馬克渥林格 - 《皇家愛斯科賽馬會》

馬克渥林格 - 《皇家愛斯科賽馬會》

Mark Wallinger

Royal Ascot

1994

Video installation on 4 monitors with 4 flight cases, 3 minutes 41 seconds

Dimensions variable

馬克.渥林格

皇家愛斯科賽馬會，1994

錄影裝置和飛行裝置各4台

3分41秒 （迴圈）

以一張面無表情的臉為特徵，馬克•渥林格出現在一系列視頻節目的監視器上。監視器放在帶輪子的航空箱頂端，皇家馬車隊由每個航空箱隔開，悠閒地巡遊在在星期二、星期三、星期四和星期五（分別地）舉行的皇家賽馬會的賽馬場上，這些大喜日子已經制度化地無聊地印在日曆上。與此同時，電影膠片讓精心編排的舞蹈作品曝光：女王冰冷的微笑和刻板的卷髮、微傾的頭以及帶著手套的揮手、愛丁堡公爵舉起大禮帽、開始演奏國歌。對於媒體報道所關注的禮帽盛裝遊行而非運動本身的這一活動而言，是再合適不過了。這裡我們有服裝以及混合著粉紅、橘黃和石灰顏色的女王闊邊女帽特寫鏡頭；幾乎分辨不出每一天的區別，就像英國廣播公司的四個紀錄片合併成一場混亂的胡言亂語。

這種肖像上的重復，都以亮綠色草皮為背景，出現在安迪•沃霍爾（Andy Warhol）新近的《執政女王》連續劇中（1985）1伊麗莎白二世的絲網印刷品上——四人一組的郵票肖像帶著好萊塢化粧術和泡泡糖顏色的不自然混合。在《皇家雅士閣賽馬會》中，沃林格靈活地控制著賽馬場的審美和快樂，魁梧的身體騎馬進入體制慣性的爭論中——一種繼續下去會帶來新的刺激的爭論（到1994年，英國女王和查爾斯王子有義務納稅，而且白金漢宮對公眾開放）。伊恩•亨特（Ian Hunt）通過不同的媒體在渥林格的議程之內把《皇家雅士閣賽馬會》定位成“無罪的抗議”，作為“一種秘密的抗議和對一個不能理解或不可容忍的而不是一次演講的場景分析”2。如果説沃霍爾的肖像系列暗示著君主政體在其臣民眼中是一種權利讓渡，那麼，在我們對渥林格電影膠片不遺餘力的讚譽中，魅力還有荒謬以及鏡頭串連帶來的疲勞合併成為一件更加微妙的事情：給情感維度附加上賽馬場這一概念的價值（與階級和血統緊密聯繫），馬這種四足動物也成為渥林格的一種個人激情。1993年，在他的經銷商安東尼•雷諾茲的組織下，他合夥購買了一匹賽馬。他把這匹馬命名為“真正的藝術品”。儘管這匹馬只跑了一場比賽就受了傷，但為他贏得了特納獎提名，並把杜尚派（Duchampian）的現成的想法擴展到與情感相聯繫的事情。

在完成他的文學碩士學位的過程中，渥林格繼續停留在戈德史密斯任教（1986-91年），他在年輕一代中的核心地位，在薩奇（Saatchi）里程碑式的“年輕英國藝術家Ⅱ”展覽（1993）中可見一斑。渥林格敢於捅政治的癢處；為了應付這場遭遇戰，頗具傳統和深受大眾歡迎的體育被證明是個包容的舞臺。“當藝術家們似乎認為向科隆的富人呼籲比向更多普通觀眾呼籲更加重要時，這是對80年代正在發生的事情的一種反應。”3 環視同一階段的攝影，馬克•渥林格、海耶斯大院31號、坎伯維爾新路、坎伯維爾、倫敦、英格蘭、大不列顛、歐洲、世界、太陽系、銀河星系、整個宇宙(Mark Wallinger,31 Hayes Court,Camberwell New Road,Camberwell,London,England,Great Britain,Europe,The World,The Solar System,The Galaxy,The Universe(1994))4。藝術家和他的兄弟站在一群來自溫布利的足球迷中間，高舉聯合王國國旗，上面書寫的“渥林格”穿過國旗中間。他們冒著打架的危險，把探礦杖浸到由足球流氓、粉絲和唯我論者組成的穿過國民同一性辯論的人流之中。臨近辯論會的地方，四台《皇家雅士閣賽馬會》的攝像監視器用省略號凸顯著權威性。DF

1.政府藝術收藏（Government Art Collection ）

2.伊恩•亨特，“抗議無罪”，見馬克•渥林格：信條，展覽類別（倫敦，泰特美術館，2000年），22。

3.羅斯艾丁引述渥林格的話，“人物概評：馬克•渥林格——種族、階級和性別”，《獨立》（2001年6月2日），5。

4.安東尼•雷諾茲博物館，倫敦。

Mark Wallinger

Characteristically deadpan, Mark Wallinger presents a series of video monitors on top of wheeled flight cases, each isolating the royal carriage’s leisurely progress down the racecourse on the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (respectively) of Royal Ascot, red-letter days in the calendar of institutional frivolities. Simultaneous footage exposes precise choreography: the Queen’s frozen smile and rigid curls, the tilt of her head, her gloved wave, the Duke of Edinburgh raising his top hat, the national anthem striking up. Appropriately for an event whose media coverage focuses on the parade of hats and dresses rather than the sport, here we have a close-up on clothes, on the Queen’s dolly mixture of pinks, tangerines, limes; the difference from day to day is barely discernible, just as the four BBC commentaries merge in a confused blather.

This repetition of imagery, all backed by bright green turf, brings into play Andy Warhol’s late screenprints of Elizabeth II from his ‘Reigning Queens’ series (1985) , a quartet of the postage stamp icon in camp conjugations of Hollywood make-up and bubblegum colours. In Royal Ascot Wallinger harnesses the aesthetic and pleasures of the racecourse, a strapping mount for entering into the debate about constitutional inertia – a debate that had garnered new piquancy (by 1994 the Queen and Prince Charles were liable for tax, and Buckingham Palace had opened to the public). Ian Hunt locates Royal Ascot within Wallinger’s agenda of ‘innocent protest’ across different media, as ‘a private protest and analysis of a situation which appears baffling or intolerable rather than a piece of speech-making’. If Warhol’s portrait series implies that monarchy is an assignment in the eyes of its subjects, in our effortless recognition of Wallinger’s footage, the charms as well as the absurdity and fatigue of continuity add up to something rather more subtle. Adding an emotional dimension to the conceptual value of the racecourse (bound up in class and pedigree), the quadruped was also a personal passion of Wallinger’s. In 1993, he bought a racehorse with a consortium organised by his dealer, Anthony Reynolds. He named it A Real Work of Art. Although it ran just one race before injury, it won him a Turner Prize nomination and extended the Duchampian idea of the readymade into something with feeling.

On completing his MA, Wallinger stayed on at Goldsmiths to teach (1986–91), and his central position among the rising generation there saw him included in Saatchi’s landmark show ‘Young British Artists II’ (1993). Wallinger dared to handle the touchy underarms of politics; for this encounter, sport, its traditions and mass appeal, proved to be an accommodating arena. ‘It was a reaction to what was happening in the eighties when artists seemed to think it was more important to appeal to rich people in Cologne than to a more general audience.’ Glance at the photograph from the same period, Mark Wallinger, 31 Hayes Court, Camberwell New Road, Camberwell, London, England, Great Britain, Europe, The World, The Solar System, The Galaxy, The Universe (1994). The artist and his brother stand amid a crowd of football fans emerging from Wembley, and hold aloft a Union Jack with ‘Wallinger’ written across the middle. They risk a fight by dipping a divining rod into the currents of hooliganism, fandom and solipsism that flowed through debates about national identity. And adjoining that debate, the quadruple monitors of Royal Ascot undercut the definitive with ellipsis.

D.F.

Government Art Collection.

Ian Hunt, ‘Protesting Innocence’, in Mark Wallinger: Credo, exh. cat. (London: Tate, 2000), 22.

Wallinger quoted by Rose Aidin, ‘Profile: Mark Wallinger – Race, class and sex’, The Independent (2 June 2001), 5.

Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London.