Chen Ting-Jung: Auf Wiedersehen, Sweetheart

3 episodes in total. (Duration: 15-20 minutes)

During World War II, swing and big band were used as propaganda broadcasting tools in both the Allies and Axis powers. I am very interested in how “popular music” becomes “sonic warfare”.

I took swing music pieces which launched in this period as reference material. Beside the joyful rhythms, I put my focus also very much on the characteristic lyrics which are filled with whispers between lovers, contentment and happiness of life and rosy dreams of the future. Based on these elements, I brought out a three scenes love play.

From Charlie and his Orchestra, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Vera Lynn to The International Sweethearts of Rhythm; music groups in different political interests composed and interpreted the swing differently. Even the lyrics were often rewritten and replaced in different transcriptions. The pieces represent different ideologies. By montaging these music pieces to a story, the idea and imagination of an “ideal” is revealed. This project is aimed to discuss the multiplicity of listening and interpretations and to discover: what do these “imaginations of ideal” that once shook the world sound like in nowadays political and social context?

Chen Ting-Jung 

Chen Ting-Jung (b. 1985 in Taipei, Taiwan) lives and works in Vienna, Hamburg and Taipei.
2009 BA in Philosophy, National Taiwan University, Taiwan; 2015 B.F.A. in Fine Arts, University of Fine Arts of Hamburg (HfBK Hamburg), Germany; 2018 Magistra in Fine Arts, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria.