蛇形手臂

文：李泊岩

 

1976年，钢琴家阿劳在访谈中谈论钢琴技巧时，形容手臂“必须变的像条蛇”。这不仅仅是手指和手臂的动作，更是指通过这一放松的姿势，让钢琴家得以对乐曲进行二度创作的基础训练。当我们听到这个级别的钢琴大师演奏时，我们会说“哦，这是阿劳的”“哦，这是霍洛维茨的”。我们因此忽略了，作曲究竟是舒伯特还是贝多芬。然而，“蛇形手臂”并非仅存在于演奏家和作曲家的关系中。相距一百年或者更早的任何母本艺术，在其后世不断延伸着表达空间并释放伟大，都应当归功于“手臂变得像条蛇”的改变。在这里，我希望延展“蛇形手臂”这一说法的内涵，来暗示通过摄影精准获取图像的那一个动作。我们既可以将它看作是一个动作形式，也可以视其为撕裂摄影边界的姿态符号。

1827年，贝多芬逝世。这一年，法国人约瑟夫·尼塞福尔·尼埃普斯(Joseph Nicéphore Nièpce)留下了目前发现的人类历史上最早的照片。同年，清朝政府收复了喀什噶尔，当时中国最大的“西方问题”得以解决。然而那时的中国人还无从通过图像纪录历史。到了1855年，英国人罗杰•芬顿(Roger Fenton)和助手用摄影记录了克里米亚战争，这场战争的开端则是马克思所谓的无法解决的“东方问题”（奥斯曼土耳其问题）。罗杰•芬顿因为摄影技术高超而出名，但却因为摄影在当时的社会环境中不被看作是艺术而失望，最终放弃了摄影。正如他的杰作《死亡隐形峡谷》那样，摄影在诞生之初就勇于艺术化地表达真实与诗意之间的关系。

2007年，年轻的旅法艺术家高岩拍摄了一组名为《夹层》的作品。这组关注新移民的作品综合地呈现了法国移民局的办公室、移民聚会的餐厅以及他们的临时居所。被空无所占据的图像集中地表述了当时移民生活的艰辛与无奈。这是近十年关注欧洲移民危机和移民身份问题较早的作品。自2010年爆发阿拉伯之春后，欧洲的移民危机成为了当下最重要的话题之一。在多年后，我们再次审视《夹层》所赋予欧洲社会格局的关注与表达，那些场景所传递的宁静气氛，竟然隐喻着即将爆发的不安。

在回溯历史的应用上，按照齐泽克的说法，事件是塑造历史的一个个转捩点，当事件发生，我们会以一种回溯性的视角尝试去看待导致事件的原因。但是事件往往是一种“超出原因的结果”，摄影为回溯历史事件提供了图像样本。当然《夹层》并不能预言难民潮，但是难民潮事件既已成事实，就有必要回头看《夹层》。这样更易于理解摄影在观念层面所具有的第一时间优势。

尽管后来录像的诞生为新闻事件提供了更为直接的素材，但作为新闻报道，录像的断章取义和蒙太奇的使用，一直存在“真实性”的争议。从2012年至今，艺术家杨欣嘉把社交媒体上大量转播的热点新闻视频下载存档，经过裁剪，只保留画面中的天空。这一系列名为《事件的天空》的作品，将录像的叙事功能完全遮蔽，让这些单色的似静似动的，难以辨别任何“事件”的图像，在真实和虚假事件之间缔造出难以溯源的真实。

图像在公共空间（包括网络）中的选用与传播，无疑带有意识形态的作用机制。艺术家耶苏从2015年开始关注建筑及公物的用色与形态，并开始了名为“CILING”的系列创作。在最近一个项目《刺菻》中，耶苏取材路边绿化带围挡制作了一件装置作品。他将摄影与特制的六边形围挡相结合，形成一座带有光影变化，却又永不凋谢的固体丛林。其本质，是对于图像权利的合法性输出与传播的反思。

从历史事件到图像权利，摄影正是事件戏剧化与“图示”所链接的动力机制，这在摄影诞生之初已经给出了悬而未决的答案，即截取是否就是结果？这个问题还要回溯自摄影诞生后的几十年。起初，诸多绘画家学习了摄影，并成立了摄影工作室用于谋生。摄影也不断影响着绘画艺术。布丹、莫奈、马奈、德加到毕加索、杜尚，这些在现代时期重大艺术变革中的绘画巨星，伴随着相机的发展演变、拍摄手法和拍摄态度的变化，生成更具个人意义的图示，针对的无非就是“截取”。

而在中国当代艺术发展至今，不管是文化断层所造成的视野局限，还是绘画艺术自身所具有的复古特征，来自摄影观念视角的补偿和追问从未停歇。换句话说，即使是使用摄影或借助图像来创作的观念艺术家，也阶段性尝试探索绘画与摄影之间的关联。杨欣嘉的绘画探索了图像在真实与虚假之间的空间，借用绘画手段，在颇有蒙太奇图像意味的叙事画面中，寻找主观停顿和迟疑的状态。在这些“未完成”的图像中，被增强了观看的误差，从而阻隔了图像原有的解读系统。不完整图像引发的歧义，在吉尔·德勒兹（Gilles Louis Rene Deleuze）看来，不过是以不同程度实现的整体。因此，在杨欣嘉的绘画中，图像切片成为了一个个没有落脚点的陷阱。

同样善于构建视觉陷阱的绘画家刘聪，在近两年的很多静物绘画中，如《圆形桶盖》和《相形》等作品，尝试在物体的观看角度和摆放上达到某种巧合，这种将类似物体进行摆放的做法同样出现在早期摄影拍摄中，例如尤金·阿杰特（Eugène Atget）、爱德华·让·史泰肯（Edward Jean Steichen）等摄影家的静物作品。这似乎将观看记忆与当今这一时空的观看经验取得了某种联系。高宇的《草地上的午餐1995》便探讨了图像及其形式，如何在记忆和认知中构建起完整的象征秩序，以至于这一秩序事实上取代了记忆和认知对象本身。马奈的绘画《草地上的午餐》提供的就是这样一种形式的象征秩序的母本，只要与之类似，便都进入它的形式秩序中被人们所认知。图像中的记忆和认知，一如用语言表述的记忆和认知，都依附在一个象征秩序网络中，没有这个网络，记忆便不复存在。所有记忆都是如此，在牛文博的装置《日常空间研究》系列作品中，同样将来自记忆的图像，解构在日益变化的日常物品中……

图像的观看与图像的给予，始终面对着摄影史与功能的转变。摄影艺术家张巍提供了一个与摄影相悖的可能性，在他的《人工剧团》系列摄影作品中，即模仿了古典肖像绘画，也模仿早期肖像摄影对绘画的模仿。他的作品有助于阐述绘画与图像互相进行二度三度创作的历史事实，可以证明“蛇形手臂”的机巧发挥着很大作用。这些崭新的虚拟肖像，将来自大众的五官重组，彻底绕开并回避了摄影诞生之初的“截取”问题。向摄影提问，重要的是图示，还是图示背后的形式本质？

当然我们还应该注意到在众多尝试中，对于图像的挪用，和对图像背后政治意义、历史意义的沿用与讽刺。张巍的做法有一定的讽刺意义，尤其是对名人肖像的重塑，那种不夸张不改变，力求极度接近的态度，更加内敛和深刻了这种讽刺的严肃性。而在张业鸿的绘画中，我们看到经典的摄影变成了消除细节的明快色块，在他的抽象绘画样式并且不带感情的笔触下，例如接《胜利之吻》等作品，显现出当代人习惯的视觉体验，那种类似波普艺术才具有的，面对资本批判悲喜交加的快感。摄影与生具来所带有的观念性，在后代的挪用、借用中形成为一种潜在的、被普遍认同的手段。就观看的逻辑而言，视觉时代的观看习惯，让我们忘却摄影。例如，当我们看到一块巨大的商业广告牌置于商场外墙上，我们不会首先想到这是摄影。在艺术家罗苇的近期作品中，图像、商业、个体精神，合成为强烈个人图像符号的商品，她宣称非艺术的做法更能突破当代艺术的局限。

那么，摄影真的已经融入艺术的整体而密不可分了吗？当摄影师崔博从成千上万张胶片摄影中选择了两件作品公布的时候，我们看到了直接摄影的边缘化与旁落。《第二次确认》是对于一个风景的两次快门确认，拍照只是摄影师的一个简单的动作，而作品的诞生则是这一简单动作之后漫长的分析。另一张《抓蛇的人》再次验证了摄影师捕捉图像的不确定，相对于画面中捕蛇者那稳准狠的动作，摄影师对于画面的每次捕捉，仍需要感觉与经验的驾驭。这一谨慎的动作，还出现在刘耀华的录像作品《声音练习》中，我们看到一个固定镜头中的稳定画面，以及刻意回避的人为表演，录像在此并没有意义，一个单一恒定的画面，在声音与空间中，凝视为一种图像化的截取状态。当设备摄取图像，在力求精准的同时，也从感性和理性中与外部世界取得了关联，因此摄影的真实性与欺骗性不断被争议，不断被解读，不断被观看，并成为所有当代人的观看经验。

随着拍照工艺的发展，对物像的快速框取，使得思考、观察、分析等诸多问题悄然后置，没有什么比猎取一个图像更快的了，以至于观念也在摄影之后被挖掘，并滞后于摄影的决定瞬间。从历史的角度来看，摄影的诞生，将历史上的绘画与雕塑统统作古，阶段性地宣告了艺术的终结。另一方面，艺术创造的转折点，也和摄影进入到艺术创作中并发生变化有关。艺术家要求摄影不再是精准捕捉图像的工具，而是观念的延伸，至少从上世纪60年代以来，那些存在于人们大脑中的观念不再需要依赖任何表达工具，以反艺术的态度成功地成为了新的艺术。

齐泽克指出，马克思用“亚细亚生产方式”这种概念，来统称那些不能用资本主义发展规律来说明的那些东方世界的历史、经济规律和文化现象。在这里，“亚细亚生产方式”就是一种“负面概念的集合”，用来囊括所有“非常规”的可能性。当代艺术，以及摄影的界定，同样越来越多地借助这样一种反向的逻辑来完成。也就是说，当它“不是艺术之外的任何东西”时，它就成为了艺术。然而这里的情况与马克思也有不同：马克思使用“负面概念集合”来回避一些难解的问题，以突出自己的线索；这里的情况却呈现出一种积极拥抱新问题的进取姿态。在当下这一个回合中，由一个图像为出发点，改变获取图像地精准度，而创作出虚构与自然真实的经验主义，成为将传统艺术精神剥离于图像经验地再生产。图像的精神准度，超越了技术准度，试问着社会价值体系中的诸多问题的改变。

 

 

Snake Arms

By Li Boyan

 

In 1976, the pianist Claudio Arrau talked about piano skills in an interview and said that the arms “need to be like snakes”. It not only refers to the movement of fingers and arms, but also the basic training for pianist to make re-creation of music through this relaxed posture. When we heard the performance of piano masters of this level, we would say “Oh, this is Arrau”, “Oh, this is Horowitz”, and we ignored whether the music was composed by Schubert or Beethoven. However, the “snake arms” does not only exist in the relationship between performers and composers. For any maternal art dating back to a hundred years or even earlier ago, their continuous extension of expression space and the release of greatness afterwards should all be attributed to the change of “arms become like snakes”. Here, I want to extend the connotation of the “snake arms” to imply the photographing action of capturing a precise image. We can regard it as an action, or the gesture symbol tearing the boundaries of photography.

In 1827, Beethoven passed away. In the same year, the Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Nièpce left the earliest photographs in human history ever found so far. In China, the Qing government regained Kashgar, solving the then China’s largest “Western problem”. However, at that time, Chinese people were unable to record history with images. By 1855, the Englishman Roger Fenton and his assistant documented the Crimean War with photographs. The beginning of this war is what Marx called inextricable “Eastern problem” (the Ottoman Turks issue). Roger Fenton was famous for his superb photography skills, but he eventually gave up photography, because he was disappointed by the social environment that photography was not seen as an art at that time. Just like the masterpiece “Valley of the Shadow of Death” of Roger Fenton, photography was brave enough to artistically express the relationship between truth and poetry from the beginning of its birth.

In 2007, Gao Yan, a young Chinese artist living in France, shot a series of works named “En Transit”, focusing on new immigrants. This pictures present in a comprehensive way the office of the French Immigration Bureau, restaurants where immigrants held parties, and immigrants’ temporary residence, expressing intensively the hardships and helplessness of lives of immigrants at that time. This is an earlier work focusing on European immigration crisis and immigrant status in the past decade. Since the outbreak of Arab Spring in 2010, the immigration crisis in Europe has become one of the most important topics. When we observe “En Transit” many years later, we found that the attention and expression given to the European social structure, and the tranquil atmosphere conveyed by those scenes, are metaphors for the forthcoming unrest.

In the application of tracing history, Slavoj Zizek believes that, events are turning points that shape history. When an event occurs, we will try to look at the cause of the event from a retrospective perspective. But events are often “results beyond causes”, and photography provides image samples for tracking historical events. Of course, “En Transit” does not predict the tide of refugees. However, as the refugee incident has become a reality, it is necessary to look back at “En Transit”. In this way, we can understand easily the first time advantage of photography at the conceptual level.

Although the birth of video later provides a more direct source for news events, there has always been controversy over the “authenticity” of news reports and the use of montage and interception of video. From 2012 till now, artist Yang Xinjia has downloaded and archived a large number of hot news videos on social media. After cutting these videos, he made a series of works named “The Sky of Events”, which only compose of sky and completely shields the narrative function of the video. These works, through the static or dynamic monochromes and images unable to indicate any “events”, create a truth difficult to be traced between real and false events.

The selection and dissemination of images in public spaces (including the internet) undoubtedly reflect certain ideological mechanism. In 2015, artist Ye Su began to pay attention to the color and form of architectures and public properties, and started a series of creations called “CILING”. In the most recent project “Thorn”, Ye Su made a piece of installation art with the fence of green belt along the roadside. He combined photography with a special hexagonal fence to form a solid jungle with light and shadow changes. Essentially, it is a reflection on the legitimacy output and propagation of image rights.

From historical events to image rights, photography is the dynamic mechanism connecting event dramatization and “images”. From the birth of photography, there existed an unanswered question, that is, is interception the result? This question also can be traced back to several decades after the birth of photography. At first, many painters studied photography and set up photo studios to make a living. Photography was also continuing to influence the art of painting. Painters rose from major artistic changes in the modern era, such as Boudin, Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Degas, Picasso, and Duchamp, accompanied by changes and evolution of camera, shooting techniques, and shooting attitudes, have created pictures with more personal significance, all targeting at “interception”.

While for the development of contemporary Chinese art, no matter due to the vision limitations caused by cultural faults or the retro characteristics of the painting itself, the compensation and questioning from the viewpoint of photography has never stopped. In other words, even conceptual artists who use photography or images to create, also explore the connection between painting and photography periodically. Yang Xinjia’s paintings explore the space between the real and the false, and by using painting techniques and narrative images similar to photomontages, seek the conditions of subjective pause and hesitation. In these “incomplete” images, the viewing error is enhanced, thereby blocking the original interpretation system of the image. According to Gilles Louis Rene Deleuze, the ambiguity caused by incomplete images is just the whole to varying degrees. Therefore, in paintings of Yang Xinjia, image slicing become traps one after another without a foothold.

Liu Cong is another painter who is also good at constructing visual traps. In the past two years, he has tried to achieve a certain degree of coincidence in the viewing angle and the placement of objects in many of his still-life paintings, such as “Circular Bung” and “Shape”. This practice of displaying similar objects also appeared in early photography, such as the still-life works of photographers Eugène Atget and Edward Jean Steichen. It seems that some connection between viewing memory and the current viewing experience has been built. In “Lunch on the Grass, 1995”, Gao Yu discussed images and their forms, and how to construct a complete symbolic order in memory and cognition, so that this order actually replaces memory and cognitive objects themselves. In fact, the painting “Lunch on the Grass” of Manet has provided a prototype for such symbolic order. Any work similar to the prototype will enter its form order and be recognized by people. The memory and cognition in the image, like memory and cognition expressed in language, are all attached to a symbolic order network. Without this network, memory will no longer exist. This is true of all memories. In the series of works of Niu Wenbo, the “Daily Space Research”, images from memories are also deconstructed in ever-changing everyday objects.

The viewing and giving of images are always subject to photographic history and changes of functions of photography. The photography artist Zhang Wei offered a possibility that is contrary to photography. In his photography works of “Artificial Theatre”, he imitates both the classical portrait painting and also the imitation of early portrait photography on painting. His works help to explain the historical fact that paintings and images can be re-created or even tri-created based on each other, which proves that the “snake arms” plays an important role. These new virtual portraits reorganized the five sense organs of the public, completely bypassing and evading the question of “interception” exists from the beginning of photography. What is more important when questioning photography, is the image, or the nature of the form behind it?

Of course, in these many attempts, we should also notice the replacement of images, and the use and irony of the political and historical significances behind the images. The treatment of Zhang Wei is ironic in a sense, especially for the reshaping of celebrity portraits. The attitude seeking no change and no exaggeration, and striving to extremely close to real, restrains and deepens the seriousness of the irony. While in paintings of Zhang Yehong, we see that the classic photography become bright color blocks without details. Under his abstract painting style and dispassionate brushstrokes, his works such as the “Victory Kiss”, display the visual experience that contemporary people are familiar with, and the bitter-sweet thrill toward capitalist criticism that is similar to that of Pop Art. The conceptual nature of photography born with it, being replaced and borrowed frequently in the future generations, has become a potential and universally recognized means. In terms of viewing logic, the viewing habits of the visual age make us forget photography. For example, when we see a huge commercial billboard on the exterior wall of a mall, we will not view it as photography at first. In the recent works of artist Luo Wei, images, commerce, and individual spirits were combined into products of strong personal image symbols. She claimed that the inartistic practice could break the limitation of contemporary art more easily.

Then, has photography really integrated into art and become an inseparable part? When photographer Cui Bo released the two works selected from thousands of film photos, we saw the marginalization of direct photography. The “Second Confirmation” is the two confirmations of shutter for a landscape. Photographing is just a simple action of the photographer, but the creation of the work is a long period of analysis after this simple action. Another picture “The Snake Catcher” once again verifies the photographer’s uncertainty in capturing images. Compared to the steady, accurate and resolute movement of the snake catcher in the image, the photographer still needs feeling and experience for each screen. This cautious action also appeared in Liu Yaohua’s video work “Sound Practice”, in which we see a stable scene in a fixed lens and deliberately avoided artificial performance. The video does not make sense here. The single constant scene becomes an imaged interception in sound and space. When the device captures images, it seeks to be precise, and builds a perceptual and rational connection with the outside world. For that reason, the authenticity and deceptiveness of photography are under constant controversy, interpretation, and watch, and has become the watch experience of all contemporary people.

With the development of photographing techniques, the rapid framing of object has caused the delay of thinking, observation, and analysis. Capturing an image has become so fast that the idea also has to be excavated after photography and lags behind the decision of photography. From a historical point of view, the birth of photography made historical paintings and sculptures obsolete and announced the end of art in stages. On the other hand, the turning point in art creation is also related to the fact that photography becomes a part of art creation and changes of photography. Artists required that photography shall no longer be a tool for accurately capturing images, but an extension of ideas. Since the 1960s, concepts that exist in people’s brains no longer need to rely on any expression tools and have successfully become a new art with the anti-artist attitude.

Zizek pointed out that Marx used the concept of “Asian mode of production” to collectively refer to the historical and economic laws, and cultural phenomena of Eastern worlds that cannot be explained by the law of capitalist development. Here, the “Asian mode of production” is a “collection of negative concepts” that is used to cover all “unconventional” possibilities. Contemporary art, as well as the definition of photography, are increasingly being completed with the help of such a reverse logic. In other words, when it “is not anything other than art”, it becomes art. However, the situation here is also different from that of Marx: Marx used the “collection of negative concepts” to avoid some intractable problems in order to highlight his own clues; the situation here shows an aggressive attitude of actively embracing new issues. At present, starting from an image and through the change of image accuracy, the creation of fictional and natural reality empiricism has become an experiential reproduction separating the spirit of traditional art from image. The mental accuracy of the image surpasses the accuracy of the technique, which poses challenges to the changes in the social value system.

 

 

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