Without Planets
(A Response To The Book ”Katie Paterson” ISBN: 978-3-7356-0261-9)
2020
Collected Items, Screen Printing on Japanese Shoji Paper
(A1, W:59.4cm, H:84.1cm for each piece)
Art, Space and Nature MFA 2nd year solo project
First Showcased in "Marking Time" Solo Exhibition, Tent Gallery, Edinburgh, UK
If there's no space between words
If there's no full stop at the end of sentences
If there's no planets in the universe
本作品是回應藝術家凱蒂·帕特森的一本書,書中每個句號都被置換成不同行星的圖像且無明顯規律。起初我以好奇的心態將每個「土星」圈出來,看看所有在它之前的單字是否有任何意義,儘管始終找不出期盼的謎底,但這過程令我明白:句子在分隔符號出現的那一刻告一段落,同時語言的意義則因此誕生,我們在句點出現前持續等待,因為唯有這樣才能完整地得到結論。若書中的行星全都消失,我們將如何判讀該文章?因此兩幅絹印上,一面印有我搜集的所有土星之前的單字,一面則是原應存於單字間的區隔。
This work came from the whimsical arrangement of punctuation marks in artist Katie Paterson’s Book. In her book, every full stop is replaced by a sign of planet but without a fixed order. I was intrigued by its delicate ingenuity thus marked out all the words before Saturn signs to see if there’s any pattern, or any possible reason to put Saturn signs in the end of these sentences. It turned out that my action had led me to an unintentional focus. In order to collect every Saturn sign in the book, I spent hours scanning every sentence and full stop. I realised that just like time, language could not function without separations. The interpretation of sentence takes shape, or can be finalized, when we see the full stop; the definition of word is determined by the space between letters; the process of creating meaning is completed by the duration between signs and marks. As a result, the work is one print with all the letters from words before Saturn signs in same distance, and another print with separation marks which can map with the letters then reveal the words on the other side.