Conducted by Hong-Kai Wang and LARM 24/11 2011
Hong-Kai Wang is a Taiwanese artist presently based between Brussels, Belgium and Taipei, Taiwan. She studied political science at the National Taiwan University, followed by an MA in Arts and Media Studies at the New School University in New York. Wang has exhibited and performed internationally, most recently representing the Taiwan Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011) with the audio/video installation Music While We Work.
During her first visit to Copenhagen, Taiwanese sound artist Hong-Kai Wang will conduct a workshop in which participants are asked to listen and speak, musically.
For several years, Wang has been preoccupied with the critical potential of sound, in particular the politics of listening. She is now furthering her research into that of speech: how do we establish shared spaces of both listening and speaking and might there be a transformative capacity within listening and speaking as possible musical acts? Wang is especially interested in John Cage’s perception of music, which he has described as “…simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living”.
On Noveber 24, Wang and LARM Research Archive invite cultural workers, artists, researchers and students to participate in a workshop of attentive listening and speaking. Set in a country with the statistically highest GDP per capita in 2011, the workshop engages with the topic of human agency in precarious economic times. Wang asks, “Is it conceivable that maybe some day people will have renounced money with pleasure? Is this a foolish, over-simplistic proposal to fight our seemingly permanent monetary limbo that has simply become a way of life? What are our desires for power, manifested by money in everyday life, and how do we learn to clarify, if we really want what we think we want?”
During the discussion-based workshop, the participants will explore how to better listen and speak, and how this might constitute a collective political effort.
The workshop will be recorded and eventually translated and edited into a speech-based radio opera entitled How to be economically powerful, musically? to be staged at TheCube Space, Taipei in November 2012.
The workshop will be in English and registration is required. See http://www.larm-archive.org/vitale-arkiver/ for more info.