Ugnayan

Description:

As part of the multi-part project, José Maceda: Echoes Beyond the Archipelago, Western Front presented an installation of Ugnayan (1974), 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 to come together as a whole. Originally broadcast on New Year’s Day in 1974, the work famously produced a musical atmosphere at the scale of Manila, with all thirty-seven radio stations in the metropolitan area broadcasting as part of Maceda’s sound diffusion. Millions of listeners tuned in, with more than one hundred “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 in New York City, and this installation at Western Front marked the work’s Canadian debut. The composition was played through twenty FM radios from 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 University of the Philippines Center for Ethnomusicology.

Curated by Aki Onda.

Documents:

• José Maceda: Ugnayan brochure (2024). Essay by Aki Onda.