Saamlung announces a karaoke lounge to take place during ARTHK12, the Hong Kong international art fair, on the evening of Friday 18 May at the popular Wanchai club MusicBox. For this project a selection of 33 international artists have been commissioned to replace the standard music videos for their favorite songs in the karaoke hall with their own video work.

Low-budget karaoke videos are often produced through the compilation of stock footage shot by student directors, allowing for only a hint of rhyme and reason to the pairing of a given looping video clip with a particular song. The categories that constitute these collisions--road songs, break-up songs, fighting songs--suggest a surprisingly generic cultural imaginary, one that is surely at odds with the impressive specificity of karaoke as a subculture.

Participating artists:

Ang Song Ming, Oyvind Aspen, Cao Fei, Chen Zhou, Cheng Ran, Heman Chong, Genevieve Chua, Aleksandra Domanovic, Hernani Gil, Ho Rui An, Ho Tzu Nyen, Hu Xiaoyuan, Kitty Ko Sin Tung, Lee Kit, Olli Tapio Leino, Leung Chi Wo, Li Ming, Charles Lim and Takugi Kogo, Liu Chuang, Lu Yang, Sara Ludy, MAP Office, Joao O, Marisa Olson, Joao Vasco Paiva, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Jon Rafman, Shuangfei Arts Center, Rick Silva, Travess Smalley, Adrian Wong, Yan Xing, Zhang Liaoyuan, Zhao Renhui