Hong-Kai Wan is a sound artist from Taiwan. Radio Papesse met her at the 54.th Venice Biennial and together we talked about her work, her approach to sound and her personal way to social engagement.
According to her, sound is tool: a tool to better comprehend the social dynamics we live in, and a tool both to interpret cultures that do not belong to us (but we occasionally cross) and to beter know/understand our enviroment.
Hong-Kai Wang, Music while we work, 2011.
At the 54th Venice Biennial, sound is the protagonist of The Heard and the Unheard. Soundscape Taiwan show and it appears both as a medium and as a metaphorical site for political actions. By adopting sound as both substance and aesthetic form, the exhibition explores the non-mainstream cultural context of contemporary Taiwanese society through the work of two artists and the inclusion of the Sound Library/Bar.
In Music While We Work, Hong-Kai Wang investigates the collective experience of listening and recording at a specific social space of labor and production. Returning to her hometown Huwei, Taiwan, Wang collaborates with an over 100-year-old sugar factory and invites a group of retired workers and their spouses to return to the historic industrial site. Through recording workshops they learn to take charge of the microphone and to later record sounds found at their former workplace.
Hong-Kai Wang, Music while we work, 2011.