听潮 [The Sound of Impermanence]: 1. Finding Putuo
By Wong Zihao and Liu Diancong; forthcoming, August 2025.
Part of a set of travelling exhibits, shown at the cities Singapore, Santiago, and Delhi, amongst others, for the third edition of the Listening Biennial, 2025. In collaboration with curatorial partners and biennial programmers: Alecia Neo [and Kahgay Ng] (Singapore); Soledad García Saavedra (Chile); and Suvani Suri (India).
15 February 2025, Singapore.
7.30pm, low tides at +0.30m.
We left the city in the hope of finding Putuo—but not the geographical place of the mountain (that is also an island) as the name refers to. Instead, it was a metaphorical Putuo that we found in the shifting edges of an intertidal landscape that comes visible in the low tide once or twice a month. The rhythmic sound of the tides receding and then returning up-shore recall the cave at the foot of Putuo where the changing tides could be heard. It was there, as a story tells, that the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara Guanyin (whose name translates as the “Observer of Sounds”) gained enlightenment by listening to the coming and going of the tides.
Finding Putuo (2025) is a 15-minute soundwork looping in a cyclic recounting of the artists’ bodily translocations from city centre to coastal periphery, and back again. When the tides become audible, the grounded-ness of the concrete-city dissolves underfoot to muddy material impermanence. The artwork is a call to pause and observe the sounds of the tides amidst daily life. Each coming and going is an opportunity to find our little Putuos.
