"vertigo of swallows in my ear" is part of Hong-Kai Wang’s ongoing research into kua a tseh, Taiwanese ballad booklets. Wang’s close read of the moral ballad "The Great Battle between the Fly and the Mosquito" is a consideration of practices of listening as embodied and relational. While fables and folk tales often end with a clear caution or lesson, "The Great Battle Between the Fly and Mosquito" is distinct in that its delivery and message remains contingent on the time and the environment of transmission and reception. Wang focusses on the way these songs have been interpreted, improvised and sung over time, and how these changes have emphasized collective forms of authorship particularly during times of social and political upheaval.

The iterative nature of Wang’s work and wider research reflects the way these moral ballads circulated. The first two iterations of this project took the form of a book, "Our Words Don’t Suit Prophecies Anymore", and a multimedia installation.

The publication took as its point of departure the moral ballad "The Great Battle Between the Fly and the Mosquito" to reorient our comprehension of human and other-than-human relations, and practices of listening. Within different literary genres, such as fables, myths, and folk tales, animals are granted the ability to speak, allowing for interspecies communication and abolishing any hierarchy between species. Within these stories, a cast of insects, animals, and mythical creatures frequently take on human characteristics through their speech and behaviour, which can be interpreted as an imposition or reflection of human desires, needs, and will. The contributing writers —Haytham el-Wardany, Phoebe Giannisi, Gavin Steingo, and Matariki Williams reflect on how social and environmental conditions shape practices of listening in critical and expansive ways.

 

National Taipei University of Education MA in Critical and Curatorial Studies of Contemporary Art

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