汾阳的喧嚣 is a short book written by Morgan Quaintance that offers an extended reading of the use and design of diegetic and non-diegetic sound in Jia Zhangke’s 1997 film Xiao Wu.
汾阳的喧嚣 was written as the second publication in Courtisane Film Festival’s Echoes of Dissent series, a project devoted to the politics of the soundtrack. This series is part of the research project of the same name within KASK & Conservatorium / School of Arts Ghent. The book will be available to purchase from the end of March here: https://www.courtisane.be/nl/publication
‘Noise in Xiao Wu is not a negative presence. It reinforces the thereness of Zhangke’s Fenyang, the inner and outer lives of his characters. Noise is articulate, just as it is in the cacophonous zones of cities around the world. Who knows if it was modernity en masse that constituted the vulgar soundscape for RM Schafer when he was predicting sonic doom in 1977… But if modernity is vulgar, what then is refined? The absence of sound, one might guess: a library, a Buddhist temple, a suburb, death. Aesthetic value judgements and speculations aside silence is, well, silent. Noise on the other hand, is filled with information. Noise speaks, and in the Fenyang of Xiao Wu it never shuts up. Well then, let’s listen to what it is saying.’
(Morgan Quaintance)
Morgan // Quaintance // ----------- 