Hong-Kai Wang's I Am Not A Very Good Extemporaneous Speaker; In Fact, I Am No Speaker At All (2011) is the third and final element of a three-part broadcast, presented as part of the research exhibition and experiment, Dear Pratella, which investigates the critical potential of sound-based art in various social, spatial, temporal, and discursive contexts. For more information, visit www.dearpratella.org.

Soong May-Ling, aka Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, began the second paragraph of a historic speech on February 18, 1943 with the statement, “I am not a very good extemporaneous speaker; in fact, I am no speaker at all.” With this speech, Soong May-Ling was the first Chinese national and second woman to address both houses of the U.S. Congress. Though Madame Chiang may have later faded into obscurity, at this pivotal moment, she spoke on behalf of the Chinese cause in a lobbying and fundraising campaign during World War II. She delivered a well-received speech articulated with empathetic, politically nuanced-words. I am not a very good extemporaneous speaker… attempts to reenact this perhaps obscure historical event by reconstructing its specific social space through recording and listening – attempting to translate its historicity as well as investigating its contemporary resonance. Participants in the recording nevertheless took turns performing the roles of both speaker and audience, further complicating the aspects of communication translated across time, space, and bodies. In listening to this reenactment and recording, against our own contemporary situation and in now retrospective reflection, what are the multiple meanings we may parse from this speech act? How might we now hear and reflect on the given social space of the recording, its historical referent, as well as the space of our own listening?

Hong-Kai Wang is a Taiwanese artist based in New York. She primarily works with sound as a conceptual means to investigate social relations and to explore the construction of new social space in everyday life. Wang studied art and politics at the National Taiwan University, followed by a master’s degree in Arts and Media Studies at the New School in New York. She has exhibited and performed internationally and will represent the Taiwan Pavilion in the 54th Venice Biennale (2011).