2018 Projects
2018年项目
Christine Erhard: TAIFUN Beijing Intervention / Christine Erhard: 北京干预
Curated by Lico Fang
TAIFUN Beijing Intervention is approaching the capital city with German artist Christine Erhard, a discussion storm is predicted as well.
“The photographs shouldn’t be viewed as isolated objects but should be experienced as one element within dialectic of image and space.
Although the picture space in my photographs appears to be extremely heterogeneous and broken, the images are not photomontages in the conventional sense. The photographs bear witness to a sculptural process that took place in my studio.
The spaces that we were unable to directly experience had become images. What interests me above all in this, is the question to what extent our general imaginary space is far more determined by images than by our own personal experience.”
—— Christine Erhard
*TAIFUN, an international art project by curator Lico Fang, acts as a medium and catalyst for cultural and intellectual exchange through 3-day art exhibitions, theater, screening, and literature events at specifically selected locations in Germany and other countries. It both transports heterogeneous points of view, concepts, and approaches and initiates dialogues and debates.
台风-北京干预 将带来德国摄影艺术家 Christine Erhard (克莉斯蒂娜·艾哈德) 的摄影／空间干预作品和一场讨论会。
“我的摄影作品不应被视为一个孤立的图像，而应该作为一个图像与空间辩证呈现的要素去感受它们。
尽管我摄影作品中的图像空间看起来不均匀和支离破碎，而它们并不是传统意义上的摄影蒙太奇。这些摄影作品见证了在我的工作室里所发生的雕塑化处理过程。
我们无法直接体验的空间已经成为图像。最令我感兴趣的问题是，一般想象空间在多大程度上是由图像决定的，而不是由我们自己的个人经验决定的。”
- 克莉斯蒂娜·艾哈德
*台风是由策展人Lico Fang发起的一个国际性的艺术项目，在德国和其他国家精选的地点，以项目为媒介，通过为时三天的展览、剧场、放映、文学等活动，刺激和促进异地间的文化和智识的交流。台风旨在双向传递异质的观点与观念，开辟对话与辩论。
The U-Cloister - Ma Jianfeng’s solo project / U型回廊 - 麻剑锋个人项目
A constellation of walls, floors, and hangings acts as the foundation for Ma Jianfeng’s current show, creating a three-dimensional material and spatial experience by interweaving indistinct imagery and abstract symbols with artifacts and artworks. It is undeniable that we cannot use words such as sculpture, mural, or “environmental installation” to describe this presentation, the same as the artist himself has always done. The specific scenes that emerge from the artist’s contextualization and appropriation seem to emphasize the usefulness of the works as a crucial part of the ritual in this “judgement ground”, purposefully presenting these barbarous, rough, primitive and totemized images and objects like tools, with mysterious “protocols” of use. Yet they are simultaneously autonomous artworks, independent from any functionality and purpose. Ma’s practice points to the directions of the transmissions of tensions between image and fact via actions, thus emphasizing the significance of manipulation to his practice. Most interestingly, in his search for integrity and abstraction in variation, we can regard abstraction as both artistic extraction and philosophical problem, and as a method (of politics) and socio-economic force for Ma.
On one hand, Ma’s works establish and destabilize the configurational relations between understanding, imagination,and embodiment, thus opening up a field of ambiguity. This space of manipulated ambiguity is generative, and it produces possibilities for the orientation of thought. Therefore from our perspective, besides purifying and extracting the complex image-object relations, abstraction can also be activated by the mutual perturbations of thought and matter. In this light, the task of abstraction is to liberate the (virtual) subject. On the other hand, social life is dominated by “real” abstractions such as money, socially necessary labour time, commodity exchange and the like, whereas abstraction can also analyse and describe operations of thought and ideology which generalize too much, thus neglecting specificity. Simultaneously, “abstracting out” is the only way to discern patterns and tendencies, to get to the “big picture”. Such a tension is particularly notable in the relationship between theory and practice in artistic production, as well as in political activity.
As the artist said, “the nihilism that abstraction produces is the norm of life and society.” The concern over this nihilism of abstraction perhaps comes from the paradox embedded within Ma’s works: the abstractions of value in capitalism; the dialectical relation between artworks associal form and as commodity. Is the value of an artwork doomed to be determined by dominant forms of market exchange and value-producing labour? The distinction between art and non-art objects lies in the differences in the practices and conditions of each creative process, whereby art objects differ from commodities in that the artistic process, from the perspective of value-producing labour-time, seems more like a perverse form of self-exploitation and speculative labour. However, as Adorno suggests, the uselessness of an artwork is the basis of its critique and its autonomy – and this autonomy does not arise out of distance from the commodity, but from the complete symbiosis of the artwork’s immanent form, structure and logic. This manifests the idea that the more the artwork is abstracted from the use-value, the more it constitutes a negation of the rule of value.
Hu Wei,
2018.4
当墙面，地板和悬挂物构成了支撑麻剑锋本次展览作品的三维的材料和空间体验时，那些难以辨别的意象和抽象化符号与人造物和艺术品交织，不可否认的是我们难以用雕塑、壁画、亦或是“环境装置”来描述这次呈现，正如艺术家一如既往的创作方式一样。这些野蛮的、粗鄙的、原始的、图腾化的图像和物体更像是工具，并拥有神秘的使用“协议”：艺术家对特定场景的设置和挪用似乎指涉了它们的实用性高于一切，作为“宣判场所”中仪式的重要组成部分。然而，事实上它们本身同时又是独立于任何使用性和目的性的自治的艺术品。他的在创作中通过行动传递图像和事实之间所潜藏的张力，从而强调其实践中“可操纵的”重要性。麻剑锋在寻找变化中的完整性和抽象性。有意思的是，在这里我们既可以把抽象看作为一种美学提取和哲学问题，也可以把它当作（政治的）方法以及社会经济驱动力。
一方面，麻剑锋的作品建立并又破坏了理解、想象、和具体之间的结构关系，开辟了一个模糊不清的领域。这种被操纵的模糊空间是具有生产力的，并且它激起了思考走向的可能性。那么，在我们看来抽象除了通过图像-物体关系的纯化萃取也可以被“思想和物质的相互扰搅”而激活。在这种情况下抽象的任务便成为解放（虚拟的）主体。另一方面，我们的社会生活由诸如金钱，社会必要劳动时间，商品交换等这样的“现实抽象”支配，而抽象化也可以帮助我们分析和描述过度泛化的思想和意识形态运作，因而也忽视了特殊性。与此同时“抽象出”似乎是辨别图案和趋势并获得“大局观（整体性）”的唯一方法。这种对立在艺术生产的理论与实践之间的关系中尤其显着，当然也存在于政治活动之中。
正如艺术家本人所提到的：“抽象所产生的虚无是生命和社会的常态。”而这种对抽象的虚无的担忧，或许是嵌入艺术家作品内在的矛盾 – 在资本主义系统中价值的抽象化 - 作为社会表现形式的艺术品和商品之间的辩证关系。艺术品的价值是否表现在它根植于市场交换和价值生产劳动的支配形式当中？艺术品和非艺术品的不同存在于在创造过程的实践和条件的相似经验下，与商品不完全相同的是，艺术品的价值生产可以被看做一种反常的“自我剥削”形式和“投机劳动”。阿多诺曾指出艺术品的无用性是它的评判和自主性的基础，然而，自主性不是出于与商品的距离疏远，而是出自艺术品内在形式、结构和逻辑的完全沉浸和共生。这展现了这样一个观点：艺术品从使用价值中抽象得越多，它越构成对价值规则的否定。
胡伟
2018.4
Yoeri Guépin: Afterlives / Yoeri Guépin: 转世
The public image of Yuanmingyuan is static like a photograph.
Beginning with the ruins of Xiyanglou – a part of Yuanmingyuan often discussed in history textbooks, knowledge regarding Yuanmingyuan has been tightly wrapped in a reductivist historical narrative that contrasts the emergence of modern China with its shameful subjugation under imperialism, to the extent that the drawn-out degradation of Yuanmingyuan as a farmland, collective production field, cemetery, and landfill site in the 150 years after its initial destruction has totally been covered over. The very idea of a ‘ruin” is a modern invention; one may say that the modern fascination with ruins (fluctuating as it might be) precisely coincides with their unprecedented production. Before Yuanmingyuan became a cultural signifier, it was simply a site of indifference. Arising out of a heated debate among archaeologists, urban planners, architects and government officials regarding its restoration in the 1980s, Yuanmingyuan was formally established as a public park designed to provide visitors with patriotic history lessons packed with emotional, aesthetic, and moral experiences of China’s checkered past.
The theatricality of Yuanmingyuan - more specifically, its mise-en-scene -rarely occurs to tourists who are inculcated by its established narrative. But for more curious observers such as Yoeri, things appeared under a different light: during a visit, he spotted an obvious mismatch between a pillar and its foundation in the Dashuifa ensemble; it resembled more of a stage than a historical remnant. This mismatch led him to an investigation into the very idea of a historical act - who laid the stones? Who installed the setting? More broadly, how was the image of the West transferred, translated, and reactivated?
The original concept of Dashuifa came from Western paintings brought to Emperor Qianlong by the Jesuits. At the height of Yuanmingyuan’s grandeur, Xiyanglou (designed by Giuseppe Castiglione) only amounted to about 2% of the overall architecture, but it is now used to represent the whole estate as a whole. Similar operations in history also occurred in Chinese art education. Since the 1980s, art education gradually switched from socialist realism to more a “liberal cannon” where Greek, Roman, and Renaissance sculptures were adopted as pedagogical tools. As a result, long before knowing the historical and cultural contexts from which these sculptures emerged, art students have been sketching Michelangelo’s David for years.
As the central component of Yoeri’s 6-month residency at the Institute for Provocation, ‘Afterlives’ presents his research conducted at two different locations in Beijing: Yuanmingyuan and the CAFA Art Museum; the former is in the west (of the city) while the latter is in the east. Looking at how Western classic images become hollowed out, condensed, and reactivated throughout Chinese history, Afterlives touches on the subtle dynamic between China’s modernity and the acts of history that constitute it.
对于大多数人来说，圆明园似乎靠中学历史课本里的西洋楼废墟照片就足以总结了。关于圆明园的绝大部分知识被冰封在 “屈辱”和“反抗屈辱”的中国近代史叙述里。在被焚烧之后的一百五十年间，圆明园被农民、小偷、集体生产合作社、甚至大学、政府机关们破坏的历史则几乎完全被息声。
80年代末，伴随着一场发生在考古学家、政府官员、房地产商、城市规划师、建筑师等人中“是否修复圆明园”的大讨论，圆明园被正式钦定为“遗址”，叠加了废墟的教育功能和公园的娱乐功能，致力于为每个游客奉上一堂富有情感、审美和道德价值的爱国主义历史课——“遗址”是直到现代才有的文化概念。在这之前，那里只是一片荒地而已。
大部分游客很少意识到圆明园是一处精致的“布景”。Yoeri Guepin在一次偶然的探访中，他注意到大水法中一条石柱和基石明显错位，这错位引发了一系列他对这种动作的想象 — 是谁摆放了基石和石柱？谁布置了这个场景？更广泛地说，西方的形象是怎么迁移、转译和再次使用的？
西洋楼“大水法”最早的草图来自耶稣会士带来的西洋画，在圆明园的最鼎盛时期，由郎世宁设计的西洋楼仅仅占整个圆明园的2%，剩余98%都是传统古典园林，现在大水法却成为圆明园首当其冲的标志。同样的动作也发生在中国的美术教育里。80年代以来，写实绘画的基础训练模式从社会主义现实主义逐步产生了变化：更多西方经典雕塑取代了工农兵的雕塑形象成为教具。在知晓宗教故事背景之前，米开朗琪罗的大卫像就已经成为了一代代年轻美术学生反复习练的模特。
在六个月的驻留中，Yoeri选择了北京一东一西两个地点，圆明园和央美美术馆，开展研究和创作。通过仔细考察西方经典形象在中国的空心化、板结和再被激活的过程，他也希望能探寻到中国狂飙突进的现代化进程是如何与此过程回应的。
Wang Jun Solo Project: Three Days and Nights(Beijing)/ 王俊个人项目：三天三夜（北京）
You can come anytime.
During that three days and nights, a series of accidents is expected. Like a jailed soldier in Athens left graffiti in caves, then recited a comedy. A man keeps mumbling, ‘I only gag, talk bullshit, if possible, I would very much like to have your attitude.’ Taoism gods in Wanshou Palace wandering in fogs and vapors... Candidates for the best performer of the year is open to all criticism…
The remains, leftovers of this project will be recycled in the next Three Days and Nights project in other venues.
开幕前的三天三夜里，欢迎您前来拜访、自习、吐槽、办公、游戏、投喂，无时间限制。
那期间可能会发生一连串的偶发事件：被关押的雅典士兵在山洞里留下涂鸦还默念了一个喜剧段子；然后一个人顺着往下接：“我只会瞎说、胡说，经常插科打诨，如果不介意我非常非常非常愿意有你的态度”；万寿宫里的道教神在风烟云雾中带着水汽弥漫，飘渺得像墙里的南柯之梦；有潜力荣膺本年度最佳行为的参与者勇于接受大家的批评……
王俊在这次创作中最终呈现的一些痕迹、一些余料，将用到“三天三夜”在其他地点实施的项目版本中。
Sleeping with a Vengeance, Dreaming of a Life/ 睡眠复仇，梦见生命
‘...For each sleep is the true practice of hope, a long training at emancipation and freedom.’
—Haytham El-Wardany, Book of Sleep, 2017
The exhibition series Sleeping with a Vengeance, Dreaming of a Life takes a close look at contemporary politicsof sleep and asks whether we can reclaim sleep and dreaming from the clutches of late capitalism. In the ‘24/7 Universe’ (Jonathan Crary), sleep has been turned into a resource, tied to production, consumption, warfare and biopolitics. We are simultaneously enticed to sleep less and to sleep productively. Contemporary cultural practice mimics this trend with sleep performances, sleep hotels, sleep music.
Can sleep instead be configured as a radical, subversive activity? Can the act of dreaming, sleep’s correlate, be imagined a political deed? If sleep were to obstruct the cycle of capitalist production and social reproduction, would the sleeper be able to dream up a better life, a better future?
Sleeping with a Vengeance, Dreaming of a Life brings together artists from all wakes of life and artworks from diverse cultural backgrounds in order to start understanding how we might share agency in a future politics of sleep. Concurrently, the curatorial model of the exhibition series is based on a much needed ecology of scale. Starting with next to no budget and working with the smallest of institutions, the first exhibitions are conceived as sketches to be fleshed out while gaining momentum over the next couple of years.
Ruth Noack, Berlin, December 2017
“因每一段睡眠都是愿望的切身实践，是对于解放与自由的长期训练。”
——海什木·埃尔-瓦达尼(Haytham El-Wardany)，《睡眠之书》(Book of Sleep)，2017
展览系列《睡眠复仇，梦见生命》（Sleeping with a Vengeance, Dreaming of a Life）将视角引向当代的睡眠政治，同时提问：我们是否可以将睡眠与做梦从晚期资本主义的桎梏中解救出来。在乔纳森·克拉里（Jonathan Crary）的《24/7 宇宙》（24/7 Universe）中，睡眠被转化为一种资源，与生产、消费、战争以及生命政治紧密相联。我们被诱导睡得既少又高效。当代文化实践则以睡眠表演、睡眠酒店、睡眠音乐来模拟这一趋势。
那么，睡眠可否被重设为一种激进的、颠覆性的行为？做梦——这一睡眠的姘头，可否被想象为一种政治行动？假如睡眠是为了妨碍资本主义生产和社会再生产的循环，那么睡眠者是否得以梦见更好的人生、更好的未来？
“睡眠复仇，梦见生命”集合了不同年龄的艺术家和来自不同文化背景的艺术作品，以尝试摸索共同介入未来睡眠政治的途径。与此同时，这一展览系列的策展模式基于一种必要的规模生态学（ecology of scale）。以几乎为零的预算开启、与最小的机构合作，初期展览的潦草雏型将在随后的几年获得动能而逐渐充实和具象化。
——鲁斯·诺克(Ruth Noack)，柏林，2017年12月
Ulrika Gomm: Horizon / 地平线
Horizon (2018), a scheme which display all book titles, containing the words democracy and China from 1989 and onward, that are accessible for the public at the National Library of People’s Republic of China in Beijing. The National Library of People’s Republic of China is the largest library in Asia, with a collection of over 35 million items. These 76 book titles found (in September 2018) are arranged in chronologic order, in Chinese and a mirrored English translation, using the font Noto Sans. This font, belonging to the Noto font family, was commissioned by Google with the goal of achieving visual harmony across multiple languages/scripts.
In the gallery space, the Horizon scheme is made accessible with the Furniture for reading, a custom made table and cushions on the floor. On November 23rd a reading, Practise Horizon, will take place in the installation, in both Chinese and English, using the book titles as material for a new composition.
Research and translation have been made by Dakota Guo.
With support by IASPIS, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee's international programme for Visual and Applied Artists.
地平线（2018）是一个由书名构成的图示，其中囊括了中国国家图书馆对公众开放的馆藏书籍中所有自1989年以来出版的、包含“民主”与“中国”关键词的书名。中华人民共和国国家图书馆是亚洲最大的图书馆，拥有超过3500万本藏书。在地平线中，找出的76个书名（于2018年9月检索）按照出版时间顺序排列，中文书名和其英文翻译一一呈镜像对应，使用字体Noto Sans。这种字体属于Noto字体系列，由Google委约设计，旨在实现跨多种语言/脚本的视觉和谐。
在芝麻空间，观众得以通过阅读的家具（一张定制的桌子和地上的坐垫）近距离观察地平线图示。11月23日，朗读表演——练习地平线将在该装置中进行，表演语言为英文和中文，图示中的书名即这一现场作品的材料。
研究和翻译由寇塔完成。
此项目由IASPIS（瑞典艺术资助委员会视觉和应用艺术家国际项目）支持。
Dennis de Bel: Get your shit together - mediation in frequencies, facial recognition and fece/ “搂着点儿您”——蹲在频率、面部识别和粪便之间
In Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, the mathematical genius Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse is showing off his new mechanical invention to his supervisor, Lieutenant Colonel Earl Comstock.
Comstock asks:“If you had to give a name to the whole apparatus, what would you call it?”
“Hmmm…” Waterhouse says. “Well, its basic job is to perform mathematical calculations-like a computer.”
Comstock snorts, “A computer is a human being.”
This conversation reflects the historical fact that in the 1930s and 40s, people who were employed to do calculations and this clerical labour were called “computers.” The different interpretations of the dialogue from war-time to the present mark a shift from a society in which the intelligence demanded for calculations and data collections were primarily associated with humans to the increasing delegation of these labours to computational and control machines. Following Norbert Wieners introduction into cybernetics in the 1950's publication 'The Human Use of Human Beings', the idea of technology as non-hierarchical, unbiased control agent for the creation of a harmonious society was set in stone.
Although heralded as merely an 'auxiliary measure’ a prime example of technology as means of control could be found the Beijing Temple of Heavens park. In 2017 the park had embraced the power of artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology to gain control over the hordes of visitors and their toilet paper usage. By means of camera operated facial recognition enabled toilet paper dispensers, visitors were introduced to a timed toilet paper cap at +-70cm per 9 minutes. Besides the dubious fact of having cameras in public restrooms, it's difficult to escape the irony in having one’s basic biological needs to be authorized by a high-tech data-harvesting machine.
Moreover, this obscene, cumbersome interface enables us to easily expose our deep-seated entanglement with everyday technologies. In order to take a shit we, first of all, need power and wireless infrastructures; secondly, facial recognition; thirdly, make sure the photo is qualified; fourthly, get the toilet paper and enjoy it. Don't forget the restroom concierge's constant attention, instructing, refilling and unjamming the grotesque apparatus, effectively preventing the cybernetic automaton from escaping human control.
As of November 2018 all the cybernetic toilet paper dispensers have disappeared from the park, to be replaced with the 'offline' variety. The artist therefore invites you to experience the archive of collected materials mediated through a bootleg version of the original facial recognition toilet paper dispenser. Allowing the viewer first hand experience of interfacing their human body to the machine.
In the past six months, Dennis de Bel explored how legacy technologies, ideologies, language and code have lead to our current technological status quo, and how human bodies are increasingly mediated through stacks of technology of varying opacities. Focusing on Beijing's Temple of Heaven Park and it's rich canon of technologies ranging from ancient rites, special service radio stations to artificial intelligence, Dennis assimilated a variety of signals, images and artifacts through mapping, kiting and 'international relations'.
Although the scientific and political paradigms have changed dramatically in the six centuries since the Temple of Heaven's construction, the historical function of the park revolving around practices of inscription, amplification and diffusion of messages through specialised infrastructures and protocols, as described by the scholar Eldon Pei, puts forth an intriguing case for the sacrificial altar as a forebearer of modern communicative technology and the very proof of the physicality of our increasingly 'digital' localities.
在尼尔·斯蒂芬森1999年出版的传奇小说《编码宝典》中中，数学天才Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse向他的上司厄尔·康斯托克中校炫耀他的新机械发明。
康斯托克问：“如果你必须为整个设备命名，你会怎么称呼它？”
“嗯......”沃特豪斯说。 “嗯，它的基本工作是进行数学计算，像计算机一样。”
康斯托克冷笑一声，“计算机不就是人么。”
他们的对话反映出，在20世纪30和40年代，受雇从事计算和这种文职工作的人被称为“计算机”。从战争时期到现在，对于这段对话的不同解释标志着社会的巨变——计算和数据收集的工作越来越多地从人力转移到机器。继诺伯特·维纳(Norbert Wieners)在1950年出版的《人有人的用处：控制论与社会》(The Human Use of Human Beings)中引入控制论之后，技术作为构建和谐社会的非等级、无偏见的控制因素的观念开始深入人心。
在北京天坛公园，技术作为控制手段的使用非常突出。 2017年，公园引入了一种“辅助措施”——人工智能厕纸机，来控制游客的卫生纸用量。通过相机操作的人脸识别启用卫生纸分配器，访客能在每9分钟内取出70cm的厕纸（不能更多）。除了在公共卫生间使用摄像机这一可疑事实外，必须通过高科技数据采集机的授权才能满足基本生物性需求的做法也不无讽刺。
这个猥琐而累赘的界面轻易地暴露出我们与日常技术根深蒂固的纠缠——为了拉屎，我们首先需要，电源和无线网；第二，面部识别；第三，确保照片合格；第四，取卫生纸，享受如厕。更别提公厕看管者需要时时刻刻对这个诡异装置保持关注，演示其使用方式、替换纸卷和防止机器阻塞，有效阻碍这一控制自动机脱离人类控制。
自2018年11月起，天坛公园里装配的所有的自动控制厕纸机都消失了，换回了常规的“脱机”设备。因此，艺术家邀你亲身体验人机互动，以一台山寨的人脸识别厕纸机为媒介进入多种材料的档案。
在北京的六个月里，Dennis de Bel探讨了遗留技术、意识形态、语言和代码如何一同造就了我们当前的技术现状，以及我们的身体如何被重重不透明的技术帘幕所间隔。他以北京的天坛公园为例，从其古老的仪式，有“特殊目的”的广播电台到人工智能，Dennis通过制图、放风筝和“国际友谊”吸收了各种各样的信号、图像和物品。
尽管自天坛修建以来的六个世纪里，科学与政治范式已历经巨大的变化，但正如学者Eldon Pei所描述的，天坛公园的历史性功能是通过专业的基础设施和仪制对信息进行书写、放大和传播，如果将祭坛视为现代通讯技术的先驱，天坛实在是一个有趣的案例，显示我们的生活正在如何被“数字化”。
