Burial for a hungry ghost > performance curated by Jaclyn Quaresma > Images Festival (Toronto) > 2025 

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Burial for a hungry ghost is a lecture-performance that stages a ceremonial farewell for Ghost Tape #10, a psychological warfare tool deployed by the US military during the Vietnam-American War. This sonic-spiritual weapon, designed to instill fear and psychological distress, becomes the spectral center of artist Annie Wong’s inquiry into sound as both a weapon and a vessel for memory, resistance, and mourning.

 

Through a series of encounters that traverse the divided landscapes of North and South Vietnam, the story-telling performance traces the ideological battlegrounds encoded in sound—propaganda Red music, banned Western music, and Buddhist chants. By weaving together these distinct registers, Burial for a Hungry Ghost listens for the echoes of past struggles reconciling the ways in which sound has been wielded to command, console, and control.

 

At its core, the work is an act of reckoning, both political and spiritual. As Annie stages the burial of this manufactured ghost, she simultaneously asks: How do we listen to history’s phantoms without becoming captive to them? Through this layered engagement with sound, video, and storytelling, Burial for a Hungry Ghost extends beyond historical documentation into a speculative ritual—one that gestures toward sonic and spiritual relief, remembrance, and the possibility of release. 

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Curatorial statement by Jaclyn Quaresma, Artistic Director of Images Festival 

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Audio recording available here. 

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