This is the first film in a series of works by the artist to engage with ways of coming to knowledge of the ecosystems of language. Its Chinese title translates directly as "the sky rained grain," the phrase used by the legendary Cangjie to describe the creation of Chinese characters, as recorded in the Huainanzi. Its first short film, but this is the language we met in, is where trees, teeth, and spoken words cross beyond the threshold of re-relating. Many elements in the film are of a learning process, of a word’s relation to language, a language’s expression to another, of wood in room returning to tree in soil, of teeth evoking bone memories — its 400 million year evolution from fish scales, of working together, and of a new story revealing itself. Instead of coming to terms with or tracing the complexity of a loss, the series proposes a different position in relation to the pain of losing.
This is the first film in a series of works by the artist to engage with ways of coming to knowledge of the ecosystems of language. Its Chinese title translates directly as "the sky rained grain," the phrase used by the legendary Cangjie to describe the creation of Chinese characters, as recorded in the Huainanzi. Its first short film, but this is the language we met in, is where trees, teeth, and spoken words cross beyond the threshold of re-relating. Many elements in the film are of a learning process, of a word’s relation to language, a language’s expression to another, of wood in room returning to tree in soil, of teeth evoking bone memories — its 400 million year evolution from fish scales, of working together, and of a new story revealing itself. Instead of coming to terms with or tracing the complexity of a loss, the series proposes a different position in relation to the pain of losing.
Shen Xin
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