VICTORIA
PHAM
artist | archaeologist | composer
'While Chase’s performance was the main event, the warm-up act – experimental sound-art collective Sonant Bodies (Victoria Pham and James Hazel) with flautist Sarah Monk – did much to prime the audience. The 20-minute set, for which the audience was blindfolded, began with the Heartbeat exercise from Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice, the audience tapping, then clapping their own heartbeats (easier said than done), in a polyrhythmic, communal sound-ritual. This evolved into performances of Monk’s Rain, the first movement from Pham’s Modes of Transportation and Hazel’s Salt and Wind Conspiracies, in an organically flowing, immersive set that had the unsighted audience tuning in to music that could come from any direction.'
Angus McPherson for Limelight Magazine, 2018.
5 out of 5 stars
MEDIA
Selected reviews, interviews, responses and profiles of Victoria and her work.
'The program was wonderfully arranged to take you from the introspective percussivness of Pauline Oliveros' exercise Heartbeat, which carried over the top of Sarah Monk's Rain to the equally immersive and corporeal Modes of Transportation by Victoria Pham, and Salt and Wind Conspiracies by James Hazel.'
Kate Tribe for ClassikON
WORDS
A selection of published writings by Victoria.
'Re:sounding is a multi-faceted project exploring the Đông Sơn drum, central to Vietnamese culture, put together by Australian artists James Nguyen and Victoria Pham. Nguyen and Pham have sat with the intricately-decorated Đông Sơn drum, considered it from many angles, let it resonate. Their response encompasses research, sound experimentation and performance...
It was piquant, nostalgic; although the nostalgia was more for the tattered remnants of Vietnamese culture passed down through family memories, rather than for a clean cut origin story.
...
You’ve got to sit through it so you can experience the flood of questions that follow. Like how their music relates, reflects, replaces the traditional sound of the Đông Sơn. Like how Vietnamese culture – any culture – is so much more nuanced and multi-layered than any one version of the story of Au Co. Like how listening to a wall of noise for an extended period evokes feelings of claustrophobia, anger and transcendence.
Maybe I did get something out of it after all. Weird shit par excellence.'