South Away

远行和双重历史性

2009-06-03T21:01:00.001-04:00

去年冬天的去南方旅行的时候路过海明威在Key West的故居，Key West是美国本土的最南端，对岸就是古巴，即便是冬天，岛上仍是流动着馥郁的夏日香气。海明威的旧宅深藏在茂密的热带植物间，有深绿色屋顶和白色墙面，干净利落。浅绿色的木质百叶窗敞开着，虽隔着白纱窗帘，仍有浓稠的阳光趟进屋子，书柜里原封不动摆着当年常阅的书籍，四处都有猫懒散地踱步。在灵动的光线里，时光像是原地徘徊，日升月落，花木升息，故人也未曾远去。就在这热带岛屿的阁楼上，海明威写下了《流动的盛宴》。

今晚整理回国行李的时候，我突然诧异，为什么他在其中年冒险途中受重创后写下为时过早的回忆录去缅怀早年在巴黎的生活，又为什么坐在巴黎的咖啡馆里孜孜不倦写地去写他在密歇根的童年和少年往事，这种地域和记忆的距离到底带出了怎样的情感和知性冲动？而这种冲动显然是具有普世性而非个体的。为什么人年轻的时候总对“远行”、“流浪”，“漂泊”种种意向有源自天性的向往？这种意向究竟是为了遇见想像的未知世界，探访在别处的生活，还是为了遇见一个更可信的自我世界？我更愿意相信这种“远走”与其说是逃离或者冒险，不如说成是一种自我探访。这个“我”永远是一个建构，解构，和再建构的过程，它是一个时间的，位置的过程，但跟是一个经验的过程。这种以心灵为目的的远走，成就了对不可知的“自由”的价值肯定，和对心性的坚守，这一探访道途中最璀璨狂野的星宿是兰波的流浪生涯。某种意义上，个人的成就，遭遇和局限都取决其所处的“双重历史性”——其个体自投生至死亡的历史性和其所处时代和具体社会情境的历史性。两者交织的偶然性造成思维的时代困境，但前者较之后者往往更易为人感知，但对后者的忽略却容易造成集体的时代盲目和精神无依感。远行在这两个历史性中间提供的其实是一个协商空间，在突然被转换的社会情境里，社会历史性豁然以强烈的可感知力冲进了个人的线性历史，而所带出的冲突，将为更宏观的自我审视和时解读提供线索。所谓的漂泊感，其实为重审价值提供了源动力，它创造了一种更纯粹的选择可能和对选择结果的主动承担。

By gut instinct or research?

2009-05-24T14:46:00.002-04:00

Is the recognition of a piece of good art by gut instinct or thorough research? Art consultants, dealers and collectors are usually willing to talk bout their distinguished taste and unique eye in art, but isn't it seems bravado? The legitimating process is never decided by the glamour of “intuition” but the hands through which it passes, the magazine pages and museum show rooms it is shown, and the status of the critics who are talking about the work. Isn't the aura of art as instinct human good paradoxical?

Living in this world, we are always overinformed and undereducated. We have this veneer of knowledge. I am quite anxious about this face of my circumstance at present, that is the reason that I sometimes force myself to keep away form the computer and get more first hand experience.

Composing a life as a woman

2009-05-20T15:03:00.004-04:00

“我二十五岁时的人生规划是生五个孩子，然后在家相夫教子”，Mary Campbell笑着说，顺便用她那一丝不苟涂着暗红色指甲油的手整了整她的Giorgio Armani上装。我无法相信就是这样一个曾打算安心在家相夫教子的女人，三十年后竟成了美国最顶尖电影学院的院长和纽约州艺术理事会主席，统筹整个州的文化艺术机构。我坐在她面朝百老汇大街的办公室里，感觉却像是进了哪个主妇的起居室，四处布满了温馨的小记忆。初冬的阳光斜斜地照在19世纪的老式家具上，抽屉精致的铜扣已经被磨的发亮了。那古董柜子上摆着家人的的照片，她的儿子穿着军装，那是越南战争的时候。后面的墙上挂着各种各样的百老汇演出海报，都是学院的毕业生出演或编导过的。临窗的工作台前面摆了一件89年百老汇演出时的剧装，镶着精致的羽毛，傍边是金色的奥斯卡奖杯。桌子后面的窗台上放着一排她曾上过的杂志封面，赫然写着“女人！权利！风韵！”，“100名纽约最具影响力女性”，“年度最成功女性总裁”……封面里是她一贯的自信且睿智的笑容。在这些显赫的头衔背后，Campbell却总在细节里洋溢出女性入微的小关怀。比如在进门供等候的小沙发前总是放着明亮怡人的花束，水果，或者小曲奇饼干，齐齐地摆在铺了蕾丝棉布的篮子里，旁边放着淡紫色的小纸巾。

用女权去形容Mary Campbell是不妥贴的，她是刚柔并齐、闲适、练达，世故又有人情的女人。她深握纽约州的政治文化权利，在奥巴马当选总统的一周后，便应邀为其智囊团做文化政策顾问，她主管的Tisch艺术学院先后出了十多个奥斯卡得主，但她同时也是三个孩子的母亲和五个孩子的祖母。我喜欢听她娓娓道来那些作为女人的人生途径和抉择困境，那沉稳平静，宛若炉火边聊起渔樵往事，丝毫没有烟火气。有的时候，我甚至觉得她的自嘲也都是带着自信的，因为过了花甲，她清楚得知道什么是她能够驾驭的，什么是可以舍弃的，自然简洁不带拖沓。

Campbell和Karen都是有信念的女人，想要改变游戏规则。但因为处世的方式不同，她们最终走上了两条全然背驰的路。Karen坚持change the world without taking power，几乎她所有的抉择都来自直觉和心性，所以她渐渐走上了激进艺术家的道路，其数次裸体和挑畔性表演最终被送入了美国最高法庭和联邦调查局。她的情感总是激烈迸发的，我数次见她因激动而潸然泪下。但Campbell深信if you want to change the world of power, you have to take the power,于是她走了一条政治道路。但也正因为有Campbell在高层掌权，才有了Karen这样反政府的独立知识分子在学院里的一席之地。有一次，Campbell聊起她童年的政治意识：在20世纪前半页，其父拥有一间自己的律师事务所，在那个时代作为一个黑人家庭，他们所拥有的财富和威望是不多见的。但在她十岁的时候，她的父亲做出了一个惊人的决定，几尽家产和精力投身参议员的竞选。也许因为时代的局限，黑人的仕途终未能实现。在竞选失败后，她的家庭几乎一无所有，除了信念。就在那些年岁里，目睹她父亲走的政治道路，及其失败后白手起家力挽狂澜的点滴艰辛，她学会了各种游戏的潜规则。睿智不是与生俱来的。

康州的晚秋，与或浓或淡的悲愁

2009-05-19T17:55:00.008-04:00

都说康州的红叶极美。十月中旬H打电话过来说她们在耶鲁有一个聚会，虽然那一阵很忙，但最后还是决定去看看。一个人坐火车去康州，沿路是漫山遍野的秋叶，这乡野的气息那么让人安宁，叫人想起桂花开时的杭州。纽约是不容易有乡愁的。唯有康州，牵系着或浓或淡的悲愁，季节里藏着安稳。

H在耶鲁的医学院呆了十五年，从学生到教授，从拥挤的学生公寓到临湖的别墅，从妙龄到极尽艰辛才成为人母。十多岁的时候，她被告知母亲患了癌症，二十多岁的时候被告知自己不能生育，三十多岁时目送唯一的弟弟辞世。但见到她的时候，她依旧露出少女般清澈无邪的笑容。生活就像日历一页页被撕开，那页页悲愁又如落叶般各自散落，归于静默萧瑟的自然。

傍晚的时候天色阴沉，H和我沿着耶鲁校园里的小路散步，教堂的钟声传来，一声声满是晚秋的萧瑟，却也是岁月的沉着。

零八年十月

在格林威治村喝一碗热汤

2009-05-19T17:53:00.002-04:00

九月底的纽约开始转凉，有一个雨夜和大米在Bleecker街角的意大利餐馆吃饭。在敞开的落地窗边坐下，年迈的意大利女人过来给我们点上一支蜡烛，隔着九月夜晚的潮湿和寒冷。一入秋，街上就变得安静寥落，偶尔从雨中穿出一两个行人，匆匆地，踩碎一地灯影。抬头间，见十字路口破损的霓虹灯闪着“Welcome to Greenwich Village”，这，就是格林威治村，繁华尽失的前卫艺术旧地。

半个世纪前，这里曾聚居着无数爵士乐手，诗人和艺术家。他们在街角的咖啡馆里谈笑争执，结识新的艺术家，收藏者和批评家，他们并不富裕，但远比如今的艺术家过得充足。彼时艺术家每天只要在临街的餐馆打两三小时的零工就能支付在一个位于west village或是SoHo的工作室，如今租用同样一个空间要花上$3000或者更多的月租。彼时艺术家走上三五分钟就能去同行的工作室窜门，并能从批评家和同僚处得到即刻的回馈，如今SoHo的街边是各种世界顶级奢侈品牌，艺术家被迫住到布鲁克林，皇后区或者纽约的周边城市。那个时候，每一个身在格林威治的艺术家都有一种强烈的时代感，那种力量类似文艺复兴时期的精神光环，自觉于时代和历史的尖端。有一个傍晚，我在Artists Space 遇见已经八十多岁的Irving Sandler, 在抽象表现主义的黄金时期，他曾是艺术家俱乐部（Club）的主管和ArtForum杂志的执笔，我们谈起格林威治，他感慨到，昔日的艺术家社区已经不再了。如今，艺术家变得吝啬，也不再有归属感。在德库宁的时代，光在Club注册的就有六百多个艺术家，他们在每周末在格林威治村聚会，和诗人，作家，评论家及哲学家们一起听演讲。做一个展览不需要有策展人，不需要费神去筹款和做公共推广，不需要有严格的筛选，优秀的艺术家推荐新手一起展览，他们的画并排挂在同一面墙上，每天由两个艺术家轮流坐在门口看场，彼时的民主那么自然的，就在伦常里。

在九月的街角喝一碗热汤，凝视着雨中败落的格林威治村。感伤于一个属于艺术家的时代已经过去了。但这毕竟是纽约，待明晨的阳光从楼群中穿过，她又将宛若新生。然而只有在这微凉的雨夜里，在街角寥落的倒影里，我才恍惚辨认出纽约，那个E.B.White笔下让人留恋的纽约，那个已经垂垂老去，却讲着动人故事的纽约。

零八年九月

2009-05-15T12:36:00.021-04:00

终于写完最后一篇论文。为了保持头脑清醒，已经一个月不沾酒精了。

下午在家做了一杯浓缩埃塞俄比亚咖啡+咖啡甘露龙舌兰，盖了一层鲜奶油。浓重但不粘腻，很到位。更喜欢龙舌兰，比百利清淡。

夏日的假期开始了。

在读卡夫卡的《美国》，题目是Max Brod在其死后挑的，其实更喜欢卡夫卡自己在写作过程中用的题目《The Man Who Disappeared》，意味深长。此“消失”即是个人作为思考主体的消失，也是文化身份在他者语境中的消失，小说是一次关于意志悖论的旅行，在充满冒险精神的行进中使形而上的精神能量渐然隐退，在以自由为目的的求索中将自由消耗殆尽。

Like the word E. L. Doctorow puts, "exile only reiterating the original universal banishment from Heaven, a man might disappear down the stark, unmediated horrors of his own consciousness without ever leaving the house in which he was born."

99 Postcards

2009-05-10T21:26:00.004-04:00

The ninty nine postcards we wrote in the past one year...

写在去年的九十九张明信片，从西雅图到杭州，从芝加哥到苏州，从纽约到温州...

Authorization or Authenticity

2009-05-10T14:28:00.009-04:00

I would like to start telling a story of my own in this essay:

I, Meredith, a Chinese female student in America. For the first time in my life, being in New York, and feeling embraced by the multicultural metropolitan. It was an opportune time to be an Asian student in the American academy since academic fields of globalism, multiculturalism, ethnic studies, and postcolonialism has developed for few decades, and were very open to other culture at the time. Being in the academy, I felt lucky that I can freely speak of my own experience and was immersed in an extremely free and open atmosphere. Actually, I never think of myself as a Third World woman until one day in Professor A's Global Observatory of the Visual Arts class. It is in the midst of our discussion of the transnational reception of the visual arts that Azza and I as the only students in the classroom who came from the Third World were asked to give some insights for the discussion. “Tell us Meredith, you are from postcolonial and peripheral culture, tell us something about China’s situation in this globalization trend,” professor A said. It is for the first time that I realized I AM a Third World woman. And because of that, I and Azza were given a lot of privilege to speak out in the class, and our voices are usually deemed as “the voice from the peripheral culture” which is listened with respect in the class. But then I realized the problematic thing of being treated as “a delegate” of a Third World nation. On the one hand, whether I can represent the China or Asian society should be doubted. Even if all I said is real and authentic, the opinion still bears personal judgment and level of perception. On the other hand I felt later in the year that my voice was more or less settled in a predefined space, a space with expectation of an Eastern image, which somehow preempted my words and maybe also determined what I could say. Thus, the little stress I am experiencing comes from two resources, the “preoccupations” in the dual sense of “concern” and “pregiven locations”[i] and an assigned responsibility to represent the national identity in large.

Actually, the form of narrative I used in the beginning of the story is borrowed from the testimonio such as the controversial text I, Rigoberta Menchú. The form of narrative creates a seemingly authentic voice on individual level but was doubted in its authenticity on a larger cultural level because of the limitations of the “authentic insider” position. And this dilemma is also what I am questioning. My personal experience makes me to reflect my encounter and situation in the Western context. Then I realized that I cannot only be myself. Not only do I have to consider my mediator or mediated position when I lived in the Western value, but the construction of my personal identity’s tension with my national identity as well. There exits a dilemma between authorization and authentic.

As Wright Mills said, no man stands along directly confronting a world of solid fact, no such world is available. We are aware of much more than we have personally experienced and the experience is always indirect. The knowledge and history we have is borrowed and thus intertwined with other people’s interpretation, judgment, and favor, together with ourselves misunderstanding toward the interpretation. Mills’s word hits my long-term confusion about the “fact” of the society which we are encountering and experiencing, and my understanding of self, the self-consciousness is usually seems unreliable as well as the interaction between the “self” and the “other”. Following this consideration, I can't help wonder how can we defined an authentic cultural belonging?

My consideration of authenticity developed into the “Knowledge as Barrier” project, by using books in the Bobst Library to pile roadblocks in the physical space, I am actually targeting the subconscious level of barrier which is formed in time when one was unexaminly absorbing the dominant discourse termed as “knowledge”. It is a work questioning whether the seemingly neutral knowledge that we have about either the East or the West is selected by stereotyped meanings and shaped by ready-made interpretations. These received and manipulated interpretations decisively influence our consciousness. They provide the clues to what we see, to how we respond to it, to how we feel about it, and to how we respond to these feelings. [ii] Therefore, they demonstrate how we arrive the identity. On what extent does the Western knowledge of East helped us to understand the reality of the geopolitical region? Or, does this knowledge hinder further understanding between East and West?

As Bruce Yonemoto describer the reception of his national identity in the West，even he was born, raised and educated in United States, he is still been view as a Japanese artist, and been positioned into the predetermined expectation for Japanese culture in his artworks. This assigned stress of cultural identity forces him to go back to Japan to study his “own” culture. A pre-occupied explanation of his work exits even before he makes the work. It is the power of authorization toward the geo-political structure.

The story I wrote in the beginning of this essay also raise another reflection about the role of being a Third World women in the post-colonial First World context. What identity is constructed in this circumstance? Many Asian female artists I visited in the last few months are facing the similar embarrassment that the tension they felt is not only from the identity as an Asian in the West, but also from their relation with the global feminist discourse. The later tension sometime even comes stronger. For these Asian female artists, their works are not usually evidence of decentering hegemonic histories and subjectivities; however, they are generally misinterpreted as victims of the fatherhood oppression in their society or resistance to the power. Many works were subjected to the appropriation and re-inscription into the dominant feminist discourse. Amal Amiren observes this situation quite well: “The result of this Western domination of global feminism is not only the prioritizing of certain issues and the obscuring of others, but also the colonization and homogenization of Third World women’s experiences.”[iii] A very good example is Xiao Lu，the female artist shoot her work in the first avant-garde exhibition in China National Art Gallery and was arrested. After the shocking event, Xiao has never explained the vanguard action publicly, but she was interpreted in following decade by Western dominant discourse as a feminist hero who stands up and fights for the female rights under the authoritarian oppression. However, fifteen years later, she finally nerved herself to stand out and declaring the events that it was only an adolescent rebellion, and admit that she was scared away after the moment. The reason she decide to declare it after fifteen years is to be honest to herself rather than living under the shadow of the dominant discourse. In this case, the division of authorization and authenticity is clear. Whether subjected to the hegemonic discourse to get the authorization of being a part of the mainstream history, or being authentic and staying peripheral.

The dislocation of the culture and its role in Western context constructs a stereotype of “what Asian and Asian culture is about” in the entire range of process by which it was translated, predetermined, merchandized, delineated, and distributed. Certain paradigms determined the way it should be looked at. These artists’ national identity is no more an officially defined identity, but as an outcome of constantly struggle and dialogue within transexperience gained in different social realities. Stuart Hall issues this situation: “ Perhaps instead of thinking of identity as an already accomplished fact, which the new cultural practices then represent, we should think, instead, of identity as a ‘production’ which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation. This view problematized the very authority and authenticity to which the term ‘cultural identity’ lays claim.”[iv] The formation of this kind of artistic style is not only artist’s self choice which mediated by the Western inclusion and exclusion politics, but is also a consequence of the hails of a multicultural stance in the global exhibition system, which tend to emphasize the difference and creates a politics of location. As Amel Amireh and Lisa Suharir Majaj observes, “A politics of location may serve to encourage a celebration of difference and cultural relativism that mystifies rather than sheds light on power relations.”[v] The crux of the problem is not only located on whether the artistic motivation is about authorization or authenticity, what should also be taken into consideration is on what extent the authentic expression of individual artists and their dislocated cultural identity can represent the entire community of Asian people and the diverse and extremely complex Eastern culture?

When the Asian art and culture was promoted in the western view, and was been gazed and interpreted in the western context, it was further othernessed. And this otherness is as Stuart said, “Not only, in Said’s ‘Orientalist’ sense, were we constructed as different and other within the categories of knowledge of the West by those regimes. They had the power to make us see and experience ourselves as ‘other’.” In many case, I might have to say that the Asian contemporary art is somehow a “feminized other” consumed by the western power of gaze and narrative.

Even at the time artists did not see themselves in circumstance of decentering hegemonic histories. “It is the way in which they are read, understood, and located institutionally which is of paramount importance.”[vi] The fact is Third World artist’s work has usually been hailed as stand up from the oppression for the perpetual truth of democracy and freedom. Beside the stereotype way of looking at artists from Asia, the changing of artists’ cultural identity happened when these artists traveled across the nation and cultural boundaries is also worth to be taken into account. Sometimes, the dialogue between geographies and histories are much more complex than the simplified description of crossing the rigid boundaries of the nation-state, and the fixed nationalist ideology. For instance, the artist Cai Guoqiang was born in China in 1957 but has lived and worked outside the country since 1986. He stated in Japan for nine years before moved to United States since 1995. Cai work is based on the old far eastern art of fortune telling, the traditional Chinese medicine and the philosophies of Dao and Chan. By bringing ancient Chinese ideas of the universe back to contemporary life, he tries to make western spectators aware of disorientation and impersonal manner of the new global universal language. The question of whether Cai is a global artist first and a Chinese artist second, or vice versa, has generated considerable confusion among art critics after he established his name internationally. And himself has consistently challenged this binary. By complicating, dodging, and deftly deflating the facile categorization of his work, Cai has contributed to this question’s waning critical relevance in contemporary global art and cultural discourse. When considering Cai’s twenty years of diaspora experience, the national identity was even less significant than cultural identity – that is, East Asia – as defined by a spectrum of “Asian” aesthetics and philosophical sources.[vii] And this cultural identity is collaboratively achieved by a group of diasporic Asian artists, and the scholars in Western Universities’ Eastern Asia Department play a fairly important role too. They function together to draw on post-structuralism to posit the legitimacy of non-Western modernism and argue for alternative referents for contemporary Asian artistic expression. The conflicts experienced by these diaspora artists brought up a thorough reflection of the identity they shared in terms of refuting westernization and articulating an autonomous vision of future. The fear of loosing one’s identity in the West keep forcing these artist to resist the West’s objectification of itself and to willfully pursue global equality before being subsumed by Western homogeneity. And the resistant effort is actually creating a new “cultural identity” based on the transnational experience. This new identity can be deemed as the second kind of “cultural identity” described by Stuart Hall, who separate the definition of cultural identity as a shared history and ancestry hold in common with others, and as a difference experience encountered by individual. He observes, “as well as the many points of similarity, there are also critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute ‘what we really are’; or rather- since history has intervened- ‘what we have become’…in this second sense, is a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as of ‘being’.”[viii] It should not be underestimated that it is the new identity as “Asian in the Western context” formed by the dislocation of cultural identity that was represented in the West as a common identity of Asian culture. Thus, the authenticity of it in representing the universal Asia culture is questionable.

Taking these concerns into account, I think the questions should be asked in the futhur transnational understanding are Is there an “in-between” space for transnational reception between assimilation and alterity? And how can we look at images without appropriating it into preexisted responses?

[i] Uma Narayan, Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third World Feminism, Routledge, 1997
[ii] C. Wright Mills, “The Cultural Apparatus,” in Power, Politics and People: The Collective Essays of C. Wright Mills, ed. Irving Louis Horowitz （London, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1967）
[iii] Amal Amireh & Lisa Suhair Majaj, Going Global, (Garland, 2000), pp 11
[iv] Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” Nicholas Mirzoeff, ed. Diaspora and Visual Culture (Routledge, 2000) pp 21.
[v] Amal Amireh & Lisa Suhair Majaj, “Introduction”, Going Global, (Garland, 2000), pp 11.
[vi] Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, “Feminist Encounters: Locating the Politics of Experience.” Copyright 1 (Fall 1987), pp 34
[vii] Thomas Krens & Alexandra Munroe: Cai Guo Qiang: I Want to Believe, Guggenheim Museum, 2007
[viii] Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” Nicholas Mirzoeff, ed. Diaspora and Visual Culture (Routledge, 2000) pp 23.

New York City, Multicultural or Provincial?

2009-05-10T14:15:00.005-04:00

“I always feel that China is just there, and China is Not There” Jack Tchen said in the last colloquium session of this semester, it moved me. Every time when I was walking on Canal Street, I felt it looks like China, but it is not, I cannot define it. New York is a place contained with the most diverse population in the world and boasts itself as a world capital of multiculturalism, but on the other hand, I never saw a city which is separated and isolated as such. The experience of walking from downtown to uppertown, and from Upper West Side to Upper East Side is like traveling trough totally different world. Is New York City really a metropolitan or a bunch of little villages? As E.B.White wrote in Here is New York:

The island of Manhattan is without any doubt the greatest human concentrate on earth, the poem whose magic is comprehensible to millions of permanent residents but whose full meaning will always remain elusive. At the feet of the tallest and plushest offices lie the crummiest slums. The genteel mysteries housed in the Riverside Church are only a few blocks from the voodoo charms of Harlem…New York City will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy…better than most dense communities it succeeds in insulating the individual (if he wants it, and almost everybody wants or needs it) against all enormous and violent and wonderful events that are taking place every minute.[1]

But I wonder, are people willingly to be insulated, or they are impelled to? Do they really live individually and privately, or do they cannot help to live clannish in separate niches?

In November 2007, Qiu Zhijie did a performing art in Chinatown named “The Thunderstorm is Slowly Approaching”. In the performance, he invited ten Chinese immigrants in Chinatown to play the traditional dragon dance on the street. The dragon dance is a traditional Chinese ritual which usually been used to drive off evil spirits during festivals. But in Chinatown, the artists changed the costume into military camouflage, which suddenly blurred the boundary of entertainment and provocation. The performance actually takes the traditional Chinese dragon dance as a starting point for investigating the pressures to hide national identity within a “host” culture, in a festive public gathering in Chinatown. The artist hopes to use the reappearance of this type of symbolic nationalist action to reveal the gap between periphery culture and nomadic nationalist culture, as well as to the inherent contradictory nature between similar nationalist community groups. This work raises the question: what tension has been hidden between the minority community and the lager city? Are areas like Harlem and Chinatown a harbor which produce identity for individuals who live there, or do they just exist as besieged scenery of “otherness” to be view and consumed as tourist attraction? For instance, to people who live in Chinatown, their Chineseness can easily be overemphasized, becoming an essentialist and quasi-genetic characteristic untouchable by comparisons with other experiences. The identity of a Chinese resident of New York bas been formed by many layers of influences― the self is intricately tied to “others.” This phenomenon generally exists in many minority communities. Racial and postcolonial emphasis usually treats identity too provincial and collective, separating it from the body politic. Individual memories in these areas are usually been ignored or treated as monolithic by outsiders. Locality, region, nation, and world have all been represented as distinct entities, and their interconnectedness has tended not to be explicated. In particular, the uniqueness of the locality has tended to be either overemphasized or underated.[2]

In the dialogic model of Chinese History Museum, I saw the alternative solution of balancing and negotiating the body politic and national identity. The exhibition model utilize the history as an entry which “rendering the past meaningful to ourselves and communicating these meanings to others.” Individual identity was discussed when people actively involved in the exhibition process. The interpretation of history impacts in present live, enable audiences constantly reformulate their personal pasts, as well as located themselves in the future. The dialog also helps people from other community understand more easily about histories and values in different New York neighborhoods.

[1] E. B. White, Here is New York, New York : Little Bookroom, 1999
[2] Jack Tchen, “Creating a Dialogic Museum”, Steven Lavine, Christine Mullen Kreamer, Ivan Karp, Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture, Washington : Smithsonian Institution Press 1992

John Sims

2009-05-10T14:07:00.001-04:00

I still remember the scene when I came to United States for the first time. I was walking form Seventh Avenue to Lexington in the early morning to take a conference, and as any new comers, curiously running my eyes over the street. But the scene I saw is with no difference with any other modern cities: countless skyscrapers and crowd people. The only sign that make me feel it is United States is the flag hanging from building after building, and street by street. Actually, flag is everywhere in U.S., it is in people bags, credit cards, T-shirts, cars, ect. It surprised me a lot, because we never hang national flag ubiquitously as American do, the flag only appeared in Tiananmen, government organization, elementary school and middle schools as supreme reverence. Why the flag is used so broad in this country? What is the symbolic power behind it?

John Sims’ Confederate Flag project helps me understand and also changed my understanding in flags. The way he redesigns and hangs flags, people’s reaction to them, and the tension it cause between history and present, white and black people, all these things reveal me the complex problems related to the flags. No mater the sentiment related to the flag is derived from individual memory or collective memories. The strong reaction to John’s work at least, has demonstrated the power of visual image. His works are always controversial. In 2007, John’s “The Proper Way to Hang a Confederate Flag” ―a Confederate flag hung from a noose on a 13-foot gallows― exhibited at Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science, the work was called to remove by the Sons of Confederate Veterans for it was deemed disrespectful of the Confederate flag. Technically, the commander of the group cited existing Florida statutes that prohibit using the Confederate flag in any kind of abusive way. Personally, he described Sims as a gimmick artist and a purveyor of "hate speech" supported by the museum. Even before Sims' one-man show "Recoloration Proclamation: The Gettysburg Redress" opened in September 2004, there were protests and death threats. The Gettysburg College president ended upwith a bodyguard after the Ku Klux Klan sent an ugly e-mail. The FBI stepped in. However, it is true that art is about awareness; it is the severely antipathy and discomfort brought by the art work that shows the possibility to bring people of opposing sides together. On the other hand, John’s redesign and "recoloration." bravely responses to visual discrimination, challenges history and subverts the historical flag. As he said in the class: “ When people come to see my show, they don’t have to buy anything and they’ve been touched. They are like, ‘Okay, I’ll never look at the Confederate flag again the same way,”

John described his work as about visual terrorism, respect, and social self-esteem. It is also about race, religion, and collaborate branding. But I think just because his mathematic background, he is doing art as preciseness as scientists. The work is like a scientific research based on a visual context, it initiates a difficult discourse of psychological complexities of symbol racial tension. The public reaction to this symbolic history is dramatic, the uncontrolled human emotion cased by the visual image is also a significant part of the work. It directly and unequivocally deals with a symbol that represents the very heart of one of the disreputable part of American history. I admire his courage to address the problem and face it directly, but on the other hand, I am personally ambivalent about the some pieces of his work which designed as lynching instrument and exhibited in a public place. I felt the painful he caused in some audience’s heart is too harsh. As an artistic object, it may be more effective than others to raise attention and reflection, but to be exhibited in a public space, should artists responsible for public’s mental limitation? If address awareness always comes first, and if human feeling should always give place to the supreme artistic freedom, is the 911 attack really becomes the “greatest art”? The nation’s amendment rights give artists the privilege to express themselves in all manners, art has served as a cultural reflection of the times, and in which, different perspectives can be discussed, this is unquestionable. But I wander, where is an artists’ moral limitation?

Another thing I realized in John’s presentation is, even if an activist artist who by no means belongs to any institution or settled mechanism, he still needs to learn to manage and market himself. In the last part of his presentation, John mentioned his tips of initiating public interactive works, tips of how to do the marketing, make postcards, T shirts, were to send the information and how to increase the visibility of a project, how to include children, ect. I am so glad to hear those issues from John. Not every artist is willing to talk these details, however, I think these events are equal important with the art project itself, because to attract more public participation is also a part of the work. Universities and art schools usually trained artists in every aspect of professional skills but seldom teach them the practical skill to make a living as an independent artist, how to make their work more visible, where to find funding resources to realize and promote the great artistic ideas. These skills will undoubtedly facilitate and enable a real public involved project, and make the community based art sustainable and autonomous.

Be Serious

2009-05-10T13:51:00.003-04:00

While watching Woody Allen’s Manhattan the other day, I was considering that I do have to take writing more seriously, not keeping a personal diary that kind of writing, but write more like an intellectual. It needs earnest practice, and it takes time.

Allow myself a litte release

2009-05-09T16:19:00.008-04:00

I feel I need to unleash myself before the summer comes. Right after I spent continuous 24-hour writing the 35 pages paper, after countless essays and presentations, after four months intense work and classes, after more then 40 gallery visits in a month, 2 curatorial projects, and more... I do need a deep breath, a breath allow myself release all the guiltiness, the frustration, and the hypertension. Otherwise, I gonna turn into a rebarbative old lady. Mummmm… I already am a coward, selfish, stupid, blunt, and lazy little woman.

Farewell to April

2009-05-01T15:30:00.007-04:00

阴沉的下午，他在格林威治村穿过两条街。
他背对着广场，
将四月最后一片云吸入胸口。

醉里看展

2009-04-30T21:05:00.014-04:00

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。那展厅隐隐于市，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，屁大一地儿，墙都没好好刷齐，大片的红砖内墙就暴着，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，故而可以看得很放肆。107个方案文本，近年圈子里的大小红人一一点到。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，乱七八糟什么都有，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”，本身就没意义嘛。93年，先生估计还靠在日本的樱花树下放小鞭炮玩呢吧。

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”跟徐震的真人雕塑有的一拼，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。（美术馆至今仍在招募女性志愿者，18－64岁皆可，有医疗保险者优先，报名截至六月。）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。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吃了一大盘嫩绿色的有机豆子，终于从酒精中彻底缓过神来，可以回家写论文了。

New Project for the NYU Bobst Library

2009-04-27T23:02:00.005-04:00

I would like to use this project as way of rethinking the politics of knowledge - the Western interpretation of the East, and questioning on what extent does the Western knowledge of East helped us to understand the reality of the geopolitical region? Or, does this knowledge hinder further understanding between East and West?

Devicing details：

I am going to use books in Bobst Library to pile a 80cm high roadblock in each floor’s east wing entrance (4,5,7,8,.9th floor). All the selected books are titled with “oriental”, and will be sorted according to the color of the book cover. Each floor will have one single color book barrier. People have to stride over these book barriers to get across.

The 10th floor is Bobst’s East Asian Library. Books in this floor are in Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Most of them are non-circulation. This floor’s structure is different from others. It is not a loop, only the north wing is open to student, and there is only one entrance to the north side room. According to this structure, the 10th floor will be devised with numerous books stack at the entrance, leavening a narrow space (25cm width) for people who want to get into the room.

2009-04-26T17:01:00.000-04:00

纽约仿佛是没有春天的，四月初下完最后一场雪，月底便要翻出夏天的薄杉。木兰花大把大把得开在曼哈顿每一个街角。周末的时候和大米坐在新泽西的小镇街边吃brunch, 要了大杯拿铁和夹了蘑菇奶酪的可颂面包，阳光很好，苍白了一个冬季皮肤仿佛又开始生息。

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，那店总藏在屋宇深处。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。

2009-04-22T02:01:00.000-04:00

It is so great to listern to the Empty Room Waltz at midnight.

Thinking about SHARE

2009-04-20T09:16:00.013-04:00

Karen rose the idea of "self "and "heart" this morning, and said: as American, we talk too much about ourselves, and as artists, we keep following our own heart. BUT, is there any moment that we have to think about SHARE, share of knowledge, memories, intimate emotions, or, even a moment of gaze. When we keep digging the SELF, should we also leave a space for offering.

We all have to consider what to do with the intense knowledge we gained through out the short life, if we can't carry them to the afterlife, maybe we could choose to pass it around. Oh....SHARE...how beautiful!

自问：在艺术家索求于心性和个性的同时，是不是需要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。但事实是，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。

2009-04-17T11:54:00.010-04:00

有时候，放下绵绵喃喃的感性述说，就像叠起夏日的花色裙子，套一件黑的冬衣寒夜慢行。

也不知道在靠近什么。但步步坚实。像是我的仲夏夜已经过去了。

The Blood of Yingzhou District/ 颖州的孩子

2009-04-17T09:51:00.012-04:00

Yoyo给我发了这个片子的link，并引了余华的话：血管里淌着冰碴子。

以下是我的回信：

我看的时候潸然泪下。事件本身的重量在瞬间牵出我错综复杂的情感，这其中包括痛彻肺腑的怜悯，对当下社会处境和价值的质疑，以及对自身的愧疚和谴责。他们的苦难亦流进整个民族的血液里。

但就电影本身，这种人道主义关怀的姿态是值得质问的。看和被看中间存在着俯视。不仅仅是社会角色的权力失衡，同时也有知识权利的失衡。在我看来选择的拍摄角度里有失真的温情。其次它对被拍摄者的后续生活处境没有同等的关怀，这一点上，拍摄者几乎是不负责任的。

我并非对其作道德指控，恰恰相反，拍摄者的行动力和终极关怀都是值得尊重的，但这并不等于对其方式的认可。必须承认，阐释方式的选择将带出一个巨大的困境：到底有没有一个完全平等的对视、阐释和被阐释的可能？是要赤裸裸得展示真相和隐私以唤起人文关怀的重量，还是同时要担负起保护个人生存处境的道德责任？对现实伤疤的揭露方式和对影片本身的形式语言处理怎样契合才能保持其本真？这些都是不容易回答的问题。

Liz's Project

2009-04-11T15:54:00.004-04:00

Liz had a dream few months ago, in the dream she saw herself dying, with a tatoo on her back, including a tree and a plumpy blue bird. She woke up and decided to get a tatoo on her back like that. This is the only thing she would like to take with her when she pass away. I did the painting for her yesterday, as part of the vedio project.

Shen Wei's Show in Randall Scott Gallery

2009-04-08T00:07:00.016-04:00

Photos from http://www.shenphoto.com/index.html

上周跟pixy一起去看沈玮在布鲁克林的个展，贴几张他的照片上来（纳闷怎么在纽约碰到的上海人都玩摄影，除了云帆）。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。Pixy说她最爱第二张，我喜欢第一张，还剩下茫茫的希望。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。

Dilemma of Logos

2009-04-05T01:25:00.009-04:00

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.”

Havana Biennial / Is Cuba the next China?

2009-04-01T21:48:00.011-04:00

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.

2009-04-01T19:31:00.003-04:00

好像还没有奔跑起来，就已经老了。

中产阶级梦想和集体无力感

2009-03-28T23:07:00.027-04:00

"Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. "——Trainspotting

“选择生活，选择工作，选择事业，选择家庭。选择他妈的大电视，选洗衣机、车子、CD 机、电动开罐器，选择健康，低胆固醇，牙医保险。选择定息低率贷款，选择房子，选择你的朋友，选择休闲服和搭配的行李箱，选择他妈的布料系列中的某三件式西装，选择 DIY，然后在星期日早晨质疑自己他妈的究竟是谁。选择坐在那张沙发上看麻痺心智碾碎灵魂的电视游戏节目，往嘴里塞垃圾食物。选择在这一切的终点彻底腐烂，在悲惨的家里撒最后一次尿，对你用精子搞出来的自私混蛋小孩来说，你只意味著难堪。选择你的未来，选择生活……但我干嘛要做这种蠢事？我选择不选择人生，我选别的。”——猜火车

中产阶级梦想是我们一代人的主流社会价值吗？找一份公务员的工作，一个中产阶级家庭的老婆，有一间父母筹备的婚房和不必太好凑合能开的车子，然后凑合着过一辈子。我并不质疑这个价值的存在权力，只是惊讶于价值的单一。中产阶级梦想多大程度上填充了人生的留白？还是它彻底阉割了从五四积累起来的认知渴望和质疑冲动？浪迹的骁烈早已在当代生活的温床枯萎了吧。我从来不否认物质生活的重要性，对女人来说更是这样。就像伍尔芙说，女人写作，需要钱和一间属于自己的房间，但对于男性作者，也许“几本蓝色书脊的笔记簿、两支铅笔和一把卷笔刀、大理石桌面的桌子、清晨的气息，加上地板打扫擦洗干净，再就是运气，这就是需要的一切”（海明威）。不是女人更物质，只是物质往往能为弱势者支出一个发声的平台，添一分思绪的静持。但在物质生活从手段变成目的的时候，竟连发声的最初冲动都被淹没了。这个时代提供给我们的生存选择到底是多了还是少了？我们有足够充裕的受教育机会，足够多样的信息接收途径，足够便利的交流工具，但为何公共空间的喑哑程度几乎与鲁迅的时代相当。我们在少年的时候就暴露于全球视野，为何数年后仍然在小我的幽闭里不能自拔。中产阶级价值梦想究竟偷走了什么？喃喃自语背后是集体的无力。

萧耳说，“如果我们对这个世界较真，我们注定灵魂会痛苦。”可是如果我们不较真，也许灵魂就坠落了。可不可以，像Mark在电影里说的，“我选择不选择人生，我选别的。”

反观和自期

2009-03-28T21:46:00.017-04:00

[深南冥默]其实是一个青春写作文本，充满对自我的抒情。那是一个不能跳跃的阶段，但也是一个必须超越的阶段，毕竟那一点微薄的才情是根基肤浅的。写[South Away] 的期待是从那个对自身的疑问状态上升到“功能性的书写”，以无知者的谦卑去聆听世界，以渐进的幅度去面对、观看、思考和质疑知识及其载体。如果可能，梳理成为行动力的背后框架。现实重量是希望达到的目标，虽然有的时候还是不可避免得带上过多自我烙印，但我希望这部分是渐少的。书写需要一种社会意义去支撑起文字的重量。我想这才是教育更高层次的目的，使人从自我认知的基础上升到一个社会反思主体，反观教育和制度的缺陷, 进而渐成为社会慢性变革的动力和基架。我欣赏的是那极少数有批判力度，能真正拓展社会空间的人。(感于“八零后的社会空间”)

走一条长路回家

2009-03-27T00:15:00.054-04:00

任义下周回国，晚上跟他、Phoebe和小妙在China Town吃了顿饭，小妙在饭桌上愤斥中国当代艺术家，继而血淋淋地当面就开骂任义的画，说看他的画觉得连做中国人的尊严都没有，还好大伙儿都是哥们儿知根知底，任义倒也不介意，照样继续调侃。饭后绕到教堂对面的“丝路”喝薄荷绿茶，小妙说，王家卫以前就在这茶铺地下层剪片。回家的时候搭错了车，那地铁一路穿过布鲁克林大桥把我带出了曼哈顿岛。很久没有从这样的距离看曼哈顿，在初春的雨夜里，阑珊灯火都融进了雨水和河流之间。多花了一个多小时才回家，车厢里只我一人。刚提到王家卫，这时候自然就想起《蓝莓之夜》，那女人选择了最长的路去穿过一条街的距离。这片是出国之前看的，第二天清晨起来去把留了七年的齐腰长发剪成了短发。那时候我其实和她一样，为了一个抵达而选择走天涯。

小妙说他九月要去芝加哥艺术学院摄影系，晚上回来google了一下他过去的作品，被吓了一大跳，小妙就是“梦得娇”啊！传说中的纽约惊艳华裔男，上海男人做到这份上极致了，贴图为证。我第一反应是男版芙蓉姐姐。但仔细看觉得作品还是经过推敲的。所有的材料都用的是最廉价的，连光线也是，直接用闪光灯赤裸裸地打在对象上，但最低劣业余的材质让主题的燥感真实强烈的冲到眼前。这套照片在网上一路被狂呕。观者当即的恶心和不适感其实在瞬间就达成了对作品的一种经验与情感的反馈。这种对视觉图像的愤叱来自早已被默认的社会文化共识，它长期潜伏在意识状态下不被觉察，却对价值判起着强大的作用力。这套作品拍完之后没往常规的艺术网站发，直接发去各种八卦网络平台，骂声四起，成功达到了预期的效果。我同时在这些照片里看到一种夸大模拟和戏谑。中国当代艺术在过去十几年里的爆发（尤在市场环节）其实很大一部分作品在整个世界当代艺术里扮演的就是这样一个矫作、自我贩卖的形象。妙的照片，其实分不清它和那些媚俗愤世的红脸到底是一路货色还是借其刀而杀其人。上上周秦风来做个展前有一晚跟他在中城的小酒馆聊天，他说中国的当代艺术家在西方只有两种，一种妓女一种嫖客，或玩弄或被玩弄（小妙显然是选择了前者嘛^^）。不过秦风他自己不管是妓女或嫖客，能做到哈佛的研究学者也算是攀上青楼中的旗舰了。单凡去年回国在美院上课的时候给学生指导作品讲了一句话我到现在还记得，他说“做当代艺术要么做婊子要么立牌坊，总之要做到极致，又做婊子又立牌坊是做不好的。”但这种归类未免过分极端了，像陈若冰那样的艺术家，我就觉得自享一世界，不在这热闹场子里，但也许这也正是造成他冷门的问题所在。冷抽象冷门冷静，反而好。

Some throughts about the experimental film

2009-03-26T15:50:00.009-04:00

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 seriously define experimental film, 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“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 a means of reaching the untellable perception world 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?

2009-03-25T22:34:00.011-04:00

这几天又开始没志气得纠结那些无聊闷骚的小女人“自我中心”话题，最狠这没骨气的劲儿，到现在还是普天下云云里只看到个“我”，简直小心眼一个。

大怒，反省！关电脑做学问！
格物致知方能诚意正心以至修身齐家。自警之。

Solo Impression Inc. Visit

2009-03-24T19:55:00.018-04:00

前天夜里看一场电影，被狠狠击中，内伤持续了42小时，焦虑得不能安心做事和睡眠，直到下午去Solo Impression被这些作品治愈。

Jean Shin

Detail/局部:

"A series of five, large-scale inkjet prints on fabric, And we move (Pause) is made up of three intersecting elements: video stills that show a dramatic close-up of a conductor’s back as he leads an orchestra, the compositional score of Czech composer Bedrich Smetana’s Ma Vlast, and the excerpted sound waves of the edited video’s audio of the performance. The video stills--capturing the moments of music and movement frozen in time--are printed above the musical score. The wavy lines of the audio levels are embroidered between the two, thus suturing the written language of music to the digital recording of one performance. Overall, the prints are distinct visual representations of music in relationship to time, and conceptually fuse the optical and the aural. "

Jean是长居纽约的韩国女艺术家。这套作品围绕斯美塔那的交响乐《我的祖国》为主题（韩国人怎么就那么深的音乐情节，我们学院作曲系三分之一都是韩国人，估计在白南准之前就埋下根了），整件作品印在棉布上，上半截是乐队指挥在音乐过程中背部衣褶变换的图像，中间刺绣的部分是音乐的数字波形图，最下面是乐谱，一件作品从不同角度视觉化了作为听觉对象的音乐，而且各种方式的融合让人舒服。

这作品是在Solo工作室做的，Judy是与其说是老板，倒不如说是首席艺术家助理，她自己几十年前毕业于哥伦比亚大学版画系，后来在Chelsea开了Solo Impression。合作方式其实也是半创作式的，有时候艺术家有观念来找她解决具体技术问题，也有的时候她冒几个方案然后联系她觉得合适的艺术家商量。所以她始终介于艺术家和经营者之间，这种状态让我向往。Solo是一版画制作工作室（除了不太做蚀刻版）它为艺术家提供技术支持和解决方案，同时出售作品，不过Judy的说法是“we don't use the word 'sell', we use 'place'", any way...它虽然也做推广也卖作品但又不是画廊，没有定期的展览项目和开幕、策展这些部件，工作室旁边有一小的展示空间，高兴了展几天，也不靠那展赚钱，开幕就端端酒碰几个人罢了。

Judy大概有60多岁了，留着诡异的长指甲，身材走形得厉害。她裹一件很旧的灰褐色毡子外套，胸前一副50、60年代才有的黑色大框眼镜，活脱像个巫婆，但怪怪的叫人喜欢。这工作室几十年了一直只有她和她的一个助手在。六点的时候夕阳斜照进工作室，透过脏乎乎的铁架窗子和疏斜的植物照在层层叠起的木质储画箱上，唱片堆了一地，Judy的灰猫在地板上晃荡着。Judy像是突然想起什么，于是说，”他们有时候来跟我要画，我觉得像是前阵刚做过的，可拿出来一看简直不能相信，那已经是25年之前的事了。”时光在这里，流淌得太快还是太慢了？

2009-03-23T10:53:00.033-04:00

夜里看《一一》，清晨醒来很灰心，钝重得抬不起眼。

怀疑生命的密度是不是虚空的。“清醒者分有一个世界，沉睡者各有其世界”但哪一种又不是形影相吊而终？
关于爱，道德，困境这些词，在儿童时就学到了，只是那时候不知道，将要为其耗尽余生。更确切地说，是被其消耗的一生。人不是慢慢老去的，是在一个比回眸还短暂的瞬间里，在万古洪荒的荒谬和同一种恍惚里，顿然就老了。那少年说，“电影把我们的生命延长了三倍。”可我觉得，这电影用三个小时，把一生的旅途和宿命都讲完了，还能期待什么。这是一场意义缺席的闹剧。无论怎样，都是一样。

若水一般淡定的，才真正尖锐刺骨。

有这样的电影，还要绘画作什么？
可我清晨失望地站在飞速穿行的地铁里，突然急欲绘画。这一刻才恍然知道，真是要等到人别无出路的时候，绘画才成为可能和出路。

2009-03-22T03:06:00.011-04:00

有一天深夜她极度悲伤。她意识到身体里的那个诗人已经死去了，留下一副干枯丑陋的躯壳。
人世间是没有完美的。爱和时间也不能完美。其实残忍的不是今世的残缺，而只是认识到丑陋的那一瞬间。带着几世的荒凉。

爱是美好的。但这美好究竟在爱和不爱之间，在初见，在过程，还是在终结，她不能确信。所以终日惶恐。
他们爱着温润的她，干净宽容美好的她。可是那个丑陋凶猛自私狭隘的胸口被遗弃在黑夜里。那个胸口使灵魂喘息。

她甚至憎恨文字，那憎恨里带着嫉妒。因为所有在文字里达到的完整和破碎，都是人世里不能轻易到达的。而她同时疾病般地依赖着文字。文字是她给自己造的局。

生命不是演给别人的戏，所以她远走。即便如此，她依旧未能逃离。她在启程的时候早已带上了回归的焦虑。
她庸俗得生活着。

其实这一切都无所谓，因为她从一开始，就只不过是庸俗得活着。

We all live in second-hand worlds

2009-03-20T15:54:00.015-04:00

The first rule for understanding the human condition is that men live in second-hand worlds. They are aware of much more than they have personally experienced; and their own experience is always indirect. The quality of their lives is determined by meanings they have received from others. Everyone lives in a world of such meanings. No man stands along directly confronting a world of solid fact. No such world is available. The closest men come to it is when they are infants or when they become insane: then, in a terrifying scene of meaningless events and senseless confusion, they are often seized with the panic of near-total insecurity. But in their everyday life they do not experience a world of solid fact; their experience itself is selected by stereotyped meanings and shaped by ready-made interpretations. Their images of the world, and of themselves, are given to them by crowds of witnesses they have never met and never shall meet. Yet for every man these images-provided by strangers and dead men-are the very basis of his life as a human being.

The consciousness of men does not determine their material existence; nor does their material existence determine their consciousness. Between consciousness and existence stand meanings and designs and communications which other men have passed on - first, in human speech itself, and later, by the management of symbols. These received and manipulated interpretations decisively influence such consciousness as men have of their existence. They provide the clues to what men see, to how they respond to it, to how they feel about it, and to how they respond to these feelings. Symbols focus experience; meanings organize knowledge, guiding the surface perceptions of an instant no less than the aspirations of a lifetime.

Every man, to be sure, observes nature, social events, and his own self: but he does not, he has never, observed most of what he takes to be fact, about nature, society, or self. Every man interprets what he observes-as well as much that he has not observed: but his terms of interpretation are not his own; he has not personally formulated or even tested them. Every man talks about observations and interpretations to others: but the terms of his reports are much more likely than not the phrase and images of other people which he has taken over as his own. For most of what he calls solid fact, sound interpretation, suitable presentations, every man is increasingly dependent upon the observation posts, the interpretation centers, the presentation depots, which in contemporary society are established by means of what I am going to call the cultural apparatus.

——C. Wright Mills, “The Cultural Apparatus,” in Power, Politics and People: The Collective Essays of C. Wright Mills, ed. Irving Louis Horowitz （London, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1967）

These words are extraordinarily strong! It hits my long-term confusion about the “fact” of the society which we are encountering and experiencing, and also my understanding of self — the unreliable self-consciousness as well as the interaction between the “self” and the “other”. Following this consideration, I can't help wonder is art original, or actually second-hand?

Chinese Art from the Sackler Sale

2009-03-19T10:38:00.017-04:00

忙了一个月的萨克勒藏品昨天总算是开拍了，因为纽约中国艺术部的这场拍卖正赶上法国部拍两件生肖铜像的风波，呼吁抵制佳士得的声音仍然此起彼伏，拍卖前谁也说不好这节骨眼上那风波对业绩有多大影响，加上经济萧条对收藏的冲击，今年的拍品估价一再被压低。预展的时候倒是有不错的征兆，一些藏家觉得今年经济萧条艺术品价格被压低，是收藏的绝好时机，但也许大部分人都这么想，结果预展从头到尾人潮一直络绎不绝。昨天上午去拍卖现场观望了一下，场面异常火爆，压根就没见有落拍的东西，人都抢疯了。最后成交统计99.5%的拍品卖出，实现价格99.8% (相比同周拍卖的日韩艺术只实现35%, 南亚艺术54%），很大一部分拍品拍出了最高估价的两倍，一件北齐的大理石观音像和一卷八大山人的鸭鹊图最高估价都在50万美金，最后落槌一件170万，另一件120万，今早拍的一件青花瓷碗估价40-60万美金，结果以200多万落槌，我到佳士得头一回目睹这样的成交量。相比上周的当代艺术Open House拍卖（佳士得成交64%，苏富比60%，费利普只有52%），中国传统艺术在这一季简直创了神话。可见不管大经济环境如何，但凡是真有价值的艺术品，总有懂得的人赏识。中国传统艺术的藏家绝大多数还是华人，一来证明在敏感经济时期，中国人手里的资金相比还是充裕的，二来可以看出传统艺术收藏界比之当代艺术要沉稳很多。当然，这次拍卖的艺术品可靠来源也是重要的成功因素之一。

Besieged Loneliness 被围观的孤独

2009-03-18T16:42:00.021-04:00

他在永恒的瞬间里

守着不能永恒的爱

他俯身

亲吻光芒

在自己的怀中叹息

时间横空穿过那身体

宛如落进黑洞的星宿

我看见无数他的影子

像夜晚森林里的虫豸

他将撕裂三月的沉睡
那样孤独

那样的孤独

那孤独来自围观的人群

又或者，只源自时间的亘古

我坐在罅隙里陪伴着他

又或者，参与了众人对孤独的凌辱

——

3.17.09 记于表演现场

Davide Balliano 昨晚在Artists Space的现场表演。这展由教母级别的行为艺术家Marina Abramovic策展，整个现场极度感人。Davide背朝观众，怀里紧揣着一盏红色警报等，长达几小时里的时间里，只有很微妙的身体动作，时而用手抚摸灯罩，时而凝视，时而叹息，时而低身耳语，时而紧紧将灯藏进怀里。百般怜爱，万千苦楚。

策展人的原话是“This scenario acts as a platform for an investigation of the biological manifestations of hell, described by the artist as revolving around three central themes: darkness, coldness and loneliness.”他围绕着黑暗、冷漠和孤独三大主题，用身体去探索地狱式的苦境。

2009-03-18T02:51:00.014-04:00

I am angry at myself.
And I feel sorry for myself.

对于艺术家责任的思考

2009-03-16T23:06:00.005-04:00

How many artists really have the critical sense? Should artists be critical even if it sometimes puts them in a dangerous situation? Definitely, artist is a kind of trouble maker and somehow dangerous to any government which unexceptionally willing to keep the activist voice down. But a healthy society always requires dissent voices against the orthodoxy or the idées reçues that authorities have. 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.

Feb Calendar 二月记事本

2009-03-16T14:31:00.007-04:00

2009-03-15T21:09:00.002-04:00

看到黎戈写契诃夫，觉得有相似处，摘之：

“契诃夫是个魔羯－水瓶。我和李老师讨论过，这个时段出生的人，往往有水瓶的天赋，加上魔羯的隐忍。从表象上看，契诃夫温和圆融，没有棱角，和任何人都不会有剧烈的冲突，迥异于白羊高尔基和狮子托尔斯泰的烈性与好斗，但是，也没有人能真正的接近或是渗透进契诃夫的内心，他像少女维护自己的贞洁一样，用一层月光般清冷的釉化剂，让别人轻盈的滑过他的表层，而无法深入。受到屈辱的时候，他从不出恶言，而是隐于人群，慢慢消化和吞咽…他屡屡艳遇，频频得手，可是他对妻子的要求是‘最好是一个月亮，不要和我出现在同一个地平线上’。敏感柔脆的人，自卫的方法通常是两种，一是尖锐的对立，二是用貌似温柔的“不抵抗”，使对方的敌意变成无用功，契诃夫是后者。”

Art as Fate

2009-03-15T19:50:00.011-04:00

上周徐冰在哥伦比亚大学讲座，说的有一句话我印象特别深，“艺术其实是宿命。我做作品的时候并不知道我对这个东西感兴趣，是过了很多年回头看的时候才知道自己原来是对这些感兴趣。一个人做什么样的艺术是早就命定的。” 这话值得探讨。放情感层面上说我是信的，我这人一直挺宿命，但由理智出发我是不信的，一个人在什么样的社会就思考什么样的问题，艺术家首先就是人，其次是公民，做什么样的作品必是由境遇生的，如果艺术家担负了公共知识分子的责任，还能说是宿命的吗？要说社会境遇也都是宿命当然可以，但牵强。

徐冰的讲座完了又和默一，罗清，楠楠，晓明和yoyo一起赶去MoMA听冯梦波的。那天是Barbara London主持的谈话，去晚了只听了个尾巴。在哥大的时候反复有人提问艺术教育的问题，巧的是冯以前在央美正是徐冰的学生，徐冰讲座没回答完的问题倒是冯梦波间接给作答了，徐教版画教出了个媒体艺术家，也许算是个成功的案例。

一伙人吃晚饭的时候开始讨论对讲座的看法，罗清说他初来纽约，关注点停留在这些西方人提出的问题上，也就是说中国当代艺术在现在这个阶段是如何被西方观众吸收和消解的，他们看中国艺术家做的作品时在思考什么样的问题。他的基本看法是中国艺术仍然是弱势的，二十一世纪的当代艺术和九十年代并无大的区别，依然是大国经济的副产品。他觉得这种对中国艺术的猎奇心态将尽，并将转移它处，而对于中国本土艺术家能不能发出更独立的声音去进行对话或提出挑战，他的态度比较悲观。我不能完全认同他的观点。当然我们谴责西方对东方的误读，但误读并不是一无是处的，它至少提供了一系列线索，关于种种价值取向及其内在前提，这对我们自己的文化反思是有利的。老大是百科全书，后来这问题被他一扯，天文地理的又扯远了，没接着聊下去。

Every Girl Has A Dream

2009-03-15T14:30:00.029-04:00

清晨七点，零下八度，漫天飞雪。睡了5小时然后背了两个巨沉的大包吭哧吭哧去上班，路过华盛顿广场的时候不幸一屁股跌坐在了雪地里，暗自骂了句“Shit！”也就翻身起来继续赶路了。要换了过去，这点破事儿得放心里发酵一整天，晚上回家必酿出篇涕泪俱下的博客不可。可是在纽约，谁又未尝过辛酸的滋味呢，这样的时刻，心底要不是守着信念，我想我就坐着起不来了。

北影的策展项目八个人合作，最后因为点小事罢工只剩下两人，我和Molly周末早晨7点起来拎着榔头扛着几十件作品硬是去展厅把那展给挂出来了，这个把月攒的猛劲全用上了。上班更没闲着，佳士得的亚洲艺术拍卖周正赶上亚洲当代部的人去了香港，结果什么活都揽给我和Nick做。周一穿着小高跟鞋跑了一整天，从早上八点起来到一直到晚上五点才吃了第一口饭。五点多有重要藏家和策展人的接待会，结果离开始剩半小时的时候仓库一个电话过来说哈佛大学美术馆运了两张巨大的赵无极过来，要人过去拆箱检查然后入库，刚放嘴里的饭还没来得及嚼就生吞了去干活。周二上九小时的课，交二十多页的作业，做两个期中报告，中间就十多分钟空出来疾走十个街区去上另一堂课。我想这半年我愣是从一个斜倚江南的宅女活生生被逼成个生猛劳工了。S问我觉得辛苦吗？我想我是连觉得辛苦的时间都不大有，没有发呆的时间也就没有苦楚。

“Every girl has a dream. ”我顺手在记事本上写，那天是Art Business的presentation day。这些我遭遇的女人，她们的梦想不是prince charming，她们的美丽来自对自身价值的追问和信念。R现在在中城经营一小画廊，她present的商业计划是艺术主题酒店，结合奢华酒店和驻地艺术家项目，并利用纽约艺术资源为住客量身定制艺术咨询及向导服务;B的项目是Restaurant with menu and receipt inspired by art; H 做的是企业艺术咨询；K自去年起已经开始运营她的艺术交际公司，客户群体锁定纽约的单身Middle Class; C的商业企划是儿童服饰，图案和样式设计均出自现当代艺术作品，她本人负责所有的图案设计工作，做的设计纹样非常惊艳；P现在在华美协进社做儿童教育，但雄心勃勃得要做一个T恤设计公司，正在联系年轻艺术家合作。这些二十出头的女人，她们的梦想也许还稚嫩，但是那样的匆忙慌张里有美好。三十出头的纽约女人美丽的方式是全然不同的，美丽背后多少都藏着辛劳，她们的聪颖在于平衡。在罗清的开幕展上结识N，她在新加坡做了七年的艺术总监然后放手跟着丈夫和两个孩子来了美国从新开始她的画廊生涯。N是极聪明的女人，但她的睿智，自信和疲惫总都藏在懒散随意甚至糊涂的外表下。这些年从艺术圈子里走过来，我相信她是倔强的，不然早不能坚持了。Z是生得伶俐润腻的上海人，第一眼就让人觉得很干练精明，不像N，叫人觉得她那样糊涂。Z曾经在纽约苏富比做了n年，在那小圈子里呼风唤雨直到去年出局，无论在感情还是事业上她都是久经沙场的武士。我看着她就想起《将进酒》，是“人生得意须尽欢，莫使金樽空对月”的意味，她是受伤并顽强着的女人。有的时候看看N和Z我就想，这是不是也是十年后的我？换成我，愿不愿意做这所有的牺牲去实现这个梦想？它的意义有多大？有一天晚上我看到N充满血丝的疲惫眼神，那一刻我犹豫了。

William Bennett Gallery

2009-03-10T15:12:00.006-04:00

William Bennett Gallery was exhibiting Dali’s prints in the day when I was hanging out in SoHo for a random walk. The large and eye catching poster outside the front door in Greene Street obviously attracted the most audience in SoHo comparing to other galleries, especially in a extremely chilly Friday afternoon.

The quality of the works is unquestionable for sure, because it is Dali’s work anyhow. And the price of the work is not too high, since most of the works are printed for 1000 editions or more, the work is acquirable for normal middle-class collectors, which is really matter especially in this economy. However, I should say that the show is totally screwed up by the seventeenth or eighteenth century like factitious context. The garnet color and enchased golden framework create a kind of classical atmosphere imitating the typical exhibiting space of MET but totally incompatible with the images they are carrying. I believe whatever kind of simple frameworks would create more comfortable feeling for the show.

I didn’t find any introductory information of the gallery on their website, neither mission nor history, but at least it’s clear that William Bennett is a gallery mainly representing master modern artists, for their artists roster include Joan Miró, Picasso, Matisse, etc. But their way of installation make the modern art seems like antique already.

Deitch Projects

2009-03-10T14:10:00.001-04:00

Deitch Projects is an exception in the sense of its physical space, in stead of having a large French window on the street side, their window are small and looks more like a regular apartment window. Looking into the space is like peeking a private living room, or a room of kindergarten with pictures and colorful paper cut ladders hanging on the patterned wallpapers. Passing in front of Deitch Projects is a totally different experience comparing to other galleries. It is fun, attractive and coursing curiosity.

The general styles of the works that Deitch Project represents share a lot of commonness, so do Deitch’s “ice-cream shore” like website. As it said, Deitch Projects is known for embracing the new convergence of art, music, performance, film and design, the inside exhibition space is usually leave for video or other new media works. They were exhibiting a retrospective exhibition of Stephen Sprouse called Rock on Mars when I visited, works and curatorial strategies totally transform Deitch Projects’s 18 Wooster Street gallery into a realization of Sprouse’s rock and roll futuristic vision. The experience is surreal, and the whole environment and atmosphere is more powerful than each single work. I am not sure if these works can be easily sold out, but it is experimental for sure.

Gail Albert Halaban @ Robert Mann Gallery

2009-03-04T00:25:00.006-05:00

I went to see the Gail Albert Halaban show last week and was really inspired by the space. The show is called Out My Window. I can’t think of any other space which can be as perfect as Robert Mann Gallery to launching the exhibition. The works shown in the gallery are photography shot in New York City and framed by windows. The works peek at people’s life and private space intimately but also distantly. In the limited frame of window and camera, the artist finds out a safe and comfortable way of looking at the inhabitants and neighbors of the indifferent and isolated New York. The New Yorkers live nearby by may never speak to each other but in exposure reciprocally. There is dramatic gazing and silent conversation exists in the distance created among the viewer and the Manhattan scene. What is interesting to look at is the gallery space itself has two large windows framing the typical New York skyline, and that echo the works incredibly well. It is not simply provide a context for the work, but also creates another layer of the work and extremely change the experience of viewing and engaging with the work.

也写点中文吧。Gail Albert Halaban耶鲁研究生毕业，这个是她第二个个展。作品我挺中意的，不过我更感兴趣的是展览空间，简直是为她这个展定做的！

这张是画廊的窗户，一共两面窗

左边是玻璃上的反射，从这个角度看作品，画廊窗外的影像

能很好地呼应作品，真实空间在作品空间里加了一层对应性。

贴几张清楚的：

Exit Art

2009-02-28T20:24:00.012-05:00

Exit Art is a gallery located at the end of the world. It is far away from the subway, and is surrounded by those desolate industrial building at the west side of Manhattan. Not only marginal in the 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 visit in Exit Art convinces me that there is still someone fighting for the eternal value of art, or, for the ultimate good of human being. And 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 the kind of fancy gallery in SoHo that one pass by and will walk into it randomly. 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 on 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 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.

写了这么多懒得翻译了，总之这展作品质量不高，几乎可以说比较差，但它提出的问题不是单个作品，而是整个展示方式对民主社会的思考和回应。我的感觉是整个展览本身是一个作品，一个完整的疑问，不能单件单件分开看。

直接把大富翁的棋盘挂墙上了，前面摆着一叠“免牢狱一次”的赦免令，观众可以将其带走。

下面是局部，用纸巾在透明塑料板上贴出来的。感觉综绘的小朋友们一

用纸贴全成了吴少君风格，原来黑纸条还可以贴成这样子的。思维僵化啊。

“艺术家联合起来为人民服务！”嘿嘿，怎么听起来像文革

Feburary Studio Visit

2009-02-28T09:19:00.010-05:00

I started the studio visit three week ago, and intermittently met several BFA, MFA students as well as Alumni who just start their artistic career and the ones already in their mid-career. The original studio visit journal was written in the form of notes derived from each visit, the conversation with the artist and my own understanding of their work. But when all the visits are done, I feel strongly that there is a common theme flowing underneath these visits, the problem we discussed in one conversation usually developed, answered or further interpreted in another. The issue which I was confused and considering can be somehow inspired or refreshed by the reflection of all the visits as a whole. So finally, I try to write this journal as a whole. To me, these studio visits are extraordinary, which start without a given subject or a certain position, but end up with an axis. It is a process of opening myself, listening and trying to understand different values. At the same time, it is an act of rediscovering myself, my own practice of communication and interrogation, since the conversation sometimes initiated a collaborative reflection. It is like the concept in German romanticism that the conversation never reaches an end for it always only approximates its subject and therefore always requires continuation. One visit after another, a core subject is more and more clear and lead to new stage of considering and understanding.

***

I did not choose artists specifically at the first moment. I walked into BFA studio in the first week and pick artists randomly for the conversation, because I thought it is important for me to challenge what ever works I may or may not like, and make a way to understand them. So I talked to Audrey Tran and Whitney Hellesen in that week. I met Ji Hae Koo in the mixing and followed with a visit in her studio the other week, and then visited Kanako Okazaki. It is interesting to juxtapose their works, compare four of them under notions of authenticity, exotification and cultural-displacement. On same level, one person’s work may provide context and reference to another one’s work.

Audrey is an America born Vietnamese but never go back to Vietnam since she was born. I was a little bit surprised when she said she did not feel any cultural difference with her native American peers literally. Among many other Asian-American and Asian artists I have talked, she has the least cultural and identical confusion about herself. She is clearer and more confident about who she is, how her cultural identity has been shaped. Whitney is native American, but interestingly, Mao’s statues and images, China flag, Chinese characters are every where in her studio. After participating the NYU project in Shanghai, she did lots of works based on Chinese images and icons. I see it as a good example of how the so called "China" is consumed among western youth.

Audrey Tran

When I walked in to Audrey Tran’s studio, she was dying some toilet paper with natural tea powder. On her right side, a large scale installation occupies 1/3 space of the tiny studio. Looking from a distance, it seems like some early twenty century interior decoration, with wallpaper with geometry patterns and wood floor. A door made by toilet paper was set in front of the room. The pale color and cheapness of the door create an uncomfortable contradictory in front of the colorful room and bring up a feeling that either the view of a room is fake or we are staying in a mundane world but peeking a mystic space in a voyeuristic way. The yellow colored wall paper was made by some foam like compound, and shaped like countless caterpillars. The awkward contrast between the artificial compound and the organic form address a dialogue between natural and unnatural, human nature and post-industrial life.

Toilets, 2008, Audrey TranAudrey explained that environment is her long time concentration. She is interested in artist’s possibility to provide foresight for the next steps in enviromentalism. But her work is not only about the political conviction; aesthetical part is always bound in her work with the ethical or political aspect. She said in her blog that “it really is a difficult thing, for me at least, to understand when the balance between ethics and aesthetics has shifted too much to one side. Today, this is certainly the something to be aware of.” In the process of finding balance of art’s own sake and art as political message, she is addressing or reflecting our fears (consciously or unconsciously) and the existential questions of the Human Condition. As the Toilet work she made in 2008, which was all made of cardboard and paper, was described by Audrey herself with the words from Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” Toilets in modern water closets rise up from the floor like white water lilies. The architect does all he can to make the body forget how paltry it is, and to make man ignore what happens to his intestinal wastes after the water from the tank flushes them down the drain...we happily ignore the Venice of shit underlying our bathrooms, bedrooms, dance halls, and parliments. “It is clearly that Audrey’s work is pointing to the awkward aspect of contemporary human life beneath its clean and will designed surface, the green material is a key element in her work which helps to keep a balance in-between.

Audrey is really good at communicating and interpreting the inexpressible part of herself. When I ask a question, she can dig into it, and then, usually led to another significant one. Not all of the artists have this ability of oral expression. It might attributes to her minor degree in Journalism, which keeps her having dialogue with others and writing constantly. Artists are brilliant in that they see the same things we see but they see them in very different directions. But some of them more concentrate on their own world, good at talking to themselves, while others have good insights on how to communicate effectively, and makes others re-think themselves. I am sure that Audrey is the later one. Her works are always driven from daily life circumstance, but powerfully enlighten our way of looking at ourselves lives.

Whitney Hellesen

Whitney is honest about her understanding of China and her exotic Oriental imagination. The piece hanged on the wall center of her studio is a painting which simply changes clothe of Mao with a cartoon character. The image is Pop like, with stiff gesture and with no setting, no narrative, just like a mass production made for the purpose of consumption. Whitney said it is her way of approaching the so called “East”, it is the specific Asia image in her mind, which is more like a chic. Here, Mao’s image has no difference with a Disney character, for which do not necessary bear historical or political significance to her. Her other installation work done in Shanghai last year is installed with a huge amount of objects they get from the local market place. All the objects (such as pop-star posters from the early century, red flags, fake Buddha sculpture, commodities made in China, etc) were piled together randomly as a wholesale understanding of Asia society. But on the other hand, the whole structure of the piled mundane objects creates a monumental moment, not only rooted in the artist’s fascination in Asia, but the western society as a whole. In Whitney's work, I saw the shade of Orientalism cliché, an iconographical deconstruct of East. Although it is not a mature work, but I respect the honestness she expressed when talking about her own away of understanding the Far East.

Another set of Whitney’s work which has been done in Shanghai is more interesting and self derivative. In that photo works, she made a respirator with colorful printcloth for each person she knew, and shot the picture under a specific circumstance. She explained it as her own way of knowing other people, the different design and color on the respirator refer to her individualized visual perception. Looking at her work, we are suddenly led into her story telling tour, with pictures slide by slide passing in front, a wonderful film just start.

Ji Hae Koo

Ji Hae is another case. She was born and grown up in Korea and went to Chicago five years ago, since she came to NYU, her art is mostly working on the conflict distance between self and other, inner part of human perception and outer spaces, the personal memory of past as culturally specific identity and current situation as in-between East and West values. Maybe because of the unavoidable Asian personality, Ji Hae and Kanako’s works are tend to be more self-centric, or say, inner enlightening and exploring.

Honestly, Ji Hae’s work is not the kind of artwork which will suddenly catch my eyeballs. When it was showed in the Commons gallery, I took a glance at the work and directly passed by. I should admit that in the razzle-dazzle contemporary art world, easel painting is more or less a weak and invisible form; it is hard to be heart-stirring or pioneering. Among all the first MFA students, only two of them are painters. My discussion with Ji Hae started with the abstract painting titled Ambivalence, it is the work I was most confused. I can feel the distance in the two dimension work, a distance between the space created by the contrast of blue and red-green color, but I am not sure what did I see. Ji Hae said it is the second painting she did in New York. She started painting very early. Before coming here, she was studied in an art middle school, art high school and art collage in Korea, and transferred to School of Art Institute of Chicago three years ago. She was well trained in the fundamental tectonics of painting in these professional path, but since she come to New York, she soon realized this will trained ability strongly limited her production, it is like been thrown a large swamp and hardly to pull herself out. She was really upset about the first piece of realistic painting she did, and then pick up this two small canvas at hand, finished the “Ambivalence” in ten minutes with her mind totally blanked from any planning, emotion, and figurative memory. She immediately discovered the instable but extremely peace moment of producing, and decided to follow her instinct and subconscious. This painting as well as later ones is actually paintings of a perceptive process, a constant dialogical movement between the “I” and not ”I” rather than a finished, static image of a concrete scene. As Alexander Jovanovich described, Ji Hae works within the idiom of invisibility. Though her works are material, and are typically made manifest via formally exquisite painting, drawing, or idiosyncratic hybrids of the two, what she presents to her viewers, and always strictly on the surface, is a camouflage, a ruse. Her intellectual concerns, her emotional coordinates, land somewhere within the realm of odd systems and mistranslations, poetic stunt-making and fortuitous accidence. When I ask why she choose painting instead of other material, Ji Hae smiled and said the process of painting all ways made her exciting! In this stage, painting is her way to abandon all the past professional practice she did in the art school and get to know herself in a centripetal way. It is in the encounter moment of the American value and her Asian identity, she left the past behind and move forward to find a way to explore the self. It is on the opposite orientation with the road Kay Lin (whom I visited later) choose, who came to America from Taiwan fifteen years ago but insists to be the one she used to be fifteen years ago, and paint in a style just as she did in school. In the tension of experiencing different cultural identity, Kay arrives her own world by retreat, whereas, Ji Hae decides to move to.

I am really grateful for this studio visit. To me, it is an opportunity to challenge myself, to leave alone my personal preference, abundant the preset judgment of an artwork, and start to understand every piece of work from a humble attitude as well as to make effort to communicate with the work. I learned it from Ji Hae.

Kanako Okazaki

It was a cold and raining Sunday afternoon that I toke the E train from Manhattan to Long Island for a studio visit with Kanako Okazaki. Her studio is on the third floor of an old building across the street of PS1. I arrived five minuets ago and was surprised that Kanako was waiting me downstairs. She was in a pink color knitting dress and smiled like a teenage girl. The first impression made me hard to believe the woman in front of me is already over 30.

More surprisingly, Kanako was well prepared for this visit: the laptop and projector was already set up in the viewing room; the studio was extremely clean and neat; her former portfolios were on the desk; even juice and cup were prepared! I finally realize that all these detail are a part of who she is, her personality, her cultural background, her way of dealing things and her way of making art. But all in all, she is such a adorable girl, talking to her is an amazing experience. She was a little bit shy, missish, but once the conversation goes deeper, you will soon discover a indescribable beautful and fertile world hiding under her gentle and quiet appearance.

As many Japanese contemporary artists, Kanako’s work is cute, childish and cartoon-like, but at the same time, her work combines with a feeling of evil, jealous and loneliness. The narrative of fairy tale usually comes with brutal damage. When I asked if she has ever affected by the style of any Japanese artists, she told me that she used to working in Aya Takano’s art studio and paint for the artist, and this experience more or less has some impact in her work, however, Aya’s work is mainly about boy’s sexual fantasy and her work has nothing to do with this kind of theme but in many case a description of egoism and the tension between different relationship. For instance the work Teatime is bout human relationship in contemporary society. In the story, the girl is a conversation with the other character, but she is actually kept talking to herself without realizing whether the other is listening to her or not. When the first relationship fail, she continues to communicatein the same way with another character and end up with the other character is killed by jealous and then eaten by the girl. During all the process, all episodes are happening in silence, just as the girl is eager to express but never have real sound coming out. There are different layers of meaning going on in this work, the will of being understood, the loneliness feeling in a relationship, angry and sad, innocent and evil, childlike wish and ruthless reality, the desire of love and instinctive selfish. Kanako her self’s introverted Asian personality and isolated sensation in Western culture, her passionate and expressive part and the gentle, quiet part, her generation’s dilemma and tension are all concinnated in the four minutes work. Kanako’s early work do not have so many layers in one work, the narrative is more direct. When asked if she think there is any progress in different period’s work, or there is just different way of doing art, she said she believe there exists progressing, but it is in the development of the artists themselves, and the phases of development they are going through. It is not necessary that any later work should be more progressive then the earlier one, it can be inner progress, emotional progress when artist is going from one state to another and so on. (Not finish yet)

The Third Mind in Guggenheim

2009-02-16T18:02:00.014-05:00

周日去Guggenheim看The Third Mind, 这展把十九世纪末到八十年代以来美国艺术家收到的东方影响零零总总做了个回顾，规模很大，从惠斯勒开始，到早期的抽象艺术，抽象表现，极简主义，观念艺术以及表演艺术，一共挑了100个艺术家，让人觉得怎么一部美国艺术史突然全成了东方观念的Postchild？总体印象是学了东方的皮毛，不达筋脉，每个艺术家的说明文字里满眼都是书法禅宗，敢问有几个人真懂真学了。Ann Hamilton 的装置是其中最突出的一件，对整个建筑和展览的理解非常到位。这展名曰American Artists Contemplate Asia，其实也囊括了很多后来在美国做艺术的日本艺术家，没明白怎么就都变成美国艺术家了。老美就这样，仿佛国际的都是美国的，所以也就有了National Museum of Asian Art之类怪胎。绕着螺旋空间一路看上去，最后压轴的是谢德庆的“一年艺术”，Guggenheim挑的是第二个一年艺术，打卡那组。最近谢德庆貌似突然被主流圈子挖掘出来了，在纽约时报上了艺术头版，MoMA三楼也在展他的一年艺术，第一组直接把当年表演的整个笼子搬到美术馆当装置了，但我觉得那笼子还是从原始照片里看更有说服力，它在照片里是作为一个文本记录，是观念的载体和场域，被MoMA干干净净地在一大房间一摆，再打个昏黄的小灯，顺便把衣服被子都叠齐了放在铁丝床上，不伦不类的小情调让人看了很不爽，不知道的还以为欧洲人做的后工业设计呢。第二组一年计划MoMA用的是照片，但没Guggenheim的版本好，Guggenheim是全幅照片连每天打的卡一起展。

在Guggenheim那天除了看到传说中的大腕Uli Sigg，还碰到了好几个熟人。前阵风声四起都说乌里希克没钱要开始卖藏品了，搞得他在波士顿的展人气很旺，我们亚洲当代部的Ingrid和佳士得纽约这边的老大都不上班到波士顿赶场去了，不过人家貌似要在嘉德卖，大老远跑去也不见得分到一羹。

http://web.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/exhibition_pages/thirdmind/index.html

PS1, Jan 31 2009

2009-02-08T10:54:00.012-05:00

Leandro Erlich: Swimming Poor

这个作品对美术馆现有空间的利用非常好，美术馆的建筑构造提供了观看作品的最佳次序。Leandro生于一个建筑世家，从小对空间及公寓结构十分敏感。他认为建筑空间在其实用功能，审美，和身份象征之外还隐含着一个情感和感知的层面。作为人们日常经验的载体和语境，日常空间成为了生活的舞台，提供与环境对话和互动的可能。这些日常建筑空间定义了我们自身，它成为我们存在的外壳，见证了我们的际遇。在他的作品中，建筑本身的实用功能被削减或转换，空间随之变成了一种诗性的虚构，隐喻和象征无处不在。同时它提出的问题是美术馆本身在为作品提供展示空间之外，它的空间是否还能成为构成作品的因素或成为作品过程的一部分。美术馆自身如何提供给观者一个思维转换的可能。

Alan Saret: Brick Wall and Sun

Alan在美术馆三楼东侧的走廊尽头，他在美术馆的砖墙上凿了一个直径两厘米左右的洞，早晨阳光从东面照进来时透过洞口沿走廊形成一条移动的光线。作品的即时性，不定性，以及物质和自然空间的关系是他长期关注的问题。很有趣的是策展人将她的作品设在美术馆东侧，只在早晨一段时间可以看到作品的全貌，而同一层楼JamesTurrell的作品Meeting每天只在日落的极短时间里对公众开放，由于每天日落的时间一直在变，允许参观的时间也因时而变。两个作品的呼应非常好。

“The flexure of each material draws a line in space which corresponds identically to its physical properties. Nature, therefore, draws the final line in the art.”——Alan Saret

Olafur Eliasson: Take Your Time

Olafur的作品必须整个人平躺在展厅里才能体会他想要提供的空间经验。虽然作品看起来很简单，但效果很好。我个人的感受是从来没有在这样的空间里存在过，以这样的角度和距离对视自己。这个展厅很大，所以能出效果，估计小的空间不行。

James Turrell: Meeting

很强大，天花板被打空了，这作品每天日落的时候才开放，可以围坐在打了橙色灯的正方形空间里凝视被割出来的一方天空，不知道是天空在落日时分变得极蓝还是因为色彩对比的缘故，总之无敌巨暴狂美。没啥好说的，James绝对一诗人啊！

Børre SæthreStealth：Distortion (...must have seen it in some teenage wet dream)

玻璃橱窗里面是独角兽标本，乍一看以为又是一个Damien Hirst. 但是从橱窗前走过的时候非常震撼，不知道这玻璃什么材质的，总之从右到左走过去，那棺子里的独角兽时隐时现，并发出迷离的七彩光芒，跟梦境一样，惊艳得我目瞪口呆。这个作品像是窥视到一个住着传说动物的异质世界，据PS1页子上的解释，说他故意打断了完整视野的舞台氛围，造成一种类似窥阴癖的观看，时间性在他的作品空间里被搅乱冻结，他的神话动物标本在远古和未来之间造成冲突。我看时的感受是一种超现实的时空分离。

Amalia Mesa-Bains: The Curandera's Botanica

这一件是整个NeoHooDoo主题展中我特别喜欢的一件作品, 屋里铺了一地薰衣草，气味很重，一进房间觉得像进了吉卜赛人的占卜铺子。台子上乱七八糟堆了造型奇怪的玻璃实验器皿，蜂鸟的尸体标本，古怪的植物学研究笔记，木雕的骷髅，晒干的植物，泥土等等。左边的书架从下至上每一层密密麻麻拍着各种个人物品，隐喻着从出生到死亡轮回间丰盛的记忆，但同时也透着神秘和凄凉。

José Bedia
Las Cosas que me Arrastran (The Things That Drag Me Along)

和美洲奴役史有关。船上装着象牙，狐狸标本，雪茄，麻织物，牛仔帽等等

Radcliffe Bailey：Storm at Sea

上面这三个作品是NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith主题展的一部分，“NeoHooDoo”隐含着一种宗教性，仪式性，和对自由精神的信仰。这个潮流始于十九世纪的文学和艺术创作，主要存在于美洲及原住民群岛。这个展览有很强的美洲土著文化意味和神秘的仪式感。

Leandro's work is exhibited in the first floor of PS1, just close to the main entrance, thus, it turns to be one of the most eye catching works in the museum. It seems as the Duplex gallery is just built for the work, or, the idea of the work is born according to the physical space of the gallery. As Leandro himself explained, the space is perfectly created a correct viewing order for his work. Undeniably, this work bend the boundaries of space with architectural installations that are, in one way or another, incomplete, unexpected, impossible, or disorienting.[1] Not only Leandro’s work, many other works exhibited in PS1 this season represent reflection of the architecture’s limitation and intend to break the normal spatial concept and perception. (Such works as Alan Saret’s Brick Wall and Sun, James Turrell’s Meeting, and Olafur Eliasson’s Take Your Time.) I think Leandro’s own statement is really important for understanding his work.

LE: I was born into a family of architects, and early on I found myself wondering about spaces, construction sites, apartments, and houses. I found that these spaces were able to hold information not just related to functionality, aesthetics, or social status, but also to a hidden layer of emotions and perceptions. I am interested in architecture as the background of our daily experiences: an emotional architecture. I think of ordinary spaces as the stage for a play. The play is, of course, our lives: we are continually interacting and in dialogue with our habitat. It defines us; it is the envelope of our existence and has a major role in the way things happen for us.

In my installations, the functional aspect of architecture either no longer exists or has been altered completely. Daily spaces—the architecture we take for granted—are very often where my work starts. The spaces I create become a poetic fiction for the viewer. Symbols and metaphors are hidden in doors, cabinets, living rooms, mirrored rooms, or inside a swimming pool.

So, it is not really the surreal but the “real” that interests me. The “very real”: the ordinary and the way that our notion of reality is conceived. There is no better place to question reality than in the ordinary.

The work itself also raises the cliché of museum’s role in contemporary art. What is museum capable of when it involves in the producing process as well as the representation of the art? Except as a functional architecture, can it experiment to be an environment which shifts the viewer's perception and experience of place and self?

I felt the curator is really intelligent to put Alan and Olafur’s work in the same floor. Both of their works are non-static and affected by the natural elements. Alan’s Brick Wall and Sun is set on the eastside of the museum, only in the morning when sunlight faces the exterior side of the building, a focused stream light shines down to the floor to make the sculpture on view. Oppositely, Olafur’s Meeting can only been viewed at the moment of sunset. But they parallel in the way of finding a time-driving space in nature, and creatively using the museum architecture.

[1] Leandro Erlich: Swimming Pool: Immersed in Reverse conversation between Alanna Heiss and Leandro Erlich

Jen Bekman Gallery

2009-02-07T12:00:00.013-05:00

I went to Jen Bekman Gallery last Friday evening for the opening of HEY, HOT SHOT! The gallery is located in 6 Spring Street, before that, I’ve never been to the Bowery Art District. I got the gallery at 7:00pm, and was shocked by the extremely crowded scene. When I finally squashed in the gallery, I found it is impossible to see the works, people are everywhere. Seems none of them really came to see the work. Then, why do such a great number of people congested here at a chilly snowing night? What do they do and what are they expecting form this opening event? Maybe it is true, the meaning of opening is only for the purpose of social and exchange information.

Jen Bekman opened this pocket-sized gallery in 2003, with the mission of supporting emerging artists and collectors, and she's made a name for herself doing just that. The gallery space is really tiny, if you stretch two arms, you can nearly reach the wall in both sides, it is impossible to exhibit sculpture or installation in such a space, so it just focus on mediums of photography, works on paper, paintings, and mixed media. But considering the limitation of physical space, they launch an online project called 20x200 to sell prints online with price ranging from $20-$2000. This project not only reduces cost for the gallery, but also attract those art lovers who are not serious collector to purchase prints in a more convenient and comfortable way.

The HEY, HOT SHOT! is a long term project for the discovering and supporting of emerging artists. For a gallery with its mission in supporting emerging artists, this mechanism is quite feasible to allow new work and new voices to be heard, and also provide time for both the gallery and artists to understand each other. Twice a year, the panel select five photographers from all the competitors, award $500 for each person and do a group show for them. At the end of the year, two of them will be chosen to receive continuing representation from the gallery and have solo show in the gallery within two years. Then the gallery will occasionally exhibit the work of emerging artists alongside acclaimed photographers to help the developing career of these artists. I think the time line of choosing and supporting young artist is reasonable, before the gallery decide which artist to represent, it create a yearlong time to examine both the artist and potential collectors.

Another part that I feel good about Jen Bekman is its informative blogs as a forum of critique and discussion. One of its blog constantly post competition opportunities and awards nation wide, recent events and achievements of its former project winners, discussion and interview with panelists, these blogs are mutual benefit, especially for a gallery target younger generation artists. Jen Bekman herself own a blog too, posted with her critical thinking, interview and coverage by major medias as The New York Times and Foam Magazine. Undoubtedly, the anecdotal evidence on the gallerist’s background suggests that a taste for art plays a large role. And Jen is good at promoting herself and create a certain culture for her business.

John Mann

这件作品我比较喜欢，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，然后仔细反思为什么喜欢，哪些因素造成自己不喜欢，对看不懂的作品进一步从艺术家自己的声明，他的个人经历和社会语境去理解，找人对话，并在一段时间后回头反思。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，他这东西为什么选择以摄影为媒介，必要性在哪里？
以下是Bloodypixy的回应：

JOHN MANN的作品说明：Following five years of photographing the landscape and those who travel through it, the series Folded In Place finds its exploration of place though a visualization of the map as the final destination. These images turn the abstract representation of the map back into a physical landscape, by looking at the map as a geography of its own. 我觉得最简单的解释是，他只希望他的地图从他选择的角度被人观看，这样才会是a geography of its own。另外一个有联系的摄影师是THOMAS DEMAND http://www.thomasdemand.de/。他所有的照片都是用纸打起来的模型，但是他从来都不展示模型本身。

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？

Bloodypixy

第一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

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。但这些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。

起始

2009-02-07T11:02:00.005-05:00

2008年的最后一天，我们驱车去美国大陆的最南端看日落，一直望着西岛的阳光淹没在墨西哥湾的另一面。那一刻，像是看着夕阳将旧日点滴都一起带走了。09年的清晨是在迈阿密温暖的初阳中醒来的，那一刻我想，是时候move forward了。把写了四年的博客停了，厌倦了没志气的小情调和靡靡之音，想要对自己更诚实。我想，把那些细心包装过的小心情放在博客上给人看或许只是因为缺乏对自身价值的认同，所以自恋并且慌乱，想要营造一个“价值”给人看，博得认可和欣赏。但那样的价值总归是空洞无实的。2008年教给我的，是务实和信仰。这个博客只作为一路观想的记录，督促我思考和前行。