hong-kai wang

Music While You Work

2010

20-channel sound installation, black rubber mats and safety stickers

Casino Luxembourg – Forum d'art contemporain, Luxembourg

The Casino Luxembourg invited Taiwanese artist Hong-Kai Wang for its first artist’s residence titled project room @ aquarium. During her residence, Hong-Kai Wang worked in collaboration with eight industrial firms in Luxembourg in order to analyse the daily sound environment of the workers. The recordings made on site constitute the raw material of her sound installation Music While You Work.

ArcelorMittal, Bruno, Chaux de Contern, Delphi, Husky Injection Molding Systems, Luxlait, Panelux and Pfeifer Sogéquip opened their doors to Hong-Kai Wang so that she could capture sounds. Beyond the recording of sounds generated by the machines and the activity of the workers, the artist carried out an in-depth reflection on the social space she was able to detect through contact with the workers’ world in Luxembourg.

During her residence, Hong-Kai Wang pursued her artistic approach of sound design by adapting it to the context of the Luxembourg workers’ universe. Recorded and then edited, all the sounds, noises and voices that constitute Music While You Work are inscribed in a complex space-time dimension articulated on several levels. More than a nostalgic and introspective quest (members of her family were workers in a sugar plant in her home town), Hong-Kai Wang is interested in the Luxembourg steel industry and its importance in post-industrial society. Hong-Kai Wang: „I’m perfectly aware of my position as a foreigner and my very temporary presence in this country. I perceive my role as that of a social agent who, through her external vision, hopes to make herself useful through a project which treats the social memory of the other.“

The ambient multilinguism apparent in the industries led Hong-Kai Wang to use it as a contextualisation tool to inform the sound landscape of Music While You Work, thus introducing a form of poetry into the work. The title, borrowed from a 1940s BBC radio programme (which, under the auspices of the government, was aimed at increasing workers’ productivity by making them listen to joyful popular music) also refers to the human dimension in her work. Presented in the form of a sound installation in the „Aquarium“ area – the former „Casino Bourgeois“… – it humourously refers to what „is missing“ in the original BBC radio programme: the voice of the workers.

-- Excerpts from Casino Luxembourg press release written by Nadine Clemens

ArcelorMittal, June 2010. Photo by Christine Walentiny