Disarming The Bunker is a speculative sound project based on site-specific performances of Umi Hsu’s text score A Little Weird, A Way from Home (2022), a collection of prompts inspired by “Sonic Images”, Pauline Oliveros’s Software for People: Collected Writings 1963-80. It is the result of a collaboration between Umi’s band Bitter Party and conceptual artist Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai.
This project traces the history and speculates the future of San Pedro through blending sounds both familiar and unfamiliar. The performances took place at the historic WWII memorial site in White Point Park in San Pedro.
At Battery Paul D Bunker, the group explored the spatial contour of intimacies shared amidst intrusion; and the ambivalent feelings of belonging and un/belonging. We embodied our loved ones by walking in their footsteps, dancing, playing instruments to soothe spirits, and humming tunes in memory of close kins and ancestors. Recordings were mixed and engineered as the source of a four channel sound installation with a display of visual ephemera.
Disarming The Bunker was created for the exhibition Archival Intimacies: Queering South/East Asian Diaspora, mounted at the ONE Archives and USC Pacific Asia Museum from March 3 – May 27, 2022. It was part of Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai’s multimedia installation Ocean Network Express (2022) commissioned during their residency at ONE Archives.
A culmination concert premiered an original song written by Bitter Party and Prima at ONE Archives at the USC Libraries on May 14, 2022.
Explore More:
A Little Weird, A Way from Home (2022)
Ocean Network Express (2022)
Bitter Party
Archival Intimacies: Queering South/East Asian Diaspora (2022)
Performance: Umi Hsu, Nathan Lam Vuong, Lindawei, Jacob Alden Sargent, Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai
Text Score: Umi Hsu
Text: Jacob Alden Sargent
Fabrication: Ashle Fauvre & Lindawei
Recording: Umi Hsu and Kenneth Yates
Illustration and Logo Design: Grace Umali
Photography: Umi Hsu, Ian Byers Gamber
Audio Mixing/Engineering/Editing: Umi Hsu
Curated by Alexis Bard Johnson and Aziz Sohail