T'ang Boogie set to music by erhu master Guo Gan
"In 1973, T'ang Boogie was a new and singular work born from a surrealist game but also from T'ang's detachment. In 2019, T'ang Boogie appears to us as a virtual body - erasable and temporary - made from physically existing cells and now scattered among collectors. The original film is silent but Tom Tam, who was holding the camera, had told me about their initial intention to set it to music.
When I met Guo Gan thanks to a concert performer friend, he saw there a "free, generous and daring" act, a rejection of the materiality of the works but not of their existence and offered himself to set the Boogie to music. The result is surprising, captivating and somehow updates the oeuvre, which for some purists will not be appropriate. But the meeting between Guo Gan and T'ang's work having taken place, it is necessary to report on it and everyone will have the possibility to review the two versions at leisure to appreciate the differences produced in the perception of the images, their memorization and perhaps the feeling that it will generate.
Guo Gan's music, entitled "Drunken Ink", frames and strengthens the original mean of communication, the film, without falsifying its content; it catalyzes the process of perception and assimilation of the Boogie as a whole without, however, preventing us from returning to the source of "information", that is, the works that we can learn to identify and recognize. From this viewpoint and paradoxically, T'ang Boogie is a communication space that allows freedom of observation and analysis; a freedom that has become very rare in the digital age.
T'ang Boogie, silent or set to music can fascinate, hypnotize or frighten others. It is obvious that it is not "for all audiences" but reserved for those who still understand that the first adventure is above all that of the eye." - Philippe Koutouzis