In 2011, the Xu Tan 'Keywords Project', which was begun in 2005, will come to a close at the Shanzhen OCAT Contemporary Art Terminal. This visual art project, which focused on the relationship between vocabulary and awareness, has been carried out in Shanghai, Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Shenzhen, Graz, New York, Guangzhou, Stockholm, Venice, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Qingdao, and Toronto, and at 2009 'Keywords School' was featured in the 53rd Venice Biennale themed exhibition.The project consists of two components,'Searching for Keywords' and 'Keywords School'. The project analyzed and compiled ‘keyword groups’ through interviews, surveys and collections from active groups in active regions of China. At the “Keywords Schools”, these keywords were discussed and exchanged in various public settings and groups to form new consciousness relationships in an exploration of new ‘artistic research’ possibilities within the current overarching social ideology of China.

The project does nothing to conceal its ‘typological’ and non-cross-disciplinary characteristics. Through the interchangeable application of 'quasi-anthropology', 'quasi-linguistics', 'quasi-phonetics', 'quasi-pragmatics' and 'quasi-sociology' methods, this project has affirmed art's innate legitimacy as an 'awareness' method, rather than a conceptual or perceptive method, for researching the 'symbolic aspect' of the link between mankind's vocabulary and consciousness. This wordplay-like method is what E.H.Gombrich would call 'The High Seriousness of Play'. The project focuses in particular on measurement and analysis of the consciousness content behind vocabulary, giving it the potential to surpass all forms of 'conceptual art that take pure linguistic form as their subject. It also alludes to a new future for sinological contemporary art.

'Possible vocabulary games' will use a language workshop format to display the two components of the project over a two month period, providing an opportunity for researchers and the general public to fully understand this unique visual art project. When the project is completed, OCAT will publish Vocabulary, Consciousness (Yi Shi) and Art – Research Report on Visual Linguistic Experiments in 'Keywords', a complete collection and introduction of the materials collected for this project.