[p] New Publication: Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Mastaba

Christo, Taschen, and the Serpentine Galleries recently published Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Barrels and The Mastaba, 1958-2018. I had the pleasure of working on The London Mastaba and co-authoring this book, which also includes essays by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Paul Goldberger and features the photographs of Wolfgang Volz. Barrels and The Mastaba follows the use of barrels in Christo and Jeanne-Claude's works of art beginning with Christo's earliest sculptures in 1958 and ending with 2018's The London Mastaba. The variety and profusion of the artists' oeuvre continues to amaze me, even though I have been familiar with their archives for 13 years; here's a book that deals with just one strain of their work and the book's 208 pages barely touch the surface.

The book was a product of many talents, including my colleagues Vladimir Yavachev, Lorenza Giovanelli, Erin Bazos, Jonathan Henery, Wolfgang Volz and the team at Taschen, including Simone Philippi.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude's artwork has always been funded by the artists themselves. Christo also earns no proceeds from the sales of this book; the book exists for the sole purpose to provide an accurate record of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's works of art.

[p] New Publication: Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Floating Piers

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

One of the limited special editions: Wrapped Book.

Taschen has just published the special edition of Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Floating Piers. I was overjoyed to be a part of the work of art, and now, to be a part of this beautiful publication as author. The book, like the work of art, is the product of Christo's physical work; he layed out all 846 pages. Also, like the work of art, the book incorporated a large team of talented professionals including Wolfgang Volz (the photographer), Germano Celant (author of the introductory essay), Vladimir Yavachev, Jonathan Henery, Marcella Ferrari, Patrick South, and the great team at Taschen. 

Christo and Jeanne-Claude's artwork has always been funded by the artists themselves; there are no grants and no outside "sponsorship." They did this–and Christo continues to do this–to maintain their freedom of artistic expression. The book is released in much the same spirit: Christo will earn no proceeds from the sales of this book. It is simply a document meant to record for future generations the incredible dimensions of this sublime work of art.

[m] Book shopping in Taiwan

---

I’ve spent a good amount of time at book stores in the English speaking world. At times, it feels excessive, to the point where I question if the time perusing the books would have been better spent reading them. Reading is the point of books, I believe (this may sound obvious, but it's not and worth mentioning). And yet, books have a meaning of their own outside of the words inside them. They are the covers, the typography, the images, the material...in short, what truly defines a book is the materiality, the design and content combined. Literature may be best visualized now by an e-book...the words reign supreme while it has an almost negligible materiality. The differences of the ‘digital book’ may help us think about the book.

While at the University of Wisconsin, I had the pleasure of working in the Special Collections and Rare Books Department. I was able to see, firsthand, some of the finer specimens of the book. Publications from the Kelmscott Press, Audubon's Elephant Folio, Newton’s manuscripts, alchemy manuscripts, etc... A first edition, first printing can sometimes bring people to spend thousands of dollars for a piece of publishing history. An inscribed copy, especially from a reclusive author, can add additional value to the book...but these things don’t necessarily add additional value to the literature - the substance inside. What about the other elements, though? The paper selection? The weight or smell of the book? The size of the margins? Taken separately, their impact is unnoticed by most people and yet, together, the elements that make these books objects have a major effect on the reader.

Upon my arrival in Taiwan four years ago, the differentiation was real. There was truly only the physical book since the content (I will say the literature) was all in Chinese. This made the written content as good as non-existent for me. What I saw was the book craft, and the surface imagery of these characters. I bought nothing and I looked rarely. Certainly there were intriguing books and covers, but with the substance lacking, so too did my interest in much perusing or consuming.

Fast forward to three years later when my Chinese attained a level of understanding that allowed me to grasp the meaning of the title and sometimes even read a large portion of the contents inside. With this change, these beautiful objects transformed into the more substantial book. There is an extreme beauty and effect in the philosophy of the e-book - the writer's words stand on their own in a nearly level playing field. And yet, the materiality of the book and the things that lay outside of literature tend to enrich our experience in a way these new devices do not. Reading is not just about our sense of sight just as listening is not just about our sense of hearing. The other senses, defined or not, are always influencing us. The book - its typography, images, paper, size, literature - is a wonderful sum of its parts.

I wanted this little brief introduction to work as an introduction to these few books I’m sharing with you as well as how my experience with Chinese books helped me think differently about the book. The books that follow are of many different sorts - some I chose for the superficial and direct reason that I found them arresting and attractive. Some I bought for their literary content. As I packed up to move, these few books were among my most valued, so I share them with you. Don't pay too much attention to the section heads - there's lots of overlap and its just my way of making this random selection a little more digestible.

Enjoy.

Relatable and Translatable  

The dramatic differences between Chinese and English present an extreme challenge to translators, especially with written translation. Roughly speaking, Chinese characters represent words or ideas and have little in common with the strictly phonetic latin alphabet (although many chinese characters do actually have phonetic elements but the rules vary greatly, to the point where many modern Chinese readers rarely think about them).

So how do you translate an English title into Chinese?  Chinese takes a few different routes, the two most common are:

1.) Use the sounds of a character to mimic the sounds of the english word (Sometimes, the characters have a clever meaning along with their similar sound...sometimes there is no meaning at all, as below)

 e.g. 湯姆索亞 TangMu SuoYa is Tom Sawyer (This has no usable meaning - if forced to translate, it would be something like ‘soup female tutor search asia’)

2.) Use characters with a similar meaning to represent the title (with no attempt for phonetic similarity

e.g.  聖經 Sheng Jing (‘holy scripture’) is The Bible

With that little intro, here are the titles for the first set of books pictured above:

1. The Portable Emerson: The translator's transliteration of Emerson's name is informed and phonetically similar: '愛默森' (the pronunciation  is 'ai' 'mo' 'sen' - say those fast and you will understand why). The characters mean 'love,' 'silent', and 'forest.'

2. Walden by Henry David Thoreau: Walden is translated as Essays from the Lakeside with no phonetic similarities. And Thoreau? 亨利·大衛·梭羅 (Hēnglì·dà wèi·suō luó) - a purely phonetic representation.

3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain translated as The Wayward Wanderings of a Mischevious Child

4. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger is Catcher in the Wheat Field  (here's a newer and less subtle variation on the cover that I saw at the bookstore)

5. A Dictionary of American Slang by various authors

6. The Drink Book by various authors

Beauty

1. Practical Picture Dictionary

2. Paintings on the Preservation of Life (Vol. II) by Feng Zikai (I will write more about him, one of my favorite 20th Century Chinese writers/artists, at a later date.)

3. Collection of Landscape Paintings

4. Manuscripts of Classic and Modern Artists

5. Original Color Picture Catalog of Plants

The Strange and Fun

1. The Art of Shadow Puppetry

2. On the Nile River

3. Anatomy for Artistic Purposes

4. Delightful Folk Stories of Taiwan

5. Excerpts from various children’s books

6. Kaiming Second English Book (This primer was written by one of the most important literary figures in the Chinese speaking world at the time, the Harvard graduate Lin Yutang. Curiously, it was also illustrated by Feng Zikai, who has another selection above)

7. Ji RueiTong

For the Kids

1. The Case of Shi Gong

2. The Selfish Giant

3. Master Zhu’s Family Doctrines

4. Three Character Classic (Most likely written in the 13th century, this is one of the most important educational texts in Chinese, widely used in Taiwan up till the 1960's. It's an amazing feat of writing, each line consisting of only three characters and using a wide variety of characters and grammatical patterns to make it a useful tool for children learning the written and spoken language. In addition to its use in language education, the text also neatly sums up the entire world-view of Chinese Confucian thought, helping to indoctrinate numerous generations of Chinese children. The very famous opening lines illustrate a line of thought seen as elemental to later Confucian orthodoxy, as explicitly stated by Mencius. The lines are:

人之初 (rén zhī chū) People at birth,

性本善 (xìng běn shàn) Are naturally good (kind-hearted).

性相近 (xìng xiāng jìn) Their natures are similar,

習相遠 (xí xiāng yuǎn) (But) their habits make them different (from each other).

[g] Keroncong, with special guest

The above is one of my favorite professional recordings of the Indonesian music known as Kroncong (also: Krontjong, Keroncong. For a truly worthwhile read, please follow this pdf link and read about the music's long and diverse history, a fascinating angle that I don't much address in this entry). It was also one of the first songs that exposed me to this music that has always felt both similar and foreign. While I now have other relations to the music, at first, it was simply Kroncong’s melodies and rhythms - its musical style - that drew me in.

I had long been familiar with Gamelan ("traditional" Indonesian ensemble music), and when I first heard the music known as Kroncong, I felt some of their pleasing similarities. While one style seemed to more closely resemble the saccharine and familiar melodies of western popular music (see 'Bengawan Solo' below, the most famous of all Kroncong songs), the audible likeness to Gamelan music seemed more pronounced in the Kroncong style known as Langgam or Langgam Jawa. In this form, the bass and kroncong (an instrument similar to the ukulele) seemed to mimic, in a more portable way, the sounds and rhythms of the massive gongs and percussion instruments in the huge Gamelan ensembles. Check 'Putri Gunung' above and 'Wuyung' below to listen to a few Langgam favorites from Andjar Any, Toeti HP and their Orkes Kroncong Bintang Nusantara.

While many hundreds of variations exist of 'Bengawan Solo,' a song originally written by Gesang, there was something about this recording and the singer's glances and voice that made this version stand out. The video also includes a variation of 'Jali Jali'.  Below is another favorite, 'Wuyung.'

Both forms of Kroncong (there are others, as well) could indicate “somewhere else; somewhere new,” in a geographical way, but the “somewhere else” was, for me, almost entirely musical. The krongcong's use as a percussion instrument, the female singer’s emotional and fluid voice, the freely improvisational introductions of the violinist, the ample use of rubato - their forms felt different and hit me directly.  

An old and rather beautiful shot of one variation of instrument combinations for a Kroncong band. For another well-researched essay on the history of Kroncong, please click here. While it can be difficult to follow, it's also oftentimes fascinating.

Some music challenges us and multiplies the wrinkles in our brain, changing the way we hear and listen. Other music has a certain, mostly undefinable, power to resonate with our heart's own strings. Kroncong did and does both to me. The style has not loosened its affect on me, an influence that I trust is as deep in its impression as it is colorful.

Admittedly, the music also has a referential power, as it brings me back to the time I spent in Java, Indonesia, when I first met Timbil. As it would turn out, he would bring me even closer to the music. So let me, in an abbreviated fashion, extend that privilege to you.

---

I met Timbil Budiarto in Indonesia in 2014. Gintani Swastika, a curator and member of the Ace House Collective, introduced me to him at LifePatch, both of these organizations important and unique cooperative groups in Jogja, located centrally in the island of Java. At the time, we had an amiable conversation, enough to remember his face. Then, about two months ago, at an art performance in the hills of south Taipei, I was pleasantly shocked when I randomly recognized his face in a crowd. We reconnected for a bit and, over the remaining month that he was in Taipei, had the opportunity to spend time together and have a few substantial conversations.

In one of those conversations, when I mentioned my near-obsession with the Indonesian style of music known as Keroncong, he quickly replied, "My mom's a Keroncong singer." Hearing this, my heart jumped. Even better, he said he had brought recordings of her performing with her friends.

When he saw the extreme excitement on my face, I think he felt it was necessary to add, "She's not a professional singer." Certainly this was no problem, and in some ways it was more encouraging. The non-professional (or, more accurately, when players "play for fun" as opposed to aspiring professionals who have not yet reached the professional stage) seems to be very much in touch with what I think of as music and its foundation: a way to sonically celebrate and enjoy life, and create harmonies with other things and people. The professional and their output is ever-well documented, transmitted and available for purchase. The non-professionals, I fear, dwindle in number. So, too, do their ensembles, sing-alongs, and choirs as more and more of us only consume music, instead of take part in it. The professional trades their time for someone else's money. The non-professional trades their time for time. Certainly there's something to this, and I believe it can be felt when playing "for fun." Although, when Timbil mentioned his disclaimer, my response was an abridged, "not a problem at all, I want to hear the recordings!"

A week or so passed before I invited him over to my home with a number of other friends. After casually drinking, snacking and lounging around, he told me that he had brought his hard drive that included some of his mother, Sumini Soerapto, and her friends' Kroncong performances. Eagerly and without hesitation, I brought Ruei and Timbil into my studio. After copying the folder containing the media onto my computer, I loaded one video.

As we watched the home video, it was hard for me not to get emotional. It was difficult not only because of the intervals, scales and the melodic rhythms of the musical style that, before, had already had an extremely inebriating effect on me; it was also hard because I was considering and feeling the strange intersections of that moment. Watching the same video together at the same time, Ruei, Timbil and I were certainly affected in entirely different ways. Physically and musically together, we were also consciously isolated. Timbil, of course, was affected in a very personal and direct way; as he watched, he pointed out his mother and his father. Also, when certain musicians' faces came into focus, he would softly add, "he's now gone," "so is he," amplifying the enigmatic power of documentation - something gone is still, in a lesser form, here.

It was a privilege to share what seemed so personal. The different sounds and images produced many different intersections in the short time we watched together. There were dissonances and harmonies, the krong krong of the kroncong instrument (this is where Krongcong gets its name from), and leisurely breaks between songs. Sometimes they were performing under a small roof outside during the day, breathing the fresh air as they performed with their feet to the ground, having removed their shoes when they stepped onto their stage. There they laughed together, played, stopped, started and, at times, looked directly into the camera. And we, the viewers, looked back.  

***********************************************************************

These videos will have different affects on you as they had on me.

Or Ruei.

Or of course, Timbil

(much less his mother),

but I feel very happy to be able to share this with you and I have to thank Timbil Budiarto and his mother, Sumini Soeprapto, for allowing me to do so.

His mother shared her voice with her fellow musicians;

They recorded it and shared it with her son;

her son shared it with his new friend,

and his new friend now shares it with you.

While the music doesn't start until around 0:40, I highly recommend you watch from the beginning to get a sense of the surroundings. Along with any of these videos, if you'd like to see them larger, just click on the link on the top edge of the video and watch it full-size at youtube.

I took the liberty to post a snippet of the first take of this song. The singer's focus and the movement of her eyes and hands seem to synchronize so comfortably with the music. Her reaction to missing her queue towards the end is fun to see in a "I know exactly how that feels" kind of way. Her recovery into the perfect take 2 is in its complete form below.

This is Timbil's mother, Sumini Soeprapto, and my favorite recording of these performances. Her voice is incredibly affecting for me and the rhythms of her ensemble mates at 2:48 that lead into the changes at 3:50 are so comfortably driving. It's the intervals like those of this song, (as well as 'Putri Gunung,' and 'Wuyung' above) that are the most gripping and moving I've encountered in Kroncong. Watch this video to the end.

Extras,

for those who still want more:

[m] Expostulation and Reply

EXPOSTULATION AND REPLY

"WHY, William, on that old grey stone,
Thus for the length of half a day,
Why, William, sit you thus alone,
And dream your time away?

"Where are your books?--that light bequeathed
To Beings else forlorn and blind!
Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed
From dead men to their kind.

"You look round on your Mother Earth,
As if she for no purpose bore you;
As if you were her first-born birth,
And none had lived before you!"

One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake,
When life was sweet, I knew not why,
To me my good friend Matthew spake,
And thus I made reply:

"The eye--it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will. 

"Nor less I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.

"Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?

"--Then ask not wherefore, here, alone,
Conversing as I may,
I sit upon this old grey stone,
And dream my time away,"

 William Wordsworth 1798.