PARASOPHIA 京都国際現代芸術祭2015

Hong-Kai Wang (王虹凱)
b. 1971 in Huwei, Yunlin County, Taiwan; based in Vienna and Taipei
www.w-h-k.net

Works in the exhibition
Music While We Work, 2011
Multi-channel sound and two-channel video installation (39 min. 17 sec.) with documentary video (31 min. 57 sec.)

Dancers of the Millions, 2015
Multimedia installation with video, desks, bookshelves, reference materials, etc.

See all installation views at higher resolution: www.flickr.com/photos/parasophia/sets/72157656847984032

Hong-Kai Wang is currently a PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In 2011 she was one of the artists representing Taiwan at the Venice Biennale, exhibiting Music While We Work (2011), built around recordings of everyday labor made in a series of workshops by former workers of Taiwan Sugar Huwei Factory, part of Huwei’s formerly thriving sugar industry built during Japanese ruling, and their family members. In What's the Musical Consequence of Change? (2013), twelve composers were asked to create music studies based on a disjointed conversation they shared on their experiences of crossing geopolitical border, while Oath of Love (2013) seeks to explore the meaning of “local” and interrogate the visible/invisible border that defines it. Projects such as these are built on long-running conversations with other people and patient, persistent collaborative labor. They are an incisive sociopolitical analysis and examination of the generation and dynamics of public spaces, of social interrelations, and of the creation, saving and deletion of cultural memory. Wang’s works are reports in the form of works of art, employing sound, video, performance, workshops, and text as media.
For Parasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture 2015, Wang presents Music While We Work, based on audio recordings of everyday labor collected by retired workers and their spouses at a sugar factory in Wang’s hometown of Huwei, part of Taiwan’s once-thriving sugar industry built during Japanese rule. In addition, she exhibits her new research project Dancers of the Millions, which presents viewers with an ongoing discursive study of the historical context in Music While We Work as a means of reconstructing the interwoven geopolitical relationship and collective social memories of Taiwan and Japan.

• Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art