I was thinking about Xiamen today, where I’ll be heading provided the funding comes through… I will hear about the second chunk next week so fingers well and truly crossed. The irony of the money coming from an organisational called ‘The National Lottery” has not escaped me.
Assuming next week brings good news, I’ll be making a performance pretty much from scratch. Last time I worked in China back in 2009 with a Beijing residency, I already knew very well what the work would be, I just needed to adapt it to the quite different context. One month was enough for this. With this work it will be different. I’ll be arriving with a set of ideas and assumptions that may or may not get me up and running. I need to feel it all though a lot more slowly and let the form of the work take shape based on the what I find when I’m there.
Back here in London and Portsmouth, where I am working, I continue with my language exchanges and these continue to surprise and inform. Today I am in the RFH in the Southbank, a good public space for this. The other day I learnt that Big Ben, viewable from the balcony, is called “da ben zhong” or “Big Stupid Clock” in Chinese. Not the most flattering translation but one I’m sure to remember!
I’m doing a number of language exchanges at the moment so that I have some basic Mandarin skills for when I go to Xiamen. I thought this would be practical and that it would make me a bit more independent. It is slowly becoming clear however that I am learning a lot more than simply how to order noodles. Little by little I start to see how the language is put together and how this gives people who speak, AND THINK, in the language a different perspective. As I will be looking at how I am framed by people in daily life in southern China, having some access to the language is really important. I am also trying to learn some of the characters and this brings it into a whole visual level.
The other day I thought I should take a picture of one of my language exchanges to document this process and get things running with this blog. I then had to stop and think from which perspective should the picture be taken? Would my partner be comfortable with it? I finally decided that the language exchange should remain what it is, as it was not advertised as an art project, and I should look for images elsewhere. At least for now.
So you can see in the photo how I’m learning Chinese characters: copying from printed examples and repeating them.
I’ll explain the project more another time and go into these exchanges more. If I try to say everything at once it is simply too much and I’ll end up saying nothing at all.
