Ugnayan

May 4 — Jun 1, 2024
Field:

Installation

Location:

Grand Luxe Hall, Western Front

Time:

1:00 – 6:00 p.m.

Description:

As part of the multi-part project, José Maceda: Echoes Beyond the Archipelago, Western Front presented an installation of Ugnayan, a work for twenty radio frequencies.

Ugnayan (1974) is a fifty-one-minute composition that consists of twenty separate tracks, each played on a different radio frequency simultaneously. Originally broadcast on New Year’s Day in 1974, the work famously produced a musical atmosphere at the scale of Manila, with all 37 radio stations in the metropolitan area broadcasting through their channels for Maceda’s sound diffusion. Millions of listeners tuned in, with more than one hundred of “Ugnayan Centers” established in Manila’s parks, plazas, and street corners to create public spaces for people to congregate with their personal radios. In 2020, curator Aki Onda recreated Ugnayan at Fridman Gallery, New York City, with the exhibition at Western Front marking the work’s Canadian debut. The composition was played through twenty FM radios made between the 1960s to the 1990s that were suspended from the ceiling of the Grand Luxe Hall.

Presented with technical support from Bobbi Kozinuk, and with thanks to the UP Center for Ethnomusicology.

Curated by Aki Onda.

Documents:

Twenty radios hang from wires, getting closer to the ceiling as they reach the back of the room. A television, propped up from the floor displays a musical score sorted into 300 cells.
Radios hang in rows from the ceiling in a carpeted room. Three amongst the many silver and black radios are red. Lights shining from above project black shadows looming below.
 A row of five radios hang from the ceiling with their power chords climbing up to the ceiling. The closest radio reads TOSHIBA and just below, AUTO REVERSE.
 A pile of pamphlets rests on a wooden surface. The pamphlet reads Ugnayan -- here’s how to listen, appreciate its beauty in full. Below the text is an illustration of diverse radios playing music.

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Captions:

Western Front is a non-profit
artist-run centre in Vancouver.

We acknowledge the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations as traditional owners of the land upon which Western Front stands.