I Heart BJ

Jocko Weyland (Helsinki, 1967) is an American artist and writer living in New York. The author of The Answer is Never (Grove, 2002) and various articles and stories published in Thrasher, The New York Times, Cabinet and Apartamento, amongst others, he is also the creator of Elk.

I Heart BJ consists of literal transcriptions of signs and other public announcements seen during a year long stint in China, crudely written on cheap homework paper with an illegally obtained Krink brand marker bequeathed to Weyland by a graffiti-minded local resident. From “Fog Shower” and “Pure Washer” to “Luxurious Mansion on the Peak” and “Progress Through Standstill” these well-meaning and inadvertent misrepresentations of the English language summon up the Babel-like linguistic environment of modern China in all it’s mysterious, mystifying and heady splendor. I Heart BJ is both a report and homage to the Byzantine semantic complexities so profusely on display in contemporary Beijing.