Memory Reflections

Memory Reflections is a site-specific audio installation that projects the sound of a Songjiang array's gongs and drums toward the museum’s exterior windows. Reflected by the glass and the architecture, the sounds reverberate throughout the exhibition space. Historically, Songjiang battle arrays served multiple functions as local community organizations, martial arts training, and forms of settlement defense, and have also more recently been mobilized in the Tapani Incident and the Anti-5th Naphtha Cracker Movement in Houjin. The work brings a familiar vernacular soundscape of contemporary Tainan into an art museum that bears the historical marks of colonial governance. By connecting everyday sounds with historical memory, it explores the latent potential for collective action embedded within civil society.