruments, the ensemble’s improvised score activated objects including a corn cob, watermelon-printed fairy wings, loose change, silky textiles, jewellery, and dried chili peppers as sound-making devices.