Before the Stockholm Keywords School, it took about three years to undertake the keywords’ searching activity. During this time, we made numerous interviews in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, etc., also in New York and Holland. On this basis, we created some audio-visual materials, videos, publications (‘Keywords Dictionary’, Vitamin Creative Space, 2008), websites (www.xutan-keywords.com), etc., for the preparation of the Keywords School. These materials, which mainly concentrate on the findings from searches in Chinese society, are from research on the basis of Chinese keywords.

With the “Keywords School” held all over the world, research on the basis of keywords was extended to a more globalized background; “Keywords School” in Venice is a brand new start.

Excerpts

Background
In October of 2008, The Keywords School held activities outside China for the first time. In Stockholm, we conducted 10 days of lectures, in which the keyword material was collected in the process of the Stockholm Keywords School activities. These materials will be in the exercise book of the keyword school during the openings of the Venice Biennale. I would like to thank all the participants of “Keywords School-Stockholm” for sharing their contributions with us.

In the Stockholm Keywords School, we had preset lecture dates, and different keywords for daily lectures. About 150 people took part in the activity in the 10 days of the lectures, with communications achieved in Swedish, Chinese and English. The artist explained in detail the daily keyword, and discussed it profoundly with the visitors.

Afterward, according to the rules of the activity, there were requirements for every visitor or “student” to provide 6-10 keywords from their mother language, in order to achieve further discussions. Among these 6-10 words, 3-5 of them concerned everyone’s aspects of self-living, living environment and the whole world, other words came from what the visitors thought of China. Due to the fact that most “students” were Swedish, they provided keywords in Swedish, and then translated and interpreted them in English.

Before the Stockholm Keywords School, it took about three years to undertake the keywords’ searching activity. During this time, we made numerous interviews in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, etc., also in New York and Holland. On this basis, we created some audio-visual materials, videos, publications (‘Keywords Dictionary’, Vitamin Creative Space, 2008), websites (www.xutan-keywords.com), etc., for the preparation of the Keywords School. These materials, which mainly concentrate on the findings from searches in Chinese society, are from research on the basis of Chinese keywords.

With the “Keywords School” held all over the world, research on the basis of keywords was extended to a more globalized background; “Keywords School” in Venice is a brand new start.

—Xu Tan

Language: English and Chinese
Size: 19×28.5 cm
Page: 66
Year: 2009

About Xu Tan (徐坦)

Born in 1957 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, Xu Tan studied at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and received a bachelor of fine arts in oil painting in 1983 and a master of fine arts in oil painting in 1989. Currently lives in Shenzhen.

In the early 1990s Xu Tan joined the artist collective “Big Tail Elephant Group” in Guangzhou, the aim of his work is to develop critical strategies for negotiating the rapidly changing economic and cultural life in China. His installation and video works explore issues crucial to the increasingly globalized world like urbanization, the geopolitical relationships between the developed and developing worlds in terms of political, economic, and cultural production and their impacts on personal lives and their expressions. Xu Tan’s works are often site-specific, dealing intimately with everyday experiences to critically demonstrate the tension between globally circulating images, modes of communication, and the impact they have locally. Powerfully and intelligently, Xu Tan’s work calls for contemporary art to engage with social reality in our time. Since 2005, Xu Tan’s Keywords Project has explored linguistic activities, collective research, public space and knowledge production through a variety of working methods in his unique art practice. Searching Keywords, Keywords School and Keywords Lab emerged from this project and reflect Xu’s evolving approach to social investigations, research and aesthetic activities as he studies connections between individual thought and collective consciousness.

Image and Text: The Pavilion, ©Authors, The Pavilion, 2009