Imperious Griffonage: Xu Bing and the Graphic Regime Author(s): Hajime Nakatani Source: Art Journal, Vol. 68, No. 3 (FALL 2009), pp. 6-29 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25676489 . Accessed: 16/06/2013 19:09
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Xu A Book the a Bing, from Sky, 1987-91, You know,I don'tbelieve there's such thingas theJapanese language. Imean, theydon't even know books, and wall scrolls hand-printed ceiling how towrite. draw of theselittle characters. printed fromwood letterpress type using false Theyjust pictures Chinese characters, installationview, Three ?Laurie Anderson, USA Live Installationsby Xu Bing, Elvehjem Museum of Art, University ofWisconsin-Madison, 1991-92 ? Xu (artwork Bing) Chiasmus
I'd like to broach my discussion with a scene ofwriting. The setting is a primary school classroom late in the tumultuous decade of theCultural Revolution (i966-circai97c/). A young teacher is copying from a textbook onto a black board. The textbeing copied is of course studdedwith Nakatani Hajime obligatory tributes to the Party and shone through by the rising sun ofMaoism. Several dozen heads nod up as s Imperious Griffonage: Xu and down students earnestly copy the teacher copy of the printed text.As strikingas themute intensity Bing and the Graphic Regime of this graphic litany is the low but persistent noise of chalk and pencils, whose incessant hitting of the board and scratching of the pages, set against the speechless background of the collec an tive endeavor, achieves almost claustrophobic intensity. This is one of the recurrent scenes ofwriting in Chen Kaige's Kingof the Children(1987), a memorable film about a young teacher sent down, likemany of his generation, to themarginal southern province of Yunnan during the Cultural Revolution.1 Awaiting the idealistic young man there is theharsh real ityof the poverty-stricken local school, where textbooks are in critical shortage. Compounding the situation is the pedagogical directive of the local party,which The epigraphs on pages 7 and 9 are from Laurie to Anderson, United States Live,Warner Brothers confines teaching the verbatim transmission of Party-sanctioned textbooks. 4-CD set, 1984,CD 2. The titleof the song Baffled, but with no alternative, the young teacher at firstreluctantly conforms '"Language Isa Virus fromOuter Space'?William to the status But the force of the scene these local circum S. Burroughs," also on CD 2, isparaphrased from quo. goes beyond William S. Nova York: stances to comment on a more Burroughs, Express (New general condition of cultural transmission. The Grove Press, 1964). pedagogical model here is ultimately thatof writing thatwrites itself,teachers Una directive that appeared inthe December and students alike inserted in a tautological circuit as itsmere linkages.With a edition of the Mao 22, 1968, People's Daily, that overrides even the content texts sensory tangibility ideological of the being Zedong called on urban youths to "re-educate" summons themselves through labor inthe countryside, copied, writing repeatedly and subjugates bodies to the scene of its thereby inauguratingwhat came to be known as self-perpetuation. The profound complicity between the operation of power the rusticationmovement, inwhich millions were and the act of is a I relocated?willingly or under coercion?to such physical writing crucial component ofwhat call the graphic as Yunnan or Guizhou to peripheral provinces regime. Perhaps elsewhere as well, but especially in China, the sheer physicality spend years embedded in remote rural communi of has defined the ofwhat culture is. ties.While couched inthe ideological language writing continuously ground parameters of socialist the movement was era was no Bildung, primar The revolutionary exception.2 aimed at the chaos of the Cultural ily quelling But there is another to The of theChildren's scene of For Revolution by displacing the youth away from layer King writing. urban centers. thenoise permeating the room comes not only from the scratching and scrib 2. See Francois Jullien,L'Encre de chine (Lausanne: bling ofwriting but also from the tramping of theherd of cows in the Alfred Eibel, 1978); and David E. Apter and Tony strolling Saich, RevolutionaryDiscourse inMao's Republic vicinity of the school yard, long shots ofwhich repeatedly cut into the scene to (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, profoundly inflect itsmeaning. One day,while routinely copying the textbook, 1994), 86, 244, 273ff. the teacher inadvertentlymixes in a nonexistent character consisting of the "cow" above the "water." In a later account Structure of "cow-water" pseudocharacter graph graph to the children, the teacher tries to explain his miswriting a cows are by evoking piece of folk knowledge: stubborn, nonsubmissive ani one can subdue them with one's because mals, yet urine, they love salt madly. Rey Chow interprets this event ofmiswriting as a subversive intrusion of
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions nature into the hegemonic textof culture, an intrusion that threatens the closure of the teacher's national subjectivityby exposing?via scatological insight? the dirty truthof culture as senseless subjugation.3 Chow is certainly correct to stress thatmiswriting here conjures up the threatof nature 'sdisruption of the textof culture, but Iwant to raise one simple observation against thisotherwise even as it nature writes? perceptive reading. Namely, disrupts culture's text, also albeit in gibberish. Not unlike the overlay of the cows' steady, stomping noise thatcompetes with the scratching sound of inscription, nature (figuredhere in the overbearing bovine presence) momentarily overtakes the teacher's inscribing hand to furtivelydrop itsown mark amid human syntax. In otherwords, this nature not a as seems to intrusion of produces sheer negation of writing, Chow as it in suggest, but anotherwriting?a bovine script were?that insists its pecu liar graphic presence. We encounter this alignment of nature with writing again when themute cowherd?who acts in the film as the personification of nature and who rejects with stubborn silence the teacher'swell-meaning offer to instructhim in how to on an to own write?intrudes empty classroom compose his mysterious script on the blackboard. The singular cryptogram, thrown togetherwith cow dung and feathers,mimics the act ofwriting without achieving semantic efficacy.Yet themute, material insistence of this script lends it a powerful mystique, one that transfixes the teacher and the camera alike in a moment of semiotic abandon.
Thus in TheKing of theChildren, the line that separates nature and culture does not run between writing and its absence. Rather, it lies between the lexicograph ically sanctioned writing of culture and nature's own script.Writing as such thus straddles the great nature-culture divide, dictating to the two sides the termsof theirnegotiations. It is in this absolute, totalizing sense that Iwill speak in this essay of a graphic regime.With the term, Iwant to evoke theways inwhich serves not to a out to writing only transcribe world existing there but actively shape its implicit order. In a nutshell, the graphic regime is theworld conceived as a in sense of the of the cosmos. writing, cosmo-graphy the literal writing its successive inflections and an Notwithstanding refigurations, enduring equation between the conceivability of order and the envisioning of theworld in the likeness ofwriting appears to persist through the long and variegated his toryof China. Scholars are increasingly turning their attention to the perennial rolewriting played in defining the fundamental outlook of early imperial order some itsmost salient and the for and lending of enduring characteristics?e.g., midable imperial bureaucracy and itsmassive textual output throughwhich the 3. Rey Chow, "Male Narcissism and National polity was rendered accountable and manageable, the ideological centralityof Culture: Subjectivity inChen Kaige's King of the commentaries not in Han and Confucianism but Children" inPrimitive Passions: Visuality,Sexuality, scriptures and only post-Han and Chinese Cinema Ethnography, Contemporary also in religious Daoism and later in Buddhism, and the cosmological authority York: Columbia University Press, 1995), (New as 127-30. accorded such graphic systems the Classic ofChanges (Yijing).4 Indeed, writing L. The the 4. See Christopher Connery, Empire of as suchwas deemed to be the creation of ancient sages, the privileged cosmo Text: and in China Writing Authority Early Imperial matrix which later rulerswere to know theworld and enact its (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998); David graphic through N. "Art,Ancestors, and the Keightley, Origins implicit order. of in 56 Writing China," Representations (1996); With some notable this tends to Jean Levi, "Rite, langue et superiority culturelle en exceptions, growing scholarship relegate Chine ancienne," Le Genre humain 21 (1990); and the persistent nondistinction between writing and world to the status of instru Mark E. Lewis, and in China Writing Authority Early and formations of mental irreality?i.e., ideological apparatuses phantasmic (Albany: State University of New York Press, at once to to 1999). power serving mask and facilitate the imperial state's real-political
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions interestsand desires. Such an instrumentalistaccount of the role ofwriting in the formation of Chinese imperial order,which also finds echoes inwell-known media-historical theories on the intersectionsbetween writing and complex own it polities elsewhere,may have its usefulness, but also risks foreclosing insights into themore subtle and deep-seated complicity between imperial order and the graphic regime.5At thisdeeper level, the relationship between writing and empire needs to be reversed.Namely, rather thanwriting simply serving the imperial state as its communicative and political medium, successive imperial themselves in a world conceived as dynasties inserted always already writing. even in a the themselves served as instru Itmay be argued that, sense, dynasties ments for the graphic regime's blind self-perpetuation. It is the positivity of such a graphic vision thatneeds to be fathomed. But how is itpossible to insertourselves into such an unfamiliar vision? My essay is a modest attempt to grope for a point of entry through theworks of Xu Bing (b. 1955), the prominent Chinese artist (now based inNew York) who has been at the center of contemporary Chinese art's quick rise to internationalpromi oeuvre one most nence since the 1980s and whose constitutes of the poignant reenact contemporary attempts to the experience of the graphic regime. Xu's extraordinarywork confronts the beholder with a series of perceptual questions us and paradoxes. Patiently tackling each of these graphic exerciseswill bring to the threshold of another history ofwriting, no doubt punctuated by numerous shiftsand ruptures,whose historical grammar is not yet readily available to us. If in the course of this exercise I give the impression of positing an ahistoric and monolithic regime, it is only as a preliminary approximation, one that a fuller historical account may eventually reinstate to itsoriginary disunity.6
Graphic Procreation
is a virus from outer Language space. S. 5. On the intersectionof writing and polity, ?attrib. William Burroughs see, for example, Harold A. Innis,Empire and Communications (Toronto: University of Toronto The intersection of and nature that informsChen's film has also been a Press, 1972); and JackGoody, The Logic ofWriting writing and the of (Cambridge, UK: in Organization Society central preoccupation Xu's works. For example, the Character Landscapes (2000) Cambridge University Press, 1986). are sketches of actual scenes, but Xu uses Chinese characters instead 6. For a preliminaryattempt at such a historiciza presumably see tion, my "The Empire of Fame:Writing and of natural forms to render the landscape in frontof him. As if to actualize the the Voice in Medieval Positions:East Early China," modern of the Chinese Asia Cultures Critique 14,no. 3 (2006): 535-66. (and predominantlyWestern) mythology pictograph, more or 7. The locus classicus for the pictographic hypoth wherein characters are deemed to put forth less schematic likenesses of esis is Ernest Fenollosa's essay The ChineseWritten the things they stand for,Xu "depicts" a treeusing the graph "tree" (shu |Sj") and Character as a Medium forPoetry (New York: a not Fordham University Press, 2008). For linguistic rock using the graph "rock" (shi5). At stake here, however, is whether the critiques of the notion of Chinese pictography, notion of pictography offers an adequate characterization of the Chinese script, see for example JohnDeFrancis, The Chinese nor even whether Xu believes such to be the case.7 In the convinc Language: Fact and Fantasy (Honolulu: University fact, pictorial of Hawaii Press, 1984), 74-130; and Viviane written owes to ingness of these landscapes less the resemblance between shapes Alleton, "Regards actuels sur I'ecriturechinoise," of and of than itdoes to the strokesdelin inParoles a dire, parole a ecr/re,ed. Viviane Alleton objects graphs prominent calligraphic de I'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en (Paris: Editions eating them, serving to place Xu's landscapes squarelywithin the parameters Sciences Sociales, 1997). of classical ink In of the theworks actualize 8. On the geomantic associations of Huang painting. place pictographic myth, see as Gongwang's landscape painting, JohnHay, another deep-seated cultural impulse: the myth of landscape calligraphic "Huang Kung-wang's 'Dwelling inthe Fu-ch'un formation, perhaps best exemplified by Huang Gongwang's fourteenth-century Mountain': Dimensions of a Landscape" (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1978). masterpiece Dwellingin theFuchun Mountain.8 The conception of the calligraphic
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Xu Bing, from Land script Sketchbooks, 1999-2000, inkon paper, AVi x 57/s in. (I 1.3x 15 cm) (artwork? Xu Bing) ^**Jte*" f^J^-^
Huang Gongwang, Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountain, ca. 1350, detail of handscroll, ink on paper, 13 in.x 20 ft. 103/?in. (33 x 636.9 cm). Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taiwan (artwork inthe public domain)
Xu Bing, American Silkworm Series I: Silkworm Books, 1994-95, live silkmoths laying eggs on blank books, book 13x II x 2 in. (33 x 27.9 x 5.1 cm) (artwork? Xu Bing)
Xu Bing, American Silkworm Series 2, 1994-95, live silkworms spinning silkon objects, includinga laptop computer, newspapers, a Bible, computer paper, dimensions variable, installation view, Xu Bing: Language Lost,Massachusetts Col lege of Art, Boston, 1995 (artwork? Xu Bing)
9. JohnHay has been most eloquent inarticulating stroke as embodiment of nature's immanent forces and articulations, one that the innerworkings of the post-Song conception dynasty painting, is here rendered literalby of painting. See his "Values and History inChinese governed post-Song landscape Painting, II:The Hierarchic Evolution of Structure," embedding calligraphically traced graphs in real landscapes, therebyreturning Res 7-8 "The Invisible inChinese (1984); Body to matrix.9 writing its natural Art?," inBody, Subject, and Power inChina, ed. Xu's installation American Silkworm Series also activates the affini Angela Zito and Tani Barlow (Chicago: University breathtaking of Chicago Press, 1993); and "The Human Body in the direc ties between writing and nature's pattern, albeit perhaps opposite as Microcosmic Source of Macrocosmic Values tion.The association here between Braille and the of laid on the inCalligraphy," inSelf as Body inAsian Theoryand patterns eggs Practice, ed. Thomas P. Kasulis, T. Ames, is is text Roger surface of the open pages evident.10 Less evident the analogy between andWimal Dissanayake (Albany: State University and textureevoked the delicate of silk, at once and of New York Press, 1993). by overlay masking echoing 10. Y. "Of Text and Texture: The text it. the moment of intersection between Eugene Wang, the printed beneath By capturing Cultural Relevance of Xu Art," inXu Bing's Bing: nature the pattern of and the pattern of culture, this evolving overlay realizes the Language Lost, exh. cat. (Boston: Massachusetts College of Art, 1995), 12. enduring idea of wen, the signifyingdesign that subsumes under itsuniversal
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Xu Bing, Pebble 2,1987, etching and mezzotint on 9'/4x x ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^mmmmmg^mm on 9/2 '^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^B x Moment ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^B on 9/49/2 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^B x (artworksXu ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^B J^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^M
This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Xu Bing, A Book from the Sky, 1987-91, legibility an eclectic arrayof patterns, including the graphic configuration of the books, and wall scrolls hand-printed ceiling ritual's of script, the syntactical articulation of writing, measured choreography printed fromwood letterpress type using false Chinese characters, installationview, Crossings, thehuman body, and such natural patterns as the stripes and dots embellishing National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1998 themyriad flora and fauna of theworld." Bringing these disparate cases of wen (artwork? Xu Bing) together is the idea of a nature thatwrites itself?which, as EugeneWang points interest in out, already informed Xu's early fossils and rough petrified surfaces.12 Yet the silkworms' effortto envelop thebook of culture in a huge cocoon remains a frustrated one, since silkworms are of cocoons on flat sur 11.On the authority of wen, see Haun Saussy, incapable forming "The of Prestige Writing: Wen, Letter, Picture, faces, thusholding the interweaving of nature and culture in a prolonged state Image, Ideography," inGreat Walls of Discourse of and Other Adventures inCultural China (Cambridge, suspense.13 MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001), Yet the deconstructive project of theseworks, seeking to blur the entrenched 66-71. text in a divide between culture's and nature's texture, is couched characteristically 12.Wang, 9. 13.Xu Bing, conversation with author, 1995. postmodernist gesture of provisionally accepting thedivide in order subsequently
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ^^^^^^
Xu Bing, A Book from the Sky, 1987-91, detail of one set (four volumes) of hand-sewn, thread-bound books printed fromwoodblock and wood letterpress type using false Chinese characters, ea. closed vol. 18/8x113A in. (46 x 30 cm) (artwork ? Xu Bing)
Xu Bing, A Book from the Sky, 1987-91, detail of lastpage of table of contents and firstpage of text of vol. I (artwork? Xu Bing)
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions to a even as it transgress it, gesture that perpetuates the divide continually dis it.We to turn our to an artist to find places need eyes earlier work of the actual ized the condition of a graphic regime that is truly indifferentto an ontological schism between textualmeaning and textureof being. A landmark of Chinese art remains most to experimental that the artist's intriguing achievement date, A Book fromthe Sky ismonumental precisely for the cosmic megalomania of its arrangement.14 The mirroring and echoing among the ample scrolls hanging from the ceiling, the open volumes lined up on the floor?which faithfully reproduce the typographic and xylographic conventions of traditionalChinese book-printing and book-binding, down to the formats of frontpage, interlinear the commentaries, marginalia, and table of contents?and panels surrounding the large but nonetheless claustrophobic space of installation reenact the familiar and Man.15 Chinese cosmological trinity of Heaven, Earth, I hasten to qualify that I do not propose the cosmological model as the static Iwant to that work's and definitive allegorical meaning. Instead, suggest constitutes a matrix in root sense a the cosmological setup the of the term, productive configuration, a deployment of elements generative of a world. The cosmology of A Book fromthe Sky is such amatrix ofworld-making, ceaselessly out more For spinning questions, paradoxes, and, than anything, writing. the creatures cosmos are or more crowding this fertile countless graphs, precisely, are pseudocharacters?"characters" that generated through painstaking and For exam exhaustive recombination of existing character-parts and fragments. consists pie, the pseudocharacter shown here of Structure of a pseudocharacter (diagram? or the author) ffi m y three distinct parts elements, two of which (7fcand "vf)are real characters in themselves and can also form parts ofmore complex graphs; the thirdunit in themiddle is pro duced by eliminating one stroke from an existing character (which is also com as It is to note monly used component of complex characters). important that even as to he thus tweaks and recombines existing units, Xu adheres closely the fundamentallymodular structure thatgoverns themorphology of the Chinese script (the real one), whereby a limited number of simpler units?some of which form characters in and of themselves while others do not?recur in more
artists not con complex graphs.16Thus, against all appearance, the method does tradict the formal principles of theChinese script; it radicalizes them. The similarity this combinatorial operation gone wild bears to the scene of 14.On the effectof scale inA Book from the Sky in The of theChildren is unmistakable. as in the filmnature and relatedworks, see Robert E. Harrist, Jr., (mis-)writing King Just "Book the at Princeton: Reflections from Sky reshufflesexisting graphs to improvise itsown writing, here the cosmic matrix on Scale, Sense, and Sound" inPersistence/ defines a space, a and reartic Transformation:Text as Image in theArt of Xu Bing, peculiar cosmo-graphic machinery disarticulating ed. J.Silbergeld and D. C. Y. Ching (Princeton: ulating culture 'swriting into a swarm of illegible but strangely compelling Princeton University Press, 2006), 29-32. graphs.At the same time, the difference between A Bookand TheKing is also sig 15.The fidelityof the books to traditional printing is indeed such that, according to the artist, the nificant. For ifnature in the filmdisrupts the coherence of culture's text from a set as BritishMuseum purchased exemplar of cosmos outside, from beyond the confines of the classroom, the of Xu's installa traditionalChinese bookmaking. Xu Bing, conver sationwith author, 1995. tion is indifferentto such a division between inside and outside or even between 16.A standard account of the structure of nature and culture. It is a space permeated by the force ofwriting as such, a theChinese script can be found inDeFrancis, inwhich nature's has been to such an 71-88.1 owe the notion of the modularity of the space disunifying operation generalized Chinese to Lothar Ledderose, Ten Thousand extent as to to If A script become integral the cosmo-graphy's inherent operation. Book Module and Mass Production inChinese Art Things: fromthe is indeed a as Abe it in a rather liberal of (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), Sky Utopia, Stanley put adoption 9-23. it is in sense a Louis Marin's conception of the term, the latter's specific of space
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions a cosmos that neutralizes oppositions, where the chiasmus of writing between 17. K. "No No Answers: nature nature is a Stanley Abe, Questions, the culture of and the of culture plain reality.17 China and A Book from the Sky," inModern Chinese That a vision of a natural writing figures in theworks of these two contem Literaryand Cultural Studies in theAge of Theory: artists is not a two were not to Reimagininga Field, ed. Rey Chow (Durham: porary certainly coincidence.,8 The immune the Duke University Press, 2000), 231; Louis Marin, so-called culture fever (wenhuare) thatgripped Chinese intellectuals in the 1980s, Utopiques: Jeux d'espaces (Paris: Editions de was in Minuit, 1973), 20-21. when the catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution that still fresh memory 18.A of artists themedium of survey engaging and China's alleged failure to achieve modern glorywere both attributed to the the book can be found inWu Hung, et al., Shu: of the ossified tradition.'9 Nor were the oth ReinventingBooks inContemporary Chinese Art overbearing weight country's many York: China (New Institute,2006). erswho likewise engaged and continue to engage in artistic reflectionson the 19. For an in-depth study of this cultural phenom Chinese such as, to name but a few: Gu Wenda, whose monumental cal enon, see JingWang, High Culture Fever: Politics, script, Aesthetics, and Ideology inDeng's China (Berkeley: ligraphic piece in an ancient script type called "seal script" (zhuanshu)is, asWu University of California Press, 1996). Hung points out, illegible twice over: first,because the antiquity of the script 20.Wu Hung, Transience: Chinese Experimental even to most sec Art at the End of the TwentiethCentury (Chicago: type renders itsmeaning unavailable Chinese beholders, and Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, are one or ond, because the characters all wrong way another;20 Qiu Zhijie, who 1999), 40-41. See alsoWenda Gu et al., theOrchid most Wenda Gu: Art fromMiddle Kingdom to Biological arduously copies Pavilion?the authoritativework of traditional Millennium (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003). times over same in a calligraphy?a thousand the sheet of paper, cynical self 21. See Norman Bryson's perceptive readings endeavor in a black block of of Qiu Zhijie and Song Dong's works inview of cancelling culminating plain ink; Song Dong, the condition of no artist in a (post-)ideological contemporary whose less poignant performance engages the repetitive effort? China in "The Avant-Garde," Post-Ideological all themore for its the surface ofwater with a in InsideOut: New Chinese Art, ed. Minglu Gao compulsive futility?to imprint of California (Berkeley: University Press, 1998). large woodblock carved with the character "water";21 and Wang Tiande, whose
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions opposite: Gu Wenda, Mythos of Lost Dynasties A Series, 1983, pseudo-seal scripture incal ligraphiccopybook format, inkon rice paper, silk border mounting, ea. 24 x 36 in. (61 x 91.4 cm) (artwork? Gu Wenda)
Qiu Zhijie, Writing the "Orchid Pavilion Preface*' One Thousand Times, 1990-94, installationwith video documentation, ink-on paper calligraphy,approx. 16 ft.6 in.x 16ft. 6 in.(500 x 500 cm), calligraphy 29Yi x 707e in. (75 x 180 cm) (artwork? Qiu Zhijie)
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions WangTiande, Digital 06-CL02,2006, Chinese exquisitely layeredwork covers a seemingly conventional piece of calligraphy? inkon Xuan rice burn \AVix I l87/s paper, marks, and no an in. (36.7 x 302 cm) (artwork? Wang Tiande) though barely legible forming readily comprehensible writing?with a as it with lit used to overlay of "negative calligraphy" were, "written" cigarettes opposite: burn holes (or "dots," in the spiritof thework's title) into thepaper.22 Itwould Song Dong, Printing on Water, 1996, perfor mance inthe Lhasa River, Tibet, one set of 36 be a tempting exercise of culturalhistory to examine thedifferent ways inwhich prints, ea. 24 x 20 in. (61 x 51 cm) chromogenic writing figured and continues to figure in these and other artists' and authors' (artwork? Song Dong) intense on conceive as reflections what many of them the prison-house of acute concern Chinese civilization?albeit with ambivalence. But the primary is not to in of my essay contextualize the works their immediate epochal back to to to ground, but instead self-consciously buy into and attempt inhabit the underlying graphic vision that they simultaneously seem to loathe and to embrace. My goal here is to use A Book fromthe Sky as a heuristic entrypoint into theChinese graphic regime, so thatwe may begin to get a feel of thisvision from the inside.
Such an interpretivegesture of inhabitingwould seem to be particularly appropriate for a work likeA Book fromthe Sky, itself the product of the artist's prolonged act of vicariously inhabiting the cosmo-graphic space subsequently materialized in the installation.The fact that the artist immersed himself in a
retreat commotion scene into yearlong from the of the late 1980s cultural the solitude of his studio to design and to carve the pseudocharacters is by now a of to a facile narrative something of legend.23 Instead resorting of spirituality and the lonely artist, Iwant to suggest that the long retreatwas marked by the vision. Imean artist's possession by the cosmo-graphic By "possession" quite liter ally the conversion into an agent of the vision: Xu became the catalyzing agent for the cosmographic space inwhich graphs procreate by crossbreeding and in new artist regenerating combinations. Methodically and exhaustively, the precipitated this graphic orgy to give birth to the countless pseudocharacters. If this sounds like a figment of a fertile imagination, the imagination turns out to In to ancient have canonical backing. the postscript the still-authoritative dictionary Shuowenjiezi compiled by the scholar Xu Shen in the Eastern Han dynasty (2?-22o ce), we find the following passage:
The simple graph (wen ~$C) is the fundamental image of things.The complex on the other hand, means "to birth" It 22.Wang Tiande and Chambers FineArt graph (zi give (zi procreates Made exh. cat. York: (Gallery), by Tiande, (New and multiplies.24 Chambers FineArt, 2004). 23. Britta Erickson, The Art of Xu Bing:Words Xu wen ziwas a Shen's distinction between and essentially morphological one, without withoutWords Meaning, Meaning (Seattle: bound with his famous "Six Laws of Character Formation" University ofWashington Press, 2001), 37. intimately up (liushu), 24. Xu Shen, Shuowen jiezi zhu (Shanghai: Shanghai inwhich he classified themorphology of complex graphs into six basic struc chubanshe, 754 guji 1981), (15A/2a-b). on one an tural Wen, the hand, is simple, 25. Tetsuji Atsuji, Kanjigaku: Setsubun kaiji no sekai patterns.25 morphologically forming (Tokyo: Tokai daigaku shuppankai, 1985), I 14. indivisible graphic unit thatpurportedly entertains an iconic relation to the
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Xu fakecharacters for Bing Bj^^ V^IHHUIHH&g|flHj| fromtheSky at ^^^^^^^^^^Hj^fei^ ^HliL^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^E^^^^^^H (photograph? Xu Bing) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^BHjj|^^^
on other is of two or more shapes of things. Zi, the hand, composite, consisting simpler graphs combined according to one of the sixmorphological patterns. serves to an connection between The above passage thus highlight unexpected what is usually taken to be a purely classificatory system of existing characters and a notion of graphic fertility,thereby further entrenching the radical collapse between nature and culture.26The totalityof existing graphs is the product of a regulated process inwhich simpler graphsmate to form complex ones, and it is such a law of procreation thatgrounded the classification system of Xu Shen's
dictionary. the corpus of actual is enmeshed in themessy 26. On the fertilityof characters inthe Shuowen Evidently, graphs always and itscosmological underpinning via the Classic history ofwords and theiruses, and the referentialresponsibility of Xu Shen see 272-74. of Changes, Lewis, as frustrated his to uncover a coherent lexicographer inevitably project system 27. Takeda Masaya presents an overview of this beneath the of characters. fascinatinghistory inhis Sdketsu tachi no utage: of graphic fertility daunting heterogeneity existing kanji no shinwa to yutopia (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo, also to be a tenacious This impossible dream, however, proved one, resurfacing 1994). Chinese in a multitude of cultural milieus and metamor 28.Wu Hung's informedtranslation of the throughout history term tianshuas "nonsense in "A 'Ghost into forms of character Placed at the tail end writing," phosing myriad interpretations.27 Rebellion': Notes on Xu 'Nonsense Bing's of this curious Xu be seen Writing,'" Public Culture 6, no. 2 (1994): 411, genealogy, Bing's grand cosmo-graphy may perhaps does not contradict of the as one necessarily my reading the delusory realization of the millennia-old, frustrated dream, finally of the for the term's efficacy pseudocharacters, to devour the entire cosmos. actualized by allowing pseudocharacters colloquial meaning of "gibberish" is itselfderiva tive of the more literalmeaning of "heavenly script," cosmic writs (mostly Daoist) believed to have literallyappeared inthe sky.On this pecu Nonsense? liartradition, see, for example, Isabelle Robinet, TaoistMeditation: TheMao-shan Tradition the of Such a reading of A Book fromthe Sky, however, flies in the face of the prevailing Great Purity,trans. JulianF. Pas and Norman J. that thework under the of rather than Girardot (Albany: State University of New York interpretations perceive sign sterility and Lu Press, 1993); Pengzhi, "Zaoqi lingbaojing fertility.Virtually all critics unconditionally accept the ground characterization de tianshu guan," inDaojiao jiaoyi yu xiandai shehui of the as nonsense Thus, critics read into (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2003). pseudocharacters writing.28 allegorizing 29. Martina a nuanced an one Koppel-Yang presents the evacuation of meaning essentially political, critical intent, target version of this inher SemioticWarfare: perspective the of either culture in the Chinese tradition more The Chinese Avant-Garde, 1979-1989; A Semiotic ing oppressiveness general, or Communist The instead Analysis (Hong Kong: Timezone 8, 2003), 169-71. specifically, the regime.29 anti-allegoricists recognize
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions I fromthe Sky, HHmi^^^H^^HV
in the "nonsense" characters the realization of the "open text," the archetypally postmodern figure of the freedom of the reader. Such a convergence ofwhat are otherwise diametrically opposed readings is to us to an entrenched beneath the enough alert interpretive paradigm operating apparent divergence. Uniting the readings is the familiar communication model a at intersection intention of meaning, model defining meaning the of and recep tion.The two readings simply highlight one or the other end of this communi cative a chain. But falling through the cracks of such communication-centered model is the agency of the graph, its intrinsic capacity to produce and reproduce itselfand its signification. It is symptomatic that the prevailing interpretations fail to closely examine A Book fromthe Sky's pseudocharacters in their concrete over as at once forms and structures, instead glossing them abstractly meaning less, painstakingly crafted,or beautiful. But it is precisely the tangible being of their vitalistic orches individual graphs that propels Xu's cosmo-graphy, capacity vortex trating the work's of graphic procreation and regeneration. A closer look at the graphs reveals theirprofoundly rivetingnature, as illustratedby the enthralled viewers at thefirst public show of thework in Beijing in 1988. For those familiarwith theChinese script, to look at Xu's is a one that mixes enchantment with pseudocharacters tantalizing experience, 30. For standard of the con are in the linguisticcritiques frustration. The graphs frustrate because they meaningless precise ception of the Chinese script as ideography, see sense that they fail as "logographs," asmodern linguists put it (in emphatic Alleton, 187-95;William G. Boltz, The Origin and to notion as writ EarlyDevelopment of theChinese Writing System opposition the of the ideograph).30 Xu's pseudocharacters fail Haven: American Oriental (New Society, 1994), ing not because theydo not correspond tomeanings directly (the real Chinese 3-24; and DeFrancis, 133-48. does not do so but because do not to known 31.1 want to underscore the significanceof what script either), they correspond any called the "eminent legibility"of Xu's are to remain JohnCayley words and hence bound unpronounceable and unfathomable. Yet installation,albeit primarily inreference to the the same failed characters enchant because the printformats. See his "Writing (Under-)Sky: On un-logographic pseudocharacters in Xu Bing's Tianshu," A Book of the Book: Some are nonetheless perpetually on the cusp of signification.That a graph devoid of Works and about the Book and Projections Writing, lexical can nevertheless be is one of themost ed. Jerome Rothenberg and Steven Clay (New support compelling intriguing York: Granary Books, 2000), 498-500. insights thatXu's work brings about.3' The taskof distinguishing combinations
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ^ in s n s ii
Xu Bing, page inA Book from the Sky, 1987-91, with red marks added by the author (artwork? Xu Bing)
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions of elements that somehow make sense as graphs from those thatdo not was a central preoccupation of the artistduring his yearlong seclusion. At stakehere is thus not an extraneous consideration for aesthetically pleasing forms unrelated to semantics as such, but rather a sensibility thatpresumes an intrinsic connec tion between morphology and meaning, something akin to the ideographic fantasy thatmodern linguists took such pain to discredit. In his insightful treatiseon theChinese art ofwriting, Jean-FrancoisBilleter that a an emphasizes well-formed character should possess organic autonomy: "Like the organism, which in the realm of nature is a relativelycomplete and closed system, independent of its surroundings, the character has to constitute, in the realm of forms, a system that is relativelycomplete, closed and indepen dent of the surrounding space; by its form, it should be the equivalent of a living being."32To achieve this goal, thewriting hand needs to adhere to several formal rules, such as: i) to fit the character in an imaginary square (as opposed to the roman alphabet, which unfolds across a horizontal line); 2) to give the character a center of gravity; 3) to give the character a "silhouette," as clean an outline as possible; 4) to integrate the distinct parts of a complex character by adjusting the relative size and density of the differentparts. While Billeter's rules apply primarily to calligraphy (i.e., handwriting), theyprovide useful to measure yardsticks the well-formedness of printed characters?and, indeed, of Xu's as well. Their and pseudocharacters morphological soundness general conformity to the organic morphology of real characters become apparent when one as simply marks their outlines and centers, in the illustration here.33 These centered, proportioned, and clean silhouettes arewhat lend body to characters and Billeter pseudocharacters alike, what aptly calls the character's
"body sense."34 Further extending the organic and naturalizing analogy,we may compare this experience of significantform to thatof the face.Well-formed graphs con a geal into countenance, whereas ill-formed ones do not, and thisunity ofmien is what confers a halo of to same meaningfulness Xu's pseudocharacters. At the the time, physiognomic expressivity of graphs frustrates the beholder, because their evocative aspects refuse to conform to thefixity of the lexicon. They cannot be named. This is probably what the artistmeant when he said thathis pseudo a writing has face but has no voice.35 The face, the philosopher Georg Simmel suggests, is the empirical paradigm for synthesis.36It is the experience of theKantian "unity ofmultiplicity" in the here-and-now of one in which the of perception, vagaries constantly moving parts crystallize, immediately and tangibly,into the coherence of a countenance. a To recognize graph in the outlandish recombination of graphic parts is an 32. Jean-Fran<;oisBilleter, The Chinese Art of experience to such a This is a Writing, trans. Jean-MarieClarke and Michael comparable physiognomic recognition. pregnant Taylor (New York: Skira/Rizzoli, 1990), 29. analogy, especially because much of themeaning the viewer finds inXu's graphs 33. There are a fewways inwhich the pseudo in factderives from themultitude of associations triggeredby their components graphs can deviate from the morphological norm, which as well as their overall Character elements in will be discussed later. shapes. incorporated the pseudo 34. 33. Billeter, character evoke a or and simi quality (e.g., "water," "sharpness," "enclosure"), 35. Xu quoted inthe wall text for the exhibition with adds further Word Play: ContemporaryArt byXu Bing at the larity existing graphs layersof connotations, both semantic Arthur M. Sackler Gallery,Washington, DC, 2001. and A "makes sense" phonetic. pseudocharacter when the myriad connotations 36. Georg Simmel, "The Aesthetic Significance without denotation into the coherence of a mien. of the Face," inGeorg Simmel, ed. KurtWolff congeal Ohio State Some are in (Columbus: University Press, 1959). examples order. The first character shown here is a rather
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Semantic and "resonances" of a phonetic J3$& X TT2 obvious example of successful semantic fromXu A Book pseudocharacters Bing, Jfc^L^* convergence of the character from the Sky, 1987-91 (artwork? Xu Bing; parts, showing diagram by the author) _ for "flame/aflame" (jfe) sitting above the M & /^ character for "death" (^E).The next is more pseudocharacter somewhat subtle, two seamlessly fusing existing characters + into a that evokes an success fjft ft (= $L graph equally ful semantic fusion: the character bing(j=?) or stands for "soldier" and shu for either "numerous" "common, lowly"; a swarm an associa their combination suggests something like of foot soldiers, tion reinforced by the increased number of dots at the bottom. The third and most poignant example combines the common element (or "key," bushou)that is often found in characters having to do with the flesh (H). On the right is the to to character for "to press, crush, flatten." The painful pseudocharacter that results from their combination would probably be pronounced something or on since in like ya zha, following the character the right, existing characters of same the structure, the right-side elements usually bear phonetic information. The "sound(s)" furtherreinforce(s) the painful "meaning" of the pseudochar acter, since itpuns with a host of such similarwords as "to push" (yafl), "to (op)press" (yaM), "to squeeze" (zha$1), "to explode" (zha 'ftp),and so on. 37. De la an remains more or Jacques Derrida, Grammatologie Such analysis necessarily tentative, given the less subjec Editions de Minuit, Lacan, (Paris: 1967); Jacques tive nature of such associations. is not to claim that the above exhausts "L'lnstance de la lettredans I'inconscient ou la My point semantic associations raison depuis Freud," inEcrits (Paris: Seuil, 1966); the whole gamut of and phonetic that may have crossed and Jean-LucNancy Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, mind as or cross the artist's he designed each pseudocharacter may the mind The Title of the Letter:A Reading of Lacan, trans. viewer arcane terrain. aim is to Francois Raffoul and David Pettigrew (Albany: of the plowing through the graphic My rather State of New York University Press, 1992). suggest that the associations evoked Xu's little square seem 38. See Ernst Robert Curtius's authoritative myriad by graphs to toward a certain as much semantic and as historical account of the notion of theworld as gravitate kernel, phonetic morpho book inhis Literatureand the LatinMiddle European logical. The body of the character is a signifyingone as well, albeitmore like a Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, face than like a name. 1990), 302-47. 39. JohnLagerwey, "The Oral and theWritten This immanence ofmeaning in the body of the charactermight have been inChinese andWestern in Religion," Religion what Paul Claudel had inmind when he stated thatwhereas und Philosophie inOstasien, ed. Gert Naundorf, famously alpha Karl-Heinz Pohl, and Hans-Hermann Schmidt betic writing flees across thehorizon, characters always face us.With thispithy and (Wurzburg: Konigshausen Neumann, 1985), formulation, he makes it clear the of the inA Book 304. abundantly why agency graph fromthe is at odds with such 40. One might pursue the analogy between Xu's Sky fundamentally poststructuralist figuresof graphic installationand the Daoist conception of heav as or materiality Jacques Lacan's "agency of the letter" Jacques Derrida's "trace," enly scriptures furtherby suggesting a Daoist some critics to subtext for the installation'scontrast between notwithstanding the insistence of the contrary. For what these the unbound of the vast scroll seek to evoke is a a unity hanging poststructuralist figures variously presence of absence, from above and the multitude of bound volumes of associations from one to another to form beneath. This forms an interestingparallel to flurry fugitive rapidly shifting sign the constitutive inherent inDaoist opposition what Lacan called the metonymic chain.37 In contrast, the web of associations of the transmitted conception holy scriptures: is as deployed around the pseudocharacter immanent: just the coherence of the texts of the scriptures are but degraded versions of the "realwrits" that literallymaterialize inthe multitude ofmovements animating the face is inevitablyfelt to be the expression and to the and sky?invisible illegible ordinary eye a coherent the numerous associations of interiority, crowding the pseudocharac certainly not bound. See references innote 28. ter are to from its inner If 41. See Lewis, 274-75; and Anthony C. Yu, felt spring kernel. poststructuralist signification and Xunzi on Names," in China/ "Cratylus Early inhabits the intersticesbetween signs, the signification of the pseudocharacter AncientGreece: Thinkingthrough Comparisons, instead emanates fromwithin the fertile center of the ed. Steven Shankman and StephenW. Durrant graph's tangibly compact State of New York (Albany: University Press, being. Despite its insistentdeconstructive gestures (and paceDerrida's critique 2002), 239. of the book as containment of the remains a of 42. Bohutong shuzheng, ed. Chen Li (Beijing: trace), poststructuralism thinking Zhonghua shuju, 1994), 12.567. the book, the linear discourse (albeitmultilinear), the fugitivebreath ofmean
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ing.38TheChinese graphic regime, in contrast, is the regime of script,graphic faceswhose countenances and constellationsmaintain theirunique and block like coherence even as they respond to and intersectwith one another. John on on Lagerway's insightfulremarks the unity of the cracks ancient oracle bones, Daoist scriptures, and Chinese writing applies equally toXu's pseudocharacters: " [The cracks] remind us that the original Chinese text is not linear and does not constitute a book. . . .Cracks on oracle bones and Taoist real writs do not
. . are represent. something outside of themselves; they disclosures of patterns (wenq),revelation of structures (li1)."39Xus "books" are in fact such heavenly writs (as theChinese term tianshumay be rendered), forwhich the linear closure of the book remains alien.40
A phenomenon asmundane as the pun may offer a better approximation for the significationof the pseudocharacters than the trace or themetonymic chain, for its associative effectsare inexorably entangled with the palpable stuffof at the intersections of mor words. Xu's pseudocharacters emerge graphic puns: phological resemblances, repetitions, and overlaps converging on each of those curiously evocative ciphers. Such a collapse between signification and pun also finds interestinghistorical analogue in one of the peculiarities of early Chinese works that continue to the modern commentaries and lexicographic perplex Sinologist. For a similar drive to anchor meaning in the tangible thickness of thewritten word governs the predilection for paronomastic glosses inHan commentaries.4' In curious dictionaries and canonical these glosses, similarities in sound or shape equally constitute the basis for punning understood broadly. For example, a passage from theHan Confucian textBohutong expounds on the compound term "ancestral shrine" (zongmiao)via auditory proximity: zongpuns with theword "to respect" (zun) and miao puns with theword "countenance" (mao).42The commentary therebyderives the core function of a shrine (i.e., "the place to house the image/face of the ancestor forworship") from the graphs'
auditory associations. Some may question my direct linkage between Xu's pseudocharacters and Han to the paronomastic glosses, pointing the difference of perceptual registers two. one sense separating the A pun, after all, is about sound, which is that is presumably renounced inXu's graphs. Itwould then appear as though theHan to as exegetes, unlike the contemporary artist, resorted speech their primary matrix associations. To infer to in a of thus, however, would be smuggle quintes modern its to senses. sentially presupposition about language and relation the Sense is discrimination irreducible for linguistics because the modern and/or Western definition ofwhat properly belongs to language centrally turnson it. The massive body of deconstructive critiques in thewake of Derrida's Grammatol ogyhas brought to light the overdetermined nature of the speech-script distinc tion, allied with global claims about signification, subjectivity,and the logos.Han us to to our exegesis compels suspend this dense cultural formation and turn eyes to an equally dense but differentcultural formation, one that centers on the graph asmultisensory block-unit of signification. Sound ceases to index the ontologically autonomous sphere of speech, distinct from the realm ofwriting, as an constitutive instead neighboring shape equally component of the discrete is in commen Structure of the character for i .Vt graph-word. This why Han canonical "loyalty" ph = pf} ?the \ ^ 'til* as in are (zhong) (diagram author) taries, just Xu's work, paronomastic glosses
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions found side by sidewith glosses that treatcharacters as rebuses. For instance, theword "loyalty" (zhongj?) is explained in another Han-dynasty text as "one whose heart-mind (xin holds one center (zhong41; puns with 'loyalty')."43 The combination of these two graphs indeed yields the graph for "loyalty." Here, as inA Book fromthe Sky, no firm line separates visual similitude and inter sections from auditory ones; together they form the tangible stuffof thewritten word to which Han commentators and contemporary artist alike seek to anchor
all meaning. The logic of similitude underlying the puns of ancient commentatorsmay appear to lend support to the notion of pictography, as some have attempted to show.44The pictography hypothesis, however, fails to capture the realmagnitude of the authority accorded towriting in early Chinese reflections. In fact,one to-one correspondences ofwhatever type between individual graphs and real things appear to have been only ofmarginal, ad hoc significance for the ancient Chinese reflectionson writing.45That writing encapsulates the immanent order of theworld was a given that required no further justifications.In this sense, writing formed an essentially closed system. If a certain notion of likeness none theless legislated the relationship between writing and theworld, the vector pointed in the opposite direction. Instead of likeness anchoring writing to the world, itwas theworld thatwas invested inwriting and transfiguredinto its likeness. Facts ofwriting were ipso facto facts of theworld, but not necessarily the otherway around. Hence the perennial importance of the pun. The dazzling choreography of graphicmirroring and resonance orchestrated by puns at once defined processes of signification and of theworld, renderingmoot the distinc nature tions between meaning and being and between and culture.
Toward a History of the Graphic Regime
It is this sense of total closure, the claustrophobic autonomy of the Chinese cosmo-graphy, thatXu's Book fromthe Sky captures with such poignancy. The world of real things evaporates there, leaving aworld composed only ofwrit ing. Bringing the collapse ofmeaning and being to its absurd but logical end, its ten thousand graphs supplant the ten thousand things of the universe to enact a a that turns on itself but articulates mad dance of cosmo-graphic system blindly nothing.What we witness in the universe of A Book fromthe Sky is themodus ope randi of the graphic regime laid bare, the stubborn operations of the regime qua
naked regime. But if thework demonstrates the fundamental structureof the graphic regime, it also divulges something about the singularmanner inwhich the artist inhabits this graphic universe, themarginal vantage point fromwhich the total as a ityof the regime's empty automatism becomes visible such. It is marginality that reminds us, for example, of the awed and perplexed gaze the peoples at the margins of Chinese civilizationmight have cast on the graphic universe of the 43. Dong Zhongshu, Chunqiu fanlu yizheng (Beijing: In it reminiscent Xixia have Chinese "center." particular, is of the script (as many 51.346. Zhonghua shuju, 1992), when first with a invented in ce 44. Lewis, 271. noted confronted page fromXu's Book), 1036 An 45. Thomas Lamarre, UncoveringHeian Japan: by the firstruler of the innerAsian kingdom of Xixia.46The Xixia script is one of Sensation and Archaeology of Inscription(Durham: invented at the four corners of the East Duke University Press, 2000), 128-30. many Chinese-inspired writing systems 46. 25 Asian where Harrist, cultural sphere (e.g., Vietnam, Mongolia, Manchuria), possessing
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions a own more a communicative script of one's satisfied far than people's practical itwas tantamount to a to in needs; claim membership civilization and, hence, to an the expression of the burning desire possess imperial cosmo-graphy of one's own. It is tempting to imagine the artist inhabiting the graphic regime like an Asian a eleventh-century Inner "barbarian" might have done, devising graphic Cover and first pages of the Huayan Sutra, universe all his own, but which turnsup as hostile and inhospitable as the one translated into Xixia, mid-fourteenth he mimics. In fact, something of thishostility is captured in one of the fewways century, wooden movable-type print, con in sometimes certina binding. Collection of the Department which Xu's pseudocharacters deviate from the morphological in of Literature,Kyoto University (artwork the norm in of real characters, namely their excessively complex and aggressively public domain) thistlyshapes, characteristics prominently featured in theXixia script as well. The Xu character inA Book from the Sky, Bing, pompous prickliness of Xu's overloaded pseudocharacters capture something of 1987-91 (artwork? Xu Bing) tower those (pseudo-)empires' admixture of yearning for and fear of China's in an ing cultural presence. Nietzsche might have perceived such ambivalence the ressentimentof themarginal kingdoms toward China's massively civilizing a power?albeit militarily rather vulnerable power?most emblematically embodied in the intimidating universe of theChinese script. As tempting as thispossible alliance with the geocultural margins of the Chinese civilization may be, however, this is not the only form ofmarginality A vis-a-vis one assertive? Book evokes the graphic empire. Indeed, of the less in some A and perhaps less deliberate?ways which characters of Book deviate norm turn out to from the may be symptomatic of the actual vantage the work
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Xu Bing, detail showing similarities between r?1 assumes vis-a-vis fsjs* fgbg tacitly the regime. Unlike the pseudocharactersand "simplified"(jianti) / Wi^) J 3f overload of the Xixia-like characters, these characters inA Book from the Sky, 1987-91 graphic ? Xu as (artwork Bing) other characters peculiarly lack density, gaping white holes upset the otherwise finely calculated w r m graphic poise and equilibrium of Xu's pseudoscript. simplified traditional to (jianti) (fanti) Their graphic sparseness brings mind thehollow ness of themodern "simplified" (jianti) characters, the official scriptof the Peoples Republic of China, systematized by the Com munist in on government the 1950s and based partly traditional forms of cal ligraphic and typographic abbreviations. The establishment of simplified characters,with their fewer strokes and radical was at reduction of formal complexity, primarily aimed promoting the easier to seen more literacy by making script memorize; broadly, however, the simplification of script dovetails with the language-reformmovements that sprung up in thewake of theRepublican Revolution of 1911and the collapse of theQing dynasty itbrought about. Proposals for simplification continued to figure prominently inmost intellectual and policy debates on and programs for the vari modernization of Chinese society and culture. The radical proposals ously sought to unburden theChinese language of itsheavy graphic baggage by abolishing the characters and replacing themwith alphabetic romanization, by inventing some artificialphonetic scriptmore suited to theChinese language, or?in extreme the and it cases?by abandoning language altogether replacing with Esperanto.47 Despite their diversity, the radical and often fantastic proposals and polemics all aimed at breaking out ofwhat modern intellectuals perceived to a massive be stiflingly dense and scriptural burden. By unassumingly planting graphs and graph-parts evocative ofmodern simplified characters on the otherwise emphatically "traditional" pages of his books, Xu advertentlyor inadvertentlyacknowledges theworks underlying af finitywith thismodernizing desire to stand outside the closure of the graphic same empire. At the time, the almost seamless way in which these anomalous graphs blend into their antique typographic and xylographic environment has the ironic effectof recouping modern (anti-) graphic sensibilityback into the closure of the graphic regime, therebybetraying the surreptitiouspersistence of the regime at the very heart of linguisticmodernism. For in theirpassion and obsession with the negation ofwriting, both the language reformersand the contemporary experimental artists end up perpetuating the very authority of writing that they sought and still seek to undermine?so much so as to virtually the difference between collapse reforming writing and reforming language.48 47. Standard English-language accounts of these Such ambiguities and ambivalences of Chinese linguisticmodernism are reformmovements are found in JohnDeFrancis, what A Book fromthe in its absurdist It is here thatwe Nationalism and Language Reform inChina (New Skycrystallizes magnificence. York,: Octagon Books, 1972); and Richard C. begin to confront the historicity of thework in the strictsense of the term.For brushes with Power:Modern Politicsand the Kraus, in its to as a very ability expose the graphic regime system that articulates noth Chinese Art of Calligraphy (Berkeley: University of but its own A Book its own fundamental California Press, 1991), 75-108. ing operations, acknowledges modernity. 48. On the of inmod persistent primacy writing A Book fromthe Sky is a modern allegory in the sense inwhich Walter Benjamin ern Chinese language-reformmovements, see defined the term: an of the as such.49 If the Murata Yujiro, "'Bunpaku' no kanata ni: kindai allegory allegorical apparatus graphic ni okeru mondai," Shiso 853 and of the Han commentators chugoku kokugo pun paronomastics and lexicographers served (1995). to invest lexical in the of it is 49.Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic meaning palpable density graphs, by divesting Drama (London: Verso, 1985). the graphic regime of its entanglementwith the lexicon thatA Book fromthe Sky
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions presents cosmography in itsbare systematicity.No longer a fact of theworld, a thework becomes world apart?a Utopia?where cosmo-graphy is exposed as was what it always but never recognized itself to be: a regime. The visibility of the regime qua regime afforded by a work likeA Book from theSky iswhat enables us to conceive a history of the graphic regime. In the optics of thisprivileged perspective, thehistory will figure as a history of blind nesses, a history of a regime thatpersisted inmisrecognizing itselfas theworld. But if the efficacyof a regime is predicated on such an entrenchedmisrecogni tion, the insightof Xu's Bookperhaps also signals the beginning of an end. In a over more a sense, and despite fervent cultural and political efforts than century tomodernize the Chinese language, themodernity of Chinese writing is just beginning, and we do not yet know what new forms of articulation between writing and theworld will emerge inwhat promises to be a protracted process of ending.Yet, insofar as its trajectorywill be a function of the sedimentary graphic investmentsof theworld that itwill have to undo, thehistory of the graphic regime remains a history of the present.
Hajime Nakatani isan assistant professor inthe departments of East Asian studies and art history and communication studies at McGill University,where he teaches East Asian art history and visual culture. His publications include articles on traditionalChinese painting and writing, Japanese manga, and comparative semiotics. He is currentlyworking on a book-length manuscript on the cultural historyof writing and cal ligraphy inearly medieval China.
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This content downloaded from 132.162.229.107 on Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:09:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions