School of Music Visiting Artist Series
Music: W.F. Umi Hsu (pronouns they/them) was born in Taipei and moved to Virginia at age 12. Hsu is a sound ethnographer and artist whose practice is driven by inquiries about sound and migratory communities. Hsu currently explores Taiwan’s street sound cultures in relation to the urban underclass experience of city development, mobility, and technology. Working to create social change through sound, Hsu leads two projects: LA Listens, a community engagement platform that reflects on LA’s changing sensory and social ecology; and mobile placemaking collective Movable Parts. Hsu also writes songs about the melancholic postcolony in ghost pop band Bitter Party. With a PhD in Critical and Comparative Studies from the University of Virginia Music Department, Hsu has received fellowships and awards from National Endowment for the Arts, American Council for Learned Society, Shuttleworth Foundation, and LA County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and is an adjunct professor at USC and Art Center College of Design.