Beside the Defined World
——Xu Tan in conversation with Hu Fang
Xu Tan (XT): The mutual relationships between language, vocabulary, and perception always reveal themselves at certain moments. In our present setting, we are studying how to manifest certain things with unknown characteristics. For example, a tree swaying in the water: there is much unknown about it.
Hu Fang (HF): What is expressed in the setting is not a unitary reality. Through your “keyword” imagery, we can see previously undetected connections.
XT: Suppose that one’s individual visions—or perhaps one’s integrated perceptions—all relate to the narrative of a latent vocabulary. I am exploring whether key visual settings similarly correspond to a “key” vocabulary.
I often talk about “awareness” and “realization,” as in, when you see an image, what do you realize? An image that is equivalent to a keyword is not a totally aesthetic image; it is also an image that makes you realize something. So in fact it is not simply a question of aesthetic expression. Can we arrive at a different place through a key visual setting, or through the relationship between a key perceptual setting and a key lexical concept?
In fact, I find this kind of process very interesting. When you talk with other people, for example like you and I are talking now, perhaps you give me some stimulation and knowledge, but later, when I see, or hear, or read the transcript of our conversation, I may discover something that was not in my memory. This process of study—seeing, hearing, or reading the words a second time—can bring us to an unknown place.
When you look back at these transcripts, you gradually pile up layers of reactions, and it is also a process of clarifying meaning. At the same time, you discover things that you did not originally notice that imply additional levels of meaning. And you can also look a third time, or look together at different things with different people, and become aware of even more things. Generally speaking, this is an attitude that we take to the artistic production of knowledge. I do not go out and try to create a kind of sociological knowledge, but I do believe that I am producing some kind of knowledge. Suppose something is not a purely aesthetic concern or expression, but it is inseparably connected to aesthetics while also causing you to realize certain things—then, what is it? I believe that this is a method of potential knowledge creation within art, and it relates to the unknown world.
HF: During this process, it seems that you do not define the exact connotations of the “keywords.” Instead, you allow the keywords to become a kind of moment: abstracted from their conventional definitions, their meaning can even be transformed.
XT: This is particularly important—this is 80 percent of the significance. When we talk about exploring the unknown world, we do not mean going into space, going to distant worlds, going beyond this world. What we actually mean is the everyday world, the world that we have so thoroughly defined. When a world is continuously defined, we see it through the lens of pre-existing knowledge. But this world is also one in which definitions obstruct other potential connections and narratives. So we undo these conventions and obstructions in order to explore the unknown world that exists beside the defined world.
The unknown world is the known world’s neighbor.
HF: You have previously emphasized that the keywords themselves are not definitions to be used in the pursuit of clarity. Rather, you use them to arrive somewhere else—maybe even as a way to go in the opposite direction. The reality is you are highly skeptical of the keywords, and in your recent study process, you seem to have gradually arrived at the direction you had been searching for.
XT: In the past two years, I have focused more on “unwrapping” and undoing definitions. Previously we felt that many things exist in a chaotic state lacking definition, so we used keywords to determine certain important connections. As I see it, connections are definitions. At present, I do not think that previous work was wrong. I am now simply more inclined to undo certain fixed definitions. In fact, we are still searching for the key points of certain objects, and then attempting to undo established definitions.
HF: This method seems to resemble acupuncture: the key points foster circulation in the connections between things, which is precisely the return to the state to existence itself.
XT: That is to say, the “knowing” we talk about is not necessarily the “knowing” of Western epistemology. A moment ago we were talking about the production of knowledge in art that leads one to suddenly realize something. That “realization” is similar to our word in Chinese, wu (悟 : realize/awaken/understand). In this kind of realization, perhaps you use a word to express something that in fact corresponds to a certain aspect of that word, but it is not an illustration of that word. When you see a certain setting and realize something, its content is often greater than the word used to describe it. But it is also connected to that word—more than connected. It is possible that once it becomes connected to the word, it becomes more powerful. If we are creating a setting that pertains to the relationships between perceptions and words, then it is closely related to cognitive realization. Perhaps, prior to realization, our awareness is already latent in this setting. I think this may be the crux of the study.
——In Sharjah Biennial 12: The past, the present, the possible, edited by Eungie Joo, Ryan Inouye, Sharjah: Sharjah Art Foundation, Arabic and English, 2015, pp. 466-468.