Yufei Xu

《一片艺瓦，万物一片》

一片瓦，比手掌稍大一点，一直随着我。在我用钴青、朱砂、赭石还是雄黄、祖母绿描线让它成为艺术之前，是一片空白。它看起来算是最棒的儿童艺术吧。因为我为它选择的是中国水彩的经典着色，为它勾勒的线条至简如伦布朗的作品草稿。

我带着它走过城市源头到大洋洲的逡巡路线，回到谋职的故土。诸多物件在生活的倥偬里得而复失，有失之海运，有失之滥用。倏忽惊现，小瓦片穿越器物的新陈代谢，从我众多个人物品中脱颖而出，登上艺术的台面。

我怎样做到，造就它呢？

学校叮嘱城市青年“要学农，要下乡”。于是城里的初中学生都“学农”，成了规定好的教育制度。对我而言，14岁那年的“学农”教会我制作乡村艺术品。学农指导员先是讲解了瓦片画的工艺流程，接着让我们制作自己的版本。我们这帮楞头小子，哪里知道什么绘画？对我而言很轻松：我照搬照抄画室笔筒上的传统青花纹样，在瓦片上稍作变形，画了十九朵祥云，它们占据着三分之二的面积。接着把纹样再简化成折笔，二十多划层层叠叠，为的是象征一块山峰巨石，巨石中延伸出松树的枝桠。黄或褐色给巨石，赤色给祥云，青色给树干，绿色给松针。其余留白，乃瓦片本色。烧制瓷器的炉子给瓦片上一层釉，让着色长久，我的工艺品就诞生了。

后来，我按这个法子，匠造自己的博士论文。原来，复制一些再改造一些，运用想象力，加入个人风格，就足够写一篇博士论文。

彼时的我，赋予这小小瓦片以心流、以结构；后来的我，一切都被它们造就。

而且，万物美观。

I have carried a tile with me, a little bigger than the size of my palm. It had been blank before I lined some cobalt, vermillion, ocher or realgar, and emerald to make it a work of art. It seems to me one of the best from kids’ arts. For the hues I happened to choose for it are as classic as those favored by masters of Chinese watercolors, and the lines are as simple and neat as some of landscape drafts from Rembrandt.

I have carried it with me from my urban origin to New Zealand where I spent one and a half year, and finally took it back to the inland Elysium, Chengdu, where I choose to work. So many other objects come and go in my life hustle. They usually are lost in hectic shippings or broken by use and abuse. No small surprise when I was cued by the fact that my little piece of tile art had survived the metabolism of my belongings, of objects.

How did I make it?

Schools bid the urban young “go mingle with peasants, go experience rural area”. So they make secondary school students in the city go through this education session, that is to get educated by the rural, of around two weeks. I went through the session when I was 14, and it taught me to make rural art. At first the instructor had laid out the procedure of making tile art, we, a bunch of rats who had no idea of drawing anything, were commanded to craft our own version of the artistic design. Easy work: I just copied the pattern on the china pen baskets in the studio. The ancient pattern was transformed into nineteen heads of auspicious clouds floating and taking up two thirds of the tile square. Then I curtailed the pattern into a dozen skewed strikes and stacked them to symbolize a boulder, where a branching pine grows out of it. Yellow or brown for boulder, red for clouds, blue for pine trunk, green for pine needles. The rest was as milk white as the tile itself. Out of the furnace that gave the tile lasting sheen from glaze was this art of mine.

This was how I crafted my Ph.D thesis later. It turned out copying and transforming, with a bit of imagination and brush style. 

Everything has been growing out of the flow and structure I gave for this little tile.

And it looks gorgeous.

Lydia

Περίμενε υπομονετικά. Με ολόσωστες πλευρές και άκρες κολλημένες με πολύ καλής ποιότητας χαρτοταινία. Πάνω του κολλήθηκε και ένα γράμμα με τα στοιχεία μου και τα στοιχεία του. Ένα αρχείο που επικυρώνει την σχέση μου μαζί του.

Όνομα

Τηλέφωνο

Διεύθυνση αποστολής

Διεύθυνση παραλαβής

Περιεχόμενο

Αξία

Ημερομηνία

//

Waiting patiently. With all its sides and edges glued with very good quality paper tape. A letter with my personal info and its details was affixed to it. A file that validates my relationship with it.

Name

Phone

Shipping Address

Delivery address

Content

Value

Date

Attila

A single hotel room while the guest is away. His room is surprisingly tidy. Dusting the wardrobe I observe how his good quality clothes were folded and organized in a perfect way. I sense a very familiar, good vibe. Then there is a drawing on the desk. It was drawn with the pen provided by the hotel on a small piece of paper taken from the noteholder. It is a tree with a disproportionately big fruit on it, an almost heart shaped strawberry. I immediately know that I saw this before somewhere. I recognize every line, every detail of it. 

Have I drawn this myself before? Or will I draw it in the future? What if years later I will come back as a guest to this hotel and I will doodle this while talking on the phone? If it’s me, will I remember this moment of finding it? Why would I avoid meeting myself? I would probably  think that leaving this sketch on the desk is a sufficient gesture to remind myself about the illusion of time.

Réka

Am 42 de ani și deja nu mai romanțez ideea de a avea un jurnal, nici conținutul acestuia.   

Deci, pot deține în acest scop un caiețel fabulos, de culoare vișinie, cu pagini gălbui și copertă ca de poveste, reprezentând un erudit sau un magician cu niște ochelari drăguți, o pălărie foarte înaltă, cu o carte imensă în față, pe care își odihnește mâinile aproape ireale, cu degete lungi-lungi. Stă într-un balon cu aer cald care se ridică sau coboară.  

Așa a fost să fie jurnalul meu, exact ca în cazul acelor relații pe alocuri neplăcute din majoritatea romanelor pe care le citeam noi, fetele tinere, cu scopul de a însuși corespunzător știința de a îmbrățișa pe deplin viitoarele noastre catastrofe, de a ne azvârli în ele..

Doar că acum știu și secretul păstrării unei cantități mari de secrete și în caz că cineva ar găsi obiectul, acest veritabil corpus delicti: un scris de mână incredibil, foarte aproape de o hidoșenie științifică. Ca de doctor, aș zice dacă aș dori să-mi romanțez rușinea.  

Oricum, adevărul este că realmente îmi place gândul unui jurnal cu o copertă eterică, având un conținut surprinzător, dar și dezolant, în anumite aspecte – frumusețe idealizată și urâțenie realistă, umăr la umăr. 

I’m 42 and I’m not romanticizing anymore the idea of having a diary, neither its contents. 

So, now I can have an amazing claret booklet for that purpose with yellowish pages and a fairytale-like drawing on its cover representing a scholar or a magician with very pretty eyeglasses, an immensely tall hat and a huge book on which he rests his almost unreal hands with long, long fingers. He is sitting in an ascending or descending hot-air balloon.

It was simply meant to be, just like all those nasty relationships in most of the novels we’ve read as young girls, with the purpose of assimilating properly the knowledge of how to fully engage in and embrace future catastrophes…

But now also know the secret of keeping a great deal of secrets even if somebody might find the object, the corpus delicti: having an unimaginably, almost scientifically awful handwriting. As doctors do, I could say if I would want to romanticise disgrace.

Despite all that, the truth is that I simply like the idea of a diary with an ethereal cover having a totally surprising and somewhat desolating content – idealistic beauty and realistic ugliness, side by side. 

Li Hsuan. 李璇

Punctum

1. n. pl. (anatomy) A sharp tip of any part of the anatomy; a point or other smaller area.
2. a concept from Roland Barthes’ book Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography:

• to wound;
• denoting the wounding, personally touching detail which establishes a direct relationship with the object or person within it. 

“Punctum has a power of expansion. Here, the photograph really transcends itself, is this not the sole proof of its art?” (Barthes R., Camera Lucida, p.50)

草药是中医药里的重要组成部分。在作品《刺点》中，图片一的草药是山楂，玫瑰和金银花。我用一根缝衣针串起这些材料，然后把它们刺入第一幅地图，象征我的童年回忆和家乡武汉的“刺点”。

我很爱喝金银花茶因为金银花可以净化身体的能量。金银花常被用来制作草药汤剂，它可以分解身体的毒素，处理细菌感染等。玫瑰则可以用于泡茶，玫瑰也有许多医用功效比如平衡新陈代谢，缓解女性的经痛和缓解焦虑等。山楂也是一种草药，可以平衡心率不齐和缓解消化系统的紊乱等。

关于草药的文化和其神秘的功效，我是从我祖父那学到的。我的祖父是一名草药研究者，他研习功夫和中国传统哲学，他用草药和气功帮助了很多人。他的工作是一所学校的校长，他每年会去山里住一段时间，练习冥想和研究神秘主义。几年前我也曾尝试过系统的草药治疗来增强我的体能和体力，它的味道尝起来像一种特殊的汤，我没能坚持下去，因为味道对我来说太苦了。

The herbs are: honeysuckle, rose, hawthorn. I used a sewing needle to make a string for these materials and pierce into the first map, to symbolise the Punctum from my childhood memory and from my hometown Wuhan.

Honeysuckle is often used as medicine and tea, to cure bacterial infections, to counteract poisoning and to kill germs. 

Rose is used mainly for making tea and claimed to offer numerous health benefits such as boosting the metabolism, helping relieve pain during periods and helping in the treatment of anxiety and diabetes. 

Hawthorn is used as medicine. It’s good for balancing heart rhythm disorder and used for digestive disorders by breaking down fats.

About the culture and mysterious effect of herbs I learnt from my grandfather. He was a herbal researcher, a kung-fu practicer and a healer. He helped hundreds of people using herbal therapy, QiGong exercise, and also by his impressive speech about Chinese classical philosophy. He worked as a headmaster of a local school, and he went to mountains every year to meditate on spiritualism. I have tried herbal therapy some years ago in order to build up my body strength and it was like drinking special soup everyday. I didn’t adhere to it, simply because the flavor is too bitter for me.

Ildikó

Meine japanische endgeblasene Bambusflöte trage ich überall mit mir hin. Das Holz ist hell und das Utaguchi (blasendes Ende) ist schräg nach außen geschnitten, und am Rand wird ein kleines Stück Elfenbein (Kinko-Schule) eingefügt, so dass subtile Tonvarianten erzeugt werden können. Die Glocke (ausgestelltes Ende) besteht aus dem Stamm der Bambuspflanze mit ihren Wurzelenden. 

Ich habe ziemlich lange gesucht bis ich „meine“ Flöte gefunden habe. Sie ist nicht besonders schön, hat viele Kratzer und Abnutzungsspuren aber hat mir auf Anhieb Töne geschenkt. Sie kommt aus einem japanischen Kloster und ermöglicht mir täglich mein Suizen zu praktizieren. Somit ist diese Flöte für mich nicht unbedingt ein Musikinstrument sondern ein Mittel um mein seelisches Gleichgewicht zu wahren.

I carry my Japanese end-blown bamboo flute with me everywhere. The wood is light and the Utaguchi (blowing end) is cut diagonally outwards, and a small piece of ivory (Kinko school) is inserted on the edge, so that subtle tone variations can be created. The bell (flared end) consists of the stem of the bamboo plant with its root ends.

I searched a long time until I found my flute. It is not particularly beautiful and has some scratches and signs of wear. The flute found its way to me from a Japanese monastery. I can’t yet play it very well, but I perform suizen breathing exercises daily that calm and ground me. So the flute is not so much a musical instrument for me, but rather a mean to maintain my mental balance.

Rita

A Blondel mirror I took from my grandma. It is a full figure mirror, around 120 years old, and has never been repaired. It literally sits now with my daughter and I at the table, in the dining room. The frame is carved out of incredibly lightweight wood, guilt and painted with some brass-like tint. The painting is getting a patina, and it covers the wooden handwork perfectly; it still looks like it was made of copper of brass or bronze. Its back is also wooden: dried, shrunk, maybe even a bit rotten. There is a cut-glass margin which skews, distorts and sometimes duplicates the images of the objects in it. The silver of the mirror is perfectly intact.

When I met the mirror, it was sitting between the two large windows of my grandma’s bedroom. It was surrounded by minimalistic, sombre, black solid furniture, with a nightstand below, which was full of old-style perfumes, more or less rancid lipsticks, creams and talc. Behind it, the windows opened to an unusually big, wild and chaotic bed of lilies of the valley. Their smell would get into the room during the sunset airings. It lived through my grandma putting her lipstick on with a disgusted grim on her face, me dancing in front of it a couple of minutes later and more than thirty years ago. I smuggled it out of my grandma’s house while she was lying far away on her dying bed. ‘You can take the mirror now’ she said unexpectedly gracefully and surrealistically certain about what was happening behind her back. It was taken across four countries, covered in nasty newspapers and grease-smelling ropes to not attract attention.

A couple of days ago, after a careful consideration, sitting in front of it, I ticked the boxes: ‘any other mixed background’ for my ethnicity and something vague like ‘any other gender’ in an official paper.

 

We observe our everyday objects. The way we relate to them.

What do we see if we take a closer look at them? What do we know about their composition and material? What is their structure? How do they function? What are we using them for? What do we know about their stories?

On this platform we collect object-stories.

 

 

 

 

How does it work?

1. If you want to develop your object-story with us, send an idea: a picture and/or 2-3 sentences. We will get back to your within one week, ask questions from our perspective and we will develop your story together.

2. If you want to send a completed object-story, go ahead!

In both cases, we will get back to you and decide on sharing your object-story together.

We reserve the right to not publish material that is harmful to any community or individual.

We are happy to answer your question and discuss your suggestions.

Initiators

Ildikó, science (RO/DE).

李璇 Li Hsuan, visuals (CN/UK).

Rita, conception and narratives (RO/HU/DK/UK).

 

These are the formats on which we can share object-stories:

Language. We are happy to share bi-lingual stories. At the moment, you can communicate with us in English, German, Chinese, Hungarian and Romanian. You can send your object-stories on any of these languages, and please be mindful of the fact that you still have to provide and appropriate English translation, too, as we use English as a lingua franca.

Medium. Choose from any of these possibilities:

• Three visuals (photos, drawings, paintings, diagrams, etc.): no smaller than 1MB and no larger than 5MB, jpeg format, high resolution (minimum 72 dpi, ideally 300dpi).  

• One text of max 1000n (meaning: 1000 characters including spaces): doc or docx extension.

• One soundscape of max 60 sec: mp3 extension.

• One video of max 120 sec: mp4, m4v, webm, ogv, wmv and flv; alternatively, you can upload the video on youtube with password, and send the link and the password, too.

You can send material on one object. Choose maximum two of the above-mentioned media to describe the object, respecting the given extensions and resolutions.

Copyright

We accept only original work of yours, and we edit them respectfully with you in agreement.

The platform displays the object-stories and has the right to share them and use them for artistic and scientific research, in which case we will inform you.

As author, you are liable to clear any copyright issues that might come up regarding your object-story. If you want to share your object-story with any other platforms you need to notice us first and mention this project as resource.

Send your object-stories and ideas to: othernessproject@gmail.com

Thank you for taking part.