By this point, it is clear no easy answer exists as to what defines ‘South East Asia’ – culturally, as much as anything else. Or perhaps such impossibility of commonality is the key. Or perhaps, it is to know that – different as we are – shaped by the strange forces of history, we are still part of one. As a region, how do we best celebrate and make the most out of this tension, these two seemingly opposing truths?

“​There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.​”​ ​(John Cage)​

Perhaps the most primitive and natural thing that a human being can do with their corporeity, is breathing. When one breathes, one creates a movement, and one creates sound. Like many a Zen Buddhist, Cage was keenly aware of this simple fact, his 4:33 exemplifying the way attempts at absolute silence invariably lead to omnipresent sound.

Thus inspired by the impossibility of absolute silence,​​ Make A Silence ​- the 2018 edition of Hanoi New Music Festival – constitutes a survey into sound-makings in South East Asia​, a region traditionally seen as ‘silent’, absent in contemporary music discourses, yet has within and across its ​numerous​ contexts a vast sonic lexicon. Through the two strands of Symposium and Concert, the festival examines the complex synthesis resulting from a thickly-woven network of sounds – indigenous or originated elsewhere, based on the academia or non-academia.

The Symposium Program within Hanoi New Music Festival 2018 will take place from December 17 to 20, 2018 at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology (Nguyen Van Huyen Street, Cau Giay District, Hanoi), from 10AM till 4.30PM each day.

After 5PM each day, there will also be an interactive site-specific performance happening at various spaces inside the Museum.

Join us in our program!