De ci de là des choses (Op.25, 2004-2006)
Around the end of 2000, or perhaps early 2001, Ping-kwan introduced me to Annie Curien. We met at the FCC, which was my usual gathering place with friends in those days. Annie had translated Ping-kwan’s fiction Island and Continents, published in 2001, into French.
The occasion for our meeting was Poésie, a French publication that was planning a special issue devoted to contemporary Chinese poetry. Annie was the chief organizer and translated most of the poems for the issue. Four poets were featured: Leung Ping-kwan, Yu Jian, Song Lin, and Zhang Wei. I was invited to create visual images to accompany the issue, throughout the inside pages as well as the cover. The editor, Pierre Dubrunquez, even translated one of my early poems, Chronology (1975), and my text-visual work Four Stanzas of a Poem (1993), as a way of introducing my background. The special issue of Poésie, subtitled Poétiques chinoises d’aujourd’hui, was published in June 2001.
This was part of the background that eventually led to my later series of image works, De ci de là des choses (Op.25, 2004).
In 2004, Ping-kwan approached me about a possible collaboration, as an extension of the FOODSCAPE project. This time, however, the subject was not food, but “things” — tungxi (東西). In Chinese, tungxi also means East and West. The suggestion came from a collection of poems he had been working on, gathered around this idea of “things.” He had been invited to Paris for a poetry reading, with the possibility of mounting an exhibition as well, and from this came the idea of De ci de là des choses. Annie Curien translated Ping-kwan’s poems for the reading and for the exhibition. I believe she was also involved in organizing the event.
The exhibition was later restaged in 2006 at the Saorge Monastery in southern France, where Ping-kwan was a writer in residence.
Following the 2004 exhibition, the organization planned to publish a book on the series and invited me to design and produce it. I presented a proposal with an artist-book concept in mind. However, the approval took a long time to arrive, and by 2006 I was no longer able to take on the project. At that time, we were in the process of relocating to 50 Gladstone Avenue, a three-storey building with two detached structures. It was a huge transition for us — from a very run-down building to a property containing four large exhibition spaces. It was a difficult period, from planning and management to the financial demands of the move.
The book was eventually produced by Éditions You-Feng, a Paris-based publisher with a Hong Kong connection. It was, in the end, a fairly simple and straightforward publication.
For the 2006 exhibition, I added some newer works. Altogether, there are twenty pieces in the series. The work followed much the same line as what I had done for Poésie, but with one significant difference in my working process: I created the titles first, before working on the images, even though the imaging approaches themselves were often quite abstract. In other words, the series began with statements, and the images followed.
This title-first approach was not my usual practice at the time. Interestingly, it has returned to me recently while I have been making, week by week, my responses to the poems in ONE POEM zine. Most of the time, the idea for the title comes first, before the image takes shape — or at least, the title and image come into being at the same time.
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Further Notes on the Titles
The twenty titles for the image works were originally written in Chinese. For the exhibition, Annie Curien translated them into French; both the Chinese and French versions were used in the exhibition and in the publication, as Ping-kwan’s poems were presented bilingually. Some of the titles also echoed the titles of Ping-kwan’s poems, including, for example, 「冬陰功湯」, 「在巴黎中國俱樂部吃毛沙律」, 「一頭從埃及長途跋涉去到巴黎的長頸鹿」, 「異鄉人獨對美麗的餐桌」, 「蘇東坡在惠州」, and 「戀葉」. I list the twenty titles below. It may be helpful to read them as a suite, as a reference to the series as a whole. The English translations have been newly added.
早晨 Google
蘋果，金山橙，四方西瓜，基因移植，沙田柚
中國現代藝術在火鍋雙年展
冬陰功湯.com
吉石大道50號
荒木經惟論
在香港「中國俱樂部」的毛主席像
旅行紐約，加美海關官員說我騎的駱駝在電腦中沒有記錄
杜可風在多倫多電影節
我從四人幫的故居移民來到七人幫發源地
北美旅行團萬錦市太古廣場在摩托羅拉手機屏幕上看香港
多倫多Queen街歲時記
IKEA，idea，無印，大割引
噢！原來你不是李嘉誠
我是一頭美麗的反對黨
我開設在「味香村」的畫廊及其他分店
在Skype與火星人談情
試論「多倫多攝影節」與「滿地可攝影節」之異同
對不起，你的域名沒有在國家信產部備案
寫一本150 Gigabytes的小說
Good Morning, Google
Apple, California Orange, Square Watermelon, GMO, Shatin Pomelo
Chinese Contemporary Art at the Biennale Shabu-Shabu
TomYumSoup.com
50 Gladstone Avenue
On Araki Nobuyoshi
A Portrait of Chairman Mao at the China Club in Hong Kong
Travelling in New York, the Canada–U.S. Customs Officer Said My Camel Was Not in the Computer
Chris Doyle at the Toronto Film Festival
I Emigrated from the Former Home of the Gang of Four to the Birthplace of the Group of Seven
North American Tour Group Looking at Hong Kong on a Motorola Phone Screen at Pacific Place, Markham
A Seasonal Record of Queen Street, Toronto
IKEA, idea, MUJI, Big Discount
Oh! So You’re Not Li Ka-shing
I Am a Beautiful Opposition Party
My Gallery at “Asian Legend,” and Other Branches
Sweet Talk with a Martian on Skype
On the Similarities and Differences between the “Toronto Photography Festival” and the “Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal”
Sorry, Your Domain Name Has Not Been Registered with the Ministry of Information Industry
Writing a Novel of 150 Gigabytes