Evolving soundscapes program

Public program and t-space X MAO: the new projects.

Buddha^10 is an open, continuously developing exhibition, a project that lays bare its analyses and processes but does not advance definitive conclusions. Through the exhibition, MAO aims to position itself as a place where the relationship between museum object and visitor is perennially questioned. The object itself complicates its own meaning: it is the viewer’s task to perceive its contradictions, sense, and profound value.

To support this dynamic, intercultural approach, the exhibition is enriched by works by contemporary artists, site-specific projects and musical performances by Italian and international artists, including Lee Mingwei and Amosphère.

Evolving soundscapes, curated by Chiara Lee & freddie Murphy, is Buddha^10 exhibition‘s public program, an itinerant collective sonic ritual, officiated by artists from the Asian continent and the related diasporas. The rooms and spaces of the museum will be turned into temples, caves and home altars where the artists involved will celebrate a shared sonic ritual that will enhance the reclaimed intrinsic rituality of the displayed objects. By reinventing the very concept of rituality, the artists experiment with new codes and open to new opportunities for the public to experience the space and the time of the ritual.

Some of the performances are designed and created specifically for the exhibition and the spaces of the museum; however all the various artists are invited to search and find a suitable space in which to perform their sound act, translating objects and exhibition spaces into noise, signal, resonance and music to continue the new flow inaugurated with “The Great Void”.

In a continuous dialogue between reinterpretation and experimentation, these artists’ works embrace concepts of the Asian tradition such as the dialogue between emptiness and fullness, or repetition as a way of transformation; but also contemporary themes such as decolonization, intersectional backgrounds, gender fluidity and dystopian futurism, testifying to the various uniqueness of the Asian continent’s cultures, genres, traditions and genders and, at the same time, channel and rework global influences.

The program
Zhuo Mengting: ​November 8
A site specific sonic score with amplified objects from MAO collection.

Tadleeh: November 22
An exclusive performance for MAO on the sense of belonging. 

Park Jiha: December 1
Groundbreaking modern music rooted in traditional Korean instruments.

Diasporas Now / Rieko Whitfield & Micaela Tobin (White Boy Scream): January 24
Contemporaneous conversations and alternative narratives on displaced identities, decolonization and more.

Chinabot / JPN Kasai & Neo Geodesia: January 25
A platform and collective created to change the dialogue surrounding Asian music. 

Sainkho Namtchylak: February 15
Throat singing and artistic research between Siberian folklore and shamanic tradition.

Liew Niyomkarn: March 1
Ambient soundscapes, gentle folk melodies and avant-garde motifs.

Ana Roxanne: March 21
Ambient, jazz, hindustani, choral and electronic musical traditions blended in a magical experience pondering the mutability of gender.

Salamanda: April 6
Dub, lo-fi house, reggaeton snares, dembow rhythms, ambient, and augmented vocals.

Phew: April 27
A haunted and strung out set of whispered vocals and submerged synths for music out of time from a legendary Japanese artist.

The first moment of expansion of the exhibition Buddha^10 through the activation of the museum’s collections coincides with the opening of the brand new t-space X MAO, in collaboration with the homonymous space created in Milan by Giulia Spreafico and Wu Rui in 2016: a studio open to the public, a creative place, but also a contemporary tea house where visitors can take a break, drink tea, meet artists and performers, take part to the events. Among the artists who will take turns to activate the museum collections, expanding their meanings and bringing them back to a contemporary dimension, there are Italian and international directors and filmmakers, visual artists and performers such as Warshad film, Massimo Grimaldi, Fuzao Studio and Jacopo Miliani.