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.