Undercurrents of Memory

During the research, Jez Fang recorded wind moving across grasslands, insects, birds, ground vibrations and the sounds of everyday life in Hengchun and Manzhou. The project also incorporates songs performed by folk singers Huang Que-yin and Hsieh Mien-ching. These recordings are not treated as illustrations of a landscape, but as sensory traces of time—holding both individual life experiences and the accumulated memory of the peninsula.

Dark, weathered coastal rocks frame a calm tidal pool that opens to the sea under a pale evening sky.

A wave breaks and washes up a dark sand beach under heavy clouds, with a band of orange light on the horizon.

Land and Folk Songs

Hengchun folk songs exist beyond melody and lyrics. They carry the textures of labour, separation, longing, climate and land, as well as the time lived through by each singer.

An elderly woman plays a wooden moon lute, looking down at the strings, in a doorway with a patterned metal screen door behind her.

An elderly woman sings with her mouth open, holding a paper fan, beside a vintage microphone in a fur windshield.

The work removes these songs from a conventional performance setting and places them alongside wind, soil, environmental recordings and electronic sound. Voices sometimes emerge clearly and sometimes recede into the depth of the soundscape, moving like memories beneath the surface of consciousness.

The “undercurrent” in the title is not a physical river. It refers to experiences that have not disappeared, even when they remain unspoken—preserved within accents, breath, melody and the vibrations of the land.

A woman sits sideways in a rattan chair in a living room, resting one arm over the back and speaking toward the camera.

Immersive Experience

The composition was further developed into an outdoor experience combining sound, breath and spoken text. Participants lay on the grass at Sheding Nature Park while Kayo Lu’s poetic and embodied guidance led them through a soundscape composed of field recordings, folk voices and electronic textures.

Participants lie in a group on the grass wearing headphones, one person sitting upright with pink hair, with wind-bent trees behind.

A person lies on their back in tall grass with arms crossed over their chest, eyes closed, wearing headphones.

A woman sits in a meadow wearing headphones and looking to the side, while other participants lie in the grass behind her.

Listening here extends beyond identifying the source of a sound. It becomes an embodied encounter through which song, landscape and personal memory begin to overlap. Participants are invited to step outside ordinary chronological time and enter a perceptual space between wakefulness, dreaming and remembrance.

A family group sits together on a blanket on a wide lawn, wearing headphones and talking, with a leaning tree behind.

The work is conceived as a love song for the Hengchun Peninsula, and as a lullaby for the people who have lived upon this ancient land.

Two participants in glowing headphones hold hands and dance on dark grass at dusk.

A barefoot participant in glowing headphones lifts one leg mid-step on the grass at dusk, with two blurred figures behind.

Artistic Approach

Undercurrents of Memory considers how sound can preserve dimensions of place that cannot be fully held by images.

Field recording is approached not as objective documentation, but as a way of spending time with a place. By bringing environmental sound, folk song and human breath into the same listening space, the work transforms place from a geographical location into a perceptual field shaped by bodies, time and memory.

Land and Folk Songs

Immersive Experience

Artistic Approach

Credits