Tan Bone — Joshua Weitzel

Tan Bone is an international sound art collective researching noise as a gesture of protest and of solidarity amid the recent military coup in Myanmar. Founded in 2021 by li li k.s.a, Joshua Weitzel and Sam Tsao they use means of composition, field recording, sound installation, lecture performance and web-apps, often featuring works from other activists and artists from Myanmar. Tan Bone’s most notable work is the work cycle Sound Pot, which features original objects from the ‘Pots-and-Pans-Movement’ that protested the military junta of Myanmar every night in the immediate aftermath of the military coup. The Pots on display belonged to young men who took part in the movement and were murdered by the military or related security forces. An interactive companion app developed by Sam Tsao informs the audience about the people behind the pots and allows the audience to experience the sounds of the pots and pans movement by shaking their mobile phones. In some versions of the cycle, cookingware is turned into speakers by using exciters. Later versions of Sound Pot also include pots from living activists as well as objects from the Kachin region in northern Myanmar,

The work has been shown, among others, at Poush (Aubervillers, 2023), documenta fifteen (Kassel, 2022), Treehouse NDSM (Amsterdam, 2022), Dialogues Festival (Edinburgh, 2022), God’s House Tower (Southampton, 2022), Errant Sound (Berlin, 2022), WTF Gallery (Bangkok, 2022), Atelier des Artistes en Exile (Paris, 2022), Opening Sound Art Festival (Trier, 2021), Marburger Kunstverein (2021), as well as Betontonton (Cologne, 2023), Myanmar Bike (Baden-Württemberg, 2023), Hr2 Kultur (2023).

Tan Bone has been kindly supported by Academie der Künste Berlin, Atelier des Artistes en Exile, Institut Francais Yangon, Goethe Institut Yangon, art research sound.