Video: Chinese literacy as a dialogue of cultures: the art object of Rio Shimizu
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
An ordinary white wall, and on it some strange writing: not hieroglyphs, not letters, but most likely something in between. Some of the incomprehensible signs could not stand it at all and crumbled to the floor, and there were gaps in the text. What is this Chinese letter and how to decipher it? In fact, there is nothing supernatural: the wall text of the Japanese building designer Rio Shimizu will be read by anyone who reads in English.
Tokyo resident Ryo Shimizu was born in Kagawa Prefecture, Japan, attended the University of Kanagawa and received a degree in Architecture and Civil Engineering. After graduating from university, he took up building design. But that is not all.
Ryo Shimizu is interested in the customs and life of the Japanese, the relationship between history and modernity, and relationships between people. To express his thoughts, he turns to photography, sculpture and installation. The 34-year-old master's latest and largest text art object is called "CNJPUS Text" (Sino-Japanese-American Text).
Already in the title of the installation, we see the confrontation between the East (China, Japan) and the West (USA). Rudyard Kipling's line: "The West is the West, the East is the East, and they can't get out of their place" - a hundred years at lunchtime, and what - during this time, nothing has changed, despite world integration and widespread interest in foreign cultures? Can't people of different nations still understand each other, how and read the Chinese letter?
No matter how it is. The Japanese installation master Rio Shimizu decided to demonstrate clearly that the mutual understanding between the West and the East is not a fairy tale, and a person who reads English is quite capable of understanding Chinese literacy. The fact is that the wall text of the art object only at first glance seems to be incomprehensible hieroglyphs. In fact, the familiar letters of the Latin alphabet are formed from the elements of Chinese writing. So, to continue to quote Kipling, "there is no East and there is no West."
Thus, Ryo Shimizu tells us: do not rush right off the bat to shout: “I don’t understand!”, It is better to first take a closer look at strange texts or people. Perhaps a closer look will help to find the known in the unknown, and there will be more in common than differences. And even the fallen letters will not prevent you from reading the text (by the way, this also applies to the art object of Rio Shimizu).
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