frieze: (angie baecker)
Xu Tan, Dictionary of Keywords (2008)
In an exchange that could be seen as antic were it not for the sincerity of its execution, Xu Tan’s exhibition ‘Keywords School’ removes pedagogy from the ivory tower to bring the classroom inside the gallery. Based on a syllabus of keywords – ‘white collar’, ‘insurance’ and ‘corruption’, among others – culled from interviews with an assortment of highly creative and active members of Chinese society, ‘Keywords School’ is an interactive multimedia installation anchored by weekly courses led by Xu, which explore these keywords as powerful and nuanced indices of social consciousness in modern China.
Xu’s research-based works, installed in different sections of the gallery, double as course material or instructional props for his lessons. Multi-Media Space (all works 2008), for example, displays digital videos of the artist’s initial interviews, mute except for utterances of keywords. Elsewhere, walls are covered in sheets of paper detailing the frequency with which keywords have been said, students explore concepts freeform on blackboard spaces, and desk areas provide computers for participants to access the project’s website. Promotional materials for the exhibition encouraged the public to apply to Xu’s courses, but most of the participants seem to be members of the art world or affiliated with the nearby Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts.
Another section of the exhibition, Survival Rehearsal Area, provides raw materials for building impromptu shelters. As a Do-it-Yourself construction space, the work serves as a counterpart to Survival House: a simple, keyword-decorated canopy intended to provide shelter for the mind. Of the pieces on display, Survival House most resembles Xu’s prior works – installations such as September 9ths Liquor (2005) at the 2nd Guangzhou Triennial – with its use of the distinctive pattern of oversized plastic bags often carried by migrant workers in China.
A catalogue-cum-textbook, Dictionary of Keywords, is an active component of the exhibition. Both reference and source material for Xu’s classes, the dictionary is organized alphabetically according to Pinyin, with each entry indicating the movements of mouth and vocal chords required to produce the keyword, as well as a sonogram based on Xu’s recordings of the keyword, visual representations of search results yielded on Google and the Chinese-language search engine Baidu, and excerpts from interviews providing context and examples of usage.
If ‘Keywords Project’ is an exercise in both pedagogy and performance, Xu is meticulous in his practice: following the strict methodology of a linguist, he rightly understands the role of the words he has selected as markers of unknowable power. His attempts to chart this influence are inevitably only able to circle the true power of the word, approaching but never grasping the core of its meaning.
fashion office:
Keywords School • Venice
4 – 21 June 2009
Participating Project
in Making Worlds
53rd International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
Create the content by defining the meaning of keywords!
Since 2006 the Chinese artist Xu Tan researches ‘keywords’. Xu Tan, born in Wuhan, Hubei Province in 1957 and currently living in Guangzhou, is working like a social theorist. By interviewing and discussing contemporary art, social life and culture, he analyses the meaning of keywords in the context of the people's backgrounds.
During the 'Keywords School' the artist, who insists on his lifestyle as 'outcast' to maintain sensitivity to the changes in social life and culture, reinvestigates the meanings of selected words together with 10 participants per day. In the new public space the meanings of the keywords are further transformed.
You can work on keywords without any set goals!
Therefore Xu Tan has elaborated a structure of a course which begins with the invitation to express the own opinion on the 'daily keywords' such as "develop; environment; car; move, movement; restlessness; revolution; body; city (city life, city structure); safe, safety" (course 10 June).
You are creating the content
Then the artist starts the free style communication between him and the participants. Every keyword is a medium to trigger different individuals to take part in certain conscious activities. The public flow of consciousness constitutes the main content of the ‘Keywords School’.
The interactive discussions from the 'Keywords School' in Venice will serve as research material for the forthcoming of the keywords project.
Apply now!
Dive into the deep ocean of life and social development! The recruitment for the ‘Keywords School’ runs until 31 May 2009 www.xutan-keywords.com!
examiner.com:
Xu Tan's keywords lecture proves to be both confusing and interesting
It’s somehow fitting that Chinese artist Xu Tan’s work focuses on the evolving nature of language as social structure as his lecture at the San Francisco Art Institute Monday night seemed at points to be lost in translation. Xu Tan, who works in Guangzhou and Shanghai, is in town as a resident at the YBCA seeing over a project entitled Keywords School. The exhibition is an iteration of a show that has been traveling to various sites since 2006 including this year’s Venice Biennale. To research his project, Xu interviewed different groups of creative people actively involved in Chinese society (China’s most famous artist, Ai WeiWei being one of them) and compiled a list of 100 keywords from the transcripts based on meaning, frequency of use, popularity, and sensitivity. Xu Tan believes that these words reveal the values and motivations of Chinese society. They comprise the collective social pulse of the people, and serve as markers that measure China’s evolution. Speaking mostly through a translator, Monday night’s lecture was at times disjunct, however this distraction did not belie the interesting nature of Xu Tan’s work.
As an example of one of his keywords, Xu gives us the Chinese word b?a , which means 8. Apparently in the last 30 years this word has taken on special significance in China as a symbol of good fortune. According to Xu, part of this is due to the fact that its pinyin spelling is close to the Cantonese word f?a, which denotes making money. It seems that “good fortune” in the new China is now defined by economic success. Xu Tan notes that the central government scheduled the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics, at 8:00 on 8/8/2008, based on the new status of b?a . Another example of this type of development is the term cultural industry. Xu says that it used to be that these words could not go together, there simply was no such thing.
Censorship does factor into Xu Tan’s project. The keyword dictionary that he compiled was denied an ISBN number by the central government due to the “sensitive” nature of its content. Xu’s work also begs the question of whether the pedagogical art gallery setting is the best place for this medium, as there seems to be a dearth of visually interesting material. Despite these questions Xu Tan’s practice serves as a revealing way of conducting socio-cultural research. Though the economic similarities between East and West are bringing us closer, the ideological gap remains broad. The word freedom was used only once in all of the interviews Xu conducted.
ybca:
YBCAlive! Xu Tan
Keywords School Classes
Classes are FREE of charge when you RSVP to radams@ybca.org.
Or free with gallery admission without RSVP
Tan will hold classes to teach keywords from his exhibition to the public and students from local universities. These classes generate other keywords that help reveal the opinions and attitudes of a western audience towards the current status of China and its role in the global environment. Gallery audiences are invited to interact with the keywords, which are presented by means of video projections and computer stations equipped with laptops, video cameras, and Internet connections. The goal is to have gallery visitors pronounce the keywords as illustrated in drawings and video clips, to ask questions of the artist through an on-line forum and message board, and to leave comments.
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