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赤裸的空间、构建的情境、邂逅的艺术——提诺·西格尔

Naked Spaces, Constructed Situation, and Encountered Art: Tino Sehgal

撰文:翁笑雨     By Xiaoyu Weng

当代艺术对传统美学导向的拒斥,对物质主义的批判已经持续了近半个世纪。其中最值得一提是的二十世纪六、七十年代由欧美发展起来的观念艺术运动和九 十年代中期由法国批评家和策展人尼古拉斯·伯瑞奥德(Nicolas Bourriaud)提出的关系美学(Relational Aesthetics)理论。观念艺术运动强烈地排除艺术中商业及消费的一面,通过行为、录像、大地艺术等诸多非物体(non-object)的形式来挑 战传统的展示方式和收藏体制;关系美学理论则定义了九十年代以来当代艺术实践中的诸多现象,认为关系艺术(Relational Art)构建了一种社会情境,将人类所介入的社会关系作为创作和思考的出发点,艺术实践不再处于独立和私人的空间中,个人表达更不再是关键。

34岁的柏林艺术家提诺· 西格尔(Tino Sehgal)无疑是近期艺术话题讨论的焦点,不仅因为他在纽约古根海姆美术馆的个展终于在千呼万唤之后揭开了神秘的面纱,更重要的是他的创作将观念艺术 和关系美学的精髓又一次推向高潮。艺术产业作为一种微观经济形式,恰如其分地反映了当今生产过度和信息过剩的社会现实。西格尔的创作反其道而行之,通过非 物质的形式制造一种氛围和情境。每一件作品都是通过口头传述,精心编排,邀请观众参与表演,在美术馆公共空间实现。创作的前期是私密的策划排练阶段,西格 尔挑选面试他作品的阐释者(interpreter),对其进行训练;展出期间,艺术家退回到幕后,完全由阐释者在概念基础上即兴实现,任何记录形式,包 括摄影、摄像、文字等都是禁止的。一方面,西格尔将观众与作品的互动扩展到最大限度,参与者和阐释者的角色始终是暧昧的,时刻互相影响、替换 ;另一方面,由于每次表演都是即时性的,不留物质记录,即失去了市场买卖最根本的交换基础。

舞蹈与经济的奇妙结合

西格尔艺术生涯的起点非同寻常,他从未进入任何艺术学院学习视觉艺术,而是选择了政治经济学和舞蹈作为他的专业 。西格尔宣称他来自一个并“没有什么文化”的家庭,父亲年幼时从巴基斯坦逃亡到英国,之后成为IBM公司的一位经理。小时候的西格尔对父亲将物质富裕程度 和成功于否划上单一等号的价值观产生怀疑,也由此对政治和艺术产生了浓厚的兴趣。“我们这代人有一个很大的问题,围绕我们的都是这些物质的东西,很多并不 是必需品,有时还没什么好处,可我们却在不断地生产它们,为得是赚钱来消费它们”,西格尔说道,“这其实就是一个经典的经济问题,也是我们这代人的病灶, 所以我想研究它们。至于舞蹈,它是一种并不生产任何实际物体的活动,但同时也能带来收入”。于是两个看似无关的命题,就在西格尔的逻辑下,顺理成章地联系 到了一起,也成为了他创作灵感的来源。

获得德国洪堡大学经济学学 位之后,西格尔曾在法国著名当代编舞家杰罗姆‧贝尔( Jérôme Bel)和塞维尔‧李‧罗伊(Xavier Le Roy)指导的前卫实验舞团担任演员和编舞。 他认为在视觉艺术的领域里,人们能更严肃地看待和思考作品背后的政治文化观念。“我不希望我的舞蹈带有任何娱乐色彩,不希望它们在剧场演出,迎合人们的口 味”,西格尔说,“我希望像艺术创作那样严肃地跳舞”。 他的演出徘徊在时间瞬息,穿梭于空间内外;置身于舞者的肢体和言语里,逗留在观者的记忆和体验中。于是,他就这样“舞”进了视觉艺术领域,“舞”进了美术 馆空间。

提诺·西格尔(左上)在纽约中央公园接受记者采访。摄影:菲利普·罗卡·狄卡西( Philip-Lorca diCorcia)Wmagazine.com

生长的作品

法国西部港口城市南特庄严肃穆的美术馆大厅里,两个舞者躺在地上相拥而吻,他们动作缓慢,穿着随意,乍看一下,如同一对互相怠慢的恋人,履行公事。 然而,当观者被吸引并仔细观看起来时,“恋人”笨拙的接吻姿态逐渐显现出“原形”。它们原来是一系列西方经典名作中拥抱接吻的场景,比如罗丹 (Auguste Rodin)1886年的《吻》,或是布朗库西(Constanine Brancusi)1908年的同名作。瞬时间,舞者的姿态和美术馆悬挂在展厅里的古典油画相互呼应了起来,形成一场微妙的对话。这对舞者亲吻了一段时间 之后,另一对“恋人”悄无声息地出现, 这时,前一对“恋人”中的女舞者突然喊道“提诺·西格尔”,然后男舞者紧接着道“《吻》”,女舞者再道“2004年”,之后慢慢退场,留下第二对舞者继续 拥吻。没错,这就是西格尔的成名作,同样命名为《吻》。展出期间,经过训练的几对舞者轮流出现在展场,每天8小时不间断,持续展期的六周。

通过西格尔的编排,这些固化在美术史里的作品被重新赋予具有血肉的生命力:西格尔对美术史的再诠释超越了书写和文字,来自舞者和时空的互动,历史概 念和当代情境的交织。生长的概念是双向延伸的,在探触过去的同时,给未来留下好奇。《吻》第一次展出是在2002年,之后每次参与的舞者不同,现场状态的 不同,就带来似是而非的重新演绎,看似相同的作品实则大相径庭。生长的概念也来自永不固化和物质化的行为瞬间, 它们是流动的,无形的,渗透生长到日常经验中。

古根海姆美术馆招聘“阐释者”的广告之一

观众互动与美术馆体验

如果说西格尔早期的作品仍带有强烈的舞蹈性质和对艺术史明显的借鉴与重组,之后的作品将这些导向逐渐淡化,重心转移到和观者的互动及通过这样的互动 来阐释哲学、政治、文化等抽象概念。参与西格尔作品创作的人群涉及面广泛,有画廊经营者、美术馆讲解员、学生等不同阶层、工作背景和年龄的普通大众。西格 尔曾声称寻找适合的“阐释者”是个充满挑战的过程,一方面是理解西格尔概念的能力,另一方面是现代城市人普遍具有的疏离感和强烈自我意识导致的潜在交流障 碍。西格尔作品的互动性正是要突破这种障碍,突破任何所谓定式的交流和理解方式,通过时而激烈,时而幽默,时而微妙的方式重新构建起一种人与人之间的关 系,且只有依靠这种社会关系,他的作品才得以存在衍生。

《这是太当代了》(This is so contemporary)是一件及具幽默色彩,甚至有些荒诞的作品。当观众进入美术馆展厅之后,经过训练的保安突然围绕着他们开始载歌载舞,并大声唱 到:“哦!这是太当代了!太当代了!太当代了!”即使是搞不清楚状况的观众,很快也被这种荒谬搞笑的气氛感染到,捧腹大笑;在另一件作品《那个物体的目 标》(This objective of that object)中,5个“阐释者”背对着展厅入口站立, 他们窃窃私语,之后音量慢慢提升并异口同声道:“《这件作品的目标是成为这个讨论的目的》”(“The objective of this work is to become the object of a discussion”),然后邀请观众和他们一起讨论关于哲学的问题。这里的“object”和“objective”是一个双关语,即指代“目标”, 又同时指代“物体”。显然,西格尔知晓观众来美术馆寻找“美术品”的心态,但是这里没有“物体”只有讨论的“目标”。笔者曾有幸参与到西格尔一件题为《这 个展览》(This exhibition)作品的表演,来参观美术馆的观众会被讲解员引领到办公室,然后告诉工作人员,他/她是来看西格尔展览的。其中一位工作人员会开始和 观众攀谈看似无关的话题,说道兴高采烈时,突然停顿,其他正在处理事务的工作人员也立刻停顿在那个时刻,仿佛时间凝固,几秒钟后,如同什么也没发生一般继 续攀谈,直到观众恍然大悟。整个过程中,观众从迷惑到质疑到若有所知。这种不舒适感是西格尔作品的关键之一,也是他执意在美术馆空间而非其他公共空间展示 作品的原因,他认为美术馆向来给人以一种敬畏感,因为参观经历是一种对艺术物品的崇拜的过程,他正是希望通过这种带有强迫性质的参与互动来夸张这种尴尬 感,从而引发观者的反思。

西格尔(左数第二位)为2005年威尼斯双年展排练《这是太当代了》。摄影:杰森·斯密特(Jason Schmidt)纽约时报

挑战艺术市场和经济体制

西格尔的作品没有实际的物质存在,那么是否就没有交换价值?没有收藏意义呢?这也正是他向整个艺术运作机制抛出的最大问题。然而,纽约现代美术馆 (New York MoMA)以五位数字收藏西格尔的《吻》显然已经证明了它们的收藏价值。尽管像现代美术馆这样大胆的买家目前为数并不多,西格尔作品的价格在2万5千欧元 到7万欧元不等。 尽管西格尔的实践本身看似是反对艺术商业面的宣言,他对买卖作品并没有任何排斥。 “‘对市场的抵制’是一些业内人事对我作品的误读。我挑战的是以物质生产交换为目的的经济基础,和由此产生的价值观及当代社会现象。” 西格尔作品对艺术市场提出的问题,实则是他对经济学的质疑,他希望通过作品特殊的买卖方式来改变目前经济体系所谓的前提条件和必要因素。

作品出售的方式完全依靠口头约定,没有书面合同、说明、收据,西格尔直接和买家面谈(常常是美术馆的策展人),一般包括五条协议:作品必须通过艺术 家曾授权并经过训练和合作的人来实施;价格决定作品的演示次数和版本;每次演示的展期最短为六个星期;期间不能使用任何手段记录;最后,如果买家要转手出 售作品,必须和新买家一样签订口头合同。现代美术馆新媒体部总策展人克劳斯·比安桑巴赫(Klaus Biesenbach)是作品《吻》的授权人,他称当时一共有12人在场,包括律师、公证人、西格尔代理画廊负责人、美术馆的收藏部和注册部等,会议持续 了几个小时 。

西格尔和曾参与他作品阐释的儿童们。Exibart.com

结语

西格尔2010年1月29日至3月10日在纽约古根海姆美术馆的个展由新作《这就是进步》(This is Progress)和向现代美术馆借展的《吻》组成。 他招聘了从儿童到白发老人等不同年龄段的“阐释者”来合作《这就是进步》,年纪最小的儿童会首先上前欢迎观众并开始攀谈关于“进步”的话题,随着由著名建 筑师弗兰克•劳埃德•赖特(Frank Lloyd Wright)设计的螺旋形旋梯的上升,和观众攀谈的“阐释者”年纪慢慢增加,直到最后由一位老人伴随抵达楼顶。西格尔作品生长的概念在这件作品中更为具 像地呈现,他试图激发观者对西方现代主义中“进步”这个概念进行的质疑和重构。古根海姆美术馆前所未有地将展厅里所有的“美术品”撤除,包括长期陈列的藏 品,给于西格尔最纯粹的发挥空间。这一举动和美术馆对收购西格尔作品做出的妥协,体现出艺术家在挑战整个艺术机制所可以获得的主动性,或许西格尔的实践在 这一方面也能给担忧艺术市场尴尬现状的中国当代艺术工作者们带来思考:除了消极对待,也许还能主动出击。

西格尔显然不是反物质艺术实践的创始者,但是在他看来观念艺术家们,尤其是极少主义者(Minimalist),虽然企图将艺术物质的一面缩减到最 小程度,他们的艺术仍旧无法逃脱各种记录手段留下的物化痕迹,因而成为了市场交换的原料和美术馆展出的物件。尽管西格尔对物质记录手段极为苛刻,可是网络 上还是充斥了大量作品场景的图片、影像。随着高科技记录手段的普及,偷拍成为了大众日常最乐衷的娱乐和实践,也成为了西格尔作品的悖论,引人深思。

注:为尊重艺术家创作概念,本文未添加任何与作品现场相关的图片。

Curator’s Room

我想我的房间和这个有异曲同工之妙。

25岁是个坎

最近挺纠结的。

自从过完全25岁生日,觉得一下子就不再是小女孩了。青春就这样和自己说拜拜了。虽然在身理上还没有什么体现,可是心理上的变化绝对是巨大的。人最可怕的莫过于自己承认自己老了吧。手机里还收藏了2005年生日时朋友发来的祝福短信,我想当时20岁的我,可能也曾琢磨过5年后的自己会是什么样子吧。

好吧,25岁就这么风尘仆仆地来了。在网上和Yuxin聊天,自己探讨说发现25岁是个坎,事业还无成,却不再像当年那样会觉得总有大把花不完的时间,于是尴尬在其中。

所以就开始谨小慎微起来,做的事情必须要有结果,不然就觉得在浪费时间,这样导致紧迫感成为无形的压力,压得我透不过气来。

我想什么才是事业有成呢?这是个多么抽象的问题呀!

一直说要顺其自然,无论我多么努力地想这样想,却总还是在纠结的旋涡里。

John的梦想是去北部的山谷里做农民,顺带做建设工,简称也就是美国农民工。不过不为人打工,只为营造自己的农场的宫殿。当我最无助的时候,我也想就这样刁根稻草,身穿条牛仔背带裤,脚踏双马靴,把皮肤晒得黝黑,直接成为西部女郎,和男主人公安安静静地过完浪漫却又低调的一生,彻头彻尾地和城市的嘈杂永别。可是,我又是矛盾啊,某一天斗志大发的时候,又开始服从社会的规则,觉得应该要怎样怎样。

人生就是你在20岁的觉得25岁的你会怎样怎样,然后25岁时又觉得30岁时会怎样怎样,依次类推,可是现实却永远不是想像的那样发生着。于是就杯具了。

More Human Than Human

在我策划的展览结束之际,我想把一些关于展览的资料整理一下,就算是自己给展览的一个小小闭幕总结吧。之前和大家说过会给大家汇报展览的消息,也一直没太有时间,也许也是自己慢慢开始对这些功过都趋于平静和低调了吧。
这里首先发上来的是发表在Artslant网站上的一篇关于我展览的展评,版权所有Post Brothers以及Artslant.com。非常感谢他能给我写这一篇很有深度的评论。


More Human Than Human
by Post Brothers


101 Collection: Route 1 : R for Replicant
CCA Wattis Institute
Kent and Vicki Logan Galleries, 1111 Eighth St., San Francisco, CA 94107
January 19, 2010 – April 10, 2010

Empathy, he once had decided, must be limited to herbivores or anyhow ominvores who could depart from a meat diet. Because, ultimately, the empathic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the defeated.

Science fiction is an art of prophecy, a process of historicizing the present, a reflection of an ongoing present as past, and a refraction of future permutations. The imaginary, symbolic, and real become interwoven through a process of cataclysmic and concomitant confrontation. Science fiction reveals that the systems of fantasy and reality are not as far apart as previously imagined. Traditional binary divides real/artificial, original/copy, Illusion, once a mirrored distance of the real, has become complete disillusion, an immediate concomitance of real and fantasy where virtual reality has rather become what Zizek describes as the ‘reality of the virtual.’

The science fiction noir film, Blade Runner (based off of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?), prophesizes an imminent dystopian future where a class of near-human artificially manufactured beings, replicants (called androids in the original book), have become illegal on Earth. A special unit of investigator/bounty hunters, “blade runners,” is charged with the identification and elimination (retirement) of these simulated humans. One blade runner, Rick Deckard, is brought back out of his own retirement to assist in the difficult task of identifying a new breed of replicants from humans. The only tool to discern this difference is the Voight Kampff test, a series of questions that measure one’s emotional responses to find whether or not the being has empathy, a quality replicants lack. The blade runners must sublimate their own capacity for empathy as they destroy these beings that otherwise appear human, requiring that they regard the replicants as wholly objects. It seems that these replicants, with their artificial memories, are often not aware of their own status as fabrications, they are “more human than human” and exemplify a profound alterity. As Deckard confronts a replicant who believes herself to be human, he realizes that his own memories may be contrived. What results is a complete immersion in the simulacra.

Jean Baudrillard speaks of a twist in the relationship between the real and its reproduction. The process of reproducibility is pushed to the limit. As a result, "the real is not what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced . . . the hyperreal . . . which is entirely in simulation."

Simulation and simulacra

R for Replicant, a recent exhibition at the Wattis Insitute for Contemporary Arts, deploys a discussion of the replicants as a means to not only question notions of reality and simulation, but also to deconstruct the various ways artists extend, invert, and undermine these operations. Curated by Xiaoyu Weng, the exhibition is the first in a yearly series that reorganizes a selection of works from the 101 Collection, an inspired accumulation of artworks focusing on artists who live and work on the West Coast operated by the ArtNow Foundation. As Blade Runner is set in 2019 Los Angeles, it is appropriate that a show featuring West Coast artists would use the narrative as a starting point. There have been numerous texts and exhibitions that have explored the role fiction, simulation, projection, and utopia play in the cultural-consciousness of the Pacific frontier, and this show extends this dialogue. For the curator, the replicant is not merely a model of a simulacral world gone awry, but a means for understanding the ways epistemologies and subjectivities are formed:

“If the replicant is not merely a simulation of a human but rather a being that experiences an alternative reality, then perhaps images do not provide replicas of reality, or fake realities, but alternative realities that might or might not be experienced."[i]

The objects presented therefore are not to be judged on their ability to access reality, nor of fiction, but to compromise these very boundaries. The curator offers the Voight Kampff test as a model for how to encounter the exhibition.

R for Replicant

The only works that explicitly address the curator’s source is Ron Terada’s Maiko series. Terada extracted a key image from the frenetic urban environment in Blade Runner’s L.A: a seductive image of a Japanese Maiko (an apprentice Geisha) that alternates with a Coca Cola logo on a billboard. In Terada’s images, the artist photographed a series of girls of European descent dressed as Maikos on a black background. In this show, the role of the image in Blade Runner is elaborated; the photos point not only to their source, but also to the entire cultural and visual climate featured in the movie. L.A. at this time is a dense and frenetic market place, a schizophrenic pastiche of different geographies, classes, times, cultures, signs, and symbols. The works serve as both a comment on orientalism in the West and the reciprocal and growing Asian cultural influence across the Pacific. The simulation of a specific cultural symbol paired with the unexpected dissonance in the features of the subjects creates an unnerving image, one of Masahiro Mori’s "uncanny valley" where something is amiss. This is not a sarcastic comment on authenticity, but rather a critical reflection on the imaginary myths reproduced through cultural circulation (the Maiko is contrived, a fantasy, an image, to begin with). The works demonstrate a truly postmodern social condition, where all signs, drained of their original significance, can be exchanged, appropriated and commingled. As the curator reminds us, this exhibition has a Debordian critique: social relations are mediated by images within the spectacle, and the replicants serve as a model for this slippage. What comes into question is not necessarily where images and reality meet, but rather the social and cultural operations that efface and nullify this divide.

Another work that is critical of representative regimes is Ian Wallace’s Study for My Heroes In The Street (Stan), 1986-92. The work comes from a long-running series of works produced by Wallace that juxtapose factual urban and figurative photography with monochromatic painting, exposing not only the tension between abstract painting and representative photography, but also the limits of images to represent the real. Usually reconciled on one canvas, as photo-laminate juxtaposed with acrylic paint, the Study conversely features a photograph collaged with silkscreened canvas patches, offering the audience a rare opportunity to see Wallace’s procedure in action. His vernacular comes with a criticality of the urban environment and the role of modernity in the production of subjectivity. In this context, the hero (who is actually another Vancouver artist, Stan Douglas) becomes a noir-ish archetype, engaged as much in the re-examination of his individual will as in the investigation of the modern world. But for Wallace, the claims of truthful representation found in both painting and photography are long eroded, and the lapse in vision produced by the patches emphasize the role substitution and obscuration play in our perceptual and subjective processes.

Many works in the show play with cinematic themes to elaborate on questions of fantasy and reproduction, including Eleanor Antin’s 100 Boots, 1971 – 1973 (a series of 51 postcards of boots crossing the continent), James Welling’s Stowe, 2006 (a photo of an odd green stage curtain), Colter Jacobson’s Victory at Sea (Phenakistoscopes), 2007 (a duo of simple proto-cinematic optical illusion machines that agglomerate distinct drawings of sailors into one animated image), and Rodney Graham’s Dance!!!!!, 2008 (a massive lightbox diptych of a Western scene). Cinema derives its power through the duplicity of perceptual mechanisms: a persistence of vision that retains the trace of an image and then fills in the shadowy gaps between the frames, deciphering the communication. The replicants in Blade Runner construct their lives in a similar way: from disparate implanted memories they produce a cohesive life story through which to identify.

Graham’s Dance!!!!! flaunts the ability of technological simulation to invert the normal order of things. The image stages a cliché Western situation in a saloon where one man shoots at the foot of another, ordering him to dance. Upon closer inspection, however it is revealed that the humorous Graham himself is clicking his heels in midair, unaffected by the threat. The artist’s simulated levitation divulges the trickery involved in image production, reiterated in the subtle dissonance between the expected image and the one before us.


Bisecting the gallery space along an angled wall, Mark Soo’s That’s That’s Alright Alright Mama Mama, 2008, also plays with this doubling by presenting a large diptych of 3D images. A re-creation of the record studio that recorded Elvis’ first hit, the blue and red images stand out with the assistance of classic 3D glasses. Like Graham, Soo parodies the aims of Hollywood to replicate the real as spectacular novelty. Each of the prints overlay two similar, but subtly different images. Their displacement allows depth; stereoscopic visual parallax allows the image to become more real, almost ghostly. The experience of Soo’s work is both visual and bodily: through its faithful scale, the images take on a phenomenological quality, allowing the viewer immediate access to a moment distant in both time and location. 3D moviemakers purport that these goofy glasses give us a more real encounter of an image. Soo exaggerates this claim, charting the movement of things into images and back again, facilitating alternative historical re-encounter.



For the artists in R for Replicant, it is not so much that simulation allows new narratives to be formed out of an old story that is interesting, but that our understandings are themselves formed through interchangeable myths. Replication is a means of giving distance, of recognizing the contingent artificiality of knowledge itself. Replicants become more human as humans becomes less humane. Replicants, in a sense, become mobile monuments to humanity, mytho-poetic figures that replace a civilization lost. Daniel Joseph Martinez embellishes this procedure, extracting from history characters and circumstances to be reconfigured in a simulated critical encounter. In A MEDITATION ON THE POSSIBILITY OF ROMANTIC LOVE OR WHERE YOU GOIN’ WITH THAT GUN IN YOUR HAND, BOBBY SEALE AND HUEY NEWTON DISCUSS THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN EXPRESSIONISM AND SOCIAL REALITY PRESENT IN HITLER’S PAINTINGS, 2005, the artist renders two key radical Black Panther leaders as abstracted white Carrera marble silhouettes. Taken from their historical place, the simulated and shrunk Seale and Newton are granted maneuverability outside the fields one would expect them to reside (while still bringing with them their politics and own significations)[ii]. By sowing the seeds of a counter-narrative, Martinez questions the recitation of historical moments, the proper forums for historical remembrance, and the equanimity of all things in the postmodern era. Language itself is based upon simulation and transference.

Mario Garcia Torres’ 16 mm looped film, One Minute to Act a Title: Kim Jong-il’s Favorite Movies, 2005, features friends of the artists successively gesturing the titles of the North Korean dictator’s favorite Hollywood movies (like in a game of charades). As in Terada’s work, the work alludes to the globalization of culture. But these simulations are inadequate; they are only literal interpretations of the names, giving little information for the communications to be deciphered in the silence. In their development, movies go from text (script) to bodies (actors) to images, but Garcia Torres inverts this: the text of the title turns into mental images by the participants, who then enact these images through simple gestures.

Juan Capistran’s The Breaks, 2000, similarly intervenes into the flow of history with a bodily act, breakdancing upon a flat lead Carl Andre piece. While truly irreverent, Capistran’s gesture becomes a phenomenological conversation between the warm/cold, the ground/figure, the living/dead, past/present, active/static. Where these divides may be easily recognized in the work, in this context Capistran’s work opens up the ontological dimension in the reverse readymade (using a Rembrandt as an ironing board, a Carl Andre as a slick stage), calling into question the idea in Blade Runner that an object (replicant) can switch roles with the human.

Another art historical inversion is Tim Lee’s Untitled (Alexander Rodchenko, 1928), 2008. In this series of four black and white photographs, Lee used an optical device comprised of angled mirrors to allow his Leica I camera (a tool heavily associated with Rodchenko’s constructivist form of photography) to take images of itself. Tautologies akin to Robert Morris’ Box with the Sound of its Own Making, 1961, the photos are essentially self-portraits. Like the slave replicant, the camera is a tool, an objectified device used to perform tasks for others. Lee allows his camera a moment of self-reflection, self-awareness.

This is where the homophonic Deckard/Descartes comes into play for Zizek in regards to Blade Runner in his book, Tarrying With The Negative. If machines can be implanted with memories and can be unaware that they are not their own, then an apparent sense of self is no evidence of the reality of the self at all. When Deckard and the replicant Rachael begin to doubt their own status as human, they plunge into the old Descartes doubting of such a statement as “I think, therefore I am.” This is essential, says Zizek, as in the narrative the difference between real or implanted memories is effectively collapsed: “where is the cogito, the point of my self-consciousness, when everything that I actually am is an artifact – not only my body, my eyes, but even my most intimate memories and fantasies?” (tarrying 40)  For Zizek, this undecided questioning actually makes them more human and by claiming replicant status, the subject acknowledges that their subjectivity is produced. The camera photographing itself is an elaboration of the camera’s aims to reproduce the real taken to its final stage.

The confusion of subjectivity is furthered in Raymond Pettibon’s No Title (Superman), 2005, one of five of his text/image works presented. It features images of Superman, an almost perfect supernatural being who must create a mediocre alter ego to fit in. Like the replicants, Superman has strength and abilities beyond the common man: at some times he longs to fit in with humans, and at other times, he pities them. Clark Kent is Superman’s pathetic doppelganger, an imperfect replicant of other humans that Superman uses to hide his true, perfect self.  One of Pettibon’sscribblings,  “the death of the body is more for him cessation of a mode of being, in virtue of this belief he becomes of a number of those who loftily do not fear to die,” suggests that Superman, as an already artifactual character, understands his indeterminate ontological status. Replicants are designed to become obsolete, to die after four years. Just as imminent retirement haunts the replicants’ sense of their identity, Superman is in a state of subjective doubt.

Kristen Morgin’s unfired clay sculptures of a comic and a toy (Jeep Comics and Donald of Doom Tank, both 2008) simulate with trompe l’oeil detail not only the objects they represent, but also their degradation over time. Where simulation often aspires to perfection, Morgin’s works emphasize the ruin of the source, denying her objects a pure origin to refer. Like the replicants, Morgin’s are objects without their own memories, artificially overlaid with the time and wear endured by another object. There is a collapsing of time: scars long forgotten turn out to be new. Morgin’s replicants demonstrate a profound operation of memory: rememberance involves both a time traveling, a bringing new the knowledge of the past, and a fabrication, an artificial filling in of the gaps that elude recollection.

 Jennifer Bornstein’s gesture in her video Collector’s Favorites, 1994, where she appeared on TV presenting a carefully catalogued selection of quotidian refuse, likewise uses the reproductive capacity of media to construct a portrait of the self, using the traces and ephemera of daily life to certify her own existence. Allen Ruppersburg’s Untitled (City Limits), 1970, plays out this commingling of time and space by presenting 5 photographs where a magazine is held in front of a city limit sign, pointing to circulation and extension both cultural and physical. Additionally, Bruce Conner’s Easter Morning, 2008, accesses the memory of an 8 mm film work from 1966 by extending its duration, gauge, and frame-rate. What results is a hazy and hypnotic effect where the past can no longer be reconstituted, but rather is allowed to remain in misty obscurity.

One thing that must be accounted for is that the curator has provided the artworks with their own miniature replicants:  photos were taken of the works in situ and are placed adjacent to the works they represent. In a sense, the reproductions operate as stand-ins for didactic labels, signifiers without signifieds. When one looks for further clarification, all that is left is the sign reiterated. One can remember when Baudrillard in “Simulacra and Simulation,” applies a short fable from Jorge Luis Borges’ “On Exactitude in Science” (derived from a situation in Lewis Carroll’s “Sylvie and Bruno Concluded”). In the story, an empire, seeking an empirical perfection, created a map so detailed that it was as large as the empire itself, a one to one ratio. In Carroll’s and Borges’ renditions the empire gives up on such an absurd solution to cartography, “We now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well," a character notes in Carroll’s story. In Borges’ telling, the map crumbles away from its loss of significance. But in Baudrillard’s description, it is the map that people live in, the simulated model, and it is reality that is crumbling away from disuse.Through this radical divorce from the real within the simulation, we have been left with a haunting absence of a divide, a universal banality of informational equivalence.

While the black and white images are reiterative, they also can divulge information unseen in the original. The curator’s placement of Mark Soo’s work in the center of the gallery allows for the reproduced image to appear on the opposite side of the wall of the original. The flattened, black and white image of the 3-D red and blue prints denatures the original’s performative capacity. What is left is a perfectly inadequate replication, a mournful trace, a memory of loss. In works either projected or screened on monitors, the reproductions capture a moment in time the viewer may not catch in their casual encounter. Other images make the viewer fully aware that this is not a circulated reproduction, but photos of the works in the spaces they inhabit. Their diminutive nature compared to the original may be a detriment, as it allows us a clear boundary between original and copy. In a perfect world, one could imagine these photographic documents appearing in the documentation of the images themselves, like the old Quaker Oats cereal box, with a picture of a Quaker holding a cereal box with a picture of a Quaker holding a cereal box, ad infinitum (somewhat akin to Tim Lee’s project). The curatorial addition may come across as a novelty; one may say that the reproductions in the exhibition become invisible, too close to be of notice. This dissonance, however, serves the curator’s purpose, like the dying replicant says at the end of Blade Runner : “All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain…”

- Post Brothers



[i] See Jameson, Fredric, “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” New Left Review, 146 (July-August, 1984)


[ii] Catherine Opie’s Freeway series, 1994, also miniaturizes the monument, allowing a certain power. For the one of the best discussions of the gargantuan and the miniature, see Susan Stewart On Longing

 

All images, except the book cover and movie poster which are from Wikipedia, are courtesy the artists and the CCA Wattis:

Ron Terada, Maiko #3, 2008. Pigment ink print. 47 1/4 x 44 in.

Rodney Graham, Dance!!!!!, 2008. Backlit color transparency diptych. 110 x 145 x 7 in.

Colter Jacobson, Victory at Sea (Phenakistoscopes), 2007. Gouache on found card, wood, mirrors. Dimensions variable.

Daniel Joseph Martinez, A
MEDITATION ON THE POSSIBILITY OF ROMANTIC LOVE OR WHERE YOU GOIN’ WITH
THAT GUN IN YOUR HAND, BOBBY SEALE AND HUEY NEWTON DISCUSS THE
RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN EXPRESSIONISM AND SOCIAL REALITY PRESENT IN
HITLER’S PAINTINGS
, 2005. White Carrera marble. 12 x 5 x 1 and 10 x 4 x 1 in.

Juan Capistran, The Breaks, 2000. Giclee print. 40 x 40 in.

Jennifer Bornstein, Collector’s Favorites, 1994. TV recording transferred to DVD. 21 minutes.

Mark Soo, That’s That’s
Alright Alright Mama Mama,
2008. 2 c-prints, 3D glasses, angled wall.
Each print 71 x 93 in., wall dimensions variable.

 

Posted by Post Brothers
on 3/08/2010

on Artslant.com
原文连接:http://www.artslant.com/sf/articles/show/14898

奋斗青年愤怒青年

坐在洛杉矶小旅馆台阶上抽烟的时候,我重温了一下奋(愤)青这个词的意思。然后连带想了一堆关于艺术的却怎么也想不清楚的问题。比如今天的艺术到底是为了什么?如何来平衡艺术的美学价值和其社会功能?也就是form和concept的关系。然后我想,其实这个就是艺术家们不懈追求的问题,往往那些优秀的艺术家就是能炉火纯青地在这两者之间周旋吧。

脑子里跳出奋(愤)青的概念,是因为近些时候无意间总能浏览到一些出自年轻人关于对目前社会体制思考的帖子,可是却很少有来自年轻艺术家们的。那么我们的艺术都去干什么了呢?难道真的还在追求个人表达?自我内心小世界?和纯粹对“美”与“不美”的阐释吗?

我始终不认为艺术所涉及的对社会、哲学问题的反思和推动应退回到政治的附庸(尤其是在中国的历史情境下,这点尤为敏感),或者说一种极度肤浅的批判上;我也从不认为以这些为重点的艺术应牺牲其美学形式为代价(这个又转回到问题的原点来,如何区分艺术和激进社会运动或政治活动),而是说我们是时候思考如何将抒发个人小情感往上推动一下的时候了。能将这两者发展成互相促进的互补关系的艺术家在目前的中国艺术界太少。

所以我想我们都应该过来重温一下这个貌似已经过时了的奋(愤)青的概念。

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