In the Mood for Love: Reimagining the Music from the Films of Wong Kar Wai

Seating for this event is limited. Proof of vaccination is required for entry, and we encourage attendees to wear masks during the program.

About the Series:

ANALOG/DIALOG is a new event series presented in partnership with Ace Hotel Brooklyn. Each month, BOMB Magazine invites a pair of artists for an intimate dialogue and performance to explore what inspires them, what challenges them, where they are, and where they want to go.

About the Event:

Our next ANALOG/DIALOG will feature an original mini-suite drawn from the music of legendary Cantonese filmmaker Wong Kar Wai, spanning his filmography from Chungking Express and Days of Being Wild to Happy Together and In the Mood for Love. Re-imagined and arranged for live performance by recording artists Ray Suen and John Chao, the performance draws on the iconic scores and songs of Wong Kar Wai’s films, recontextualised for our times, including the use of found sounds of Taipei, Hong Kong, and Bangkok, as well as contemporary instrumentation. The performance also features a visual reinterpretation of scenes and images of Wong Kar Wai by the visual artists MORAKANA.

With a career-spanning retrospective this past year at Lincoln Center Film Center, Janus, and IFC, Wong Kar Wai is a director of the moment and having a tremendous revival. His work reflects the great transformation that Hong Kong and Asia have undergone over the past decades. And as artists and musicians whose practice and body of work concerns itself with memory, sound, and place, we think this would be a timely, moving, and interesting work to share with BOMB’s audience.

The program is a 25-30 minute performance of an original piece, written specifically for BOMB and Ace Hotel, based on main themes from across Wong Kar Wai’s films, Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express, Happy Together, and In the Mood for Love, including Shigeru Umebayashi’s famous “Yumeji’s Theme,” Wong Faye’s Cantonese cover of The Cranberries’s “Dreams,” and other main motifs. The music will be accompanied by a motion collage drawn from the movies as well as found footage of the eras referenced in the movies, reinterpreted by MORAKANA.

About the Artists:

John Chao is a music artist, sound designer, and installation artist. John’s music has been heard on TV, commercials, and he has performed with Cai Guo Qiang and other artists.

MORAKANA (Tiri Kananuruk and Sebastián Morales Prado) are performers and artists exploring the hybridization of living systems, robotics, the manipulation of sound in the context of technological consumerism.

Ray Suen is a multi-instrumentalist, performer, music director, composer, and arranger. He has performed and toured with acts such as The Killers, The Flaming Lips and Childish Gambino among others and is currently the Music Director for Lorde. He has contributed to recordings by Childish Gambino and Kamasi Washington as well as the motion picture soundtracks of Bill & Ted Face The Music and Trolls: World Tour. Suen works and lives in Los Angeles.