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Xu: We started. Thank you everybody to join us this afternoon. (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: First, I'd like to thank MASS MoCA Director Joe.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: He really, really loves the phoenix.
The first time I came to visit MASS MoCA, I've brought a copy of the phoenix catalog
to show him. When he saw it he pulled out his own copy and said I've already seen this
before (laughter). Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Male: I'd also like to thank Jane Canova of Williams College.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Of course, I'd also like to thank everyone
who was a part of making this exhibition and this event, this lecture tonight possible.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Tonight I'm primarily going to make
a simple explanation of the works that are on exhibit at MASS MoCA.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: first I'm going to put up two images
of things that are very traditional, very classical, things that almost seem silly.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: The primary reason I'm showing these
is that they show the training that I received when I was in China.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: In China, to become an artist, there
were two paths that you had to take. One was to enter deeply and seriously study the sketching
and drawing studies
of 19th century Europe. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: The other path was to come into contact and go amongst the workers and farmers, and
the People's Liberation Army to experience their emotions. Only then will you be able
to express their emotions. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Of course, this is connected to the Cold War period, the separation between China
and the rest of the world at that time. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: When the West was involved in experimental contemporary art, China was amongst that was
involved with doing very traditional realist art.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: As a Chinese artist, this training
is part of your history so the question is, how do we look back at that aspect of our
histories? Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Thinking back on it, I realized this type of training could be seen as being a
great waste of time but it had an incredible value and help to me as an artist.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Even working here at MASS MoCA, on
this exhibition, when I asked for it to be of certain height and Joe said it should be
at this height, and it ended up at this height and I saw and I came back and looked and I
realized that in fact it would have to be at the height that I recommended (laughter).
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: I worked in many museums, and perhaps
it's because Joe is tall. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: A lot of museum, after having worked with me, begin to think that this artist is
so picky. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: In the end they all liked me because they realized that this artist, this person
is doing it to make it, when they see it at the end, doing it to make it even better.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: I'm very, very sensitive to forms because
I've drawn so many of these Davids Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: This was a landscape that I drew at that time.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: I don't really like to draw people
so I drew more landscapes. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: A portion of these works are currently on display at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford University.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Many experts had looked at my drawings
and saiod, "Wow, these are amazing in comparison to the works by people like Van Gogh and other
artists in the exhibition." But what I thought is that, any Chinese artist that's been in
Chinese Academy could draw like this. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: In 1990, I came to the United States and my primary motivation, my goal was to
understand exactly what this contemporary art actually was.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: At that time, I've already done some
small scale experiments. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: This is an installation I did at PS1. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: In fact, it's an arrangement of many, many mulberry leaves, inside I in fact placed
silkworms. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: After a few days as the silkworms ate the mulberry leaves, it changed into this
cocoon arrangement of gold and silver coloration. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: With this work, I really begin to understand and begin to experiment with how to use traditional
Chinese philosophical approaches to approach contemporary art.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: This series of silkworm works was done
around 1992 or thereabouts. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: The silkworms were laying eggs and spinning cocoons and spinning silk onto these
objects. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: It was all taking place in the gallery. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: This is a silkworm VCR which is done at the time at Jack Tilton's gallery in SoHo.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: I put the silkworms inside the VCR
and they were spinning cocoons within the VCR.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: What's interesting is the VCR continued
to work (laughter). Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: I attached the monitor and what was being shown on the monitor was what was happening
inside the VCR. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: In fact, this work is a kind of time difference in our concepts where we see a
time lapse-- Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: --in our visual sense of the word. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Those are some of my earlier works. I've done many of them. Now I'm going to begin
talking about some of the works in this exhibition. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: In this exhibition, there are two works that are considered my calligraphy works.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: These calligraphy works used these
characters that appeared to be Chinese but are
actually English. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: In the exhibition, I took this idea and turned it into a classroom.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: When the audience entered the exhibition
there were instructional books, there was the blackboard, there were video instruction
and instructions on the wall. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: When they first entered the classroom they thought it was a Chinese calligraphy
classroom but when they begin to practice they realized that it was something that they
could read. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: At this point, the audience had a very, very special unique experience that they've
never had before. Xu: Yeah. We can see this little L-I-T-T-L-E people P-E-O-P-L-E.
Jesse: Yeah. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: This is the method by which young people, in China, young people would begin to learn
the methods of calligraphy. Xu: Red line tracing method.
Jesse: Red line tracing method. Xu: Yeah. (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: This is a page from the instructional book.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: In fact, the changes are not that large.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: It's just a change in the style of
the use of the brush. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: It's hard for us to believe that this is actually an English book.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) they not look like a soft worm. (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Yes. With this stroke, you can't draw in a way that appears to be a soft piece of
wood--a worm, sorry, a worm. Xu: Not look like a soft worm, yes.
Jesse: Worm. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: This is all content from very traditional Chinese introductions to calligraphy practice.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: They're all very serious.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: This is a calligraphy work of mine.
It's an early one and of course, it isn't nearly as good as the works that are on display
here now. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: This is an ancient Chinese poem that has been translated into English and then
rewritten in my calligraphy. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Now everybody can probably read this. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: As long as you read from top to bottom, left to right, inside
to outside. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese).
Jesse: This work is ... this idea is very, very interesting and a lot of lectures, people
come up to me and say that, "Chinese people must be very unhappy. You turned Chinese into
English." I respond, "No Chinese people should be happy because I've taken English and turned
into Chinese." (Laughter). Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: This type of calligraphy is in fact two systems of writing and pressing them together.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: They become lettering or text that
looks different on the inside and the outside. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Or a type of writing that is wearing a mask.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Like the traditional approach to forced
marriage, taking two people and pressing them together, and whether or not they are appropriate
together they're together (laughter). Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: We have this concept of English, what English is; we have this concept of Chinese,
what Chinese is. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: In front of this calligraphy, we don't have a ready-made conceptual framework for
approaching it and reading it. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: A lot of my works present a barrier to people's normal ways of thinking.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: When I get people's habits of thinking
and interruptions, it's like a computer dying but then it comes back with more ways of thinking.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: A few years ago, we received a letter
from the Australian Ministry of Education. They were designing a new IQ testing system.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: They'd hoped to gain our agreement
or approval to put our way of writing into their IQ testing system.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Because when we read Chinese and when
we read English we're using two different parts of our brain.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: People that are looking for employees,
particularly in Asia, we used these characters and showed them to potential prospective employees
to see if they can read them. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: They are testing both their ability to change between the ways of thinking and
even test their sense of humor. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: In this exhibition, in the part that's going to open tomorrow, there's another work
called "Book from the Ground." Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: This is a very interesting book. It's a book that anyone in the world can read.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: It's written with icons that we've
collected. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: The book talks about the 24 hours in the life of the character, with each chapter
being one hour. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: The name of the book is from "Point to Point." You can see at beginning at the
first chapters of Point. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: At 8:00, he leaves his home and he takes a subway to work.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: At 9:00, he gets online and reads his
email. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Ten o'clock is break time. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: This is 11:00 o'clock. A lot of people now when they go to work and get online are
actually doing other things. Xu: Yeah. (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Looking for friendship online (laughs). Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: At 12:00 o'clock he's deciding what to eat, et cetera.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: You can see from the start, it begins
with the point and it gets larger and larger to a globe and then a city and then a residence.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: As it gets bigger, you see in front
of the building a bird and the bird is singing. Xu: Singing, singing, singing. (Speaking in
Chinese) Jesse: Singing, singing, singing and the man
is sleeping and the sound of the song of the bird enters into his dreams.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: The alarm clock rings and the bird
continues singing. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: The alarm clock continues to ring, the bird stops singing and flies away.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Regardless, he gets up and he gets
up quickly and goes to the shower. Xu: Not shower (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Oh, to the bathroom, sorry, bathroom (laughter). He's having trouble.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: He gets on the Facebook, he's reading.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese). Jesse: Yeah.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: The first chapter talks about everything
that happens before he goes to work. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: The beginning of the book starts with icons that were collected and pasted. When
you get to the end they become organized and simplified and they appeared to be more like
a language. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: This entire book has no traditional words in it.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: What's so interesting about this is
it overturns what our ideas are or culture that we have.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: The way we used to appraise a person
was to look at his cultural level, to appraise his personal background.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: From this book, none of these standards
work. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: To read this book, it has nothing to do with, it doesn't rely on t-he breadth of
your education or your educational background, but instead the depth and breadth which you
have entered into modern life. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: It's become a novel that can be published anywhere in the world without translation.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: In fact now, it's already been published
in many, many places. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: It's been serialized in most popular magazines in China.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Everybody knows these symbols. It began
with these three symbols. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: I thought that I could use symbols, these three symbols to write a short story.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: I could use the tens of thousands of
symbols to write a much longer story. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: From that point on, we began to collect symbols and icons from all over the world.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: We had a principle that none of the
icons were icons that we created. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Icons that we collect have the value that they already existing that they are legible,
that they are pre-formed. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: While we're making the book, we also developed an English language software. You
enter in English and characters of the icon will automatically appear.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: It's very easy to read.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Of course, the volume is Chinese. We
also are making at the same time a Chinese version.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: We enter in Chinese, it also becomes
an icon. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: With this between English and Chinese, two different languages, you can instigate
communication. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: This is an exhibition at the moment. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: In an exhibition, we took our studio and moved it into the exhibition space.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: I wanted to express that this is an
unfinishable project. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: In fact, I started this project 10 years ago.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: This book only came out last year.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Of course, I was doing many other things.
People said to me that eight years ago, 10 years ago, this book wasn't writeable.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: In that eight years, icons and pictograms
and emoticons had been emerging at incredible speed.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: For instance the icon that represents
a location only came out after Google Map was developed.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Within a short time, people throughout
the word now recognize what this icon means. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Just like the logo for the Beijing Olympics or the London Olympics, in one night,
everyone around the world can recognize it. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: At every moment of everyday people throughout the world, through every form of
media are being educated in this reading of icons.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Even though our lives are completely
different from the lives of humans thousands of years ago, the words and expressions and
language that we used has remained the same. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: So we can realize how unsuited these traditional languages are to the situation
of today, of working and living together. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: We can see that there is this attempt to create a more direct, more visual, more
easily understood method of communication through the activities of the youth, through
the activities of large corporations and through the activities of NGOs and chart organizations.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: As I see it, today is the beginning
of a new phase, a new cycle of pictographic language.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: This is examples of children who, having
seen the exhibition, returned home and did their homework using this language.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: This is the serialized version.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Next, I'm going to talk a little bit
about another work in this exhibition, "Background Story."
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: This is a version of "The Background
Story" presented at British Museum, which was a version of a painting in their collection.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: This exhibition at MASS MoCA, it's
a replication of a version of a painting in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum
of Art. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: This series was first done at the Asian Art Museum in Berlin.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: The Darling Museum has lost 95% of
their collection of Asian paintings by the invading Russian Red Army.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: The two countries still argue about
this. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: I was doing a large scale retrospect of exhibition. When I do these exhibitions,
I always like to do something new as well and I was thinking about what I could do for
the Darling Museum. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: In the exhibition space at Darling Museum, it's surrounded by display cases and
behind these glass display cases, there is a pathway.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: At that time, I had to leave and I
had to go to Spain. I was transferring between planes heading back from Spain to Germany.
I saw that there was this milky glass in some of the offices and against the milky glass,
behind the milky glass were plants. Seeing it from the front, it appeared to be, very
close to Chinese ink painting, Chinese landscape painting.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: I'm sure that I had seen that kind
of phenomena before but because I was thinking in my mind about the museum at Darling, about
the display cases, only then did I have that inspiration to it.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: As an artist, being inspired is a very
sudden random experience. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: For instance, if I look at this piece of wood right now, I think maybe I want to
do a work that has to do with wood. Of course, inspiration is sudden but the artist, in making
in the work, the work itself is not sudden. He has to have this idea before he can make
it. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: There is a problem that's been produced within your thinking.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: When you go behind the work, you can
see branches, you can see garbage, you can see the things that you see everywhere in
your life. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: We've taken transparent glass and turned them into milky glass.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: We put these objects on the back of
the milky glass. If you put it very, very close to the surface, if we put it tightly
close to the surface, you can see very clear image of the object behind it.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: If you give a little bit of space between
the object and the glass it becomes slightly less defined and more like a Chinese visual
painting. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: The work we're doing actually is we're adjusting the light in between spaces.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: By placing the sheet of milky glass,
we're recording the state of the light in that position.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: It's like an X-ray film, an X-ray slide.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Why am I calling it painting with light?
At that time, when I was doing this exhibition, the curator, John Stewart, said that, "You're
painting with light." I thought it was a very interesting way to describe it.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: As I see it, light compared to things
like canvass or paint, or shrink paper or ink is much, much richer.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Through the series of works I have
a better understanding, more understanding of Chinese painting or Chinese art.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: For instance, this branch, a single
branch can show a tree Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Even a leaf from a tree. Its form can express a tree.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Just the way that a single rock can
form an entire mountain. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Just like Chinese bonsai. Xu: Bonsai?
Jesse: Just like bonsai. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Because Chinese painting is actually painting, is actually symbol, it symbolizes
itself. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: The character for tree is actually drawing a tree.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: This kind of approach is very difficult
to replicate oil painting but it is capable of doing fictional landscapes.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Sort of abstracted Chinese landscapes.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Expressive landscapes.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: In this exhibition, everybody likes
the phoenix, which makes me very happy. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: I'll give a simple explanation of the background of the phoenix. Originally, it
was a work that made for the World Financial Center in Beijing Central Business District.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: I had just returned at the Central
Academy of Fine Arts and I usually don't accept public artwork commissions. The commissioning
party approached me and said, "If you consider accepting it, we may be able to give some
funding to the Central Gallery." Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: I've just gotten back to the Central Academy and I figured that if I could bring
them a little bit of money, it would be good and people would think I was very capable.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: I went to the construction and I said
I would take a look. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: When I arrived, when I got to the construction site, it gave me a very, very strong sense
of shock. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Which is just like approaching a large animal. When you sense its temperature, when
you see its skin moving, it's almost frightening. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: This sense of shock and fear came from seeing the conditions of the market laborers
living and working and the intense disparity between this and these huge modern buildings
around Beijing. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: At that time, I had this idea to use this trash, this waste from the construction
of these huge modern buildings to make a work that could be put inside the building.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: That's when I started to really want
to make this work. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: I began to worry that the commissioning party wouldn't accept this idea.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: The commission party accepted it.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: So we started to work.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: It was a huge, huge space, a huge glass
space and it appeared, in many ways, as a cage.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Seeing that space I wanted two objects
flying forward inside the cage unaware of the cage that they were stuck in.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: This is our team. At that time, our
team was primarily made up of migrant laborers. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: My sense of this team was that they were really quite smart.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: I thought that if they had received
a really great vacation nobody knows what they can come up with.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: This is the first exhibition in Beijing
outside because the commissioning party in the end wouldn't accept the work.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Because this work that began as a four-month
ended up taking two years to complete. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: During the period of its making, the Olympics happened in Beijing, during the Olympics,
Beijing decided that all construction works had to stop performance.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Of course, then we had no source for
our materials. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Of course, after the Olympics, following the Olympics was the world financial crisis.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: At that point, the level of acceptance
and level of humor of capitalists towards artwork began to fade.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: They started to say that, "Oh, you
know, your work doesn't seem to be quite finished. You should probably put a layer of crystal
on the outside." Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Two years ago when this work was first exhibited outdoors at the Today Art Museum,
it's taking on ... (Speaking in Chinese). Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: It's taking on the flavor or Chinese reality, contemporary Chinese reality.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Next I'm going to talk a little bit
of the artistic considerations that went into making
the cage. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: This work is huge, as you've seen, and the most difficult part, the most taxing
part is that we had four phoenixes, two experimental. In the experimental versions, when we found
the appropriate relationship of materials, we would move it to be final version.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: To make this work interesting, the
materials that we found would have to be put in the appropriate place; the place where
the materials should be. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: For instance, this part was the part that was very difficult for us to deal with
at that time. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Now having made it into this form, I think it's quite interesting.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Yeah (laughs). (Speaking in Chinese)
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Oh, yeah, yeah. Sorry, this position
is very similar to the pilot's deck in the plane, in cockpit or something.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: It's very refined, with lots of types
of tools. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: For instance, these feathers are created with shovelheads.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: This part of the shovel is very similar
to that part of a feather that it's supposed to take on wing and make it stronger.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Many of the tools that we used come
from the study of the replication of things and nature.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: With this, there's a kind of internal
logic that produces a beauty. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: You also produced a sense of humor. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: This part is made up of lots of materials from renovations. I've always felt that it
looks like Chinese shadow puppetry. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: In making this work, I began to feel that it really resembled Chinese folk art.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: It's very different in many essential
ways from the Western approaches to contemporary art making.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Using ready-made materials is something
many artists have done. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: It's very connected in essence to the methods used in Chinese folk art.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: The method of Chinese folk art is to
use the most inexpensive and the cheapest materials to express their hopes for the future
and for their lives. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: You see this in Chinese art, using corn husks and corn silk to make beautiful
objects. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Using roots from trees and using its form, its preexisting form to make something
beautiful. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: As you can see, the phoenix also has many LED lights within it.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: During the day you can't really see
them. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: With the change of light, as evening approaches, these lights would become more
and more apparent. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: At night, when it's dark, you cannot see them at all. You can see very flat, very
distant phoenix constellations hanging midair. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: When you approach these phoenixes, these two phoenixes from a close distance
they appear to be very fierce. They've used this cheap material to make themselves beautiful
and give themselves a sense of self-respect. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: At the distance or a night, they begin to appear very soft and beautiful, something
very distant from our own reality. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Next, I'm going to talk a little bit about the tiger skin rug.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: The tiger skin carpet is one piece
in the tobacco project series, of course. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Project, yeah. The tobacco project began probably at around 1998 at Duke University.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: The Duke family grew on tobacco. The series of
works includes many, many small and large works. The work that I showed was the QingMing
Festival on the river on which I placed a very, very long cigarette that burned solely
across its surface, leaving a mark as it burned. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: This is a book made out of bright leaf tobacco and printed by hand and the contents
describes why the Duke family went to China very early to sell tobacco.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: There are many, many small and large
works in this series. That was a rolling book that is actually printed with the textual
book about the Duke family. Xu: Yeah. This is my brand of cigarette. (Speaking
in Chinese) Jesse: The tobacco project is a moving project,
a project that's never going ... it's unending. In my research, I begin to understand the
connection between Duke and China. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: We did a tobacco project in Shanghai as well.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: We made new works that discussed the
history of tobacco in Shanghai. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Last year, the tobacco project was again exhibited at the *** Museum of Fine
Arts. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Based on the Virginia history of tobacco we added even more new ones.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: This is a very special unique artist's
book that's made with stencils from early Virginia tobacco brand names.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: I gave the stencils that I selected
to Renee, who is a friend and author and he composed them into a poem. Reading through
the book, when you get to the end and you can read the contents of the poem.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: That's the state of the first tiger
skin carpet that we made in Shanghai. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Whatever they should pay attention to, this is the tiger skin carpet on display
here. From the front, it looks like a target, when you go to the back, it resembles zebra
skin. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: It's almost as if you walk around and the light follows you.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: In earliest time that we exhibited,
we had a very, very aroma of tobacco. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: In the exhibition, we also have a 17-minute long animation.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: The title is "Character of Characters."
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: I'm going to show everyone a few segments.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: (Speaking in Chinese)
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: (Speaking in Chinese)
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Tomorrow, you can see it at the exhibition
(laughter). Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: I'm going to tell you a little bit about the work. I use this method of animation
cartoons to write something like thesis. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: What it talks about is the connection between the character of the Chinese people,
their philosophical attitudes and how they see the world and its connection to the writing
system that they've been practicing for thousands of years.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Chinese is very different from any
other language in the world. It comes in many ways from the way it's pronounced, in the
way that that pronunciation differs. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Chinese is a single spoken pronunciation to a single character.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: English is, and other languages ... Is
anyone here a linguist? Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: I think it's agglutinative language where changes in tense and in mood are accomplished
by adding to the end of the word. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Many languages began as pictographs but because of the connection to the way languages
are spoken they didn't support the development of spoken languages.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: The Chinese could support that continued
use so it's almost as if Chinese is the only example.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: The only remaining surviving pictographic
language. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: The Chinese characters are very connected to this approach to writing because they've
been using this form of writing for thousands of years.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: For instance, in Chinese education,
children have to spend years of time remembering how to write these specific symbols.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: There's a very strong quality of copying
culture in China. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Why is there this idea of bootlegging in China? It's called [inaudible 00:59:32]
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: It's all connected to this.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Chinese really like famous brands.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Perhaps in Asian countries, Japanese
and Korean people are also the same way. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: This is maybe connected in some way to the importance of symbols in eastern cultures
or in Chinese culture. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: In Chinese art and in Chinese culture, symbols have an incredible importance.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: In Chinese painting, we paint [inaudible
01:00:32]. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: OK. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: A rose, a penny, plum, plum orchid. Xu: Bamboo.
Jesse: Bamboo and jasmine. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Chrysanthemum. Xu: Chrysanthemum.
Jesse: They're always painting these four flowers.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: In Chinese opera, there is an incredible
emphasis on masks, sort of makeup with each stylization representing specific character.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: In Chinese, studying a painting, it's
paper copying paper replicating the work of the masters.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: In Chinese, spoken language is the
same with four-character phrases, very complex situations and ideas all have to be put into
four-character phrases. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: The details aren't important but for this kind of thing you use four characters
to describe it. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: There's also a unique quality to the Chinese view of connections. When Chinese write the second stroke is related to the
first stroke. The third stroke is related to the first two strokes.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: Chinese culture is suited towards taking
temporary circumstances and making decisions about what's going to happen next.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: There's an American author that wrote
a book about (Speaking in Chinese). Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Finding your way in China. He spent many years in China.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: He felt that in China, in driving there's
this kind of physical language occurs. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: So many people don't understand how Chinese driving in China seems so chaotic
that many groups of cars coming together in the same intersection all find their ways
out, the direction. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Through lots of practice they just see what the next step is after seeing the
current situation. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: For instance, when two cars get close to hitting, they can have a little meeting
and decide who's going first (laughter). Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: It's all decided by a sense of feel. Xu: (Speaking in Chinese)
Jesse: Yes. In Chinese calligraphy and Chinese painting, it all takes place on shrink paper
and an artist that understands painting is a good artist, knows the most important thing
is leaving a part for shringer to decide the shrink paper, to decide.
Xu: (Speaking in Chinese) Jesse: This is a good point to stop and begin
the Question & Answer phase.