Great Wall of China - the difference between Western and Eastern Civilization in the installation by Shu Yong
Great Wall of China - the difference between Western and Eastern Civilization in the installation by Shu Yong

Video: Great Wall of China - the difference between Western and Eastern Civilization in the installation by Shu Yong

Video: Great Wall of China - the difference between Western and Eastern Civilization in the installation by Shu Yong
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The Great Wall of China - the difference between Western and Eastern Civilization in an installation by Shu Yong
The Great Wall of China - the difference between Western and Eastern Civilization in an installation by Shu Yong

Contemporary Chinese artist Shu Yong confirms the words of Rudyard Kipling that the West and the East will not come together. And for a clear demonstration of this truth, he created a large-scale installation with the title The great Wall of China.

Great Wall of China - the difference between Western and Eastern Civilization in the installation by Shu Yong
Great Wall of China - the difference between Western and Eastern Civilization in the installation by Shu Yong

The China Pavilion is one of the largest at the 2013 Venice Biennale. The Celestial Empire presented a large number of contemporary authors and their works, including Wang Qingsong, who showed an unusual work dedicated to the theater, and Shu Yong, who built a symbolic copy of the Great Wall of China in the courtyard of the pavilion.

Great Wall of China - the difference between Western and Eastern Civilization in the installation by Shu Yong
Great Wall of China - the difference between Western and Eastern Civilization in the installation by Shu Yong

The essence of the latter work is to demonstrate the huge chasm that separates Western Civilization from the Civilization of China. This installation is based on one and a half thousand translucent bricks, on each of which one or another word or concept of the Chinese language is written.

Great Wall of China - the difference between Western and Eastern Civilization in the installation by Shu Yong
Great Wall of China - the difference between Western and Eastern Civilization in the installation by Shu Yong

And under it are written two translations of this word into English - literal and semantic. It turns out that there is often a huge difference between the two. For example, the same concept in Chinese can be translated simultaneously as "new era" and "scientific and technological progress." Much more amusing is the discrepancy between "cheap garlic" and "boy's crisis".

The Great Wall of China - the difference between Western and Eastern Civilization in an installation by Shu Yong
The Great Wall of China - the difference between Western and Eastern Civilization in an installation by Shu Yong

Shu Yong demonstrates, using the example of these features of translation, different views of the world between different peoples and whole Civilizations, as well as the current impossibility of finding a single key to overcome this barrier, even with modern technologies. For clarity, the Chinese artist used an automatic translation from the Google Translate service to get the literal meaning of words in his native language.

The Great Wall of China - the difference between Western and Eastern Civilization in an installation by Shu Yong
The Great Wall of China - the difference between Western and Eastern Civilization in an installation by Shu Yong

However, one of the edges of this Great Wall of China has collapsed, which symbolizes the beginning of the process of globalization and mixing of cultures even in such a traditionally patriarchal society as the Chinese one. However, this process is two-sided. More and more realities and values of the Celestial Empire are also penetrating the West.

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