Gong (ฆ้อง) Gathering: Workshop & Participatory Performance Series

Select Tuesdays, September 17 - November 26, 2024

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC WITH RSVP

Duo Session 1 - elekhlekha x MORAKANA: เครือข่ายเสียงฆ้อง–On the Networks & Khong Wong Sound Cultures
Tuesday, September 17, 6:30-8:30 PM
Tuesday, October 1, 6:30-8:30 PM

Duo Session 2 - elekhlekha x an_outskirt: Songs of Grief
Tuesday, October 22, 6:30-8:30 PM
Tuesday, October 29, 6:30-8:30 PM

Duo Session 3 - elekhlekha x Melissa Almaguer: Rhythmic Exploration & Embodied Sonic Experiences
Tuesday, November 12, 6:30-8:30 PM
Tuesday, November 26, 6:30-8:30 PM

Artists and Organizers

elekhlekha อีเหละเขละขละ

Collaborators

MORAKANA
an_outskirt
Melissa Almaguer

Gong(ฆ้อง) Gathering: Workshop & Participatory Performance Series is a series of workshops, collaborative sound-making, and participatory performances inspired by a community gathering gong ensemble found throughout Southeast Asia. Gong(ฆ้อง) Gathering is a collaborative platform for sharing, exchanging ideas, and collective conscious raising where elekhlekha invite guest artist collaborators MORAKANA, an_outskirt, Melissa Almaguer, and participants to collectively investigate, consciously reflect on, and unfold Southeast Asia's layers of political complexity through the continuity of oral and aural history and sound cultures' lineage. We'll dive into different roots and communities and learn their way of collaborative sound-making, ritual, history, and political complexity. We create our work out of the struggle of unlearning the current dominant system, relearning our histories, and looking to discover a common ground from Southeast Asia, the Global South, and beyond the nation-state and define decolonized possibilities.

Gong(ฆ้อง) Gathering Workshop is unique in its approach, aiming to democratize interaction between participants. This is achieved through the technique of hocketing, where a flowing line of melodies and rhythms is distributed among all participants. This approach eliminates the role of the dominant force and underlines the agency of each individual who participates. Our public engagement is designed to be a learning experience, divided into three section sessions, each with one collaborator artist/collective and with two parts, one workshop and one participatory performance. We'll learn through collective listening of curated tracks, reading texts, and discussing and analyzing together by drawing from hocketing patterns and inspiration based on our research of various Southeast Asian sound cultures and tuning systems. The second part will be a collaborative sound-making performance between elekhlekha, participants, and guest artist collaborators responding to the prior session. The juxtaposition of ancestors' knowledge and new aesthetic reconfigured to a new context aims to reclaim agency, the long-lost innovation, and reimagine the new process and new mode of expression.

Workshop & Class Design:

• The technical is beginner-level friendly and designed to be easy to follow.

• The workshop's first part will include inspiration, text reading, listening sessions, and discussion. We’ll also introduce basic tools and hands-on sound-making.

• Please see the preparation of each session to know what to bring to the particular workshop.

• The second part of the session is a collaborative performance and sound participatory using some know-how from the first week of the session.

• Photography disclaimer: Please be aware that photographs, audio, and video recordings will be taken during this event. By attending, you consent to your image being captured and used for release, publication, exhibition, and promotional purposes, including but not limited to social media, websites, and other marketing materials. If you do not wish to be photographed, please inform the event staff. We appreciate your understanding and cooperation!

• If you have any specific needs or require accommodations to fully participate in this event, please contact us at least two weeks prior to the event. We will do our best to meet your requests.

Duo Session 1 - elekhlekha x MORAKANA: เครือข่ายเสียงฆ้อง–On the Networks & Khong Wong Sound Cultures

Duo Session 2 - elekhlekha x an_outskirt: Songs of Grief

Part 1: Tuesday, October 22, 6:30-8:30 PM
Part 2: Tuesday, October 29, 6:30-8:30 PM

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC WITH RSVP

This second duo session features guest collaborator an_outskirt. We will focus on the shared cultures between our cultures in Southeast Asian geography. While we have many in common, many are unique in their histories.

An immigrant's story is a tug-of-war. To locate the present, one always translates looking back into moving forward. Issues of coloniality/decoloniality, tradition, and culture are always at the forefront of every enunciation. The first week will be a workshop; an_outskirt will share different sound traditions that have, despite centuries of erasure, managed to survive and come down to them. The interlocking patterns of the Tongatong, or bamboo stomping tubes (improvised PVC tubes for the workshop), and an ancient song form, Tagulaylay, or elegy for the departed, are the traditions we will use as frameworks to confront forgotten ways of being in sound.

The following week will be a collaborative performance between elekhlekha, an_outskirt, and participants using the know-how and tools from the first session.

#gonggathering @elekhlekha @an_outskirt

Preparation (For the Sessions):

• We’ll provide PVC tubes for the sound-making workshop.

• The Duo session is designed to be rsvp in pairs (if you rsvp, please make sure to be able to rsvp on Oct 22 and Oct 29.)

Duo Session 3 - elekhlekha x Melissa Almaguer: Rhythmic Exploration & Embodied Sonic Experiences

Part 1: Tuesday, November 12, 6:30-8:30 PM
Part 2: Tuesday, November 26, 6:30-8:30 PM

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC WITH RSVP

The last duo session in the series features guest collaborator Melissa Almaguer. We will anchor the topic on the Southeast Asian rhythms practiced in gong ensembles using the participatory sound through our bodies and found objects. The participatory process with found objects is the heart of elekhlekha's Jitrs extended Gong Ensemble, inspired by the missing and disappearing gong instrument. In fact, in Southeast Asia and the Global South, we found parallel histories of the erasure and fading of sound cultures, rituals, and people's stories. 

For the workshop, elekhlekha and Melissa Almaguer will workshop and rehearse with participants on sound making using body, found objects, and collective aural memories to tune and create sounds and rhythms for community gatherings. 

The following week will be a collaborative performance between elekhlekha, Melissa Almaguer, and participants using the know-how and tools from the first session.

#gonggathering @elekhlekha @melialmaguer

Preparation (For the Sessions):

• Everyone brings a computer to join the exercises and sets up a virtual MIDI bus on the machine before coming to the session!

• Have a web browser (Chrome or Firefox) installed. (Safari is not supported)