Tang Poetry (唐詩) is considered the Golden Age of Chinese poetry. In this series of interventions, Stephen transliterates Tang into to his surname Tan 陳 – which has multiple meanings of to exhibit / explain, and old / stale and similarly retranslates poetry into 韻 (rhyme) as it shares the same pronunciation as 運 (Fate) to signal his repurposing of Tang Poetry to elucidate and critique Neo-Confucianism that arose during that period which still pervades East Asian culture, society and politics today – a framework of repression and “morality” where individuals must understand their place and selflessly submit to authority.
CREATED BY: Stephen Chen | COMPLETED: 27/03/2023
[女]无 折 天 (Wu Ze Tian -> Folding Nothing into Heaven)
Wu Zetian (武則天) was the first and only female emperor of China. Even amongst the rare class of historical female rulers, her accomplishment is even more astonishing considering she ascended to power by her own means (vs. hereditary accension like the others).
In a patriarchal society wrought by Confucianism, women were not considered in same class as men – their assigned purpose was child bearing, and had no inheritance rights. Concubinage became normalized and women taken as concubines had even worse status – they had no social place in society unlike wives, their purpose was for sex, domestic labor and maximizing male heirs.
Wu Zetian entered the Imperial Palace as a lowly concubine and eventually became the Emperor (vs. an Empress who was subservient to a male), an unprecedented feat. Demonized for centuries as an evil scheming slut who destroyed men and the country (by chauvinistic Confucian society and elites), recent scholarship and archeological discoveries have reassesed the reach of her accomplishments. She re-established the Silk Road (the most extensive trade route in ancient times), and her cities became the most comopolitan amongst the world. During her reign, women in China were the most liberated in the world, they were able to obtain an education, and even held positions of power (such as Wu Zetian’s unprecedented move of making a woman her prime minister).
无 折 天 rewrites this great woman’s name into a new set of characters (with the same pronunciation), roughly translating into “Folding Nothing into Heaven” to acknowledge her unprecedented hard won achievements for herself, for women, and for the country (China has never regained that level of women’s rights and cosmopolitanism of her time). It is prefixed with (女), the character for woman to signal her power and simultaneously point at the chauvinism inherent in the construction of the word 妩 (also pronounced wu, comprising the radical for woman 女, and nothing/empty 无) which means to flatter and enchant.
A Hidden Markov Model (to encode the hidden relationships between words) trained on poetry written by Wu Zetian generates a new poem at each click, based on her words set against a randomly generated background color based on silk brocade.
躺 詩 (Tang Shi -> Lying Down Poems)
Asian economies of Singapore, Korea, Japan, China etc. have risen in economic and political power (albeit at different times). Neo-Confucianism underpins these prosperous yet repressive societies whose populace do not engage in democracy (other than the ritual and performance of voting). Its leaders trumpet the neo-confucian virtues of education success, meritocracy, and “trust” in government which exudes an illusory appearance of equality and civil society for shallow superficial onlookers whilst suppressing stark inequalities and dysfunctions.
躺 詩 transliterates the word tang in Tang Poetry (唐詩) to another word with the same pronunciation, meaning to lie down, evoking the “lay flat” (躺平) movement in China and its rejection of societal pressures to overwork and the rose-tinted propaganda of Xi’s “Chinese dream” with the promise of a bright future for the nation and a “better life” for themselves. Millions had slaved for the “996” work culture (i.e. working from 9am to 9pm, six days a week) for the company and for the “country” yet still cannot afford a home, or to marry and have children.
Whilst onlookers have dismissed it as mere dissatisfaction and disillusionment, for 躺平 resistors (and it is no easy feat to resist in those societies due to high societal and government pressues to conform) it forefronts ongoing struggles with impacts on relationships and mental health (both taboo topics to publicly discuss) and the lack of support from family and social programs. This “meritocratic” society is a facade for Hunger Games where everyone has to outcompete each other for success, with no allowance for failure or slipups. Gender inequality is rampant despite the “meritocracy”.
A Hidden Markov Model (to encode the hidden relationships between words) trained on the most “complete” compilation of Tang Poetry volumes 868 (comprising poetry about dreams) and 875 (poetry around prophecy) generates a new poem at each click, set gainst a random Shan Shui painting (traditional chinese painting style by literati) to evoke lost / forgotten dreams of a languid ideal.
