Taiwanese Social Soundscapes: Hong-Kai Wang and Yu-Hsien Su

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Sound is a medium, but it can have wider meanings attached to it. Sounds create the fabric of a society, but they can also turn from symbols of vitality into fastidious noises or can assume a political value when hinting at censored and repressed voices.

Two Taiwanese artists recently based their projects (presented at this year’s Venice Art Biennale) on sounds.

A graduate in political science with an MA in media studies, Hong-Kai Wang mainly uses sound as a way to investigate social relations and explore new social spaces. For her project “Music While We Work”, Wang went back to her hometown, Huwei, and asked the retired workers of a 100-year old sugar factory to return to this historical site, one of only two plants still in operation in Taiwan.

Here they recorded the sounds of their former work environment, a particularly symbolic place since sugar production was vitally important in the colonial history of the country. The sounds were later manipulated artistically in the second stage of the project to recreate a sort of architectural music-space.

A student at the Graduate Institute of Plastic Arts at Tainan National University of the Arts, Yu-Hsien Su founded his own independent record label, indi-indi, and released a selection of performances by amateurs including foreign boatmen, a scavenger and a vagrant.

Recording under a highway viaduct, on the deck of a Taiwanese fishing boat or in a recycling site filled with discarded plastic, Drummer No. 10, Group Java and Plastic Man redefine through Su’s “Sounds of Nothing” project the traditional rock aesthetic, while using music to express their individuality, break social barriers and put an end to their condition of outcasts in which modern society relegated them.

While the two projects may not have any direct connections with politics, they assume new meanings if analysed taking into consideration the thirty-eight years (1949-1987) of martial law in Taiwan. The people of Taiwan regained their voices when martial law was lifted, while the protagonists of these two projects become the voices of a modern multitude telling their stories or building temporal social spaces through sounds.

Hong-Kai Wang

What inspired your "Music While We Work" project?
The problems I encountered in working on another project at Casino Luxembourg in 2010. In Luxembourg I collaborated with eight industrial sites where I collected sounds generated by workers’ on-site activities. Language barriers, lack of adequate training and limited knowledge of the local situation on my end forced me to re-define the project from working alongside the workers to becoming an active listener and observer. Whereas in this new project, my personal investment on and attachment to the place and the people who live there generated different questions.

Would you compare it to a sort of sound-documentary or an architectural music-space?
There is no narrative in this piece. It is really about a temporary social space constructed by sounds. The American composer Robert Ashley once noted that the most important and uninvestigated architectural music-space of our time is the imaginary space made possible by the microphone. "Music While We Work" echoes his reflection and seeks to further investigate this particular space built by shared listening and recording within a century-old sugar factory.

What fascinated you the most about the sounds of Taiwan you recorded?
In this project, I didn’t do the recording myself but I invited a group of people - the retired workers and their spouses, whose lives and work had revolved around the factory for decades - to collect the sounds that fascinated them. I was guided by them through the factory as they navigated it by listening. What fascinated me the most is what they heard through the microphone but I couldn’t hear with my ears in the same place and at same time.

Do you feel the project had an impact on yourself?
The recordings took place at a community that I left in my adolescence. This community has been always a home but I always wanted to be elsewhere - first Taipei and then New York. Years later, I ended up working with these people who never left that place. It was a long, winding path for me to reconnect with the “home” I left behind.

Did you find it difficult to reawaken your personal memories through sound in your project?
I look for and listen for what is unheard among the audibles. Personal memories are just as elusive and invasive as sounds can be.

What does sound represent for you?
Sound is a means to compose poetry in life.

In which ways can sound help us understanding the needs and problems of society?
The composer Edgard Varèse once reflected that people usually don’t know how long it takes for sound to speak for itself. In my practice, I often ask the audience to make the effort and to take time to engage in the act of listening, because to do so is political and because it instantly changes the power relationship between the listener and what was unheard and what is to be heard. For instance, in "Music While We Work", I tried to push this examination further and perhaps make it more accessible by creating a platform where listening can be seen as a potential political agent in contrast to the visual referents of the social spaces that exist therein. What can be at stake when you are listening and after you’ve listened? What could be at stake needs to be asked not just by you or me, but also by a lot of people who share similar concerns. What should we do to avoid reacting as conditioned by society’s attributes or even by the position we believe we have chosen? When you read poetry, you don’t necessarily think about contributing to society. However, when you are making poetry in the sense of defining a unique language through sound, you are listening for things you don’t hear easily, and then whether you will find them or not is a political process.

Do you feel that Taiwanese artists are achieving global recognition?
On the global level, this has a lot to do with the power of China, whether we who are of unequivocal Taiwanese identity, like it or not. Maybe we should ask: Is the “Taiwanese artist” a globally recognised and perceived entity?

Yu-Hsien Su

What inspired your “Sounds of Nothing” project?
I like to buy albums. Most of the time, what I bought wasn't simply music or images, but rather a document which told us how that particular band or musician was introduced to the masses. An album can say something more than just the music or the video itself and I think it is a good way to express oneself. For this reason, I hoped I could use this format as a medium for creation. Besides, I enjoy having open jammming session with someone who cannot play instruments at all since it is experimental and funny.

In which way do the people involved in your project challenge the expectations of the listeners?
They are not ordinary music performers, but they are expressing something else through issuing an album. This challenges and changes our views and preconceptions about the independent production of albums.

Would you consider this project as a social protest or does this project have any connections with the protest music tradition coming from Taiwan or with the sound liberation movement?
I don't think this project has anything to do with protest music. It's more a project involving the liberation of the imagination, or, consensus liberation. I don't care whether the sound is connected with social issues or the sound itself has any possibility. I try to represent the sound in a way that it can make the individual heard and seen since I think we have to challenge the way we talk and express ourselves.

In your opinion, which was the most moving or fun recording you did with Plastic Man, Drummer No. 10 and Group Java?
The most interesting part of it was that I had to meet these people without preconceived ideas. I remember that, in the case of Plastic Man, I just passed by and said "Nice to meet you, I am an artist. I want to make a project with you, but I don't know what we can do together. Can we make friends beforehand?" It took me three months to get to know him and the people around him. We ate together at the recycling site and I started getting acquainted with their stories. Then one day, after three months had passed, I suddenly realised that I had interviewed Uncle Mao about his life but had totally neglected something more important than his life stories. Indeed, when Uncle Mao talked about plastic, he looked so confident and charming and at that moment I realised plastic was going to be the protagonist of the project connected with him.

The video about Uncle Mao/Plastic Man is very informative and allows the watcher to discover a lot about the different types of plastic, but it has also got an ironic side to it. Do you feel that irony and humour help you delivering your message?
Sarcasm and humor are additional characteristics of this project. Although these may not be the most important things, I do believe they are what makes art so attractive. I also think they have something to do with my personality, since I’m a funny guy.

Do you feel that through these recordings you also analysed your own experience of being an artist?
I like to be an artist who cannot be easily taken for granted. But I never doubt about my artist's identity. An artist can create a new indie brand and make an indie album or can make a meal and say a joke. The way of creating art is free. This is the most interesting and challenging part of creating art.

What does sound represent for you?
Sound is just sound, but the way we “use sound” interests me the most. For me, this is a kind of social model and you can falsify or reshape it.

In which way can sound help us understanding the needs and problems of society?
I am not sure if I am capable of answering this question. I guess "sound" leads us to witness how things should be defined, used and endowed with values. Even if it might not immediately indicate what people need and all the problems in our society, sound itself and its presence manifest everything there is to know in quite an obvious way.

Do you feel that Taiwanese artists are achieving global recognition?
I think we are facing an irritating problem at the moment: is it possible for us to get rid of the limitless fear from our disadvantaged status on the international scene?