ARTISTS & THEIR VOICES
Don’t Speak the Local Tongue? Make Your Own
The underbellies of elegant language
New York swallowed a few artists. And regurgitated some rebels. So much of a rebel Xu Bing ink-stamped one pig all over its back with words of Latin alphabets and another with square characters, all fictional, then put them together in one pen strewn with books. The pigs fornicated in a public show. Guggenheim pulled the video of the performance in New York in 2017 just before an important opening, under pressure from animal rights groups. The art world punched back, with sharp criticism for cutting artistic freedom.
What? Humans fidgetted in witnessing raw nature? The show was in Beijing in 1994. The two pigs didn’t seem to mind performing. Innate humor surfs alongside the celebrated artist Xu Bing’s seething frustrations.
The core issues: Are current languages on the global stage compatible? Xu knew what he was doing. English words — fake — were on the boar, Chinese words — fake — were on the sow. Does cultural dominance result from language dictatorship?
The pigs didn’t come out of a vacuum. Xu paid his dues.
1972. As an educated youth, Xu Bing reported to the poverty-stricken northern village. He lived in a shed surrounded by pig pens. A shed full of mouse holes. Food and fodder steam from the same two communal woks for humans and pigs. Water in winter? He had to hammer through the stubborn ice in the tank. Every. Single. Time. He kept practicing calligraphy despite his night shifts, wrist moving with the brush and paper that froze together.
That was during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, 1966–76. He was 17. Still, he preferred it to the factories in the city. No luck having a father as Professor of History at Beijing University, and mother a staff member in the Department of Library of Science, herself from a family of means. Such a “problematic” family background meant the son had to be re-educated at the time.
Did emigration to the US in 1990 bring Xu Bing relief?
Xu Bing’s other works shone not only at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA and the Smithsonian Institution in the US, but also in solo exhibitions all over the world. Not bad for someone in his thirties. The MacArthur Fellowship award in 1999 coronates an illustrious list. It recognizes his genius capacity to contribute importantly to society.
But the shock of facing yet another new language culture — this time English — was crucial. As a child Xu swam in books high up on the university library shelves he wasn’t allowed to touch. When he learned enough to indulge in literature, he had to relearn the entire written language in simplified form, adopted under Mao. Xu does not trust formal language.
Not only do the ills of language plague him, but also what prevents humans to see through the ugly in search of the good — the good past cultural crassness and political ignorance.
His solution? Xu Bing created a 24-chapter-novel Book From the Ground (2003-ongoing) with emojis and pictograms that everyone can understand. A day in the life of “Mr. Regular Guy” in a generic city raised a few excited eyebrows when the book debuted in 2012. Hear, hear, the rushing tune of a youthful crush. Half-hearted claps for Big Boss in meaningless meetings. Good chuckles and nods. Think cartoons, or scrolls — the early Asian equivalent to graphic novels.
The latest title A Day in Manchester just came out in 2021. The project promises more. Ever wondered what went on in a youthful mind half-a-century ago in the immediate post-Mao days? Read these manuscript pages:
The world is Xu’s studio. Found graphics amass: Hospitality and airport signage, washing instructions, road signs, trademarks, musical notes, buttons banished to the fringe on keyboards, none to spare. No lack of attempts by humorists to make chapters into poems and plays either.
Don't think this works in real life as an expanded international language?
Once, I was exasperated when water continuously refused to come out from the faucet. Even more exasperated when the only English-speaking front desk staff was absent. I had just moved for a short term to a developing country then, somewhere not only did I not speak the local language, but attempting at English was not the locals’ priority. Nor did they share any of my other languages. What to do? I did a quick sketch of a dripping faucet and a cross and showed it to the guard on duty. It worked! Five minutes later, someone fixed the water issue.
That wasn't the first or last time I communicated in drawings. Eventually, I wanted to carry around my picto-lingo notebook to get through sticky situations. Works well in countries where it is not advisable to whip out our iPhones and androids in public.
We can resort to google translate these days, but this is more fun.
Our existing languages are based on geography, ethnicity, and culture (including all-powerful English), and all fall short… Today, the age-old human desire for a “single script” has become a tangible need. This predicament requires a new form of communication better adapted to the circumstances of globalization. Only today can the implications of the Tower of Babel truly be revived. — Xu Bing, 2007
What a dialogue with his epic work Book From the Sky, the installation of a set of 4 books and large scrolls of rice paper, all covered in fake words — fake words that first brought him tremendous fame in China in 1988/89, and then the US, Europe, Japan, and Australia.
It comes from above, it must be true!
It comes from the sky! It’s multiplied. It looks good. It sounds good. It’s printed. IT MUST BE TRUE. We know the drill. Akin to this century’s internet. Viewers bathed in the light of printed scrolls hanging overhead at the Met in New York. The metaphor and irony of gibberish-cloaked-in-grandeur linger. Applicable worldwide.
Book From the Sky earned as much acclaim as it did suspicion. At the time of the first showings in China, some politicians couldn’t read the fake characters that looked so real in the artwork and condemned it. Popular interpretation says it’s a commentary on political fake news. Coming from the sky, the work wittily points to how distanced governments could be from the governed. A bottom-up language from the gut is truer than one top-down.
Skywatching or bird watching?
Meanwhile, Xu Bing’s The Living Word depicts birds way back from the pictograph era. This rainbow-colored installation traces the word BIRD from the modern-day simplified character 鸟 to the traditional 鳥, to ancient pictos that fly out the skylights of exhibition sites. Or the other way round. The simplified 鸟 looks like a bird with a big dot as the eye. Is the written word coming back to Picto? 🦜🦜🦜 Not so fast.
Simplified characters lifted millions of Chinese from illiteracy. But paring words down to the bare bone risks losing nuanced meanings. Watch that bird.
Does Picto eliminate scandalous translation risks?
Recently I wrote a piece on dim sum 🥟and tea culture🍵. Auto-translate interpreted my description of the chef cooking up lobster parts 🦞 as political turmoil. What? I most certainly did not torture that lobster. Never again, auto-translate.
Well, Picto? It may not replace sophisticated legal language any time soon, but the beauty is we don’t have to first learn the words before we learn the language. We don’t even have to learn the language to use the language.
Lately, I hear talks of interculturalism — active sharing and understanding other cultures through living — versus multiculturalism — passive peaceful coexistence with other cultures. Intercultural graphics is what Picto creators need to minimize interpretation gaps.
Will this alternative graphic language reduce us to simpletons?
Ten years after Book From the Ground debuted, the world of emojis stands grand and growing with Gen Z. We humans desire better communication, sans borders. Language births from accumulated culture, and the current writing culture is ruled by keyboards enhanced with emoticons. Can the next generation still articulate with accuracy and eloquence?
Two adjacent washroom doors of a restaurant in the central business district of Hong Kong show signage in the photo above (not Xu Bing’s artwork). Which one would you choose to go in? At the time of the encounter, I have yet to hear about any complaints of the “wrong” sex intruding. How do words communicate? Here, as graphics. Do we see cultural metamorphosis?
Xu has returned to China in 2007 and continues to live and work in Beijing and New York. Fascination with language continues to dominate his oeuvre. Fate willing, Xu Bing will have a few more decades to see this new language happen.
Btw, Xu Bing’s emblem is his English name arranged in square letter form. Can you decipher that?
Art is predestined and honest, therefore valuable. — Xu Bing
© Pseu Pending (Seu) 2021
References
- Xu Bing
- Ignorance as a Kind of Nourishment
- Language Ideologies in the Text-Based Art of Xu Bing
- Regarding Book From the Ground
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