Continuing to blur the inherent division between performers, audience and insitutions, his other new work, Hong Kong Solos, will take place at six non-profit art organizations. At Meyers’ invitation, six local Hong Kong composers have created new commissions in close collaboration with staff members at six arts organizations across the city. In order to experience these intimate pieces devised for one performer and 1-4 audience members, potential listeners are invited to book visits to these institutions. The work centers around the coming together of two usually disparate parties: a composer and an art professional, a (sometimes amateur) perfomer and a visitor, and the (otherwise disconnected) art and music communities in Hong Kong. (Find the repertoire list, commissioned compositions, metascore and more about the project in the Spring Workshop Archive Dropbox.)

Ari Benjamin Meyers shared: “An exposition, not an exhibition is a program specifically created for Spring as an open research process. The show has a lot to do with the way one can collaboratively work here, how people and organisations from the local community can transcend boundaries to create cross-disciplinary meta-works. This is not necessarily typical in other places; it 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, An exposition, not an exhibition can experiment with how we break the old rules of music, music-making and its institutions and propose new ones.”

Spring Founder Mimi Brown says: “I have waited years for the right chance to mess with the rules of music. So I look forward with anticipation to the new vantage points on the topic that Ari’s program will put forward. We wanted especially to ground this conversation locally, and appreciate the opportunity to play with music in the company of six Hong Kong composers and our fellow local arts organizations. As 2017 will be our final year of the Spring Workshop initiative, it is poetic and meaningful to dedicate ourselves to test the ground for the founding of a new experimental art institution – the Kunsthalle for Music – and to do so once again both with our beloved local arts family and with our trusted partners at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art.”

By both working with an existing ensemble (HKNME) and its repertoire as material, as well as by commissioning new works, An exposition, not an exhibition is an invitation to collectively question the modes of production, definition and experience around music. Gathering an ensemble of performers and composers from across disciplines, Meyers imagines an open space for music that exists outside of recordings and staged environments, and finds welcoming landing pads within the tightknit network of the city’s art institutions.