Against Easy Listening is a group exhibition that scrutinizes the politics of listening and sound in everyday globalized life. With a roster of artists working in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, the exhibition consists of projects in installation, performance, sculpture, video, photography, and phonography.

The role of the aesthetic in this exhibition suggests other forms of knowing - how does one make sense of listening, what type of understanding is cultivated by the ear? How can hearing be a model for social engagement, a practice in tune with issues of community and locality, mediation and difference? Against Easy Listening is an exercise in polyphony: public speech turns into song, voices once dormant or unheard surface to the center for the ear rarely differentiates signal from noise.

With: Cattle Depot Community Concern Group, Huang Xiaopeng, Phoebe Hui, Viet Lê, Anson Mak, Mixrice, Mieko Shiomi, Society for Experimental Cultural Production, The Propeller Group (Phunam, Matt Lucero and Tuan Andrew Nguyen), Adrian Wong, Lyota Yagi, Zheng Bo

The exhibition also features a collection of sound organized by Society for Experimental Cultural Production including: Eric Anglès, Mary Walling Blackburn, Hitlike/ Zhang Liming, Jiang Zhi, Jaffa Lam, Viet Lê, Warren Leung, Anson Mak, Tuan Andrew Nguyen (with Wowy, Alan Hayslip, and The Propeller Group), Pak Sheung Chuen, João Vasco Paiva, Adrian Wong, Yao Chung-Han, Yeung Yang, Zhang Anding, Lee Kit and Su Wenxiang and others.

Steven Lam, the curator (image of Steve)
Steven Lam is a curator, artist, educator, and the Associate Dean of The Cooper Union School of Art in New York City, the United States. He has a MFA from the University of California, Irvine and currently teaches performance and sound theory in the Art History and Theory Department at the School of Visual Arts, NYC. Lam has developed exhibitions primarily for non-profit institutions and universities, often prioritizing his experience working in such pedagogical programs. Lam was a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program as well as a Lori Ledis Curatorial Fellow at Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, and was a research curator for the Third Guangzhou Triennial (2008) with CURATORS Gao Shiming, Sarat Maharaj, and Chang Tsong-zung. Recent curatorial works and collaborations include “...in a most dangerous manner” with Sarah Ross at SPACES Gallery, Cleveland, OH (2010); ‘Tainted Love’ with critic Virginia Solomon at La MaMa La Galleria, NYC (2009); ‘Free as Air and Water’ (2009) and 'The Crude and the Rare" (2010) with Saskia Bos at The Cooper Union; and ‘For Reasons of State’ with Angelique Campens and Erica Cooke at The Kitchen, NYC (2008). This is his second exhibition at 1a Space.

Opening Reception: 6.30-8pm, 19/11/2010