Xu Bing's Construction-Site Language

If you're not familiar with the art of Xu Bing yet, you should be. I have had the great fortune to experience Xu Bing: Phoenix at the MASS MoCA (the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), and it was absolutely thrilling. Now there is art that I enjoy because I find it beautiful, art that I love because it moves me, and art that flat-out confuses me. Somehow Phoenix has escaped all these, and has become something I find rare these days: art that excites me.  Being in the presence of these two giant phoenixes filled me with awe, with wonder, with curiosity, and, best of all, with inspiration. Phoenix is much more than an installation. It is a complex work that deals with the social and cultural world of China, as well as the unleashed human imagination. While not strictly poetry, Xu Bing's work is immensely poetic.

Feng and Huang soaring.

Phoenix consists of two 12-ton birds that are suspended mid-air in a football field sized building. The male, Feng, reaches 90 feet in length, and the female, Huang, reaches 100 feet. Each bird is made from materials Xu Bing harvested from various urban construction sites around China. According to the MASS MoCA page, these phoenixes, "bear witness to the complex interconnection between labor, history, commercial development, and the rapid accumulation of wealth in today's China." Hard hats, girders, shovel heads, small bucket-loader scoops, amongst many other minutiae, are transformed altogether, giving these birds shape, depth, texture, contour, and life. Even the remnants of the daily lives of construction workers were used to birth these mythic birds.

The social and cultural implications of these birds I'll leave to all of you, as I am simply not equipped with enough knowledge of China to tease them all out, but, trust me, there is much to think about. My primary interest here is the poetic imagination, vision, and resourcefulness used to create these incarnations of rebirth. When you first experience these birds, you immediately feel their grandeur, their sheer size. As overwhelming as that might be, it is not intimidating but, rather exhibit an infectious joy, wit, and playfulness. These birds are celebrations of human imagination.

Close up of crest and bill.

Some of the most difficult parts of creating a bird from construction materials, I imagine, would be its softer parts: hued plumage, differing feathers, various textures. Though for Xu Bing this isn't an issue. For instance, look at the crest of the phoenix on the left: hard hats and the remnants of a fan are arranged in such a precise manner so to resemble light, bouncy, plumes. Part of a the genius of this piece is how obviously correct his choices are. Naturally it would be hard hats on top of the head. But a fan? Well it might got hot under all those hard hats, might as well have some ventilation to cool off! Or consider the feathers. Using shovel heads is a stroke of genius. The round heads and shafts capture the scalloped look of layered feathers perfectly. One of the most mudane, back-breaking tools has taken flight, is utterly transformed, is lifted out of our mortal world and into the immortal mythic.

The language of feathers.

Before I get too far astray, language truly is at the center of Xu Bing's art and imagination. As a calligrapher, he is well aware that  shape and beauty vital to a language, and that words and characters are not solely signifiers of meaning, but vessels of art. Though Persistence/Transformation: Text as Image in the Art of Xu Bing, published in 2006 by the Princeton University Press, makes it clear that Xu Bing concieves language as raw material, as an object that can, and should, be manipulated. This idea is similar to the work of Gertrude Stein, and, in some ways, William Carlos Williams. Consider "Susie Asado," by Gertrude Stein:

Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.

       Susie Asado.

Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.

       Susie Asado.

Susie Asado which is a told tray sure.

A lean on the shoe this means slips slips hers.

When the ancient light grey is clean it is yellow, it is a silver seller.

This is a please this is a please there are the saids to jelly. These are the wets these say the sets to leave a crown to Incy.

Incy is short for incubus.

A pot. A pot is a beginning of a rare bit of trees. Trees tremble, the old vats are in bobbles, bobbles which shade and shove and render clean, render clean must.   

       Drink pups.   

Drink pups drink pups lease a sash hold, see it shine and a bobolink has pins. It shows a nail.

What is a nail. A nail is unison.

Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.

 
Even if meaning is elusive here, we get the impression that these words mean something more, and are not simply words. As with any poem, this poem relies on sound to establish meaning, setting, and context. At the outset, "Sweet tea," is a drink, but is also a pun for "sweety." We realize that the speaker has affections for a woman named Susie Asado.  This idea is compounded with the next line, and we learn that Susie Asado is a "told tray sure," a "told treasure." The speaker is obviously not shy with her affections, but is rather deliberately cagey. The poem proceeds in this manner, and it become more erotic as it progresses. Words like "jelly," "tremble," "bobbles," and "nail" are not only pithy, evocative langauge, but are also erotically charged moments. Stein has found a way to convey sexual desire in witty, playful, and repetitious language. This breakthrough would not have been possible if Stein didn not see words as tools that are to be used in new ways.

What Stein does so well take everyday langauge, words that we persumably know well and have used, and breaks it so that it may be remade. She Stein reminds us that words have meanings, but sometimes we need to forget those meanings in order to understand the world in a new way. Suddenly langauge we are accustomed to is made strange to us, has become fresh, and we are awakened to new possibilities for f language, new configurations, and new modes of expression.  

This idea does correlate with Phoenix. If we see langauge as raw material, and words as tools used by people, then Phoenix is the physical embodiment of poetry. Shovels, hard hats, fans, canisters, scoops, and wires are all created by people, and people use them in interesting ways. It is the same with language. We create language everyday and use it in interesting ways. So what's the difference between a shovel and an adjective? Or a noun? What's the difference between a frame of steel and conjuctions? Not too much I'd say. 

Their vast differences aside, both Stein and Xu Bing are incredbily resourcful in how they use their materials. They have access to the same materials that you and I have, but their poetic vision enables them to startle and entertain us.  They have created pieces that are strange and beautiful, and do what all great art does: makes the world strange to us, opens our percpetions, and then brings us back to reality with a fresh pair of eyes.