Trace of Force: Lin Hwai-min’s Water Stains on the Wall

Drawing inspiration from the tradition of shu-fa, i.e. the Chinese art of writing, Taiwanese choreographer Lin Hwai-min has choreographed a series of dances: Cursive (2001), Cursive II (2003, later renamed as Pine Smoke), and Wild Cursive (2005). Water Stains on the Wall (2010) is the last work in the series. Although shu-fa is often translated as Chinese calligraphy it is different from the Western concept of calligraphy, of which the etymological meaning is beautiful (calli-)writing (-graphy) and which is therefore more related to »decoration« (Billeter 1990: 11ff.). In Chinese, shu-fa – in which shu means writing and fa means law or way – means the law or the way of writing. In the tradition of shu-fa, the law of writing is concerned with the ways of manoeuvring the forces that bring forth the dynamics, which make shu-fa so adored by the Chinese literati as the art of writing. In one of the most important treatises about the art of writing, Array for the Ink Brush, Wei Shuo, the shu-fa artist in the Eastern Chin dynasty, clearly indicated, »to let the brush fall onto the paper to write the strokes, one must use the force of the entire body to bring them forth« (Huang Chien 1981: 22)1. Wei Shuo explained the different ways of manoeuvring the force to write different strokes with the different imagery. For example, she mentioned writing the horizontal stroke should be like »the clouds emerging in array that ranges into the distance«, writing the dot stroke should be like »the rock’s falling from the mountain«, and writing the turning stroke should be like »the heavy bow’s being released« (1981: 22). Nonetheless, it is important to note that the imagery is not concerned with the figure of the stroke but the way of manoeuvring the force. In other words, when the shu-fa artist writes the stroke with the imagery in mind, it is not about making the figure of the stroke like the outer form of the things in the imagery but about making the force that one uses to write like the