Xu Tan: Keywords of Cowin Global

Keywords of Cowin Global by Xu Tan is one of the publications from the ongoing project “Keywords School”. The publication is based on his Keywords School, which took place at a manufacturing company called Cowin Global in China. This book is considered to be an extension of Xu Tan’s art practice into publication which can be called Paper Space. In this project, Xu Tan is for the first time using color to discuss the ineffable content of the consciousness. Xu Tan was working together with the employees to explore the status of collective consciousness behind the visual and psychological perception of colors responding to words, thus shaping the publication as a colorful “chromatogram of consciousness”.

Contents

Part One: Introduction, by Wang Jing  1

Part Two: Keywords of Cowin Global Ⅰ

K-keywords: the effable and the analysis of consciousness  9

Part Three: Keywords of Cowin Global Ⅱ

The workshops: 15 K-keywords, associated words, and examples  17

Part Four: Keywords of Cowin Global Ⅲ

K-keywords and the ineffable, and a comprehensive analysis  55

Part Five: Appendix  85

“Eight”, Collectivism, and “Sub-bliefs,”by Xu Tan

Unpiloted and Unidentified, by He Cong

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.

Photo by Wen Peng

Image and Text: the shop, ©Authors, the shop, 2019