Eliana PerezMarshall WeberXu Bing

The Tide’s Story (White Scroll)

Eliana Perez, Marshall Weber, Xu Bing

The Tide’s Story (White Scroll)

Date

2006

Edition Size

unique

Media

Inkjet

Binding

Custom box

Dimensions

11 × 720 in

$ 12,000.00

1 in stock


The Tide’s Story is the culminating artwork of a collaborative effort between Marshall Weber, Eliana Perez, and Xu Bing, illustrating Weber’s eponymous poem in English, Spanish, and Mandarin. The multi-lingual calligraphy flows wavelike through a seascape horizon, interrupting the conventional act of reading and translation, thus renewing the practices of reading and writing as overt parts of the aesthetic experience. The illustrations and calligraphy serve to integrate the book’s subject matter with its form and function. The metaphorical components of the illustrations – salty blood, ink, and seawater – suggest the quite literally fluid exchange occurring both between the reader and the book described in the poem as well as the subject and form of the book. The wave and wind forms replicated in the book’s actual design engage the reader both physically and intellectually in the production of waves themselves, both as the reader scrolls through the physical book or strolls past the exhibited scroll. These primary forms of physical transmission of light, sound, heat, and liquid align themselves with the figures in the poem as well as the creators of the book, enhancing the idea of only the most “fluid” boundaries existing between humans, books, scrolls, words, images, and nature itself.

This work was part of an ongoing series of collaborative projects between Xu Bing and Marshall Weber and was exhibited in the Found in Translation exhibition tour (2006-2007, at the Centers for the Book in Minneapolis, NYC, and San Francisco), the first Diamond Leaves International Triennial of Artists’ Books(Co-founded by Weber and Xu Bing, 2012, at the Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum in Beijing), as well as in other exhibitions. Catalogs exist for both noted exhibitions.

The scroll is composed of tiled high-resolution scans of the original pen and ink calligraphy and drawing and was scanned and Iris printed on Japanese Mitsumata paper at Laumont in NYC.

Original English poem and calligraphy by Marshall Weber.
Illustrations, Spanish translation, and calligraphy by Eliana Perez.
Mandarin Chinese translation by Xu Bing, Jesse Coffino-Greenburg, and Zhai Yong-ming.
Mandarin Chinese illustrations and calligraphy by Xu Bing.

Inquire for price, [email protected]

Video excerpt from the beginning of The Tide’s Story (White Scroll)
Video excerpt from the end of The Tide’s Story (White Scroll)

The Tide’s Story
please

hold me with both of your hands

tightly
so we both feel the exchange
of blood and ink

let us stare at each other
relentlessly in endless
yet silent
conversation

this is the life we share
contracted
by the death of beings
gentler than ourselves

quiet and swaying
they bequeathed infinite
universes
with paths as numerous and varied
as their roots
as profound
as the dark earthen depths
to which those tendrils
plunged

life’s anchor
securing the laden vessel
holding sails to the sky
and pages to the sun
floating in the sea of words

each water drop a letter
each wave a word
a sentence
a paragraph
all telling
the tide’s story

sentenced
to madness
lunatic imaginings

our legions
of scrawled tinder sticks
kindling igniting
firestorms
in our brains

lightning fields stricken
with tangled consciousness

please

hold me tightly
with both of your hands
turn me
again and again

please

— Marshall Weber, Brooklyn, NY