Western gaze, multi-cultural flashbacks

When I came up with the idea for Sound Envelope of sharing field recordings between Hong Kong and London, I never realised how much it might affect me if I took part myself. I arrived in Hong Kong just over a year ago after spending the majority of my life in the UK. Although I have so many fond memories especially of London, I thought I had moved on. So when I heard the field recordings from the London participants and their stories behind them, I was quite unprepared for the rush of emotions which followed; the sounds reawakened thoughts and sensations which really took me back to the dear city and made me realise how important it still is to me.

The soundscape consists of my field recording from Hong Kong interspersed with recordings from London by Mathias Arrignon and Dereck De Abreu Coelho. The Hong Kong recording is from the former site of the infamous Kowloon Walled City, an object of great fascination for the West. The slum city no longer exists and in its place is the Kowloon Walled City Park used for family walks and picnics, photo shoots and exercising which often involves slapping oneself very loudly – the bane of my life whenever I’ve attempted to make field recordings here. The London recordings are from Peckham Rye Lane and East Street Market and offer a glimpse of its multi-culturalism that I took for granted whilst living there. The recordings fade in and out; sometimes this may be obvious and at other times it may be harder to distinguish the sounds from the two cities. The result is perhaps akin to Hong Kong as seen or heard through the Western gaze with flashbacks of multi-cultural London.