A while back I published an excerpt from “The 85 Project,” linking medieval Chinese verse with Talmudic mysticism, on CipherJournal; a few years later, I ran into Robert Majzels and Claire Huot at a conference in New Orleans. I came across the fuller presentation of their works online, and I pass it on to readers of this blog interested in poetic takes on Chinese writing and its connections around the world:
The “85” project is a poetic multi-media investigation into the reception of the Chinese language and culture into English. The operation involves several transfers: from the original Chinese text into a literal character-for-word translation, then into 85 English letters, and into a visual poem. The visual poem is subsequently read aloud, and that reading is videotaped. Readers struggle to assemble words and phrases, creating if only for a moment the strange experience of speaking another culture. Concomitantly, the potential of reading English is unlocked by the permutation of letters. The reader of an 85 becomes a writer who manipulates language in its materiality.
I remember I was at their presentation in New Orleans as well, and found their project quite exciting, and strange as well. But why don’t you mention what that image at the top of the post is? It’s a great piece of Chinese poetry arcania that I first discovered (actually in color) in Li Ruzhen’s 1820 novel Jinghua yuan (Flowers in the Mirror).
Thanks for the information about Li Ruzhen 李汝珍 and Flowers in the Mirror. Here’s the link to his wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Ruzhen
Lucas