On Any Given Day: A Soundwalk at Hong Lim Complex

On Any Given Day: A Soundwalk at Hong Lim Complex

Soundwalk

Date: Sat, 30 Aug, 2 PM - 4 PM

Meeting point at Hong Lim Complex: Sook Ching Inspection Centre Historic Marker https://share.google/BTWvLxBgyKalF6vlj

Presented by The Listening Biennial, a highlight of The Singapore Night Festival

For The Listening Biennial, Third Edition, Chong Li-Chuan made a soundscape composition entitled On Any Given Day. It is an 8.5-minute stereo piece created from field recordings made at Hong Lim Complex in Singapore. The work is a meditation on the site’s layered history, specifically its role during the Japanese Occupation in 1942. The piece positions listening as an act of remembrance and woven into the soundscape is a personal thread: the story of Li-Chuan’s grandfather’s improbable escape from death during Sook Ching.

Extending from this composition, On Any Given Day: A Soundwalk at Hong Lim Complex is a 60-minute silent walk guided by Li-Chuan. It invites participants to attune to the sonic present of a site marked by public and personal trauma. Once the epicentre of forced separations, Hong Lim Complex now folds into the city’s everyday rhythms.

This walk offers a space for reflection, listening to the present, to what has been lost, and to what resounds. To walk is to remember. To listen is to resist forgetting.

Participant Notes:

• 2 hours includes a 60min soundwalk followed by dialogue with the artist
• Dress comfortably for walking and climbing of stairs.
• Bring a water bottle

About the Artist:

Chong Li-Chuan

CHONG Li-Chuan (b.1975) is a Singaporean composer who is passionate about philosophy, culture and the arts. Li-Chuan’s career in music and sound started in the late 90s, working as a composer and sound designer collaborating with practitioners in theatre, dance, spoken word, architecture, filmmaking, design, and visual art. Li-Chuan’s creative endeavours include music composition, sound design, site-specific art and performance, installation, free improvisation, and collaborative work, to continually explore the poetics of sound and listening.

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About The Listening Biennial

Since 2021, The Listening Biennial has sought to foster research and discussion on listening, recognising its transformative power as key to enriching personal lives and social initiatives, and which supports ethical and political practices. As part of the Singapore Night Festival, the artists of The Listening Biennial invite you to enter the space of Third Listening, to listen out for a plurality of life-forms as well as pathways of interconnection between seemingly irreconcilable differences.

Read more: https://listeningbiennial.net/biennial-editions/third-edition

Singapore Edition: https://www.brack.sg/index.php/2025/07/12/the-listening-biennial-third-edition/