Poets with Cameras, again

A few months ago I wrote about Mo Mo’s abstract photography. I neglected to mention that Yang Xiaobin has been using a similar strategy in a micro-photo series, which is to say taking pictures of physical objects (walls, street pavement, and the like) at ultra-close range, blowing up the results to impossible-to-decipher vistas and them exhibiting them as abstract work. This he calls his “post-photography” or “Traces as Palimpsest,” as his first show of such work was subtitled. A palimpsest is a work of layers, with older text effaced, erased, destroyed or otherwise just faded from view, and a newer text inscribed upon it. When applied conceptually to the built environment, which Yang’s work seems to suggest (near I can make out)–the waves of development in Taiwan in this case but in fact anywhere the built environment is constrained enough to require constant re-development–we can see older structures exerting their presence in shadowy forms through the new, ghosts which haunt any optimistic attempt to assume that our physical surrounds are “here to stay” (and of course all ideological implications with-standing).

By the time the work reached the Jiaodu Abstract Art Gallery (角度抽象画廊) the series had taken on the more inscrutable name: Post-woundism (后伤口主义), leading with the following image:

Yang Xiaobin photography image

The “scar tissue” of contemporary life makes a certain amount of sense to me, but I’m not sure I exactly see it in this image (or at least its reproduction, which may indeed have lost something in translation).

Regardless, and now it looks as though Bei Dao has joined this particular fray (or just gang), with an exhibition in Hong Kong Museum’s Beijing branch in October last year of related work. The Poetry Foundation carried a report (from Global Times), with little more than announcing the fact that the exhibition took place.

201210152311409663

de1d1f45-0bc3-4aab-9eb7-c060c273b416

The title,  “Nil Mirror” is reminiscent of the title of Bei Dao’s Landscape Over Zero, something which would suggest word-image convergence on some level. I can imagine a terrific group show of poet-photographers, particularly if combined with readings.

11 thoughts on “Poets with Cameras, again

  1. Wow, this post is nice, my sister is analyzing such things, thus I am going to tell her.

  2. Pana says:

    Do you need Excellent Computer & PC Services – then we are here for you. From here you can get excellent PC & Computer Services at ptaoirfble rate. Please visit us for more details.

  3. […] Poets with Cameras, again (chinaavantgarde.com) […]

  4. […] Poets with Cameras, again (chinaavantgarde.com) […]

  5. […] Poets with Cameras, again (chinaavantgarde.com) […]

  6. […] Poets with Cameras, again (chinaavantgarde.com) […]

  7. […] Poets with Cameras, again (chinaavantgarde.com) […]

  8. […] Poets with Cameras, again (chinaavantgarde.com) […]

  9. […] Poets with Cameras, again (chinaavantgarde.com) […]

  10. […] Poets with Cameras, again (chinaavantgarde.com) […]

  11. […] Poets with Cameras, again (chinaavantgarde.com) […]

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s