text by Chia Chi Jason Wang
Silence comprehends heaven's tempo,
In emptiness ten thousand vistas soar.
--Su Dongpo, “Seeing Off Master Can Liao” (1073)
On June 26, 1938, Honinbō Shūsai, the most renowned Japanese Go player of his age played his final farewell tournament before retirement. At the age of 39, Japanese writer Yasunari Kawabata, who later went on to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, was commissioned by a newspaper to write about this epochal competition. Having rewritten the piece numerous times, it was published as a novel “The Master of Go” in 1954.
“The Master of Go” is largely a factual record of the competition. Its main character, Shūsai, is the twenty-first inheritor in the Honinbō succession. This last tournament before his retirement (held in 1938) was of particular significance as it symbolized the end of a very long tradition. Kawabata chose to write his book in the first person, pointing out in a somber and sad tone that this was an era in which “all the grace and elegance of Go as art had disappeared.” In this context, Kawabata also referred to the fact that “from the way of Go the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled” and from this point on: “Everything had become science and regulation.” [1]
At the time of the farewell competition, Honinbō Shūsai was already 65 years old. Out of respect for his age and to ensure a fair contest, the competition was conducted under strict rules, with three months allowed for the competition to be played to conclusion.[2] Unfortunately, Shūsai became ill during the competition, so the match was paused a further three months. Once the game was resumed it did not conclude until December 4th. The retiring master lost to his younger opponent of the seventh rank by 5 points. Not long after the competition, on January 18, 1940, Honinbō Shūsai passed away.
Through his book “The Master of Go,” Yasunari Kawabata took a game of chess played under conditions of extreme silence and solemnity and transformed it into a cacophony of highly complex psychological voices, portraying a world of high tension and excitement. The entire novel is painted in sober detailed strokes, depicting the principles and ethics of life, describing in great detail the various physical and psychological struggles that went on behind the game. The author even utilizes victory and defeat as a vehicle for a discussion on the duality of self and death. What is perhaps most moving is his depiction of the struggle faced by chess players in confronting reality but also seeking to maintain the ethics of the game. The graceful bearing and romantic charm of Go are portrayed by Kawabata move by move, which allows readers to experience first hand the powerful contrast between ancient and modern players. He also shows how they overcome their selfishness, utilizing what approximates to Bushidō spirit. Even in the face of physical pain and spiritual agony, players strive to overcome the test of reality and reason and thereby achieve recognitions as a model player for generations to come.
Tse Su-Mei was moved by the description of the chess game and psychological space in “The Master of Go” and it was this that encouraged her to take Kawabata’s depiction of the match as her text. With this in mind, she reconstructed the scene of two men playing chess and developed it into four image works, known collectively as The Master of Go (after Yasunari Kawabata) (2006). Through the white wall and the space as set between the images, Tse also means to evoke the notion of time. According to the artist’s own discussion of this piece, all of the images are seen from the point of view of the white pieces, which Go Master Honinbō Shūsai always played and which is also the same viewpoint of the audience.
When compared to Yasunari Kawabata’s novel, Tse’s four images present an intriguing contrast. Given that games of Go used to be a process of communication through hand movements, an interesting question is how best to introduce text into the process? Kawabata was a pioneer in the creation of the Go novel. He used the format to infuse a game played in silence with a loud clear voice, much like the sound from the human heart. Indeed the beauty of this idea is perhaps best encapsulated in the words “Silence comprehends Heaven’s tempo,” written by Song dynasty poet Su Dongpo (1037-1101) in his Zen poem “Seeing Off Master Can Liao.”
However, Tse Su-Mei’s four image works are exactly the opposite. She effectively inverts the reality and psychological voice connected to the ups and downs, circuitous moves, confusion and resonance Kawabata makes such an integral part of Go - which involves silencing the voices in the novel. When dealing with the structure of the pictures, the artist chooses to eliminate the original lines delineating the squares on a chessboard. As viewers stare at the chessboard provided by Tse, the psychological violence of combat between the pieces is stripped away to be replaced by black and white pieces that transcend time and space. This seemingly blank and unsustainable game of chess arouses a voluble silence and that gives rise to the sound of footsteps in the silence that seem to allude to a mysterious, profound and inexplicable sense of history that can never be related in full.
Tse Su-Mei uses the images in The Master of Go (after Yasunari Kawabata) to set the scene for “silence comprehends heaven's tempo.” That in turn brings to mind a certain visual Haiku for the audience, inadvertently echoing the spatial atmosphere in the next line of Su Dongpo’s poem – “In emptiness ten thousand vistas soar.” In point of fact, semantically speaking, “emptiness” here refers not just to the “space” that holds ten thousand vistas. At this juncture it is also a concept of sound. For example, the aesthetics of the Daoist “Lao Zi” observes: “Loud is its sound but never word it said.” Even more clearly, although the piece approximates to soundlessness, it is certainly not silent.
The introductory article “Duologue: Exhibition by Lee Mingwei and Tse Su-Mei,” written for this exhibition by Iris Huang takes sound as its focal point in an attempt to establish a connection between the works of the two artists. As part of this, she traces the history of the Chinese character “Jing” (vista; 境), quoting the classic work, A Dictionary of the Etymology of Chinese Characters, by Eastern Han dynasty scholar Xǔ Shèn (ca. 58-147). According to this, “Jing” means the same as “Jiang” (border or boundary; 疆) which based on the “land” radical makes it a spatial concept.[3] However, Xǔ Shèn also points out that in a classical sense the definition of “Jing” is very similar to that for “Jing” (竟), where the definition for the second “Jing” is the end of a piece of music.[4] Based on the etymology of the characters, our interpretation of “Jingjie” (border; 境界) can be extended in the same way as Iris Huang and thereby understood as musical notes or a time-based rhythmic flow around space, creating an echo or reverberation effect.
Tse Su-Mei removed the vertical and horizontal lines from the chessboard, which effectively eliminates the boundaries that map the space of any chess battle. This means the pieces lose their immediate battlefield and that everything regresses to emptiness. At the same time, it also indicates that reality and all rules and norms no longer apply. Perhaps this is the only way that Jorge Luis Borges’ (1899-1986) belief that “forgetting is forgiving” actually becomes true. Within this idea we can truly feel the space, vastness, profundity and richness of Su Dongpo’s: “In emptiness ten thousand vistas soar.”[5] In this way, Tse gradually ensures that the chess competition on which “The Master of Go” is based forgets reality, transforming it instead into an eternal inquiry into the essential nature of existence.
Ever since Tse Su-Mei first started officially presenting work in 1999, her creative theme has been people related – taken as a motif for reflection and action – the inseparable links between visible/invisible etiquette, laws and norms. If we take The Master of Go (after Yasunari Kawabata) as an example, then Go has always been a refined art that places a great deal of focus on etiquette and, after a thousand years of development, has many strict rules and regulations. The reason Tse takes interests in this subject could well be paralleled in some way to the training she received in classical music.
The study of classical music is much the same as the refinement of chess skills. In addition to observing rules and etiquette, the production of quality music is also dependent on the musician’s knowledge of musical scores which need to be memorized and practiced ad infinitum. The horizontal and vertical lines of a Go chessboard not only symbolize the borders on a battlefield, they also represent a set of rules and restrictions to which the chess pieces are required to strictly adhere. In the same way, a stave represents a restraint and set of norms for musical performers, composers and conductors. Both music and chess involve transcendence within the confines of recognized norms.
In an earlier video installation entitled “Das wohltemperierte Klavier” (The Well-Tempered Clavier, 2001), Tse bandages the fingers she uses to play music and films herself playing Bach’s “Das wohltemperierte Klavier” presenting close-up images. From 1999-2003, she occasionally used herself as the main character in her video works. Bandaging the fingers she uses to perform alludes to a hand that is injured in some way, but can also be taken as a visible representation of the norms and restrictions of music. If we look in more detail at the way the performer’s fingers are bound, it appears not so much the result of excessive practice but rather something done in the pursuit of perfect technique through forced correction.
As part of the process of practicing and nurturing musical talent, Tse Su-Mei uses her own physical experience to cultivate a rich sense of self-awareness and has maintained an interest in discipline and institutions. The recently completed piece “standard eye level” (2006), takes a bonsai as an allusion, raising questions and even criticizing the “standardized social gaze of mankind.”[6] This is a spatial installation that displays a bonsai, though the plants on display have the bottom of the pots removed. The artist also uses a metallic stand for each plant on display and ensures each one is at exactly the same height – namely at the viewing audience’s eye-level. Tse provides a thin fluorescent horizontal orange red line at the exhibition arena, highlighting the visual impact of the eye level view.
Sharp-eyed viewers should all be able to agree that standard eye level displays completely unconcealed visual violence. In her own description of the piece, Tse Su-Mei called the potted plants “dwarfed trees.” This nomenclature strengthens a sense of aphasia or helplessness with the plants caused by their inability to grow.[7] Although once part of the natural environment, the process of human adaptation has reduced them to controlled objects manipulated to create a sense of visual beauty. Tse takes the image of the potted plants and adds a metallic stand, crafting it into a unified mechanical whole. This focuses on the mercilessness and violence of mechanical systems, though the silence of the plants shows us their disassociation and helplessness. Furthermore, the potted plants supported by metallic stands also appear completely disabled.[8]
The work standard eye level presents an absolute vision, forcing viewers to see work from a single perspective. Another recent piece Dong Xi Nan Bei (E, W, S, N) (2006), provides a more open visual perspective. Where standard eye level and Dong Xi Nan Bei (E, W, S, N) differ is that the latter deals with relativism. This is especially the case because North, South, East and West are mainly used as geographical coordinates positioning people, places and objects. Furthermore, scientific verification ensures that North, South, East and West are already a priori objective and permanent. By contrasting North, South, East, and West with a person’s viewpoint or physical position, the artist highlights commonplace subjectivism, arbitrariness and partiality, all ways in which we habitually make ourselves the center of everything.
Despite this, people too easily resort to using a compass to locate things right in front of them. North, South, East and West on a compass rotate as a result of changes in physical position and line of sight. Originally, the compass was used as a tool to help people who become lost determine their position relative to four objective directions. Ironically, people often misunderstand the compass to mean they were the center of the world and that the world of nature moved in tune to the actions of man – an idea that constitute mankind’s ultimate loss of direction.
Is it possible for man to lay aside his ego or the arrogance that makes him the center of all things? In 2003, Tse Su-Mei produced the video installation L’écho in which she makes use of post-production editing to place images of herself playing the cello in the vastness of a mountain landscape. She combined this with classical music and an echo, presenting it to spectators as one work. This piece is an intriguing combination of video, an artist’s performance and music, creating an integrated visual and musical effect that is at once beautifully refined and extremely poetic. As the classical music swirls around the lofty mountains and vast valleys, spectators are once again reminded of the Zen poetry of Su Dongpo “In emptiness ten thousand vistas soar.”
L’écho brims with the artist’s own music, a melody that is a direct product of the strict training Tse received in classical music. Because of this, L’écho highlights a subject that is worthy of further consideration: looking at the picture, what role is played by the uplifting mountains and valleys?
It is against this natural mountain landscape stretching into the distance, that the musician practices and displays her musical talent. Despite the musician physically occupying only a very small part of the picture the music fills the entire space. The sound of the cello echoes in the air, contrasting against the original sound of the instrument.
From a naturalist point of view, the echo originates in the broad mountain valley where the Tse is located. Performing in this place, the musician is able to listen carefully to her own playing, which itself creates multiple reverberations in the sound of the cello. Tse Su-Mei uses music as a medium and a metaphor for the human self. Although an echo is nothing more than a refraction of the original sound and therefore unable to perfectly reproduce the former, at the very least it forces the player to listen intently and view part of her self.
Tse deliberately places her-self and the cello music in a natural setting and seeks self-enhancement and transcendence through a process of constant inner dialogue. From her arduous training for “Das Wohltemperierte Klavier” (The Well-Tempered Clavier) to the self-listening and feedback for L’echo, the underlying spirit is clearly one of self-improvement and transcendence. Although the artist has consistently raised questions about the existence of norms and the constraints they impose, she is ultimately more interested in whether people are able to pursue self-transcendence without harming nature.
In L’echo, Tse Su-Mei uses the exquisite poetic imagery of mountains and valleys reminiscent in an attempt to make her own small and seemingly insignificant self one with nature. Through music she crafts nature into the spatial location of a refracted echo. This scenario once again speaks to Su Dongpo’s Zen poem: “In emptiness ten thousand vistas soar.” In addition, it is exactly because nature can be described as: “Loud is its sound but never word it said,” that it can be used as a mirror in which spectators can see their true selves. It could be said that Tse borrows the awareness of L’écho to show how people can let go of their obsession with themselves by using nature as a mirror, returning to the music of the natural world and seeking a new resonance between the self and nature.
The artist uses L’écho to reveal several problems in the relationship between self and nature continues to discuss the issue in greater depth in her more recent works. What is particularly clear is that Tse often makes animals the motifs of her creative work, sometimes hiding behind them, sometimes speaking trough them, deliberately giving the animals a voice so that they too become mirrors of the self. Taken still further, Tse Su-Mei effectively makes these animals echoes of the human self.[9]
John Berger points out that a huge rupture in the relationship between mankind and animals began in the nineteenth century. As people continued to hunt and tame animals on a large scale, certain species slowly disappeared from the face of the earth or became living specimens in zoos.[10] Today, most animals have been contained and institutionalized by mankind. When compared to the close interrelationship man has had with the animal world since ancient times and the richness of imagination witnessed in religion, literature and art, modern man has clearly forgotten this historical sentiment and memory.[11] Animals have been colonized and silently forced apart, thereby sharing modern mankind’s sense of dislocation, transformed into little more than objects viewed and controlled by man.
Although the modern position of animals is greatly diminished, Tse Su-Mei seems to believe they remain the most convenient and direct vehicle through which mankind can fix its relationship with nature. She often presents animals to viewers in magnified form and also gets close enough to record their natural sounds. In her most recent work Sound for Insomniacs (2002-2007), Tse’s main characters are five cats and images of their heads are taken in the way of traditional Western portrait paintings. According to Tse, these portraits give the cat a human expression and emphasize the idea of uniqueness in nature. These portraits are combined with recordings of the cats purring, similarly showing how different each cat and its' sound can be. She herself has purportedly discovered that the purring of cats helps insomniacs fall asleep. For Tse cats are self evidently closer to nature than mankind whereas the inevitable result of constant self-dissociation and alienation that comes with modern civilization is responsible for sleep depravation. The artist uses the portraits of cats in a somewhat humorous way, reflecting the anxiety or after effects of our excessively self-centered nature.
Through these cats, Tse Su-Mei feels and reflects the warm sensation created by touch and hearing. Discussing Sound for Insomniacs, she recently wrote the following instruction for viewers: “Find a nice cat/make him feel comfortable and feel safe/fondle slowly and approach to hear ([the] best is to put your ear on the cat's body).”[12] One of the ideas the artist is attempting to communicate is how best to listen to sounds beyond our-selves and to nature.[13]
Other works by Tse Su-Mei that involve listening intently include the recent piece Mistelpartition (Mistle Score, 2006). The artist revealed that she found the images of forests used in the work at the side of a road she uses to travel to and from home every day. For a long time she considered how best to develop the wooded landscape as a creative motif. This work still employs post-production images mixed with classical music, displayed in video format. As the name Mistelpartition itself infers, Tse clearly views the forest as a musical score. The upright and long trees shed their leaves in autumn/winter, forming a strangely organized vertical musical score. The seasonal cold, together with the barrenness and biting wind, remind her of some of the scales in No 1 Cello Concerto in E flat major by modern Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), hence its inclusion in the video.
At the same time, Tse Su-Mei also simplifies the irregular circular shape of the mistletoe that grows out of its own environment in the forest, into different sized graphic dots made into a collage. In the picture, the forest images move slowly in a horizontal direction and the sound of the cello gradually rises. These dots move to the secondary rhythm behind that of the cello, the meter of which was arranged by the artist herself. The effect of emphasizing the illuminating notes deepens the sense of time and psychological space of the piece.
After being developed according to the artist’s sensitivities, what was originally an ordinary looking forest takes on a lyrical, prosaic beauty that speaks to the harmony of man and nature. In the same way that Tse often uses the name of a piece to drop hints, it is also possible that she deliberately uses the coexistence/ parallel existence of the mistletoe and forest as an allusion to the fact that man also has the power to choose a balanced relationship with Nature.[14] In terms of the aesthetics of the work, humanistic classical music and images of the forest are interwoven to create a parallel textual relationship. There is a certain degree of mingling of still life in nature and the humanist self, though the atmosphere of the piece continues to radiate a sense of both harmony and loneliness.
Jorge Luis Borges once wrote a very short story entitled “Borges and I,” which discussed the fear of “I” being forgotten. In the story, which was written as a dramatic monologue, “I” is Borges in the first person, whereas the famous writer Borges is designated “the other one.”[15] Tse Su-Mei, on the other hand, deliberately plays down her own importance. In the handful of solo exhibition catalogues she has published, the titles selected, whether for exhibitions, catalogues or articles, her name is always written in lower case letters - su-mei tse.[16] Clearly this is a deliberate choice on the part of the artist. When compared to the sincerity of Tse, Borges in the short story is altogether more relaxed and seems equally natural and unrestricted, whether poking fun at himself, complaining or being satirical.
People who are scared of being forgotten are continually strengthening, replicating and magnifying themselves. This unlimited expansion of the self not only divides the self but also creates the distinction of self/enemies, self/objects. Borges once used a labyrinth as a metaphor, detailing how the vain King of Babylon had a stunning maze built in his honor. Believing it to be the only one of its kind in the world he invited the king of Arabia to visit the maze and used it to humiliate his adversary. Not long after, Babylon was attacked and occupied by the Arabs and the erstwhile king became a prisoner. The Arab king decided to treat the Babylonian King as he had once treated others, banishing him to a land of endless desert. Although the desert had no stairways to climb, no doors to force, no wearing galleries to wander through, no wall to impede one’s passage, it was still perhaps the severest kind of maze and he ultimately died of thirst.[17] Whether a physically constructed maze that restricts the vision or a desert labyrinth with no visual impediments, both are allusions to the tendency of people to lose their way.
Perhaps Tse Su-Mei shares Borges’s interests. Her Proposition de Détour (2006) also appears in the form of a maze.[18] The artist uses the sixteenth century image of “Paradise Garden” on a Persian rug as her chief source, with reference to the circular labyrinth paved into the ground at Chartres Cathedral in France. To that end she creates a circular work that spread on the floor is nine meters in diameter. As far as the faith practiced at medieval European churches, the pavement maze was designed for the faithful to walk around, signifying the pilgrimage of the pious.[19] In the middle ages, a pilgrimage was a journey of inquiry, undertaken not only to be closer to God but also as an act of repentance and redemption on the part of the faithful. In this context, the cathedral’s labyrinth was a substitute for the pilgrim’s journey East to Jerusalem, and this makes its spiritual importance all the more clear.
Proposition de Détour which came after the transformation of Tse Su-Mei is decorated with animals and colorful flowers from paradise gardens. The natural world of flowers is infused with ideas of joy one might associate with a return to the Garden of Eden. Tse chooses the name Proposition de Détour rather than labyrinth and provides clear points of entry and exit within the work. As already mentioned, a maze or labyrinth implies a person has lost his or her direction. At this point, Proposition de Détour is a replacement, clearly indicating a way out of that sense of being lost. This symbolically circuitous journey provides new opportunities for physical and emotional communication and dialogue, whilst also aspiring to repair and reestablish the relationship between mankind and nature.
Despite the fact that we can see Proposition de Détour is circuitous, it is not a journey with no conclusion. As soon as we walk out of the labyrinth in which we entrap ourselves, “taking a circuitous route” becomes a way of transcending people’s realization of themselves.
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[1] Yasunari Kawabata, The Master of Go, translated by Ye Wei-chu (Taipei: Muma Culture, 2002), pp 59. Also Yasunari Kawabata, The Master of Go, trans. Edward G. Seidensticker (London: Yellow Jersey Press, 2006), p. 57. “Honinbō Shūsai” is also rendered as “Honnimbō Shūsai.”
[2] It was originally decided that each player would be give a time limit of 40 hours, 4 times longer than a standard match, with a five-day interval between sessions. The period of three months was calculated allowing 5 hours for each session. According to Yasunari Kawabata, such long games caused the players continued anxiety and exhaustion as they sought to maintain their combativeness over such a long period.
[3] Xǔ Shèn, Shuowen jiezi jiaodingben (“A Dictionary of the Etymology of Chinese Characters”), proofread by Ban Jiqing, Wang Jian and Wang Huabao (Nanjing: Fenghuang Publishing, 2004), pp 405
[4] Op cit pp 73
[5] Jorge Luis Borges, “Legend,” in Collected Fictions, trans. Andrew Hurley (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), p. 338.
[6] See su-mei tse (Chicago and Luxembourg: Casino Luxembourg--Forum d’art contemporain absl, Luxembourg & The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, 2006), p. 134.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Another work based on the same concern is Tse Su-Mei’s photography piece Pieds bandés produced in 2000. In this work, Tse wraps her feet in a transparent plastic covering and then imitates the cruel custom of binding women’s feet in ancient China. This work touches on the extent to which etiquette and custom can approximate to a form of violence, forcing people to comply and thereby distorting them both physically and emotionally. For the Pieds bandés, please see op cit su-mei tse, p. 133.
[9] This type of work is best seen in large video installation The Ich-Manifestation (2005). In this piece Tse uses the land turtle to refract the human self. For a more in depth discussion of the work please see Jens Hauser, “I Turtle? Thoughts and Paradoxes Based on Su-mei Tse’s Ich-Manifestation,” in su-mei tse (Chicago and Luxembourg: Casino Luxembourg--Forum d’art contemporain absl, Luxembourg & The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, 2006), p. 134.
[10] See John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?” in About Looking (New York: Vintage International, 1980), pp. 3-28.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Quote from e-mail sent by Tse Su-Mei dated September 20, 2007.
[13] The earliest example of listening to nature in the works of Tse Su-Mei can be seen in a video piece entitled Shell Headgear (1999). Similar images appeared once again in the later sculpture work SUMY (2001).
[14] Tse often uses the name for her works as an allusion to her actual inner intent. This approach is also evident with Das Wohltemperierte Klavier (The Well-Tempered Clavier, 2001) and in 〔ε:r〕 conditioned (2003). At the same time, both these pieces also address the issues of norm/control relative to constraint/damage that so interest the artist. The term “well-tempered” in the former clearly refers to a melody completed by Tse so as to control her own degree of importance; the latter “〔ε:r〕 conditioned,” similarly refers to the adjustment, regulation or control of a tune or melody.
[15] Jorge Luis Borges, “Borges and I,” in Collected Fictions, trans. Andrew Hurley (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), p. 324.
[16] In this exhibition “Duologue: Exhibition by Lee Mingwei and Tse Su-Mei,” Tse thinks it would be more logical for both artists’ names to be written in the same order to prevent confusion. Also, she generally expresses her name as Tse Su-Mei when she is in Asia.
[17] Jorge Luis Borges, “The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths,” in Collected Fictions, trans. Andrew Hurley (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), p. 263-4.
[18] Tse has also used the desert as a setting for her work, when completing the video installation piece Les Balayeurs du Desert (The Desert Sweepers, 2003).
[19] For more information on the Chartes Cathedral labyrinth and its religious significance please refer to the website: http://www.lessons4living.com/chartres_labyrinth.htm。 |
