Sinographics

The deconstruction, deformation, and reinscription of Chinese or sinographic writing is considered one of the most significant developments in late twentieth century avant-garde Chinese art. This dissertation attempts to think through the possibilities generated by this play on words by exploring three seminal instances of this practice, a practice I attempt to think through the term "sinographics." What are we to make of such artworks and what might they make of us? In the first case I examine the apparent conundrum of word and image presented by Xu Bing's Book from the Sky (1987-91), an installation of scrolls and books printed in a meticulously crafted "language" of fake Chinese characters. Does Book from the Sky call for a reader or a viewer? Are these objects words or images -- or something else? It is to the possibility of this "something else" that this study attends. A second chapter revolves around Qiu Zhijie's Writing the " Orchid Pavilion Preface " One Thousand Times (1986/1997), a compulsive act that insistently rewrites the script of China's millennia-old calligraphic tradition in the mode of contemporary conceptual and performance art. Finally, in my treatment of Song Dong's performance piece Breathing (1996), I contend that the artist's own prone body, his inspiring and expiring action, and the frozen index of his breath figure as the material of the sinographic impulse. By focusing not on what these artworks (don't) say, but on what they do and how they exceed existing frames of reference, this dissertation suggests that among the things we may make of such contemporary Chinese art is nothing less than the ruin or oblivion of a certain form of thinking art as representation.