Delay

2025.06.26-08.23

Introduction

Delay — Chen Hongli's Sensory Experiment

I have collaborated multiple times with artist Chen Hongli on sound art projects. The last time was at the INACT International Performance Art Festival in Strasbourg, France, in 2023. One of his works from that time, "Résonance" (Chinese title "Gongzhen/共振"), remains vivid in my memory. In this piece, the artist led passersby in a public square to form irregular geometric shapes and guided them in synchronized stomping. Participants followed the artist's rhythm, accelerating, slowing down, stopping, and repeating, filling the entire square with waves of thunderous stomping sounds. At the time, this performance showed me how passersby, through the simple repetition of footsteps, released personal pressure, dissolved barriers, and gradually attained a sense of euphoria. Now, viewing Chen Hongli's new exhibition "Delay" ("Canxiang / 残响"), the two works share a clear lineage, with the artist acting as the absolute wielder of power in both.

In "Resonance," Chen Hongli, through the control of rhythm, transformed the unorganized bodies of passersby into "resonators," revealing how power permeates individuals through the pulsation of sound. "Delay" continues to explore the core proposition of how sound governs perception. Here, the artist transplants this model of power into the context of war; resonance is no longer a tool for liberation but becomes a medium for transmitting violent waves.

In "Delay" Chen Hongli constructs a philosophical field concerning war, memory, and perception through a cross-media sensory experiment. Utilizing the resonance of sound, matter, and space, he allows violence to re-enter our sensory systems in a non-linguistic manner.

He emphasizes the intertwined experience of the body and the world, echoing Michel Foucault's "biopolitics" – power ultimately acts upon the body. The task of art, then, is to make the body once again the agent of perception, not merely a passive recipient. The audience's movement, listening, and touching within the exhibition become acts of re-experiencing perception and potential resistance. This sensory strategy elevates the exhibition beyond a purely auditory experience, transforming it into a bodily exploration and practice.

The main Exhibition hall, "The Vanished Highlands," deconstructs wartime violence through sonic resonance, generating painted musical scores from this resonance to build a multi-sensory immersive theater moving from auditory to tactile to visual experience. In this work, the artist challenges the boundaries of traditional media: the canvas is no longer a static visual carrier but a developer for sound waves; the cracks in the pigment are both visual symbols and solid traces of sound. This self-negation of media brings to mind Clement Greenberg's modernist theory, yet Chen Hongli seems to push further. Media are no longer autonomous but permeate and disrupt each other. This cross-boundary resonance creates a kind of perceptual chaos, forcing the audience to reconsider the nature of violence amidst sensory dislocation.

Chen Hongli's "Delay" demonstrates how he redefines the boundaries of human-machine collaboration through sensory experiments. He uses sonic data to generate painted musical scores, translating wartime violence into calculable resonant frequencies, thereby transforming AI from a mere tool into a co-conspirator in perceiving violence. The algorithmic process of visualizing sonic cracks is, in essence, a concrete practice of encoding sound into a multimodal database. This creative approach breaks through the limitations of traditional AI art focused on stylistic imitation. By constructing neural networks of hearing, touch, and sight, it forces machine learning to process the "invisible reverberations of data" amidst sensory dislocations.

This exhibition also represents a cutting-edge exploration of art in the AI era: it offers no answers. Instead, through the fracturing and reconstruction of the senses, it relies on the persistent echo lingering in the audience's ears after they leave the physical space to complete the perceptual migration from the physical realm to the neural network. Within this transformation, it seeks possible paths of resistance.

By Wan Lilei

artist

Chen Hongli

Artist

Chen Hongli is a sound performance artist and the founder of the Sound Museum. He is a leading independent musician in China, an advocate and practitioner of experimental music, and a pioneer in sound sampling, electronic avant-garde music, and immersive soundscape music in China. As an artist with an independent creative spirit, he consistently demonstrates innovative capabilities in concept while continuously expanding the boundaries of art in practice. He utilizes sound art as a form of social intervention, showcasing a new sociological methodology and experimental direction.

Through the expressive medium of "Improvisational Sound Performance," Chen Hongli has engaged in ongoing cross-disciplinary collaborations with artists both domestically and internationally, gradually forming his unique philosophy of sound art. He was the first to introduce the Guqin (ancient Chinese zither) into contemporary art and is also the first to interpret Guqin culture through contemporary artistic concepts. Starting from his first cross-border collaboration with international artists using the Guqin at the 1996 Ghent Festival (Belgium), he initiated a series of sound art projects titled “Dialogue”. From the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in 798 to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; from the Red Brick Art Museum and the Sino-French Large-Scale Installation Art Exhibition to the IRCAM Centre Pompidou in Paris; his “Dialogue” project progressively entered art museums and contemporary art centers. Using the language of sound art, he expresses concern for life and cultural reflection. His creative spirit within China's sound art field is avant-garde and uniquely representative.

Selected Artistic Chronology:

1991 Graduated from the Central Academy of Arts & Design (now Tsinghua University Academy of Arts & Design), majoring in Mural Painting.

1992 Formed the band "Xuewei" (穴位) and served as guitarist.

1996 Participated in the Ghent Festival (Belgium), collaborating with international artists using the Guqin.

1999 Invited to the Beijing International Jazz Festival, where he conceived and directed the multimedia sound work “Evolution@Jazz”.

2000 Improvisational Sound Performance “ScreenZ”, performed at the Kunsten Festival des Arts (Brussels) / Brighton Festival (UK).

2003 Created “Dili and Paul”, a work combining folk music field recordings and electronic music.

Improvisational Sound Performance “Ritual” European Tour: Kunsten Festival Desarts (Brussels) / Festival d'Automne à Paris / Centre Pompidou (Paris) / Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA, London).

Multi-screen video sound work “No. 5”, “Out The Window”, exhibited at the Japan-Korea Multimedia Art Exhibition.

2004-2009 Collaborated with artist Wang Jianwei, designing sound and composing for his works “Spider 1”, “Dodge”, “Bird Without Flying”, “Connection”, “Omen”, “Crossroads”, and “Hostage”.

2005 Interactive Sound Installation “City Reflection”, exhibited at the 1st Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture.

2006 Large-scale outdoor sound installation “Millennium Bug”, a permanent installation at Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, Shanghai.

2009 Improvisational Sound Performance “Time·Theater·Exhibition”, Today Art Museum, Beijing.

2010 Improvisational Sound Performance “Welcome to the Real Desert”, Zurich Theater Festival (toured in Zurich, Geneva, and Basel, Switzerland).

2011 Improvisational Sound Performance “Yellow Light”, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing.

2012 Documenta 13 (Kassel, Germany), invited to direct and design sound for contemporary artist Yan Lei's project “Limited Art Project I”.

2013 Sound works “Shift Right 49CM”, “Do Not Enter”.

2014 Interactive Sound Installation “Attention World: Tribute to the Disappearing Dimension”, exhibited at the First Experimental Video Open Exhibition, Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, Beijing.

Sound Art Project “Dialogue”, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing.

Improvisational Sound Performance “Time Temple”, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Sound design for the film “Morning of Vanishing Time”, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

2015 Guqin Sound Performance “Spiral Ramp Library”, PBL Theatre, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Sound Art Project “Sound Sculpture”, Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing.

2016 Sound Art Project “Dog Star Project”, exhibited in "Ailleurs est ici / Elsewhere is Here" - Sino-French Large-Scale Installation Art International Touring Exhibition.

2017 Improvisational Sound Performance “Dialogue”, IRCAM Centre Pompidou, Paris, France.

“Sound Theater”, performed at the "Rob Report 2017 Best of the Best Art Gala 'Tribute to Excellence' Lifestyle Ceremony", a cross-disciplinary collaboration with Wang Jianwei, Liu Xiaodong, and Chai Mingming.

2018 Soundscape Art Exhibition “The Way of Listening”, ICICLE SPACE, Shanghai.

Soundscape Art Exhibition “Roar of Silence”, Cheng Xindong International Contemporary Art Space, 798 Art Zone, Beijing.

Soundscape Art Exhibition “Listening to Silence”, Wanmu Caotang, Guangzhou.

2019 “Monogatari (Tales)”, exhibited in "Silent Transformation - The Subtle Influence of Ancient Chinese Medical Culture in Contemporary Life and Art", Sichuan, China.

2020 “Eight-Tone Ambulance”, part of the Franco-German Special Cultural Fund Activities for Wuhan.

2023 “Heart Sound Joy” (Xinsheng Huanxi), Strasbourg, France.

Wan Lilei

Curator

Curator，art consultant.

Currently based in Paris, France, and a partner at Galerie Agnes Thiebault. She holds a Master's degree in Art from France, awarded the highest honor by the contemporary art jury.
With extensive experience in researching the works and markets of postwar french artists, the curatorial practice focuses on the artistic forms and visual constructions of contemporary Chinese and European artists. In recent years, special attention has been given to the application and promotion of sound art, committed to promoting the Chinese artists' in the development of global contemporary art.

Deng Zhiting