废话废画
Useless Words,
Useless Drawings
废话废画 (fèihuà fèihuà) is an exercise in making something without asking if it's useful or useless. To write or draw seemingly useless, silly, pointless things that people doing useful, important, smart things would tell you not to do. The point is to plant the tree and forget the fruit. Whether that's profound or just useless is hard to say.
The original writing for 废话废画 was created out of a game.
Two players: Yvonne Xu and Germaine Chong. One person says something, the other responds. Like improv.
And like improv, everything is invented on the fly without a concept or message or direction (which is harder than it sounds... try asking a writer to write anything or a painter to paint anything). Basically neither player knew what was being made or what it would eventually become. The only thing they had was a set of rules.
The response could be a continuation, contradiction, misunderstanding, something indirectly related, or a completely new direction. A word, a sentence, an idiom, a drawing, a written sound. Anything, as long as it could eventually be written by hand.
Each response had to come within 24 hours. Enough time to think, not enough to overthink. (Easy to overthink everything, so the deadline was necessary.)
The point was to make something without striving for meaning. To make a thing without knowing what the thing is, what the thing is for, or whether the thing is useful or not. An experiment in intentionally unintentionally making something, anything or nothing.
Full rules of the game here, if you're curious.
Calligraphy ink on raw xuan paper, unmounted.
One piece only. Not for sale.