有一天自问，在艺术家索求于心性和个性的同时，是不是同时需要在创作中考虑留一个分享的空间和供他者收受的空间？

对很多时代的艺术家来说，大抵都不能避免在“个体”和“公共”之间做出选择，即便有时这个选择不必然二元对立。事实是，无论自囚于边缘还是爬上话语中心，它们的根性如出一辙，两者都需要在他者和假想敌中确立一种身份认同已完成自身的合法性。其质相当，唯量有别。所谓的“边缘”艺术家，构造的其实是一个对独立和另类的想像，而其之所以能成为独立或另类，取决于其被认同为边缘的过程，而这认同则必将索求于共性。很多时候，“自我”（或者个性）是一个假象，它只在普遍性里获得可能。那么，能不能说，艺术创作的内在动机都是为了认同？对一个艺术家个性体悟的认同，无论这认同是来自边缘人群还是主流。如果是，这个动机是否会对创作造成误导？为了认同而创作的潜在危险是它将最终成为自我他者化的牺牲品。

 

 

周五去第五大道逛了十几个画廊， 中城的画廊都分散在高级公寓里，不像Chelsea可以沿街一路逛去，隔着玻璃窗瞄一眼，不好的展就间直跳过。57街和第五大道的画廊像是要在苏州的小巷里找一间裁缝铺子，得循着本子里的地址穿街走巷一路寻去， 铺子总藏在屋宇深处。中城的画廊是要在LV和YSL中间找到一扇狭小的公寓门帘，摸索着进去，在前台签字，等待在电梯门打开那一瞬收获一个惊喜。

 

 

跟pixy一起去看沈玮在布鲁克林的个展。虽然展的都是旧的片子，但还是让人很喜欢。他的片子有一股静穆的力量，那些身体和肌肤传达出通透冷静，一切都像是被时间荡涤过了，身体不再那么重要。每一个身体里都流淌出不可触摸的精神能量。有的时候，人物的凝视让人看得透不出气来。他新近的片子方向有一些变化，呈现出更多对作为载体的空间本身的探索和记录。但我觉得他不管拍什么，总都带着一个静穆的气场，连看似社会纪实的图像从他的镜头一过，也便成了诗性空间。

 

 

Melissa在第二街弄了个小派对庆祝刚完工的策展项目。大约是很久没喝酒了，两杯半的酒精和着几块瑞士奶酪下肚，才下午两点半，出了街就飘飘然起来。这脑子恍惚得写不了论文，索性一路逛到下城看展。

E-flux在展Hans Ulrich Obrist的Unbuilt Road, 其实就是把十年前的书重新翻出来晾凉。Essex 街离中国城近，那地儿很荒，四周什么都没有，像是才走了几步就出曼哈顿岛了。展厅隐隐于市，在一堆黑人和华人开的小破店间摸索着一把铁架楼梯下去，屁大的地儿，墙都没好好刷齐，大片的红砖内墙就赤裸裸暴着。这年头，大概实验空间都得装模作样contextualize，以表跟white cube划清界限。看了约莫半个小时，没一个人进来，所以可以看得很放肆。107个方案文本，近年圈子里的大小红人儿一一点到。每个方案几乎都异想天开，要搭通天塔的，要给太阳系加个行星的，自己做日历一年过15个月的，加上当时酒精还在神经里翻腾，看得整个过程全然超现实。见了一件国货，蔡先生93年做的，要全世界人民在世纪之交关灯两秒。一句话就说清楚的方案，噼里啪啦加了一堆话去解释其“意义”，挺费劲的。93年，先生估计还靠在日本的樱花树下放小鞭炮玩呢吧。

从E-flux出来又逛去New Museum看报上沸沸扬扬讨论的"比耶稣更年轻的一代"（因为耶稣33岁受刑)，换在中国这就叫八零后艺术，美国的叫法是“Millennials”, “Generation Y”, “iGeneration”,“Generation Me”或者“Generation OMG”。整个展览持续超现实，总体感觉是到处是电线、声音和视频。国货有仨，曹斐的“COS-Players”，陈年片子没啥说头。储云的“This is XX”倒是很抢眼，雇了个女人整天在美术馆睡觉，此人每天早晨服下安眠葯后穿一件白T在众目睽睽下大睡至闭馆，暴性感。刘窗的“Buying everything on you”之前在北京展过。在路上随便拉一人把其身外之物统统买走（包括内衣内裤），然后跟摆地摊似的在美术馆铺了三个台子的琐物，对“身份”的铺陈方式倒是挺到位了。这个展据说策展过程声势浩大，找了150个艺术家策展人和艺评家推荐了一个长达500人的名单，再由馆方三名策展人最后敲定50人入展。此外，馆方还出版了一本囊括所有500个被推荐者作品的册子，挂出一副民主旗，摆的还是多元全球的阵，走的是双年展艺博会的棋谱, 然后一群人齐喊着八零后的口号，仅此而已。我原本是抱着接受头脑风暴的准备去的，结果发现普遍性彻底压过特殊性，到底是这个时代全球青年文化及其自身意识有其惊人的相似性，还是这个艺术创作和筛选的机制整体病态？

差不多花了两个小时看完这俩展，出来在whole food吃了一大盘有机豆子，终于从酒精中彻底缓过神来，可以回家继续啃论文了。

 

 

Dilemma of Logos

Randy mentioned on Tuesday morning’s colloquium that the main separation moment of modernism and postmodernism is the point when the keyword of discourses changed from “history” to “geography”. I kind of agree with this saying. It’s direct impact in art, as Danto described in his book After The End of Art, art as a liner historical development and progressing had met a dead-end in 1960s, after that, is a decentralize, unhistorical, and discursive art scene, and artist is taking the task which used to belong to philosopher, thus the relationship between art with aesthetics become more and more indifferent. But once artist adopt the rational way of thinking, the dilemma of Logos seems even more clear, no matter for individual’s artistic production or contemporary artists as a totality. Fredric Jameson has already realized this dilemma decades ago as he put it: “…the truth of our social life as a whole-in Lukacs’s terms, as a totality-is increasingly irreconcilable with the possibilities of aesthetic expression or articulation available to us: a situation about which it can be asserted that if we can make a work of art from our experience, if we can give experience the form of a story that can be told, then it is no longer true, even as individual experience; and if we can grasp the truth about our world as a totality, then we may find it some purely conceptual expression but we will no longer be able to maintain an imaginative relationship to it, in current psychoanalytic terminology, we will thus be unable to insert ourselves, as individual subjects, into an ever more massive and impersonal or transpersonal reality outside ourselves. ”It might be the main challenge for every artist in our time who are thrown into the extremely decentralized reality of living in a global circumstance, and encounter the predicament of articulate the individual experience while having it rationally reflect on the social life as the totality of human condition. I agree with David Harvey's saying that “‘Globalization’ is the most macro of all discourses that we have available to us while that of ‘the body’ is surly the most micro from the standpoint of understanding the workings of society…These two discursive regimes -globalization and the body- operate at opposite ends of the spectrum in the scalar we might use to understand social and political life.” 

 

 

 

Aneka and Junming had a conversation on experimental film this morning. I felt some of the questions raised in their conversation worth further contemplation. For instance, how to define experimental film seriously , is there a clear boundary between experimental film and commercial production, or, between film and video? The second consideration of me is whether the experimental film has enough ability to communicate with normal audience, on what extent can they really be understood? Obviously avant-garde film -or other forms of avant-garde art- seems more like “an artists’ community only for artists”, in this teny tiny circle, artists are the ones who produce the works as well as audiences who consume them. Art for art’s sake is pale, ironic and narcissistic, if film lacks the ability of communication, how can it be democratic? The third question I am keeping in mind is why do people make experimental art, where does the motivation locate? Do they use experimental art as means of reaching the untellable perception of their own, or an irreplaceable way of expression in order to transfer the “personal perceive” to a commonly shared experience? And finally, what do experimental film offer? A belonging to subculture, an quasi-vanguard status, a challenging viewing angle toward the mundane world, an inspired reflection for one’s own, or just a label of belonging to certain kind of socio-cultural class?

  

Exit Art is a gallery located at the end of the world. It is sooooooo far away from the subway, and is surrounded by desolate industrial buildings at the west side of Manhattan. Not only marginal in its physical location, as a 25-year-old cultural center in New York City, Exit Art consistently remains its pioneering and quasi-marginal status in the art world to catch the newest trends in American culture as well as to challenge the aesthetical, political and social issues immediately.

I constantly ask myself: in our age, how many artists can still act as public intellectuals to question and seeking potential solution for the vital crux of our society? Obviously, the trip to Exit Art convinces me that we still have artists fighting for the eternal value of art, or, for the ultimate good of human being. Exit Art is the stage for the rehearsal of these utopian ideas; believe it or not, it’s still supporting those unrealistic artistic dreams in a turbulent age as ours after 25 years. Exit Art is not like fancy galleries in SoHo that will catch your eyes when you pass by. The surface of the space is humble and unengaging, even without a clear logo outside the space except a large word “change” hanging on the window in 10th avenue where thousands of vehicles and people circulate daily. But it is powerful, powerful in the means of create a dialogue between the space and public instead of using a commanding attitude.

I went to Exit Art last week for the exhibition called “The Labyrinth Wall: From Mythology to Reality,” Through February 7, the two curators line the space with sixty-two panels, invite fifty-one artists to work on site, and the public could watch the producing process. The event obviously demonstrates again the space’s openness, ingenuity, and closeness to the zeitgeist. But on the other side, the democratic way of passing any rights to the artists themselves and allowing anything on the wall could run the risk of low quality. It is true that some of the works in the exhibition is really not good. I’ve heard similar complains from many of my friends who visited the show during the last few weeks. However, I think the core meaning of the Labyrinth show is not the quality of a single work on a panel but the underlying concept they conducts as a whole entity. We complain the exhibition space for the works are arranged too crowded, too random, not making any sense, or not resonate with one another. This attitude is actually derived from the traditional way of looking at a space as just a vessel for holding the artworks, which should be white, clean and simple in order to create an exquisite background for the works on show. Whereas here in the Labyrinth show, the entire space can be looked as an artwork on the single work on the wall, or, more accurately, the space is the final result all these artists are exploring. The physical structure is as complex as the various works, but it is not really all that puzzling, the real labyrinth exists in the ideological level,-the production and consumption of the different voices coming from the exact moment of American society.

 

 

 

 

周五晚去Jen Beckman看了Pixy同学的群展。画廊空间极小，但操作模式值得借鉴。John Mann 的展出作品我比较喜欢，但我现在试着尽量不从自己的喜好出发去看作品，用一个开放的姿态去谦虚阅读每一件作品是与其对话的第一步。Melissa那天说得很有道理，可以在看每一个展挑出自己欣赏、不欣赏和压根看不懂的作品，然后仔细反思为不喜欢，对看不懂的作品进一步从艺术家自己的声明，个人经历和社会语境去理解。此时不喜欢或看不懂的，或许彼时在全面理解后便有了欣赏的理由。我对John Mannde 疑问是他的媒介，他的东西为什么选择以摄影为媒介，必要性在哪里？摄影这种媒介和装置很大的不同就是它的前提是已将观看的视野和角度锁定，带有一种强制性，同时它使作品和观者在空间上的距离，距离之间的对话受到限制。如John自己所释地图其自身成为一种geography，这让我想起郭熙评山水画言之：“山水有可行者,有可望者,有可居者,有可游者……但可行可望不如可居可游之为得。”如果地图本身成为一种地理，一种终极目的，为什么不能提供一种弹性更大的空间对话呢？

 

Pixy的几张照片里隐含的身份政治引起我极大的兴趣，它对男女关系中性别角色的试探很微妙也很到位，颠覆了传统性权利和固定角色。男性的身体阴柔裸露，而女性不论从姿态和衣着色彩上都更显得霸道强势。同时，这个作品在男权和女权之间形成的张力可以被看成是对这个时代各种政治关系的一种叙述，一种在后殖民之后的身份政治阐释。Hosang Park的片子我也挺喜欢，图像对韩国在资本主义影响下和在现代化进程中的社会做了一个有趣的俯瞰。这些图片中做为公共场所的公园无一不透着一种后工业时代的冷漠慌凉

I am thinking that a good artist is the one who can really disentangle sense from nonsense by asking the right questions and expecting pertinent answers, even more importantly, enable to offload the humanistic knowledge from the extremely complex social reality and then pass it to the public, to let every single citizen to shoulder the weight of culture and knowledge in our time.

 

Havana Biennial / Is Cuba the next China?

 

The New York Time posted an article on today's first page of The Arts section titled as Havana Biennial, in Which Chelsea Takes a Field Trip to Cuba. I read the article on the subway at 9am, and was totally shocked by it. It is horrible! And the current circumstance shows it is quite possible that Cucan will become the next undernourished global art market as it was happened in China. More dangerously, Cuba is closer to the "global art center", which facilitates the capital and political operation turn the area into another Amercian back yard.

 

Here's some quotes followed with my personal perspective:

The “Chelsea Visits Havana” show, which opened on Saturday as part of the 10th Havana Biennial and gives the Cuban art world a look at the New York art scene. Is this mean New York art is the canonical standard for the judgement of any other regional art? Why should Cuban art mimic the New York art scene, it is ridicules. Yeah, the author seems admit it is ironic, but the general point of view in the whole article obviously shows a indeliberate pride of American’s position in the global contemporary art world, which, goes with a presupposition that US attitude is an ultimate criterion. He legitimate this commanding attitude without any examination, or, at lest a second of doubt. I still believe that the only possible way of making a regional art biennial meaningful is the ability to address real problems and tensions in the geographical region, and to reexaming both the tradition and the modernity's influence in the daily life of the specific contemporary society. Sure one must with a global perspective, but it doesn't mean a global selling of one nation's value.

A dozen other American artists and scores of critics and buyers flocked to the island to enjoy themselves, show their wares and, perhaps, offer solidarity to Cuban artists, many of whom were denied travel visas to the United States to sell their work during the eight years of the Bush administration. Globalization has a special relevance for the island’s artists. Before the Bush administration stopped giving visas, many of Cuba’s top artists spent months at a time in the United States or Europe. They stayed linked to the island partly because collectors are typically more interested in works produced by Cuban-based — not immigrant — artists. What does it mean by saying “American artists critics and buyers flocked to the island to enjoy themselves, show their wares and, perhaps, offer solidarity to Cuban artists”? Is it really for the sake of art communication or celebration? I don’t believe in it. It seems to me is just another filthy colonization in the form of capital game. We can see from this report how Cuba is covered in the Western media as a virgin land not only for Western investors in the art market but the whole entertainment industry and tourism as well. Obviously, there doesn’t exist an equal conversation or equal trading, for the simple fact that it is far more difficult for Cuban to go across the boundary than American. And the article described in a way as if American is the only almsgiver for Cuban artists, so that even transnational Cuban artists have to always go back to their country “because collectors are typically more interested in works produced by Cuban-based — not immigrant — artists”. If digging further into the way American media interprets the Havana Biennale, one might discover that art in this context is turned into an excuse, or, we could say that art establishes the stage, but what actually take into play are politics, economic interests, and a selling (more propriety imposing) of American value and ideology. In Cuba’s case, it is definitely too early for the biennial say “Farewell to Postcolonialism” (2008 Guangzhou Triennial’s theme), the Western power is still operating and casting a shadow on the geopolitical space.

“The hope is that this will be a first step toward normalizing U.S.-Cuban relations,” said the show’s organizer Alberto Magnan.

Well, the diplomatic manoeuvres appear. Other strategies in the news are keeping delivering a sense that Havana is all about revolution, resistance, and rebel, all of which, are orthodoxy and immediate images of Third World communist countries. It somehow fulfills the Western audience’s expectation for the exotic “other” culture. But if these images have anything to do with the reality of daily life in Havana's contemporary society, they don't care.