scholarly journals Translanguaging and visuality: Translingual practices in literary art

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tong-King Lee
Keyword(s):  
Visual Art ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Turn On ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Literary Art ◽  
Xu Bing ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

AbstractTranslanguaging is a resource for linguistic creativity in communication and for critical engagement with one’s sociolinguistic or sociocultural reality. This article examines how translanguaging operates in two visual art installations by the contemporary Chinese artist Xu Bing. Square Word Calligraphy takes a visual turn on translanguaging by inventing a hybrid calligraphy that incorporates English words into the orthographic frame of Chinese. By physically tracing the alphabet through the character, viewers gain an embodied translingual experience, which encompasses an intercultural imaginary negotiating and transcending the English-Chinese divide. By contrast, Post Testament demonstrates an intralingual mode of translanguaging, whereby a biblical text is inflected with heterogeneous registers and rendered ineffectual as coherent discourse. Here the encounter and intertwining of text registers create a transformative space replete with ambiguity and mayhem. In these radical works of language art, translanguaging delineates borders while simultaneously interrogating them, creating liminal zones and articulating a politics of (mis)recognition, (un)readability, and (in)communicability.

Reception History and the Interpretation of Revelation

2020 ◽  
pp. 375-393
Author(s):  
Ian Boxall
Keyword(s):  
Visual Art ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Music Drama ◽  
History Of Interpretation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Biblical Texts

The chapter describes the discipline of reception history as the study of the ongoing use, interpretation, and impact of a biblical text. If the history of interpretation has often focused on the ways biblical texts are understood in commentaries and theological writings, reception history also considers how a book was received in spirituality and worship, in music, drama, literature, visual art, and textual criticism. Criteria for selecting and organizing materials useful for reception history are discussed, and there is a review of recent attempts to provide broad overviews of Revelation’s reception history, along with specific examples of the value of the discipline for interpreting Revelation.

scholarly journals The image of Paradise in «The Sermon on the Annunciation to the Holy Virgin» by Ioanikii Galiatovskii

2019 ◽  
pp. 44-50
Author(s):  
Liliia Bomko
Keyword(s):  
Hierarchical Structure ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
The Hierarchical Structure ◽  
Assumption Of The Virgin

The article attempts to analyse the image of paradise in “The Sermon on the Annunciation of the Holy Virgin" from the collection "The Key of Understanding" (1659) by Ioanikii Galiatovskii. Paradise in his sermon is depicted as a hierarchical structure of the nine Angelic Choirs: the Angels, the Archangels, the Principality, the Authority, the Mastery, the Parish, the Throne, the Cherubim, and the Seraphim. Comparing the angelic choirs of Galiatovskii and the depiction of celestial choirs in «The Mirror of Theology» (1618) by Cyryl Trankvylion Stavrovetskyi, one can see some differences, including a change in the sequence of arrangement of angelic choirs and in the semantics of names, which Galiatovskii supplements with explanations of the saints' presence on all choirs. The theme of the Annunciation that becomes the beginning of the salvation of the human soul is brought closer to the understanding of paradise. If one compares the preaching on Gospel with a painting one can easily grasp substantial differences in the interpretation. Galiatovskii does not follow the biblical story of the Annunciation, which tells how did the Archangel Gabriel appear to the Holy Virgin and inform her of the birth of Christ. Instead, he interprets this event in anagogical (spiritual sense), describing paradise and the Blessed Virgin in a similar way. Visual art closely follows the biblical text when depicting the Annunciation – the Holy Virgin and the Archangel, who holds a white lily that means god news, are surrounded by several tiny angels that are holding a white lily flower (like in the painting by the French artist Philip de Champaign "Annunciation", 1644). Interestingly, the interpretation of the Annunciation in Ioanikii Galiatovskii’s writing is close to the theme of the Assumption. One might mention the painting "Assumption of the Virgin" (1475 - 1476) by the Italian artist Francesco Botticini, who depicted the Holy Virgin standing next to the hierarchical structure of the nine Angelic Choirs.

scholarly journals The Round Table 03 圆桌: A Conversation with Xu Bing

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 201-207
Author(s):  
Madeline Eschenburg ◽  
Ellen Larson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Round Table ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Xu Bing ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

The following is an excerpt from a conversation between contemporary Chinese artist Xu Bing, Madeline Eschenburg, and Ellen Larson. Xu Bing curated an exhibition at the Central Academy of Fine Arts titled The Second CAFAM Future Exhibition, Observer-Creator: The Reality Representation of Chinese Young Art, on exhibition through March 2015. Our conversation centered around his thoughts on a new generation of young Chinese artists as well as reflection on his own early career and time in New York. The conversation was conducted in Chinese and has been translated into English.

Who’s Afraid of Canaan’s Curse?

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 388-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Knust
Keyword(s):  
Reading Strategies ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Sexual Perversion ◽  
Reparative Reading ◽  
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

The story of Noah’s curse of his grandson Canaan (Gen. 9:18–29) is especially well suited to an interpretive style Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has labeled “paranoid reading.” Oft exploited by those invested in xenophobia and racism, this passage appears to present an intrinsically identitarian plot that cannot be shaken off, either by historicizing or by other kinds of critical engagement. Indeed, historical critical analysis has tended to confirm rather than undermine the story’s determination to justify disinheritance on the basis of some vague form of sexual perversion. In her later work, however, Sedgwick began to call such paranoid readings into question, advocating a more open, descriptive, and anti-foundational approach to texts and histories. These “reparative reading” practices cede paranoia’s determination to be “in the know” to descriptive multiplicity and more limited acts of noticing. Inspired by Sedgwick’s insights, this essay considers the advantages of paranoid reading strategies, especially when it comes to this story, even as it acknowledges the serious limits of such readings, which have yet to succeed if the goal is to undermine the stickiness of sexualized and racialized blaming rooted in this difficult biblical text.


scholarly journals Performative Strategies in Contemporary Chinese Avant-garde Poetry

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (10) ◽  
pp. 100-116
Author(s):  
Yulia A. Dreyzis
Keyword(s):  
Modern Art ◽  
Experimental Poetry ◽  
Chinese Poetry ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Xu Bing ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

The paper presents an attempt to explore the problem of mediality in Chinese poetry of the last thirty years. New Chinese poetry is particularly susceptible to the influence of the latest concepts of modern art and now more than ever needs a clear contextualization in relation to other forms of culture and avant-garde practice. This can be achieved through applying an analysis paradigm for performative word art developed by Dr. Tomáš Glanc in the context of Czech and Russian neo-avant-garde. It perceives experimental poetry as a form that fulfills a shift of the word thus making it labile. Examples of this phenomena can be found in Chinese poetry in the works of Ouyang Jianghe, Yang Xiaobin, Ouyang Yu, Xia Yu, Chen Li, Xu Bing, Wuqing and many more experimental artists. Their creative use of word shift principles shows how performative strategies are adapted in contemporary Chinese poetry keeping in mind the specific hanzi (character) medium that it is based upon. It seems both a continuation of a long-existing tradition and a radical exploration of the ‘iconic turn’ in the field of language.

Installing a world city

Above Sea ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 117-146
Author(s):  
Jenny Lin
Keyword(s):  
World City ◽  
Migrant Labor ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Contemporary Chinese Art ◽  
Urban Intervention ◽  
The Face ◽  
World Expo ◽  
Recent Project ◽  
Xu Bing ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

Chapter Four considers worlding, or the city’s positioning as a cosmopolitan center on an international stage, as a philosophical construct and tangible phenomenon tied to the development and promotion of present-day Shanghai and contemporary Chinese art. The chapter presents three Shanghai-based installations by transnational art stars Gu Wenda, Xu Bing, and Cai Guoqiang. Disrupting the East-meets-West soundbites surrounding discussions of these works, this chapter interrogates the artists’ privileged subject positions, arguing that such artworks function as branding campaigns that world Shanghai. The chapter also discusses the loaded cultural geographies of these installations’ shared sites: the Bund, once the heart of Shanghai’s British and US-controlled International Settlement, and the Pudong Skyline, considered the shining jewel of China’s post-socialist economic rise. The chapter concludes by discussing a more critical recent project by Cai Guoqiang that acknowledged the migrant labor fuelling Shanghai’s urbanization in the face of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, and a related urban intervention by artist Ai Weiwei.

The Twelve Minor Prophets in Art and Music

2021 ◽  
pp. 278-295
Author(s):  
John F. A. Sawyer
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Minor Prophets

This brief study of reception history begins with how images and texts have been handled in works of visual art, giving some idea not only of how the Twelve Minor Prophets dress and what they look like in many different contexts but also, particularly in Christian tradition, how they have been used to illustrate details in the Gospel story. It begins with some independent statues and paintings and then turns to look briefly at how each of the Minor Prophets, starting with Jonah, has been portrayed in the light of details in the biblical text. It then looks at how the Twelve have been interpreted in oratorios, cantatas, and anthems, as well as in African American spirituals and popular songs, both Jewish and Christian.

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