記憶中的園區風景
Ground Scenery in the Memory
自05年學院從東三環邊的光華路搬到海淀的清華園以後，圓明園便是我常去的地方：並非因為一百多年前的榮耀與恥辱，事件毀滅的是皇家風景，遺址裏依然蒼翠欲滴，夕暉灑地。我倒是想尋找那些被荒草掩埋的小徑，以及通向那些在圓明園中自發生長又被強力拆毀的村落殘跡。十多年前我們這一代人中的不安分者在那裏尋覓過烏托邦的理想，形成在權力話語之外的藝術群落。今天看來，他們在圓明園的短暫棲息竟然成為中國當代藝術史中浪漫而又苦澀的一頁。據説現在的海淀官府是後悔的，後悔錯過了最有“錢途”的文化産業。當時這些窮愁的藝術青年被逐出圓明園，他們向東尋覓，迎著朝霞，是潮白河畔的通州宋莊收留了他們。十年前我去宋莊拜訪朋友，那裏仍然是京郊最為普通的農村，藝術家的日子過得艱難，但他們從不抱怨，一邊畫畫，一邊打理田園生活，眼裏總是透著希望。而今天的宋莊似乎已是當代神話的發源地，官員、農民、商人、藝術家各盡所能，各得所需，已形成蔚為壯觀的藝術生態鏈。我在挂著“中國宋莊”四個大金字的村口巧遇幾位學院剛畢業就投奔此地的同學，言談之間讓我感到這裡已儼然成為藝術青年嚮往的“革命根據地”。楊衛、洪峰曾與我談過“宋莊奇跡”，都感嘆奇跡來得太突然，變化的速度讓有圓明園經歷的老藝術家們還一時難以適應。
Since the art institution moves from Guanghua Road near east of the 3rd ring of Beijing to Tsinghua Yuan in Haidian district in 2005, Yuanmingyuan Park became one of my favorite places to visit: not because the glory and shame over one hundred years ago, since what the event has destroyed is the scenery of the royal family, inside the site you can still find emerald green and the glow of sunset. What I am really interested in Yuanmingyuan are those trails buried in weeds and the vestiges of villages which came into being spontaneously and were destroyed by force. More than ten years ago, those feisty people in our generation have been looking for the ideal of Utopia there, and formed an art community outside the power circle. From today’s perspective, their short stays in Yuanmingyuan unexpectedly become one romantic and also painful page of the whole Chinese contemporary art history. It is said that today the Haidian government is very regret to miss the most “beneficial” culture industry. At that time, those misery young artists were banished from Yuanmingyuan, and they looked for their shelter towards east, toward the sunglow, and finally they found the Song Village in Tongzhou at the banks of Chaobai River. Ten years ago I went to the Village to visit friends; it was still just like the most common countryside in Beijing suburb and the artists had a very hard time, but they never complained about this: on one hand they drew, on the other hand they took care of their rural life. You could see hope in their eyes. While today the Village seems already being the cradle of a contemporary myth, there officers, farmers, businessmen, artists satisfy of one and all, and a spectacular artistic ecological-chain has formed. At the entrance of the village where hangs the bronzing words “China Song Village”, I encountered several students who just graduated from the institution and came here. During the conversation with them, I found here has already become the “base” where young artists desired. Yang Wei and Hong Feng have told me about “the miracle in Song Village” and both of them believed that the miracle came into being too sudden and too fast to accept for those elder artists who have experienced the Yuanmingyuan era.
儘管如此，從昔日的圓明園畫家村到當下的中國宋莊，臍帶沒有斷，那本是一種生活方式的存在，一種自由精神的存在。如今的我駐足圓明園，心繫著宋莊，包括在那裏創業的朋友，那遠離皇家風水的潮白河畔。
From the art community in Yuanmingyuan to the Song Village nowadays, the umbilical cord of art is always there and never been cut off. That is a way of life, an existence of free spirit. Now although I walk in Yuanmingyuan, my heart is in the Village together with my friends who set up their business there; I am thinking about the banks of Chaobai River far away from the royal Fengshui.
宋莊有了氣場，便引來各路好漢。我要説的是李鐵軍，北京當代藝術館的主持人，一位精力充沛的藝術家。他上個世紀90年代初去了玻利維亞，那是切•格瓦拉戰鬥過的地方，然後又在西班牙求學，回國後便選擇在宋莊安營紮寨。北京當代藝術館坐落在宋莊的一片蔥翠林場中，灰墻、高矮不一的旗桿、碎石路。在沒有展覽開幕式的日子裏，這裡更像一處私人會所。鐵軍引我到後院的天光工作室，有曲徑通幽，伴著雨後的蟬鳴、霧靄和林間散佈的雕塑，眼前的一切幾乎完全抹殺了十年前宋莊給我的記憶。
Song Village has attracted many talented people from various fields with its unique charm. Here I am talking about Li Tiejun, the director of Beijing Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), an energetic artist. In 1990s, he went to Bolivia, where Che Guevara has strived in and then he went to Spain to study. He chooses Song Village to be his base after he came back to China. Beijing MOCA sits in verdant woods in the Village; grey walls, mast of different heights, gravel road make the place much more a private club than a museum if there is no exhibition opening ceremony. Tiejun lead me to Tianguang Studio in the backyard. The winding path, the sound of cicada after the rain, the fog and the sculptures scatter in woods, all these sceneries has almost wiped away my memory of the Village ten years ago.
這麼寧靜的環境本該享受，鐵軍卻在寧靜中畫出了《園區風景》、《霧》、《大自然》、《花狗》等具有震撼力的系列作品。他的畫均為大尺度的黑白灰單色處理，畫面朦朧，似景非景，莫不是鐵軍在多年的闖蕩中混淆了記憶的邊界？而在完成的畫面上，色漿的肆意揮灑和流淌又在割裂那些模糊的形象，莫不是鐵軍有意要用暴力來破壞風景的靜謐？我無意追問藝術家在這些畫中想説什麼，但我關注他的言説方式，他對溫文爾雅的山水畫及書法傳統有著一種緬懷式的日常操練，我想他從中汲取的養分也會影響到自身對園區風景的表達。
In such a peaceful environment, people originally should enjoy life, but Tiejun creates series of work which had great impact, such as The Ground Scenery, Fog, Nature, and Colored Dogs. All his paintings are in large size, with black, white or grey color. The vague frame makes the scenery not like scenery. Does he mix up the boundary of memory in his years of adventure? And in his finished works, the indulged use and flow of colours and inks tear up those vague images. Is he deliberately using violence to destroy the peace of the scenery? I do not intensively want to know what the artist want to review in his paintings, what I am more concerned is his way of speaking. Tiejun has a yearning daily practice of gentle landscape paintings and calligraphy, and I believe his benefit from that will affect his expression of ground sceneries.
如同我有著記憶中的宋莊，鐵軍也有著記憶中的園區風景。記憶是我們生命中最為重要的價值體驗，它混淆時間和空間，甚至完全拋開了它們，讓形象時而模糊時而清晰。人們大都借助攝影術來保留記憶，而鐵軍則是把記憶本身直接寫在畫面上，從造型語言的角度看，形象的不確定性可以有效阻止宏大敘事的編織，因而讓藝術家所有想説的只能是暗示，這裡沒有再現，更沒有教諭。
Like me keeping the memory of Song Village, in Tiejun’s memory, there is also unique ground scenery. Memory is the most important value experience in our life. It mixes the time and space, even put aside of them, making the image sometimes vague and sometimes clear. Most people use photographing to keep their memory, while Tiejun put it directly on his paintings. From the view of molding language, the non-determinacy of image could prevent massive narration effectively, thus makes all artist’s saying just a hint. There is no recurrence, no lecture.
一般而言，風景得以進入人的視野，是因為人的在場，因此場域不是寬泛的、抽象的自然空間，而是生命個體得以呈現的具體環境，在鐵軍這裡“場域”被轉化為具體的“園區”。可以説當代人的生存“園區”不僅充滿著人與人之間的利益衝突或文化衝突，同時也充滿著人與物之間，或人與存在之間的矛盾。心理學中所説的“風景失憶”往往是這種矛盾衝突的表現。如鐵軍作品中出現的公共汽車、鐵軌、飛機等現代技術的産物雖讓人司空見慣、習以為常，但其背後隱藏著對人的生存擠壓和統攝力，一種人們無意識地自甘承受的理性規則。或許，李鐵軍的繪畫只能以一種既朦朧又“暴力”的方式表達出個體生命在當代技術體系中脆弱的存在。
Generally speaking, people could see scenery because people are there, thus the ground is not a general and abstract natural space, but a specific environment where living individuals could express themselves. Tiejun change “space” into specific “ground”. We can say the “ground” where modern people live is not only full of beneficial conflicts and cultural conflicts between people and people, but also full of contradictions between people and thing, or people and being. “Scenery Amnesia” in psychology is usually an expression of such conflict and contradiction. Bus, railway and plane, all those modern technological items in Tiejun’s works are very common to people, but behind them are the living pressure of people, the reasonable rule which people would like to bear unconsciously. Maybe, Tiejun’s painting could only use a vague and “violent” way to express the weak existence of individual life in contemporary technology system.
人在“園區”中觀看和畫畫，那麼感悟在繼續，記憶也在延續，而且是在巨大的不確定性中延續。從圓明園到宋莊，近二十年來中國城鄉的巨大變化讓那些記憶中的風景變得支零破碎，公共景觀的建造一邊在編織宏大敘事，一邊在不斷掏空我們生命記憶中鮮活的細節，從而也讓個體之間的差異變得模糊。是的，我們現在已經習慣於權力鏡頭中氣勢恢宏的大風景，園區在一個個興建，風景在一點點變幻，留給我們的只是觀看的徬徨。
Inside the ground district, people see and paint, the understanding is continuing, so is the memory, continues in great non-determinacy. From Yuanmingyuan to Song Village, during 20 years, the great upheaval of the cities and countries in China has shattered the scenery in memory into pieces; the construction of public sight on one hand make up the great narration of the era, on the other hand clean up the fresh details in our living memory step by step, thus it also makes the discrepancy between individuals indistinct. For sure, we are used to those imposing large sights from the lens of power; the ground district is building one by one, the scenery is changing little by little, and what leave to us is only watch in wander.
可以説，從模糊的記憶到當下現實的園區風景，李鐵軍在畫面上一再質疑形象的不確定性，用矛盾的語言表達來拒絕矯飾的寫實主義。我以為他是一位既橫向拓展自己的實驗領域，又進行縱向思考的藝術家。所謂橫向和縱向，亦即是對東方與西方，傳統與當代的一種立場選擇，這種選擇決定著藝術家的視野和判斷。我們看到與改革開放同步的中國當代藝術已不再提供美容功效，它只是一份在社會情景的劇烈變化中具有人文關懷的現實主義記錄，一份預防失憶的檔案。
From vague memory to the realistic ground scenery, Li Tiejun continually to question the non-determinacy of image in the frame of painting, using contradictive expression to refuse mannered realism. I think he is an artist who expand his own experiencing field horizontally and also think vertically. Speaking of horizontal and vertical, it is also a choice between east and west, tradition and contemporary. Such kind of choice determines the view and judgment of the artist. We see that Chinese contemporary art which is synchronous with the reforming and opening up could no more provide the beauty making effect. It is only a humanistic realism record in the dramatic change of social situation, a file to prevent amnesia.
從圓明園坎坷走來，或從歐美洗禮歸來，今日的中國宋莊不問英雄出處，只是在不斷聚積著能量，這裡不僅是新時期農村包圍城市的根據地，同時也是在時間和空間兩條軸線上新一輪美學建構的交叉點，我相信李鐵軍這位充滿激情、能量和智慧的藝術家已經確定了自己的價值抉擇。
Either with the frustration in Yuanmingyuan or with the adventure of western world, the Village doesn’t care about where those people are from. Energy gathers continuously here. It is not only a base of “city bounded by countryside” in the new era, but also a new round aesthetic construction junction of time axis and space axis. I believe Li Tiejun, the artist full of energy, power and wisdom, has already determined his choice of value.
包林
清華園
2009-08-15
Bao Lin
Tsinghua Yuan
2009-08-15