Beyond the Future: Papers from the Third Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

SESSION 3 : REGIONAL PERSPECTIVES I SPEAKER: Xu Bing The video you have just seen is from last year, and was taken in New York. The animal that you saw is called a New Hampshire pig. It's actually the type of pig that I was familiar with in China more than twenty years ago. At the time I remember thinking how the pig looked like a panda, but at that time I had no idea that I would be using one in my art work. I began to use animals in my work, in particular pigs. Later, I thought about the New Hampshire pig and was keen to use it in my work also. This was done in a gallery space and a Chinese garden environment was constructed with bamboo and there was a painting by the Qing dynasty artist Wang Shim in hanging as well. Now I would l i ke to turn to my calligraphy works, a new style of call igraphy which I th ink of as 'words wearing masks'. This call igraphy looks like Chinese calligraphy, but in fact it's composed of Engl ish letters and is in fact a poem by Robert Foster. The work that you see in the Asia-Pacific Triennial is actually a classroom for the introduction of the new Engl ish script and it's a space that I have borrowed from the Queensland Art Gallery in order to 're-educate' locals with my new calligraphy. Ever since I started to show these classrooms I have been amazed by people's responses. I often receive letters from people written in this script telling of their experiences of teaching it to others or of practising it themselves. In some schools they have even been holding special calligraphy classes and calling it 'Chinglish Calligraphy'. I have been collecting these letters and materials, and have included them in some of my exhibitions in order to assist others in their learning of the script. There are more and more people who ask me to write these characters for them. Some want me to create a sign or symbol for their company, others an inscription for a book or an art folio. Here in Brisbane I have been asked to write the words 'The Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art' and you m ight have noticed that this sign is hanging on the exterior wall of the Queensland Art Gallery. I find these jobs very interesting. In the West it does not appear that the same practice of writing dedications or using calligraphy in such an artistic or graphic manner exists. This is a slide of an advertisement, a paper cl ipping, that was sent by a friend from London and it's actually a commercial advertisement using my calligraphy. But in fact I'm not very happy with the rendition of the calligraphy. This is another rendition of my calligraphy done this time by students of a school in Paris, and they were asked to write their names using my script. This is a letter that I received from a Japanese friend of m ine, and it incorporates Ch inese, Japanese and English languages . He starts off with the dedication 'Dear Xu Bing', with the Japanese word 'san' on the end and then he goes on to use Engl ish script 'Thank you for taking the time to come here' and the word for time appears in Chinese characters and so really what he's doing is a hybrid use of language. Formally the script looks the same, but the Japanese person is working with Chinese, Japanese and English. This is a book cover. The book was printed in Japan by a friend of mine and the title of the book is Library of Babylon. I have often thought how much simpler it would be if, for example, all of the restaurant signs in Chinatown were written in my script, for that would remove the unnecessary complication of one line of Chinese characters and one line of English . In actual fact my work, the new English script, assumes that my occupation is closer to a script-design ing artisan than a contemporary artist. The social nature of this work is the most 52