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Buddhism and the Art of Xu Bing

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Buddhism and the Art of Xu Bing Meaningless Language with Meaningful Words: Buddhism and the Art of Xu Bing Kori Lisa Yee Litt For the 2006 inaugural Singapore Biennale Belief, con- ments from real characters (Figure 3). The effect on viewers temporary artist Xu Bing (b. 1955) created a massive hand- who are literate in Chinese is one of unexpected frustration, woven carpet to replace the red prayer mat in the main hall for the characters retain a semblance of legibility, yet they of the largest Buddhist temple in Singapore—the Kwan Im cannot be read. A few years after the completion of Book Thong Hood Cho Temple.1 He called the work Magic Carpet from the Sky, Xu Bing produced an opposite, yet comparable, (Mótăn 儨⇃) (Figure 1). The carpet, which featured excerpts effect on English speakers by creating a Square Calligraphy from four “faith-based” texts (one Buddhist, one Gnostic, one Classroom (Yīngwén fāngkuài zì shūfă rùmén 㣅᭛ᮍഫᄫк Jewish, and one Marxist), has received very little scholarly ⊩ܹ䮼) installation (1994-96, Figure 4). The classroom was attention, but then again, Xu Bing is not generally known for equipped with desks, writing instruments, practice books, his engagement with religious themes. and an instructional video, which invited the audience to Because he achieved fame first in his native China and partake in a lesson in New English Calligraphy. As they per- then globally from projects that feature fabricated systems formed the writing exercises, English readers soon began of writing, the scholarship on Xu Bing instead characterizes to realize that they could decipher the “characters” in the him as an artist who is primarily concerned with the nature practice books, for the seemingly Chinese forms are actually of language, or rather with the arbitrariness of language. To English words posing as Chinese characters. The left-hand be sure, the artist’s production process has proven to be column of characters in one practice-book page (Figure 5), motivated by a desire to subvert his viewer’s linguistic and for example, begins the nursery rhyme “Little Bo Peep.” As cognitive expectations. For this reason, many scholars tend with Book from the Sky, the unpredictability of Xu Bing’s to approach Xu Bing’s work armed with Western theories invented systems of writing forces each viewer to reconsider about phenomenological experience and the deconstruction his or her own expectations about words and, consequently, of language. While such interpretations may enhance our to alter his or her conventional structures of knowledge. general understanding of the artist’s work, this paper will The circumspect attitude toward language that un- demonstrate that they fail to note that the general impetus derlies both of these projects has been traced back to Xu for Xu Bing’s mistrust of language is also firmly rooted in his Bing’s own formative experiences with books and writing.3 interest in non-Western religious beliefs, more specifically, Language reforms enacted in China during the late 1950s in the tenets of Chan Buddhism.2 when the artist was learning to read and write caused him The first artistic manifestation of Xu Bing’s disillusion- to mistrust the stability and permanence of words. With the ment with words appeared in his Book from the Sky (Tiānshū simplification of Chinese characters and the development ໽к) project (1987-1991, Figure 2). This installation of hand- of a romanization system, by the time Xu Bing was in grade printed books and scrolls contained over four thousand fake school, a single spoken word or idea could be denoted in Chinese characters that were invented by the artist using ele- three different ways on paper.4 This paper was developed in a seminar on Xu Bing, taught by Robert Chinese Avant-Garde, 1979-1989 (Hong Kong: Timezone 8, 2003), E. Harrist, Jr., at Columbia University. I thank him and Dawn Delbanco 169; Britta Erickson, The Art of Xu Bing: Words without Meaning, for their continued guidance and critical eyes. Meaning without Words (Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), 1 The Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple is also known as the Guanyin 33. In addition to the influence of the language reforms, the artist’s Tang Sakyamuni Buddha Temple. academic parents also owned scholarly tomes that he claims were dauntingly inaccessible to him as a young, not-yet-literate child. 2 Xu Bing occasionally mentions his interest in Chan Buddhism in interviews and writings. See Glenn Harper, “Exterior Form–Interior 4 For example, the word “horse” could be written as the traditional Substance: A Conversation with Xu Bing,” Sculpture 22 (2003): 46-51; character 侀, the simplified character 偀, or in the pinyin romanization “Xu Bing,” in The Invisible Thread: Buddhist Spirit in Contemporary Art, system as mă. The “Plan for the Simplification of Chinese Characters” ed. Jennifer Poole and Sarah Wyatt (Staten Island, NY: Snug Harbor was published by the Chinese Communist Party’s Committee on Lan- Cultural Center, 2004), 10. Scholars, however, rarely discuss the topic guage Reform in 1956 and the “Chinese Language Phonetic Spelling at length. (pinyin) Plan” was enacted in 1958. See, for example, Guo Yingjie, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China: The Search for National 3 See Martina Köppel-Yang, Semiotic Warfare: A Semiotic Analysis, The Identity under Reform (London: Routledge, 2004), 91. ATHANOR XXVIII KORI LISA YEE LITT More often, however, the theories of modern Western the use of language, dialogue, and writing. Language and the philosophers and theorists are employed to interpret Xu communication systems with which language is associated Bing’s misgivings about language. Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl are superficially logical, but fundamentally arbitrary; for this Popper, and Michel Foucault have all been loosely associ- reason they function well as aids in disrupting normal thought ated with Book from the Sky, for example.5 Moreover, the patterns. Xu Bing’s skepticism toward language and writing is “productivity of incomprehension” that can be traced back not merely a product of Western influence, but rather stems to Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound has been used to argue from “an opposition to written tradition [that] is rooted in that the unintelligibility of Xu Bing’s made-up words allows the essence of Zen.”12 viewers to engage productively with the aesthetic, political, In a few of his works, Xu Bing directly links the concepts and cultural underpinnings of the work.6 The installation has of language’s arbitrariness and religion. In his 1992 installa- also been discussed in terms of Charles Bernstein’s defini- tion Post Testament (Hòu yuē quán shū ৢ㑺ܼк), the artist tions of “absorptive” and “antiabsorptive” writing.7 Finally, bound a pile of volumes in gold-embossed calfskin to make Xu Bing’s work is often characterized as a visual illustration them appear to be tomes with literary importance. Yet once of Jacques Derrida’s theory of deconstruction, insofar as the the viewer looks beyond the superficial appearance of the artist strips the false characters of any semantic meaning.8 work to its constituent parts, he or she is forced to reconsider More recently, scholars have turned to cognitive science to the authority ascribed to the appearance of religious writ- re-analyze how viewers perceive Xu Bing’s characters, not- ing. The hybrid text found within the books is composed of ing especially the primacy of our urge to read and equating alternating words from the King James Version of the New the viewing experience with the neurological disorder of Testament with those from a trashy novel. Xu Bing here un- alexia.9 dermines the importance of words in the Christian religion by Even though Xu Bing may have been exposed to the rendering the actual text meaningless when read in a normal writings of Nietzsche and Popper by the mid-1980s, he reading pattern. Likewise, the title of his 2003 amorphous admits that he had never heard of the other theories when glass sculpture Sausage, Bean, Worm, Shit, Zen alludes to the he created his early works like Book from the Sky.10 He did, arbitrary and meaningless nature of using words as labels, however, study Chan, or Zen, Buddhism, a faith that dem- since each of the terms in the title could be descriptive of onstrates a particularly unusual relationship with language.11 the sculpture’s vague form. The object could be the pure Chan Buddhism considers our phenomenal world to be an essence of Zen Buddhism, or it could be a piece of excre- illusion and therefore advocates an enlightenment that can ment; it could be both, or it could be neither. With his title, be achieved by upsetting the notion that what we perceive Xu Bing reminds his viewers that “words are arbitrary and is equivalent to reality, that is, by denying the ultimate reality only constrain us from knowing the truth.”13 of the phenomenal world. One of the ways that Chan Bud- Such attempts to undermine the importance of language dhism confuses the notion of phenomenal reality is through and writing work in the service of Xu Bing’s larger goal: to 5 Köppel-Yang, Semiotic Warfare, 163. Köppel-Yang describes Karl 9 See Robert E. Harrist, Jr., “Book from the Sky at Princeton: Reflections Popper’s term falsifiability as the possibility that a hypothesis or as- on Scale, Sense, and Sound,” in Persistence/Transformation: Text as sertion can be proven false or refuted by some sort of observation Image in the Art of Xu Bing, ed. Jerome Silbergeld and Dora C.Y. Ch- or experiment and applies it to Xu Bing’s work. See also Hal Foster, ing (Princeton: in association with Princeton University Press, 2006), “Xu Bing: A Western Perspective,” in Persistence/Transformation: 25-45.
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