The Book about Xu Bing's Book from the Ground

by Mathieu Borysevicz (editor)

The creation of Xu Bing's Book from the Ground documented and described in text, images, and photographs. Although the pictogram-only narrative in Xu Bing's Book from the Ground can be read by anyone, there is much more to the story of Xu Bing's wordless book than can be gleaned from icons alone. This companion volume to Book from the Ground chronicles the entire project, mapping the history of Xu Bing's novel creation from inspiration to exhibition to publication. In the 1980s, Xu Bing created Book from the Sky . Using garbled and nonsensical faux-Chinese characters, this installation expressed Xu's doubts about written language and provoked questions about the Chinese language. Thirty years later, with Book from the Ground , the artist expresses his hope for a single, universally understood language. Inspired by airport signs that communicate instantaneously through images—directing a temporary community of modern nomads where to eat, shop, sit, and find a bathroom—Xu began to collect images, icons, and logos from which he could construct a story. This book describes Xu's research, showing notebook pages and bulletin boards full of clipped-out images; offers commentary by the artist and discussions of reading, alphabets and languages; documents, with text and photographs, exhibitions and installations connected to the work (including a Book from the Ground pop-up concept store); provides a list of works; describes Xu's “icon lab”; and “translates” Xu's pictographic narrative into English.

Genres: Art

160 pages, Hardcover

First published February 14, 2014

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic exploration of the process of creating Xu Bing's Point to Point: The Book of the Ground, that I loved so much. This book explores the linguistic/semiotic understandings of the art work. Xu Bing points out that his original Book of the Sky was a book that no one could read, and the new book was one that everyone could read. I have already written up the first pass at an activity for a film discussion group that extends Xu Bing's work into film appreciation and analysis (and production)... of course, only to find that the roots of my idea were already touched on in an interview he did. No problem, he didn't apply the ideas to film... which I will be doing. I'm also extending a little demo he did, into a fuller exploration.
The many photos of the book release/exhibit provided excellent insight into the process of identifying and compiling the symbols for the book.

[Mills College Library]

702.81 X8b 2013