一闪一闪亮晶晶...
Once upon a time,
there lived two monks, one old and one young.
One day, the old monk told the young monk a story:
“Once upon a time,
there lived two monks, one old and one young.
One day…”
The structure of this poem traces back to Gertrude Stein’s phrase in 1913, “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.”¹
William S. Burroughs later used this line to reflect on the relationship between image and word, alongside his cut-up writing.² In a 1981 recording, he uttered: “word falling - photo falling.”³
Around the same time, in 1975, Ulises Carrión also returned to Stein’s rose in The New Art of Making Book: “In the abstract language of the new art the word 'rose' is the word 'rose'. It means all the roses and it means none of them.”⁴
Both Burroughs and Carrión’s readings on Stein’s rose reveal the paradox of language: meaning of words does not reside in words themselves, but from how they meet, in their context and gesture.
A paragraph of words is like a piece of textile, which the pattern is determined by the act and rhythm of weaving/writing.
In this sense, Star is a star is a star… can take any form: an A4 sheet, a website page, a flipbook, or a video where the words shift colors. Here, the poem appears as a video installation in a gallery, where language ceases to be linear, but a shelf to store and care for wasted film footages.
2.
3.
4.
pg33403-images.html#SACRED_EMILY.
"A Word Is a Word Is a Collage—A Profile of William S. Burroughs (1965)," Bill Butler, accessed August 12, 2025, https://realitystudio.org/interviews/a-word-is-a-word-is-a-collage-1965/.
Nothing Here Now But The Recordings, “B4," by William S. Burroughs, Industrial Records, May, 1981.
Ulises Carrión, "The New Art of Making Books," in Publishing Manifestos, ed. Michalis Pichler (Miss Read and MIT Press, 2022), 50.
STAR IS A STAR IS A STAR...: A Video Textile
2025
Video installation collaborating with
@William Denis
Sound by @Xixi Wang
Size varied
8mm, Super 8mm, 16mm film,
scan of screen-printing on 16mm film,
digital film footages
3:13 mins
Screenshots view
Installation view