Creative Projects
A space for explorations and experiments.
The Academic Complaints Song
For this project, Chow Yiu Fai, Jeroen de Kloet and I collected complaints anonymously from academics across different disciplines and continents and adapted them into a Complaints Song, modelled after the Complaints Choir Project. Along with participants at the Rehearsing Futures - Pedagogies of Care project at HKBU, we performed the song together on beautiful Peng Chau Island in Hong Kong on May 17, 2025. We had so much fun belting out these collective complaints! We invite colleagues and students to sing along with us whenever we feel a little down about the state of our profession (or the world in general). Of course, a song is not going to solve serious problems but it can recharge our energy so we live to fight another day.
Project Description
In 2010, we published an appeal Towards an ethics of slowness in an era of academic corporatism. We failed, of course. We recall, nevertheless, a proposition: perhaps we should whine more and more shamelessly, more loudly; perhaps we should turn our private, individual whining into a collective, creative and public performance, modelled after the initiative Compaints Choir. In the spirit of rehearsing, we collected complaints from our colleagues, turned them to a song, and performed it with fellow scholars. The experiment aims to salvage solidarity, liveliness and pleasure from our work, to redeem the politics of whining.
Fascism, Trumpism, is world war three humming?
KPI, budget cuts, assessment incoming
Paper churn, admin work, what else remains?
These are a few of our favourite complaints
Course projects, term papers, exams and theses
So many words to read, I barely get to sneeze
In time you realize, AI’s to blame
These are a few of our favourite complaints
Big conference, powerpoint-less professors droning on
H-index, low I.F., no tenure - poof! you’re gone
Assholes and hypocrites drive me insane
These are a few of our favourite complaints
QS rankings, citation index
When I am feeling sad
I simply sing with you my favourite complaints
And then I don’t feel so bad
Why don’t they tenure us and just stop ranking
Why do these articles bullshit about nothing
Reviewer number two you are to blame
These are a few of our favourite complaints
Bosses are control freaks students are cash cows
Zooms bore us all to death so god help me say ciao ciao
So busy that we must work in airplanes
These are a few of our favourite complaints
So tired hiding my Imposter Syndrome
So many forms to fill fuck online systems
Why do they take the lift, just two floors away
These are a few of our favourite complaints
3-year contracts, thousand deadlines,
When I am feeling sad
I simply sing with you my favourite complaints
And then I don’t feel so bad
In 2010, we published an appeal Towards an ethics of slowness in an era of academic corporatism. We failed, of course. We recall, nevertheless, a proposition: perhaps we should whine more and more shamelessly, more loudly; perhaps we should turn our private, individual whining into a collective, creative and public performance, modelled after the initiative Compaints Choir. In the spirit of rehearsing, we collected complaints from our colleagues, turned them to a song, and performed it with fellow scholars. The experiment aims to salvage solidarity, liveliness and pleasure from our work, to redeem the politics of whining.
Fascism, Trumpism, is world war three humming?
KPI, budget cuts, assessment incoming
Paper churn, admin work, what else remains?
These are a few of our favourite complaints
Course projects, term papers, exams and theses
So many words to read, I barely get to sneeze
In time you realize, AI’s to blame
These are a few of our favourite complaints
Big conference, powerpoint-less professors droning on
H-index, low I.F., no tenure - poof! you’re gone
Assholes and hypocrites drive me insane
These are a few of our favourite complaints
QS rankings, citation index
When I am feeling sad
I simply sing with you my favourite complaints
And then I don’t feel so bad
Why don’t they tenure us and just stop ranking
Why do these articles bullshit about nothing
Reviewer number two you are to blame
These are a few of our favourite complaints
Bosses are control freaks students are cash cows
Zooms bore us all to death so god help me say ciao ciao
So busy that we must work in airplanes
These are a few of our favourite complaints
So tired hiding my Imposter Syndrome
So many forms to fill fuck online systems
Why do they take the lift, just two floors away
These are a few of our favourite complaints
3-year contracts, thousand deadlines,
When I am feeling sad
I simply sing with you my favourite complaints
And then I don’t feel so bad
Yiu Fai Chow, Hong Kong Metropolitan University
Jeroen de Kloet, University of Amsterdam
Helen Hok-Sze Leung, Simon Fraser University
Loose Sounds 游離的聲音
A video essay on my old home in Hong Kong.