Mar 3 | An exposition, not an exhibition Opening

Ari Benjamin Meyers
An exposition, not an exhibition
Opens March 11
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It’s time to relax around new music.

Lie on the floor and look up the barrel of a clarinet. Take in the sound waves of bassoon, guitar, guzheng and sheng, melodica and all the strings one could desire. Admire the dexterity of the able hands and lips of plainclothes professional musicians. Track down our friends across the city’s arts organizations for command amateur performances of newly-written 3-minute solos by local composers. Like live tiny desk concerts!

This March we want to put all this before you. You don’t need to know anything in advance or to worry that new music isn’t your field. All you have to do is show up during our special opening hours and let us blur some boundaries.

A warm welcome to Ari Benjamin Meyers who returned to Spring this week for his third visit. He is now preparing the above for our March 11 opening of his multi-sited show An exposition, not an exhibition.

“An exposition, not an exhibition is a program specifically created for Spring Workshop as an open research process. It stems from the collaborative spirit of the city’s cultural community, how people and organisations from the local landscape can transcend boundaries to create cross-disciplinary meta-works. This is not necessarily typical, but has a lot to do with the relationships and position of Spring Workshop within the local cultural landscape of Hong Kong. Using this as a springboard, the show can experiment with how we break the old rules of music, music-making and its institutions and propose new ones,” writes Meyers.

In the first location, Spring Workshop, Meyers will debut Litany and Rapture, a work that engages the members of the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble in an arduous durational performance of their entire repertoire, specially arranged by Meyers as “music on display.” The work thus offers an encyclopedic overview of and reckoning with what is commonly thought of as “contemporary music.” At the other six arts organizations—Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong Arts CentreM+Para Site, soundpocket and Things that can happen—Meyers has commissioned a set of new musical compositions/interventions that will be performed by staff members at their desks for intimate audiences, forming a live work entitled Hong Kong Solos. And a third new work, Anthem, is a unifying melody that all performers and audiences will intone as a choir.

On March 23 (Thur), to coincide with South Island Art Day during the Art Basel Hong Kong week, we have combined efforts with frieze magazine to co-present Music and the Museum, a discussion between composers/artists Ari Benjamin Meyers and Samson Young with our curator-at-large Christina Li, and chaired by frieze deputy editor Amy Sherlock. Join us for an insightful morning on the evolving cultural contexts in which contemporary music is produced, performed and collected.

We didn’t forget about our tiniest audience at Spring (who may also be our most musically open-minded), and will present a children’s music workshop led by composer Shane Aspegren on March 18 (Sat) when the kids will sample ambient sounds and create compositions.

It will be a month of adventure for ears and spirit. Let us blur some boundaries.

Ari Benjamin Meyers
An exposition, not an exhibition
March 11—April 1, 2017

An exposition, not an exhibition will take place in seven arts organisations across the city of Hong Kong. In the first location, Spring Workshop, an ensemble of performers from the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble (HKNME) and their entire contemporary music repertoire will be specially arranged by Meyers for display in an experimental setting in an artwork entitled Litany and Rapture. At the other six arts organizations—Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong Arts CentreM+Para Sitesoundpocket and Things that can happen—Meyers has commissioned new musical compositions/interventions that will be performed by staff members at their desks in a new work called Hong Kong SolosTaken together, these events epitomize Meyer’s experimentation with dissolving the delineation between art and music.

PROGRAM DATES
Saturday, March 11
2pm to 4pm

An exposition, not an exhibition
Public opening at Spring

Thursday, March 23
10am to 3pm*

SICD Art Day x Art Basel Hong Kong
*see section below for details on 11am artist talk

EXHIBITION HOURS
March 16 – April 1
Litany and Rapture
2pm to 7pm

Thursday to Sunday only at Spring
Hong Kong Solos
By appointment only at multiple sites (see below)

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Date Mar 11—Apr 1, 2017
Time *Please check exhibition page
Location Spring Workshop and offsite locations
Event Exhibition, music, performance
Cost Free
More info

RSVP for
Hong Kong Solos

As part of An exposition, not an exhibition, Meyers created a new work Hong Kong Solos by inviting six composers to create new commissions in close collaboration with staff members at at six non-profit arts organizations. In order to experience these intimate pieces devised for one performer and 1-4 audience members, potential listeners are invited to book visits. The work centers around the coming together of parties that don’t usually intersect—a composer and an art professional, an office and a performance—and presents the occasion for them to approach each other through the prism of a unique moment of music-making.

The composer/performer/site collaborations are:

1. GayBird Leung x Michelle Wong at Asia Art Archive

2. Steve Hui x Samantha Kwok at Hong Kong Arts Centre 

3. Shane Aspegren x Tom Morgan at M+

4. Vanissa Law x Olivia Chow at Para Site 

5. Charles Kwong x Alice Wong at soundpocket

6. Lam Lai x Chantal Wong at Things that can happen 

Hong Kong Solos will be performed by appointment only. If you wish to book a visit, kindly complete the RSVP form. Registration is on a first-come-first-served basis and places are very limited. We will do our best to provide you a slot, but apologise in advance if we can’t meet your request.

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Date Mar 11—Apr 1, 2017
Time Please RSVP for available slots
Location Multiple offsite locations
Event Performance, music
Cost Free

frieze x Spring Workshop
Talk: “Music and the Museum

March 23 is the perfect day to join us at Spring not only for SICD Day, but also for Music and the Museum, a discussion between composers and artists Ari Benjamin Meyers, Samson Young and Spring Workshop curator-at-large Christina Li, chaired by frieze deputy editor Amy Sherlock, on the evolving cultural contexts in which contemporary music is produced, performed and collected.

The event celebrates the launch of the newly-redesigned March issue of frieze, featuring a monograph on Young’s work, as well as Spring Workshop’s current exhibition by Meyers, An exposition, not an exhibition.

Date Mar 23 (Thur), 2017
Time 11am to 12pm
Location Spring
Event Discussion
Cost Free

Children’s Composition Workshop
with Shane Aspegren

We are over the moon that the talented artist/composer Shane Aspegren has agreed to teach our children’s workshop for this show.

The workshop will demonstrate how a smartphone can be used as a simple tool to create modern music. Led by Shane, the children will learn basic ideas about sampling everyday sounds to use as building blocks for their own musical compositions.  They will record musical instruments, as well as incidental sounds around Spring Workshop, to use as source material for making their own samples to play with. After creating their own rhythms and loops, the children will share their creations with each other at the end.

Children aged 8-14 years old are welcome to sign up. Spaces are extremely limited, so please RSVP asap if you are interested. Despite the fact that this workshop sounds epic, we don’t have space for “adult-sized” kids.

And don’t miss Shane’s composition for Hong Kong Solos which will be played by Tom Morgan in the Cyberport offices of M+! The RSVP link is above.

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Date Mar 18 (Sat), 2017
Time 12-2pm
Location Spring
Event Children’s workshop, composing, sampling
Cost Free admission

About
Kunsthalle for Music

An exposition, not an exhibition was developed during Ari Benjamin Meyers two residencies at Spring Workshop in the summer and fall of 2016, and stems from his ongoing research into the essence of live musical performance and the questions surrounding its protocols for audiences, performers and institutions.

The Kunsthalle for Music is commissioned by Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (Rotterdam) together with Spring Workshop (Hong Kong) and will make additional appearances at locations to be announced. An exposition, not an exhibition at Spring Workshop (March 2017) will unfold the Kunsthalle’s foundational themes, followed by a conference at Witte de With (May 2017) and punctuated by an inaugural take-over, featuring a series of new commissions also at Witte de With (January 2018).

www.kunsthalleformusic.org 

Print
Date 2017
Time
Location Spring Workshop
&
Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art
Event Music,
performance,
conference
Cost Free
More info
Contact

Spring Workshop
us@springworkshop.org

3/F Remex Centre
42 Wong Chuk Hang Road
Aberdeen, Hong Kong

Click here for map of Wong Chuk Hang neighbourhood