PARASOPHIA 京都国際現代芸術祭2015

For Open Research Program 13, we present a workshop with the Taiwanese artist Hong-Kai Wang, who is currently a PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In 2011, as one of the artists representing Taiwan at the Venice Biennale, Wang exhibited Music While We Work (2011), a multichannel video installation that was built around recordings of everyday labor made in a series of workshops by former workers of Taiwan Sugar Huwei Factory, which was part of Huwei’s formerly thriving sugar industry built during Japan’s occupation of Taiwan, and their family members. For Parasophia, in addition to presenting Music While We Work, Wang is planning a new project with the working title Dancers of the Millions, which will be conducted in part in Kyoto. This Open Research Program will feature a discussion with local experts and cultural producers/makers based on Wang’s workshop in Huwei (2013–) and bibliographic sources on the history of the sugar industry in Taiwan. The video recording of this discussion will be reconfigured into an installation as part of the new project.

About the Open Research Program
The Artistic Director and his curatorial team will conduct part of their research for Parasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture 2015 publicly, in the form of lectures and other events in this program.

Hong-Kai Wang (王虹凱)
b. 1971 in Huwei, Yunlin County, Taiwan; based in Vienna and Taipei. Parasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture 2015 participating artist. Read more: Hong-Kai Wang