Walking in a moving city day after day, do you miss the scenery and the sounds beyond the beaten path?

The city is the most integrated nexus of material production and cultural resources today. People try to synthesize the complexities of urban life in different ways; they actively pursue more meaningful ways of living. On the one hand, modern social structures and production methods determine our current worship of efficiency; people are constantly trying to use technology to compress the time and energy of travel. On the other hand, the occupants of modern cities have new demands and new imaginary lives. More and more urban themed music has been created and transmitted. People express their inner emotions through notes, hoping to soften the tensions and rigidities of life, becoming the masters of their fate. Despite this, inhabitants of cities often feel that they are not self-sufficient. It seems impossible to suture together the fragments of life and space in a meaningful way, to recover subjectivity in the formless urban landscape.

The lives of modern city inhabitants are connected by various spaces, and our identities change with the space we occupy: from an employee, to a consumer, to someone enjoying recreation, to a connoisseur. So we define ourselves: producers and consumers, authors and audiences. When human-selected modes of travel hint at our mutual interconnectedness, when people try to communicate with mediums other than language, using music to explain the relationship between individual and city, then we can talk about music and rhythm. How do we avoid lives of urban ennui? How do we control our lives and invest each moment with value?

It is with these questions in mind that the artist Chen Wei and the Xiami artist, Li Xingyu started this collaborative project, with the support of the LiCheng and Xiami Music. The “Urban Spectrum” art project aims at revealing the musicality and the visuality of every corner of the city, in various times and tempos, as well as the how the cultural potentials of urban space needs to be unlocked by insightful, conscious thought. “Urban Spectrum” reproduces the everyday life and landscape of the city. Music is combines nature with reinforced concrete, and the audience both watches, and lives, this art. As on any urban road, while we continue to pursue better lives, surprises always arrive;  by going where they lead us, we become the authors of our own aesthetics.

Artists

Chen Wei

Li Xingyu （Xiami Artist: Whalecircus）

Curated  by

You Yang

Co-produced by

LiCheng, Xiami Music, UCCA