Ruptured Rhetoric

Abstract

Under the pressure of the political environment, Chinese immigrant communities of a new sort have had to form in the UK. From 2020 to 2022, strict COVID-19 policies enforced by the Chinese government left a large number of Chinese nationals stranded overseas. Concurrently, the political conflicts in Hong Kong since 2019 and shifting geopolitical dynamics in China prompted a significant influx of Hong Kong citizens emigrating to the UK. Within this context, soundwork has emerged as a powerful implement for shaping ideology, aesthetics, identity, and subjectivity in these immigrant and diaspora communities. Amid these challenges, ethnic Chinese sound artists based in the UK actively contribute to the construction of Sinophone communities, incorporating the local culture while challenging the homogenized concept of “Chineseness” in terms of a new, critical epistemology. These Sinophone communities take place in venues such as performance spaces, art galleries, and public areas. Artistic activism plays a pivotal role, with sound art serving as a potent medium of expression. Artists such as Chris Zhongtian Yuan, Bo Choy, Yarli Allison, and On Yee Lo employ various forms of artistic expression, including video arts, installations, films, and performances, to capture the political circumstances and psychological states of these communities. By drawing on theoretical frameworks from Sinophone theory and sound studies, this paper analyzes the soundworks of four artists of the Chinese ethnic or Hong Kong diaspora based in London, focusing particularly on the protest, storytelling, ritual, resistance, nostalgia, and mythological elements in their works’ sonic effects.