Art journal #76: Celeste Boursier-Mougenot @ Barbican

What a delightful show! There's no introduction at all at the door, so I almost missed it. It started with a walk through a dark channel with sound installation which is only the prelude.

Suddenly birds (really small, size of half a palm, called zebra finches) flew by. A few more in a distance are drinking water from cymbals and standing on guitars and pecking on the string to "play" the instrument that you can hear loudly through the amplifiers, together with the birds' own singing! While its not "music" in the traditional sense, the captiving soundscape felt like real harmony.

The kids at the exhibition loved it. I loved it too. Its felt truly special - and deserving of the description "magical" (vs. Steve Jobs keep calling iPad magical!)

Boursier-Mougenot is trained as a musician, and has been doing interesting sound installation work since then (suddenly this remains me of the HK night/soundscape work by Kingsley Ng). The practice of sound installation came in the 50s, when John Cage did his celebrated piece called 4'33'' during which no instruments are played for the duration, so that audience are made aware of the ambient sounds in the performance space.

Again goes to show that art (even so called high art) doesnt need to be inaccessible at all. I think this will be a hit too if we do it in HK. Wouldnt it be nice if WKCD would have shows like this in future!!