Différance & Momentum——Chengyong

J.J.Rousseau believes that language sets a barrier between us and the outside world. It prevents us from directly experiencing the world.
‘Différance’ means differed patterns. It represents a ceaseless breakdown of significance.
 
Obstacle
 
I started to use Braille as the major creative element in 2000. Around 1990 I experimented with mixed media for 7 – 8 years and in 1997, began to work on character deconstruction, which I consider to be a continuation of previous works as these works also explore materials such as rice paper, photos, gesso etc. However, the process requires more meticulous handling, creating a more minimal content by stressing on the formality of character symbols. During that period of time, I developed a solid understanding of character structures and calligraphy, and did ample research on well-known steles. My goal was to stop limiting myself to the shape of characters and instead try to understand and grasp them from the perspective of abstract form making, and construct a pure visual style using elements extracted from the literal meaning of the characters. According to Derrida, ‘deconstruction’ should not be interpreted as a negative derogatory term. Deconstruction takes apart existing established structures, a process that involves skepticism, analysis and criticism. Therefore, the nature of deconstruction aligns with the critical tradition in history.
 
I did some character deconstruction works during my stay in Kila Foundation in Slovenia. Most of them are permanent collections by the Foundation. (Kila Foundation’s collection includes Picasso, Kandinsky, Cezanne, Dali etc. The nature of their collection is solely academic and non-profit) For an Asian artist who worked in Europe, I was inevitably confronted with a clash between the two cultures. Reflection upon those days revokes the picture of coffee tasting under Mediterranean breeze, and typical Western cuisine served three times a day. My works would have arguably adopted a slant or shown some influence from Western contemporary artists. However the core of my heart said that wasn’t the case. What I meant by the core was an instinctive unfolding of my ego in European soil. Otherwise the outcomes would either be 1. The works are loathed for lack of originality, if I reproduce and imitate Western art, or 2. I fail to convey the essence of Asian art, the ‘preservative-free nutrition’ others expect me to deliver. The art of Chinese calligraphy is another potential motivation behind the series of character deconstruction. I believe that Chinese calligraphy could be the forefather of Oriental art.
 
The second phase is the expression with sign language. Sign language is language in motion. A singular word or phrase is conveyed through a combination of standard syllables stringed together. Why sign language? On one hand, I teach in a college of special education where special terms related to ‘handicap’ are frequently mentioned. They didn’t catch my attention at first but later on they often flashed through my mind and gradually I became obsessed with it. After a long artistic meditation, handicap takes on an extended realm that covers not only congenital handicap, but also obstacles experienced by average people and our society. On the other hand, besides its linguistic attributes, sign language also plays a certain function in conveying subtle emotions and suggestions. That’s how I was inspired to create the series on sign language, with a focus on the general theme of ‘obstacle’.
 
It is particularly important for me to reinforce the unique and conceptual aspect of my works through the expression of sign language and by highlighting the nature of obstacles. In 2000, I started with the idea of pasting Braille textbook pages which were deliberately torn on the smooth side of a CD. That’s my first attempt to use Braille as the major creative element. What I wanted to show was even for visually impaired people living in the current era of digital information, they are still able to feel the images, audio and various symbols of our time with relative ease.
 
Differed Patterns
 
There are usually some reasons or motivations for artists to choose new themes, materials or ways of expression. The change of style may be a result of some coincidence, but if we examine it in the long run, it usually seems more like something inevitable. ‘Obstacle’ has been the theme of my work in the past decade. Obstacles are so closely related to people’s life that it can be traced in one’s mind, language, action and psychology. We recognize them according to our individual needs and circumstances. In the modern society, there are always some unsurpassable ‘obstacles’ in our cultural communication, living habits and knowledge cognition etc. Such ‘obstacles’ are actually people’s mental state during their activities, and they emerge as a consequence to their knowledge structure, psychological health, living environments, cultural backgrounds and economic situations etc. From painting to installation and to performance is actually an elevation of senses. All three artistic forms and techniques surround one theme. A free and precise exercise in this part plays a key role in enforcing the theme and revealing the core of the work.
 
Inspired by the calligraphy art of Liu Xue, I integrated Braille into the painting series ‘Reading Duchamp’. In ‘Reading Duchamp’, the organic combination of Braille structure and Chinese characters forms reading obstacle, while the content of small characters in regular script is actually traceable. The content is written in real regular script in small characters. The idea behind this work came from two aspects: first, I once did a series of character deconstruction pieces. I deconstructed many characteristic cursive scripts, reconstructed them into pure abstract symbols, and thus made the characters illegible. Secondly, the Oriental quality contained in and conveyed through my works has always been a principle in my works. Derrida said that he was interested in various aspects of Chinese culture, in particular Chinese characters, for unlike Western syllables which combine to form meaningful words, Chinese characters are unto a world of its own.
 
With such deconstruction and extension of characters, I not only wanted to try a new artistic form, but also to provide the viewers with some unfamiliar information, that is, to raise a question on the nature of Duchamp’s art. Will his artistic resolution continue to influence the development of contemporary art? For many years, contemporary art has been developing under Duchamp’s guidance and it has been very difficult for people to walk out of his spiritual direction. No matter whether this degree of influence by Duchamp is ever growing or decreasing, the general understanding of contemporary art has never deviated from this big circle. I read the idea of “a harmonious union without obstacles” from Wang Ruiyun’s Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp. The circle, in my understanding, is ‘a harmonious union without obstacles’, whose spiritual substance is to establish a passage linking Eastern and Western cultures.
 
While Duchamp is giving the direction for contemporary artists, he is at the same time unintentionally placing many unsurpassable ‘regulations’ and ‘obstacles’. ‘Reading Duchamp’ is a coexistence of reading obstacles and legibility, just like a magnified chessboard showing many possibilities. Although it is not a fresh topic, its visual effect brings some suggestion to people’s psychological cognition – the misinterpretation and misunderstanding caused by the heterogeneity of reading and the authenticity of misreading. Reading is an indirect process of cognition, in which emotion will also count a lot. In a reading process, emotion plays the crucial role of accepting or rejecting what one receives, directly affecting our attitudes and behaviors in our cultural understanding. In the course of continuing the traditional and the ethnic culture, besides the inevitable heritage and amnesia, there is also an invisible inertia that keeps interacting with human perception and cognition. In this process, humans are always the subject that dominates. The misreading of culture is actually caused by our misunderstandings. I hope that there will be no more misunderstanding, estrangement, nor sadness. Judging from the conception of the work, some friends have remarked that this set is a renovation on the basis of the original one. I often work on large scale with an eye for details. A lot of labor went into preparation and implementation. Each piece of work needs to be rendered first, and the blind spots have to be fixed and drawn one by one. It took three months to finish a 4 meter long work. The same method applies to other works of varying sizes. Except for a few meaningless segments, every work is translated into Braille by professional teachers and then drawn. The contents cover excerpts from Dream of the Red Chamber, Jay Chou lyrics, love letters, personal writings, and common word or phrases. The following series of works ‘Reading Bible’ and ‘Interpreting Bible’ have bigger scales.
 
The snow white glazed set of works in ‘Banquet’ were very special. They were clean and pure, and vividly expressed the theme of ‘obstacle’ and touched on something very subtle. On one hand, the color would remind the viewers of a white city jungle, indifferent and cold-blooded, without any otiose color and chillingly pure. On the other hand, a special psychological atmosphere is constructed through both the visual sense and through the sense of touch, in fact from vision to touch. So when an unusable daily appliance was presented in front of the viewers, the viewers were strongly provoked to think. The effect was as good as we anticipated. I think the creation of this set of works, which was a conceptual interpretation of, and a psychological reaction to the theme, was a mere coincidence. By contrast, it is an inevitable process for me to move from painting to installation and finally to performance work. In December of 2003, the installation work ‘Magnified blind spots’ was displayed in the top-floor exhibition hall in Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art. Over twenty black eyeballs with a diameter of 2 meters created a unique visual and psychological effect. The viewers developed a special relationship with the obstacles.
 
The idea of ‘Our Obstacles’ exhibition was first conceived in Ban Po Bar in February, 2006. As an artist working in Nanjing, I feel that artistic activities and outward communication in this city are far from enough, so I invited contemporary artists from Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou and Nanjing to get together in Nanjing and exchange ideas. Based on my understanding about the concept of obstacle and works by other artists (relevant to this theme), I decided to hold an activity extended from my personal concern to a common concern of the public. ‘Our Obstacles’ exhibition formed its general structure on this basis. Twelve artists were invited in that exhibition. Most of them brought their most representative and pointed works, which revealed various obstacles in people’s psychology and personality in modern society. Wu Hong remarked at the end of his article, ‘So, through the description of transcendence, commonality and sociability of human’s emotional experience, we’re able to understand the physical, psychological and social themes from the exhibits, which inspire us to ponder ‘What is an obstacle?’, ‘Who has obstacles?’, and ‘Who creates obstacles?
 
The performance work ‘Consultation’ was a project brewed in my mind for nearly one year. It was carried out in ‘Our Obstacles’ Contemporary Art Exhibition in December 2006, which gained considerable popularity and once became an important topic for various media at home and abroad. In May 2007, another performance work ‘Contact’ was carried out in Nanjing Shenghua Arts Center. Four deaf people participated in the show. ‘Contact’ was a sequel to the ‘Consultation’ performance. At first, it was performed in a bar at 1912 Street in Nanjing in May. Things didn’t go very smoothly. The bar had agreed to stage the performance a few days ago, but the boss would not allow photographing and videotaping when the actual performance took place. After negotiation, he allowed us to continue on the condition that we pay for beverage consumption. We needed candles to create the atmosphere, but the security guards came over, stopped us from using fire and suspended the performance.  Then we were told the performance could resume for another 15 minutes before they cut off electricity. After a period of reconsideration and adjustment, this project was carried out for the second time in ‘Without Boundaries’ (Contemporary Art Exhibition) at Shenghua Arts Center on July 28. The timing, environment and preparation were quite ideal this time. A booth was set up with a stereo inside and 12 earphones outside. The audiences were able to get an intimate experience of how deaf people communicate and their recreational activities.
 
The creation of performance works is actually a very natural process. In terms of the fundamental factors that brought about my performance pieces, on one hand, it is because of my long meditation on the theme. When I am working, there are usually four principles guiding my meditation: being original, academic, far-sighted, and of social concern. Analyzing works of excellent artists, we find that all of them accomplish or are elevated within these four spheres. On the other hand, the desire for a way of expression is the motivation for any human activity. Once an artist decides a theme and tries to express it, he or she would instantly begin to look for certain methods or measures to support his or her ideas. It is just like that the framework of an object is based on the attributes of a certain material. In contemporary art, artists give up single and limited expressing methods, expanding the space of mind and cognition and unveiling the essence of culture volition.
 
The earlier works I created use abstract language and concepts while recent works explore a broader scope which is hard to define. Language is a reflection of the status of reasoning but not the status of objective existence. We can’t reconstruct the world with language. Saussure argued that the focus of linguistic signs should be the relationship between the signifier and the signified, instead of the relationship between the word and the things that it designates. The same theory manifests itself in contemporary art which tries to form an associative relationship between the signifiers - images, sound, objects, or body structures with a certain value. The components of a painting do not stand on their own. They are given meaning through interactions in a network of relationships. To put it more specifically, the value of a component is established in opposition to another component and the affirmation of its value relies on the deferment of other values. In recent works, I’m trying to explore new meanings beyond existing values and body experience by reinforcing the digital effects of images and focusing on the basic properties of visual forms.
 
 
Silent Remembrance
I look forward to getting rid of the influence of fixed experience, including remembrance of the traditional culture that is fading away. On the one hand, we are deeply influenced by tradition; on the other hand, we feel sad about its vagueness and pointlessness. The extraordinary landscape paintings of ancient dynasties, the sense of detachment shone in calligraphy, the confidence and self-esteem shown by intellectuals are impressive and highly respected. Wang Xizhi, Yan Zhenqing, Huang Tingjian, Mi Fu, Guan Tong, Fan Kuan, Li Cheng, Ma Yuan and Fu Shan, etc. have all become significant symbols of the glorious oriental history, leading to grand development of garden art. The natural beauty revealed in rockery, a remarkable symbol of traditional Chinese garden, make people almost forget that it is artificial. Gardens are not only a carrier of Chinese traditional culture and art, but also an important channel to spread the philosophies of Confucianism and Taoism. At the present stage, the so-called concrete jungles keep devouring the space for traditional classic gardens and architecture, making it a common faith for contemporary people who cannot get rid of the frame consisting of cement and steel and can no longer imagine a life without cell phones that they have to rely on virtual network. People are immersed in this virtual world, which is so indifferent that the contemporary spirit turns to be dim and weak due to the lack of senses and directions. In this regard, remembrance seems an effective way to get back to traditional cultural spirit. By “getting back” I don’t mean we need to copy the past. It is impossible task in nature anyway. We don’t have the access to truly reliving the past. We cannot experience their transportation, communication and lifestyle. Our understanding towards our ancestors is, to a large extent, confined by the classics they left us.
Remembrance is somewhat sad. Fading Landscape Series is created in memory of Wang Xizhi, Yan Zhenqing, Huang Tingjian and many other great names in Chinese art and culture history. I feel the adoption of Braille is a good way to interpret the work. Through the remembrance of the past we can perceive the difference between tradition and contemporaneity, and learn the value of remembrance in the present context.

Silent remembrance is a concept.
 
Idea is Strategy
 
Two people came to mind, Mao Zedong and Derrida.
 
In the early 20th Century, Mao’s vision to found a New China was a pioneering idea. A new idea does not guarantee solution, or offer analysis. It’s certainly not destruction, but a strategy. From the time the concept of New China was envisioned to its successful establishment, Mao’s philosophy has gradually found their way into the new life and mindset of Chinese people.
 
Derrida argued that deconstruction operates in Marxism traditions and carries Marxist spirit. To a certain extent, all people on earth, men and women, whether they are willing or unwilling, aware or unaware, are all heirs of Marxism. Derrida argues that the process of deconstruction involves skepticism, criticism and aufheben. Deconstruction speaks truth of a happening. It breaks down existing structures. The central concept of deconstruction lies in the reconstruction of a logo. Meanings are uncertain for they exist in a forever changing state. The concept of ‘différance’ consists of two components, ‘différance’ and ‘deferment’. ‘Différance’ is a spatial concept while ‘deferment’ is a measure of time. Thus, différance takes place in both time and space. Derrida has made a great contribution to our world. Like Marxism, people of today might all be heirs of Derrida’s theory of deconstruction whether they are aware of it or not.
 
To a certain extent, Mao and Derrida share common thoughts.
 
It’s a long process to construct and establish a new system. The gradual changes in any system are accompanied by changes in ways of thinking. I have experimented with mixed media, character deconstruction, sign language, Braille, Reading Duchamp series. It’s not difficult to find traces of ‘différance’ and ‘momentum’ of logic in the nature of these works. As an artist, it is my guiding principle to produce works that reveal ‘différance’ and ‘momentum’ in the nature of objects. Edmund Husserl questions the différance between meaning and object. It’s an impossible dream to establish certain principles from empirical evidence. Because dreams disappear in daylight, in the same way that meanings disintegrate the minute one has spoken.
 
I like silent narrations, better still the silent touch of deferment!