High Life

HIGH LIFE 33 Xu Bing on language “First of all, what I have been using seems to be language but not its substantial essence. Language is like a type of implement to me: somehow, being used and consumed are its core function, even though its external packaging at times contains more cultural content. All of my works about language are actually all working on the packages. “The reason that I consider the package to be more important is because Chinese characters are so special.The characterofChinesepeople or Chinese culture is deeply related to the character of Chinese characters. “For instance, the ways of reading Chinese and English are so 更像电脑病毒，却在人脑中起作用。 在可读和不可读的转换中，在概念的 倒错中，观者固有的思维模式和知识 概念被打乱，思维的惰性受到挑战。 也因此在寻找新的依据和管道的过程 中，思想被打开更多的空间，令其警 觉文字，找回认知原点。这是我的那 些‘文字’的作用。” 徐冰谈创作 “文革之后我重返城市。我阅读一切 可以到手的书籍，以及像其他人一样 读很多西方理论的翻译作品。之前在 文化上是饥饿的，所以一有机会就狼 different. Though Chinese characters have been modernized as they went from pictographic to ideographic form, pictographic logic is still their underlying essence. For the modern Chinese character ‘ 寒 ’ (meaning ‘cold’), its form depicts a person wrapped in hay, curled up alone at home during the cold weather with the floor of the house covered in ice. There is already somuch information embedded in just a single character like ‘cold.’ It affects our everyday life reading, thinking and observing in an intriguing manner. “Although these works of mine are teasing and mocking the language, they actually hold it in awe as well. Our generation has experienced cultural revolution and lack of education, plus my parents 吞虎咽。但后来发现这些过去很期待 的东西，得到之后实在是和我的期待 不同，所以有一种很深的无聊感。因 此那会儿就特别想做一本我自己的书 来表达这种感受。 “于是我就把自己关起在一个小 屋子里开始刻这些‘天书’（艺术家 自己创造的伪汉字），做这些谁都不 认识的字，一刻刻了一年多。我觉得 刻这个字特别舒服。面对这些包括自 己都不懂的文字，入刀和新鲜的木块 之间的交流让我觉得充实，有一种实 实在在的推进。 “我后来发现，一个人的创作动 力和生命动力本身，就是不断地去寻 找一个特殊的时间段，让生命投入到 这个时间段，从而获得一种存在感和 充实感。 “到底做什么以及是不是做艺术 都不重要。但首先你做的东西是应该 值得做并且没有人做过的，同时又对 社会有益的，还要具有创造力。这个 是我的基本要求。” 徐冰谈中国当代艺术 “中国的经济崛起一定是对中国当代 艺术的发展、对中国艺术家有帮助和 推动力的。市场化、市场价格、艺术 价格的提升，其实都会引起世界对于 work in Peking University, which led to an awkward relationship between the language and me. “Generally, languages take effect through the conveyance of ideas, expression and communication. But for those of mine, they work through absence of communication, being misled and confusion. My ‘characters’ are not user-friendly fonts at all but more of a computer virus, capable of affecting the humanmind. During the switch between being readable and unreadable in the mind of viewers and amidst the subversion of their preconceived notions, they upset viewers’ habitual ways of thinking and concepts of knowledge, obstruct viewers’ connectedness and impair their own expressiveness.