2017 / Language, video, printed text
Fafalish
A sentence passes through translation, accent and transcription, becoming a situation between languages.
HE FA’S ROLE
Artist and exhibition curator
Complete chapter contents
LANGUAGE AS MATERIAL
Translation does not return meaning intact.
Fafalish was exhibited at CCA’s Simpson Library in San Francisco, October 2–December 15, 2017. It combined the video Kunlun (Brother Order) with printed text extending along walls and a column.
The process begins with Mao Zedong’s poem Kunlun: Chinese is translated word by word into English, spoken with a Chinese accent, heard as pinyin, transcribed into Chinese characters and translated into English by machine.
Reading the installation today, these shifts suggest that an utterance is shaped by every person and tool it passes through. The wall lets a visitor compare traces; the listening station asks for time. Accent and mishearing become material that can be examined, rather than simply errors to be removed.
SIX TRANSFORMATIONS / AFTER THE EXHIBITION ACCOUNT
- 01
Chinese poem
- 02
Word-by-word English
- 03
Accented speech
- 04
Heard as pinyin
- 05
Chinese characters
- 06
Machine English
Exhibition photographs: CCA/C Archives, CC BY-NC 4.0. Resized and compressed for the web.
From language shifts to the space between screens.
Seen alongside YourTube (2018), Fafalish opens a question that later takes another material form: what has happened to the content before it reaches us? Fafalish exposes accent, transcription and translation. YourTube places images and comments within a space where people sit together. Both reward beginning with the installation and returning to the text.
Exhibition and original sources
CCA VAULT: exhibition record, photographs and curatorial statement ↗
The process account follows the exhibition record. The comparative reading on this page was written in 2026.
Between wall, column and listening station
The portfolio separately documents the listening station, long wall and column. Printed language takes on different spatial scales: visitors can pause at a tablet, follow sheets above the workstations or read at a column between bookshelves. A text frame from Kunlun on p. 33 places different languages and phonetic transcriptions alongside one another.
Translation takes place in front of the camera
Two vertical test recordings bring typography, images and a phone’s live translation interface into one chain of observation. “FUCK IS .mov” records separated English letters and changing translation results; “白眼1.mov” repeatedly frames a red image combining Chinese characters and a face. They show an ongoing adjustment among letterforms, image placement and recognition results.
The 27-minute, 16.8-second recording “MAH02831.MP4” moves from a group gathering and talking to operations among paper, phone and computer display. The original photograph “DSC02869.JPG” records this process at close range: handwritten and printed forms cover the table, the phone interface appears on a monitor, and participants converse in the same space as the screen.
Source documents: FUCK IS .mov; 白眼1.mov; MAH02831.MP4; DSC02869.JPG.
CLOSE READING / 2026 CURATORIAL INTERPRETATION
Fafalish
If language cannot return intact, can communication still happen?
A deviation in one conversion becomes the material available to the next. Sound does not simply obey its source text, and written characters cannot guarantee a return to the original. Error is not a residue removed by final proofreading; it is an action that moves the work forward. Accent, guesswork, hearing and software rewrite meaning together. Looking only for what the final sentence means misses the way meaning acquires a body during its passage.
The library is not a neutral backdrop. Sheets along walls and a column turn a space associated with quiet, accurate reading into a site of successive transformations. The listening station moves visitors between written forms and sounds. The work does not prove that misunderstanding always liberates. More specifically, it disperses the authority to recognize, transcribe and correct a sentence beyond one standard language. Changing media becomes a way of changing the conditions of speech.
The limits of this reading
Machine mistranslation is not evidence of machine intention, and linguistic error does not establish a maker’s or viewer’s identity.
Sources for this reading
Based on the CCA VAULT exhibition description, public work page and installation archive. Private recollections are not included.
Work record
Fafalish, 2017. Language, video, printed text. He Fa’s role: Artist and exhibition curator.
- Work / series
- Fafalish
- Date
- 2017
- Medium
- Language, video, printed text
- He Fa’s role
- Artist and exhibition curator
- Catalogue section
- Selected works
Cite this record: Fafalish · 2017 · Artist and exhibition curator · https://hefa.p4theater.cn/en/work/fafalish
TAKE A PATH ACROSS
Other paths from this work.
Language in transit
Reading after something is divided
Fragments retains breaks between image strips, while Fafalish juxtaposes successive transcriptions. Both make seams readable: one rearranges visual positions, the other changes correspondences between sound and written meaning.
Continue from this work ↗Read the source materials
- Work imageImages and presentation ↗
The complete horizontal image consists of dense horizontal strips, with divisions and seams remaining visible.
- Period documentChinese poem ↗
The CCA exhibition statement supplies six transformations: Chinese poetry, literal English translation, accented reading, pinyin transcription, Chinese rewriting and machine translation into English.
- Work imageImages and presentation ↗
Language in transit
Materials shape how attention stays
Lose losing specifies any projection-suitable material; Fafalish combines paper texts with listening apparatus. Surfaces participate in expression in both, but the former’s still records cannot establish its projection rhythm.
Continue from this work ↗Read the source materials
- Period documentFrom photographs to a projectable image ↗
The portfolio medium entry specifies any projectable material, with dimensions determined by the venue; the record supplies no screening duration.
- Period documentTranslation does not return meaning intact. ↗
The CCA exhibition statement documents printed texts, the Kunlun video and listening/reading devices exhibited together.
- Period documentFrom photographs to a projectable image ↗
Language in transit
How a sentence changes a position
FafalishA Centrist’s Self-Rescue Guide After the Failure of Love
He Fa’s Who Are the Centrists? uses repetition and wordplay to unsettle a position; Fafalish changes sentences through transcription and translation. Both intervene in meaning, but writing and conversion do not constitute the same mechanism of error.
Continue from this work ↗Read the source materials
- Period documentThe production and He Fa’s writing ↗
The project text and He Fa’s Who Is a Centrist? of 23 April 2021 ground audience choices, character speech and repetitive language; production credits remain distinct.
- Period documentChinese poem ↗
The CCA exhibition statement supplies six transformations: Chinese poetry, literal English translation, accented reading, pinyin transcription, Chinese rewriting and machine translation into English.
- Period documentThe production and He Fa’s writing ↗
Language in transit
How later voices enter the material
Fafalish repeatedly changes text through transcription and translation; YourTube brings phonetic reinterpretation, on-screen comments and re-editing into multiple screens. Both expose material to later interpretations, but successive linguistic conversions and the juxtaposition of earlier viewing traces unfold at different rhythms.
Continue from this work ↗Read the source materials
- Event recordA playback file finds its place in the installation ↗
The Dayou.mp4 shown in the installation instructions corresponds to the saved file of the same name and size; its frames retain on-screen comments and picture-in-picture.
- Period documentChinese poem ↗
The CCA exhibition statement supplies six transformations: Chinese poetry, literal English translation, accented reading, pinyin transcription, Chinese rewriting and machine translation into English.
- Event recordA playback file finds its place in the installation ↗
FROM HERE, ELSEWHERE
Passages between works
- Meaning on the way
Poetry, literal translation, accent, transcription and machine translation pass meaning along until error acquires a form.
- The container takes part
Text extends across walls and a column, while a listening station offers another rhythm of attention.
Related records in the archive
- YourTube ↗2018
- Shixiang ↗2019–2020