When you do your own work, it’s your own point of view. It’s how you see the world, your own perspective on things reflected in the artwork. But with advertising or marketing, you’re helping other people get their points of view across. You’re just an interpreter.

To me, that’s the fundamental difference between designers and artists. You speak for yourself, or you speak for someone else. They’re separate things, but I think I can do both. They don’t really conflict, as long as you know what’s right and wrong!

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I’ve been trying to learn Japanese this year. I’m making progress but it’s definitely slow. While I took Spanish in high school, my brain didn’t shift the way it is now. As I started to write and learn these brand new characters, I started noticing all the things I take for granted, all the built in assumptions that come from the structure and vocabulary of my native language. The way your language is shaped influences the way your ideas are shaped. Learning a language very different from your own makes you deconstruct what things mean. Not just what words mean, but the ideas behind the words. For instance, the belief in the void or emptiness in early India, combined with the structure of their language, likely led to the creation of the number zero.

I recently saw an exhibit of work by Xu Bing, a Chinese artist who wrote about a similar experience.

I didn’t come to America until I was 35. While my mind was already fully developed, my English level was still that of a child. This awkward feeling that came from my experience of cultural and linguistic miscommunication turned my interest towards symbols, language and communication.

His artwork often revolves around language and books, what forms they take and what they mean to a culture. The seeds for this artistic direction started as a child. His parents were librarians during the Cultural Revolution.

When the Cultural Revolution ended, I returned from the countryside to the city. I took advantage of my parent’s work-related access to the library, and read all kinds of books from the stacks enormous holdings… I was like a starving person who all at once has too much to eat, and winds up so uncomfortable that he is filled with disgust.

Some of his work includes:

• A Case Study of Transference – Two pigs in a pen littered with books, one female covered in fake Chinese characters, and one male covered in fake latin alphabet characters, mate in front of an invited “intellectual audience.”
• Silkworm Series I – IV – Moths lay small black silkworm eggs onto open books. The eggs form the appearance of a Braille-like language. Shortly after the exhibit opens, the eggs hatch, and the small black worms wriggle over the pages, forming the appearance of ink lines and squiggles, a second incomprehensible language.
• The Parrot – A parrot shouts learned phrases to the gallery visitors, such as “You people are so boring!”, “Modern art is crap!” and “Why are you holding me prisoner, you bastards!”

In Xu Bing’s most recent work, Book from the Ground, he is compiling a universal language created from existing international icons. The first icons came from airplane safety cards and airports, and later came from street signs, other safety instructions, advertising and other sources. The icons are chosen for their universality, and require almost no learning curve from most people who read them. His plan is to create a multilingual dictionary and software of these words (for universal translation) and to publish a novel written in this icon language.

Now when asked about the meaning of his work, he often simply points to the Chinese legend of the origin of writing, contained in the Huainanzi. In the story, when Cang Jie invents Cangjie, the God of Heaven is so afraid that grain falls from the sky and ghosts begin to wale.

Those whose culture embraces Chinese characters (i.e. people in Greater China, Korea, and Japan) have such respect for shu and consider it so sacred, that they believe it capable of effecting change in the natural order of things.

The artist’s web sites have many great insights into language, culture and art.
Xu Bing Dot Com (the artist’s web site)
Book from the Ground (project web site)
Xu Bing’s blog

Books by or about Xu Bing

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1. Beijing Modern Dance Company – Pink Floyd’s The Wall

The Beijing Modern Dance Company created the piece Red Light set to the music of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. It toured the U.S. back in 2005, and has haunted me ever since.

For most people in the United States born after the 80’s, The Wall is something you see and listen to in high school. Many people adopt it to provoke and encourage all the rebellion they’re going through. It’s a natural desire to break away from your parents and become you’re own person, and these lyrics are great for it. Over time, though, the lyrics no longer have the general punch they used to. They became solely about dealing with teenage rebellion and nothing more. They became a cliché. “Hey! Teacher! Leave those kids alone!” is a perfect excuse to stage a walkout and go sit in the sun and smoke under a tree.

I didn’t think much about this going into see Red Light. I liked the film, even though it had been awhile since I watched it. But it never dawned on me what cultural preconceptions I had when I entered the theatre.

For the first half of the performance, I cringed often. The whole thing seemed coupled together from stock modern dance moves, with some Flashdance thrown in. The set was scaffolding, uplight hitting dancers twirling around poles and leaning out from them. It seemed pretty awful.

But then something happened.

As the title song The Wall (pt. 2) started, I had a sense of dread. We’ve heard the song so many times, why should this be on stage? Will they pantomime stealing liquor from their parent’s locked cabinet and getting drunk in a friend’s garage?

The dancers came out in lines, to me reminiscent of video I’d seen of Chinese training schools. These schools have hundreds of students in one class, lined up outdoors in strict formation, exercising or practicing martial arts.

Then the lyrics, which for so long had meant nothing outside of high school, played out
We don’t need no education.
We don’t need no thought control.

Outside the context of my comfortable U.S. suburban childhood, suddenly this song was not just daring, but dangerous. We had all seen the videos of tanks against students in Tiananmen Square. Dancing to this song, to this whole soundtrack, at it’s heart about standing up to authority in any of it’s guises, was an act of courage. I had been naive, comfortable and lucky. I had to rethink my perspective, and understand this wasn’t about teenage rebellion. It was about breaking free of real authority and control.

I still feel some of the choreography itself was stuff I’d seen before. But good art should take you out of your own shoes, shift your perspective. Rarely has it happened as strongly as when I watched this work.

I know China is opening up to many new things. It’s hard to tell what news outlets are passing on here, how skewed or limited it may be. It’s clear though that artists in China are taking risks, and the government is allowing it. Risky art is important for any culture, helping the people to reflect on what they do and who they are. As more risky art is created in China and shared with the rest of the world, the more we all benefit, artists and audiences, from being pushed into new ways of seeing China and ourselves.

Buy Pink Floyd’s The Wall

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1. Graffiti Artists at the Bethlehem Wall