Word World--Where_is_语言_مرضی_nehmen 나? (文字将去向哪里？)
Film, 1:37mis, black and white, sound. 2024.
GSA MFA Exhibition, 2024, UK
The background of the film：
Abram (Abram, 1996:66) claims that “with the advent of the aleph-beth in Greek, a new distance opens between human culture and the rest of nature.” In the East, Linguistic scholar of the Eastern and Chinese period Xu Shen in the book of Shuowen Jiezi mentions that logographic characters were transformed through methods such as "transference" and "borrowing," similar to rebus, where only the sound of the logographic character was retained while discarding its meaning(Tang, 2020). Humanity boasts that the invention and standardised development of writing broke the knowledge monopoly and elevated social status held by refined literati, enabling everyone, even children, to quickly grasp the simplified script evolved from logographic characters. Whether in Eastern or Western civilisations, after the phonemicisation and rebus transformations of words, "each image now came to have a strictly human referent: each letter was now associated purely with a gesture or sound of the human mouth. Such image could no longer function as windows opening onto a more-than-human field of powers, but solely as mirrors reflecting the human form back upon itself." (Abram, 1996:86) The sensory engagement with the new script becomes confined within the human-created discourse system, gradually rendering individuals mere cogs in the operational machinery of the civic world, incessantly spinning. Until our senses habitually perceive the primal language as a transparent replica of the universe, attributing power to the lion's body, authority to the eagle's eye... (Foucault, 1983). Our perceptual system gradually shuts down, preparing the body to become a mere chess piece.
About the structure of the film：
The film consists of three sections, each composed of gradient landscapes made up of various texts.
The first section is composed of Gaelic text. The images are collected from the Scottish Highlands, Glasgow, and the surrounding areas. The sounds are collected from nature, including the wind, flowing water, and bird songs.
The second section is composed of English text. The images are collected from factories and ships during the Industrial Revolution. For the sounds, I imitated the sounds of hammering iron and machinery at work.
The third section is composed of texts in English, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Urdu, German, and other languages. The images are composed of Glasgow's contemporary architecture, universities, traffic, and people. The sounds come from electronic technology and vehicles.
关于电影的结构构成：
影片由三个部分组成，每个部分都由各种文字组成的渐变风景组成。
第一部分由盖尔语文本组成。这些图像是从苏格兰高地、格拉斯哥及周边地区收集的。声音是从大自然中收集的，包括风声、流水声和鸟鸣声。
第二部分由英文文本组成。这些图像是从工业革命期间的工厂和船舶中收集的。对于声音，我模仿了锤击铁和机器工作时的声音。
第三部分由英语、汉语、韩语、日语、乌尔都语、德语等多种语言的文本组成。图像由格拉斯哥的建筑、大学、交通和当代人物组成。声音来自电子技术和车辆。
阿布拉姆（Abram, 1996:66）声称，“随着希腊字母表的出现，人类文化与自然其他部分之间开启了一种新的距离。” 在东方，东汉语言学家许慎在《说文解字》中提到，象形文字通过“假借”和“转注”等方法进行了转化，这类似于用谐音字符，仅保留象形文字的发音而舍弃其意义（Tang, 2020）。人类自豪地认为，书写的发明和标准化发展打破了知识垄断，并提高了文人的社会地位，使每个人，甚至儿童，都能快速掌握从象形文字演变而来的简化文字。无论是在东方还是西方文明中，经过词语的音素化和谐音转化之后，“每个图像现在都有了一个严格的人类指代：每个字母现在都仅与人类口腔的手势或声音相关联。这样的图像不再能够作为通向超越人类力量领域的窗口，而只是作为反映人类形态的镜子。”（Abram, 1996:86）对新文字的感官参与被限制在由人类创造的论述系统中，逐渐将个体变成市民世界运作机器中的一个齿轮，不断旋转。直到我们的感官习惯性地将原始语言感知为宇宙的透明复制品，赋予狮子的身体以力量，赋予鹰眼以权威……（福柯, 1983）。我们的感知系统逐渐关闭，准备将身体变成一颗棋子。
Video Captures.