Railing Codex is an installation, a community printshop, and a collective dictionary created by Pararailing (Jie Shao, Sixing Xu and Xuecan Ye), their friends, and friends of their friends. Launched in 2022 as a response to the slippage of meaning that marks our post-pandemic world, Railing Codex invites cultural practitioners—artists, curators, writers, poets, scholars, and arts workers—to each contribute a dictionary defnition for a word.
This project has now been materialized into an artist’s book in the form of a slanted dictionary which collects the first eight volumes of Railing Codex. In each volume, contributors select one word from a designated list and interpret it in their chosen genre and language. Then, contributors each select one word from their respective entry and nominate a writer to participate in the next volume. The nominated writer chooses from this new list of words to continue writing.
Artist: Pararailing (Jie Shao, Sixing Xu and Xuecan Ye)
Design/Art Direction: RELATED DEPARTMENT
Translation: Jaime Chu, Mike Fu, Jiajing Lily Sun, Sixing Xu, Allen Young
English Copy Editing: Andrea Chu, Kate Costello, Jeff Crosby, Matt Turner, Aaris Woo
10cm x 13.5cm
Published by Page Bureau, 2025
