Word: xu
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...months, forcing some companies into the red in what had been a booming industry. Baosteel, one of China's largest steelmakers, has cut prices twice since August, and its CEO is glum: The era of rapid growth for China's steel industry "will soon be remembered as history," says Xu Lejiang...
...ease, however, by the precedent set by perhaps the most famous work to date of artist Xu Bing called “Book From the Sky” or “Book From Heaven.” In one of the first examples of installation art in China, Xu created volumes of scrolls containing approximately 4,000 invented Chinese characters, which were then hand-cut onto wooden print blocks. Each character appears to the viewer as if a real word, with Chinese visitors to the installation noting that their first impression of the project was that many...
...dealing so directly with issues of language in his work, what Xu quite ironically does is address the issue of cultural translation as well. He gives power to the belief that issues of relatability to Western audiences are not insurmountable, and in fact have cultural precedent within China. Standard Chinese is a Chinese that is at once familiar and foreign to many—there are likely hundreds of millions of Chinese who speak Chinese dialects at home or even exclusively and deal with issues of cross-cultural translation everyday...
...Xu Bing included, there is a wealth of wonderful art emerging from China—especially Beijing. Unfortunately for some of the artists who decide to shrug off the demands of the international market in favor of more directional work, their art often meets the criticism from the government, often resulting in professional dismissal and bans on public displays of art. Nonetheless, Chinese artists today, due in great part to the art boom in their nation, are presented with incredible prospects. While the prices of art made by Chinese may fall, foreign interest in the Chinese art scene is unlikely...
...lost a bit of ourselves in this violent, perversely comedic account. We are glad to escape with only the scars of those final, apocalyptic words: “Everybody’s fucked. Be grateful you left.”—Staff writer Denise J. Xu can be reached at dxu@fas.harvard.edu...