The Embargo of Silence

Yuen Chee Wai, Louis Quek, Cheryl Ong, DuckUnit

The Embargo of Silence is conceived and curated by Yuen Chee Wai. It consists of a concert performance that responds to the use of the silent-disco sound technology, where both performers and audiences listen to the work only through headphones. Three musicians Cheryl Ong, Louis Quek, and Yuen Chee Wai perform live, transitioning between improvised electronic music and DJ sets while siloed within luminous scaffolds designed by DuckUnit.

Here, silence is not presented as a void or absence but as a condition that changes how listening operates. It introduces a deliberately introspective mode of listening — one where sound does not assert itself into space but waits to be encountered. Rather than resonating publicly, the music trespasses directly into the listener’s inner terrain, allowing interpretation and response to unfold privately rather than collectively. The work shifts music from something that occupies the room to something that occupies the body. Every listener becomes a singular room. This choreography is both possessional and processional. No listener can be certain of what another is hearing: shared yet unverified, withheld yet unapologetic. This is the secrecy of the medium—the embargo of silence.

Yuen Chee Wai (Singapore) is a musician, artist, designer, and curator. Often inspired by ideas drawn from philosophical and literary texts, and perspectives glimpsed through the filmic eye and photographic lens, Yuen’s stylistic oeuvre in improvised music is marked by internalized reflections on memory and loss, invisibility and indeterminacy. In 2008, together with Otomo Yoshihide (Japan), Ryu Hankil (South Korea), and Yan Jun (China), he formed FEN (Far East Network), a improvised music unit focusing on the multifaceted networks and collaborations between musicians and artists in Asian countries. He is also a member of the music group The Observatory, in which he plays guitar, synth, and electronics. He tours extensively with FEN and The Observatory, and has presented at MIMI Festival, Lausanne Underground Music and Film Festival, All Ears Festival, Ftarri Festival, Gwangju Biennale and CTM Festival.