RESOUNDING: REMATRIATING THE ĐÔNG SƠN BRONZE DRUM
With Dr Victoria Pham (composer and archaeologist) this project seeks to record and collect a comprehensive sound archive of those Đông Sơn Bronze Drums currently held in museums throughout the world. Many of these ancient instruments were taken from Vietnam under French occupation and subsequently during the Indochinese Decolonial Wars and the American-Vietnam War. Many instruments have also ended up in the private auction market.
By proposing the idea of reMatriating the sound of these displaced drums to local musicians in Vietnam and throughout the Indo-Pacific (as opposed to the repatriation of artefacts from one museum vitrine to another). Our extended collaborative effort of percussionists, musicologists, researchers and artists seeks to challenge what it means to reawaken and regenerate cultural practices in the now. We propose working with this ancient drum to rethink conventional forms of institutional museology and object repatriation. We hope to resound the voice of these silent instruments and demonstrate how collective diasporic interventions can maintain cultural production and practices that are as widely dispersed as our ancestral objects.
The Art gallery of NSW, the Australian Museum, and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Cambridge University) have been partners - and in continuing negotiations - in this experimental project to record, digitise and reinvigorate the sounds of the bronze drums in their collections and storage facilities. A website and interactive digital platform have been built to become a repository for the sound recordings of drums from both private and institutional collections. There are also live listening and performance events programmed around the drum. Presentations include a 2020 digital festival titled “BLEED” for Arts House Melbourne and Campbelltown Arts Centre, live performances in 2021 at the Australian War Memorial and Footscray Community Arts Centre, and at the Sydney Opera House in 2022 & 2025.
https://www.re-sounding.org/ (website and digital sound archive)
https://vimeo.com/354666972?share=copy (storage facility at the Art Gallery of NSW)
https://www.re-sounding.org/exhibition (BLEED festival online videos and performances)
https://vimeo.com/554096849 (live performance Footscray Community Arts Centre)
https://www.arrowcollective.org/james-nguyen-victoria-pham-re-tuning-2022
(‘RE:TUNING’ Sydney Opera House _ co-commissioned by Sydney Opera House and
Arrow Collective)
https://vimeo.com/845468555/c798f18698?share=copy
(A Drumstick is a Hammer’ for Anna Schwartz Gallery)
https://vimeo.com/950479670/27cf522d0e?share=copy
(‘Drum of Pejeng’ for Sonic Travellers, at BUS Projects)
publication:
https://theconversation.com/how-were-using-the-vietnamese-ethnic-savings-scheme-h-i-to-buy-back-our-cultural-heritage-204802 (The Conversation about diasporic savings and private purchases of cultural materials)
