Bryan Au Yong

Artist Statement

In his 1962 novel Island, philosopher Aldous Huxley wrote: “Western intellectuals are all sitting-addicts. That’s why most of you are so repulsively unwholesome.” My training as a composer included repulsively unwholesome years sitting with paper and pencils drawing circles and lines. My life as a musician awakens as I sketch Forest Requiem, where people listen to and sing with the trees. I encourage you to join me as I walk and fold, reach and discover.

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Byron Au Yong creates participatory events Variety calls “claustrophobic and expansive, intimate and existential, personal and political all at once.” Examples include Activist Songbook to counteract hate and energize movements, Kidnapping Water: Bottled Operas for hiking singers and percussionists, Turbine for the 200th anniversary of the Fairmount Waterworks, and Yíjū 移居 (to migrate) for the Jack Straw New Media Gallery. Honors include a Creative Capital Award and Time Warner Foundation Fellowship.

Artist Recommended Resources

• Read: Up in Flames: The Ephemeral Art of Pasted-Paper Sculpture in Taiwan, by Ellen Johnston Laing and Helen Hui-ling Liu (2004), Gleeson call no. NB1270.P3 L35 2004
• Watch: Golden Venture, documentary directed by Peter Cohn (2006)
• Visit: Rainforest Action Network
• Visit: STAND.earth