Out There :: Sound Artistry

Artist Janet Cardiff is interested in what she calls "three-dimensional sound. It's invisible, but it goes into your body." Right now Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art [SFMOMA] are co-presenting Cardiff's immersive sound installation "The Forty Part Motet" in its California debut at Fort Mason Center, through Jan. 18, 2016. It's the inaugural exhibition in Gallery 308, a newly renovated historic space that's part of the center's Building A.

Created in 2001 and considered Cardiff's masterwork, "The Forty Part Motet" is a reworking of "Spem in Alium" by English composer Thomas Tallis (ca. 1505-85) in a 40-part choral performance. Sung by the Salisbury Cathedral Choir, individually recorded parts play back through 40 speakers arranged in an oval formation. Visitors can walk through this "sound sculpture" listening to individual voices from the choir as well as the combined symphony of sounds, on a 14-minute audio loop.

Each speaker becomes, in effect, an anthropomorphized person in this virtual choir, just as the 16th-century music "becomes a soundtrack to the city" as you look out the gallery windows, Cardiff said at the press preview last week. The artist said she's interested in "the potency of music to move you," and the spiritual and emotive qualities of her installation are very much in evidence. "The Forty Part Motet" is a truly sublime artwork that enters through a few senses.

Tickets are free and can be reserved at MotetTickets.org. Due to anticipated demand, visitors are encouraged to reserve tickets in advance. A limited number of same-day tickets will be available to visitors throughout the run.

SE Asian Gay Glances

If Paris is the City of Light, it seems sometimes that San Francisco is the City of Film Fests. Every year new and specialized ones pop up. This fall sees the debut of the San Francisco International Southeast Asian Film Festival, produced by Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network [DVAN], coming up on Nov. 20-22. Opening night, Fri., Nov. 20, transpires at ATA in the Mission, followed by all-day screenings Sat. & Sun., Nov. 21 & 22, at New People Cinema in Japantown. This year is the 40th anniversary of the tragic and misguided US military meddling in SE Asia, and the film fest seeks to make connections "between wars then and now, overseas and on our streets." Gender identity, love, and LGBT issues are not absent from the fest's offerings. Here are a few films that come complete with a gangle (gay angle), described from press materials.

Big Gay Love (2014): "Jonathan Lisecki stars in this unconventional take on the standard Hollywood romcom formula, as a socially awkward gay guy in the stock Meg Ryan/Kate Hudson role, with a cult-TV heartthrob cast as his potential soulmate as they attempt to find Big Gay Love." Director Ringo Le is an Asian American filmmaker who is of Vietnamese descent. (11/22, New People)
Scene from directors Swann Dubus and Tran Phuong Thao's Finding Phong. Photo: Courtesy Swann Dubus

Finding Phong (2015): In directors Swann Dubus and Tran Phuong Thao's documentary we meet Phong, who "grew up in a small town in the center of Vietnam, the youngest of six children. From the time he was a young boy, Phong felt like he was a girl with a mismatched boy's body. Not until he moved to Hanoi to attend university at 20 did Phong discover that he was not the only one in the world with this predicament. His dream to find himself by physically changing sex becomes a reality several years later. The movie follows Phong's struggle during these years, with excerpts from his intimate video journal, along with his encounters with family, friends and doctors, all of whom must come to terms with the boy's determination to become a complete girl." (11/22, New People)

Two short films from the POV: First person documentary + panel program have gay hooks. Distance Between (9 min.): "Filmmaker R.J. Lozada has offered to be a sperm donor for a lesbian couple wanting to conceive. Since he knows he might not play an active part of the child's life, Lozada's documentary serves as a sort of love letter to the child, in an attempt to establish a paternal bond." My Beautiful Resistance (8 min.): "Director Penny Baldado, owner of Oakland's Cafe Gabriela, originally moved to the U.S. to live as an out lesbian because she felt that she couldn't do that in her native Philippines. Her status as an undocumented immigrant becomes an obstacle as she attempts to establish her American life." (both 11/22, New People)