Samson Young

Muted Situations #2: Muted Lion Dance

In Muted Situations #2: Muted Lion Dance by Samson Young, Chinese lion dancers perform the auspicious procession traditionally presented at special occasions such as weddings or during the Lunar New Year. Yet, the customary percussive sound of drums and cymbals are absent. Instead, it is the sound of the performers’ physical exertion that comes to the forefront, revealing the beautiful, exhaustive rhythm of their craft—their feet hitting the ground, deep inhales and exhales, and the rustling of their clothes. This video is one of the early works in Muted Situations, a series that Young started in 2014 as text-based instructions for staging situations in which sonic foregrounds are muted. Young’s interventions consciously suppress dominant sounds and voices as a way to uncover the unheard and the marginalized. This process of muting also disrupts viewers’ expectations about familiar situations and make apparent certain assumptions about hearing and sounding. This approach to muting speaks to another form of artists’ experimental engagements with sound as a medium.