The Academic Complaints Song
Performed in Peng Chau, Hong Kong
intro
The academic complaints song is an experimental piece to salvage solidarity, liveliness and pleasure from work, and to redeem the politics of whining.
Inspired by the complaint choir project initiated by artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen in 2005, this piece is a reaction and response to the increasing pressures in the field of academic scholarship where competition takes over collaboration.
Using humour, parody and fun, the song promotes ‘methodological promiscuity’ blurring disciplinary boundaries, and forging creative and productive alliances to counter the current paradigm. (Chow, de Kloet and Leung 2010).
Participants of the Rehearsing Futures conference practiced, rehearsed and sang their hearts out, collectively processing and transforming pressure through laughter and song.
Based on: My Favourite Things, The sound of Music (Rogers & Hammerstein) –
Performed in on Peng Chau, Hong Kong for Rehearsing Futures – Pedagogies of Hope (16-17 May 2025).
Chow, Y. F., de Kloet, J., & Hok-Sze Leung, H. (2010). Towards an ethics of slowness in an era of academic corporatism. EspacesTemps.net, Actuel(12.07.2010), 8314.
http://www.espacestemps.net/document8314.htm