Closing Reception | Infinite Doors

Empty Gallery is pleased to present a closing reception for Takeshi Murata: Infinite Doors featuring both a solo violin performance and a durational intervention within the exhibition space by NYC-based Murata collaborator, C. Spencer Yeh.

Manifesting many of the same cultural obsessions as Murata – obscure b-movies, underground noise music, and experimental cinema – Yeh’s multi-disciplinary practice ranges across the fields of video art, composition/improvisation, and curation while always retaining a certain anarchic spirit at its core.

For this event at Empty Gallery, his first ever performance in Hong Kong, C. Spencer Yeh will enact a durational intervention into Murata’s exhibition in which he “scores” the exhibition space, replacing Murata’s existing audio and creating a radically new way for viewers to engage with both Murata’s videos and the spatial architecture of Empty Gallery.

Afterwards, Yeh will present a concert-length performance manifesting his decades-long engagement with the amplified violin – an instrument which, like many Chinese-American children, he was encouraged to adopt as both an extracurricular activity and a form of cultural assimilation. Although Yeh first became known for his aggressive détournement of the classical instrument in his Burning Star Core project – where he deployed looping, distortion, extended technique, and other manipulations in order to create pulsating fields of noise – his recent return to the instrument has seen a more contemplative turn evoking shades of Tony Conrad, Malcom Goldstein or Henry Flynt. Performing with the bare minimum of effects and processing, this current stage of Yeh’s musical development sees him diving deep into the effects of trance-like repetition, creating complex and filigreed matrices of sound which create the paradoxical experience of both movement and stasis.