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 Centre, M+, Para Site, soundpocket 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 Solos. Taken together, these events epitomize Meyer’s experimentation with dissolving the delineation between art and music as he researches the foundations of the Kunsthalle for Music (see below).

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)

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.

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.

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.

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