Of Anarchy in Music: More Journeys in Sound

Date: 2025/04/12-2025/07/06

Time: Tue.-Fri. 09:00～17:00, Sat.-Sun. 09:00～18:00

Location: National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts
Outdoor Area (Skywalk, Sunken Courtyard), Lobby, Buffalo Hall, Gallery 102, 201-202

Curator: Marcella Lista

About the Exhibition:

Starting from sound as an object of exhibition, "Of Anarchy in Music: More Journeys in Sound" offers an encounter between works from the New Media collection of the National Museum of Modern Art - Centre Pompidou and works by artists from Taiwan and its neighbors in the Asian region. Like a jam session in music, the exhibition recomposes itself from one city to another, incorporating new participants. The approximately thirty works gathered here showcase pivotal experiences from the past twenty years at the crossroads of experimental music, sound installation, audiovisual composition, sonic environment, and acoustic performance. The journey starts outside the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts and moves through various spaces on the ground floor and first floor of the museum, reflecting the dispersive nature of sound frequencies: the artworks here may be heard before they are seen. Through a wide array of forms, materials, codes, and media chosen by the artist, these sound propositions invite you to perk up your ears and shift your body and mind into motion.

The title "Of Anarchy in Music" is both deliberately anachronistic and viewed through the lens of a new relevance. It is borrowed from a little-known essay by the German-Russian composer Thomas von Hartmann, a friend and collaborator of Vassily Kandinsky, published in L’Almanach du Blaue Reiter, which was edited by Kandinsky in Munich in 1912. This anthology brought together reflections and proposals from artists, composers, and poets around the idea of destruction and the breaking down of outdated art systems. A proponent of atonality and microtonality, Hartmann argued for the relevance of "cacophonic sounds," asserting that "any combination of sounds, any sequence of tone combinations is possible" as long as it responds to an "inner necessity" for the artist, disregarding the codes inherited from classical harmony. Beyond this manifesto from early 20th-century modernity, the inspiration from anarchist ideas runs through history, across all regions of the world, and today finds new resonances. This exhibition follows a main thread related to this political model: the idea that any organization, any arrangement, is temporary and constructs its own transitory rules as a strategy to transcend dominant structures. To think of an emancipatory form of organization, as suggested by anthropologist David Graeber, could call for a "microtheory," meaning "a way of addressing the concrete and immediate questions that emerge from a project of transformation."

The eight parts of this exhibition revolve around questions posed by the sound medium, whether they relate to the transformative powers of technology, the re-examination of inherited musical forms and cultures, or acoustic investigation practices and the way they aim to challenge the legal domain. Today, artists move fluidly from concert to installation, from field recording and sampling to generative AI, from conceptual protocols to unprecedented forms of staging and storytelling. Without attempting to categorize their experiences, the rhythm of these eight parts remains an open score.

Participating Artists

1. Francis ALŸS
2. Lawrence ABU-HAMDAN
3. Éric Baudelaire
4. Edmond COUCHOT AND Michel BRET
5. Holly HERNDON AND Mat DRYHURST
6. Dumb Type
7. Bill FONTANA
8. Gary HILL
9. JAO Chia-En
10. Hassan KHAN
11. Mark LECKEY
12. LIN Chi-Wei
13. LIU Chuang
14. Christian MARCLAY
15. Yuko MOHRI
16. Emeka OGBOH
17. Susan PHILIPSZ
18. Maxime ROSSI
19. Molly SODA
20. SUN Wei
21. Mika TAJIMA
22. Naama TSABAR
23. Steina Vasulka and Woody Vasulka
24. WANG Changcun
25. WANG Chung-Kun
26. WANG Hong-Kai, Lou MO, Alia MOSSALLAM & Keijiro SUGA
27. WANG Fujui
28. Elsa WERTH
29. Samson YOUNG
30. ZHOU Tao

Organizer: Centre Pompidou

Co-Organizer: National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts

Supporting Organizer: Ministry of Culture, Technology Art Venues Innovation Project, Taiwan Content Plan

Sponsor: NTMOFA Patrons Circle

Special Thanks: Bureau Français de Taipei

• "Of Anarchy in Music: More Journeys in Sound" Exhibition organized by the Centre Pompidou, Paris in collaboration with the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.