Ugnayan

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:

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