Issue 72 | Collective Narratives: The Narrator And His/Her Texts

题引人 Writer / Moderator 

杨旖旎  YANG Yini

嘉宾对话 Guest Speakers 

 王拓   Dir. WANG Tuo 

何子彦  Dir. Ho Tzu Nyen

▶  影片放映｜Film Screening

何子彦《无名》

The Nameless

Dir. Ho Tzu Nyen

王拓《共谋失忆症》

Symptomatic Silence of Complicit Forgetting

Dir. Wang Tuo

✦ Screening Time｜放映时间

July 3rd 9 am -  July 6th 9 am

NY Eastern Time

@ www.CathayPlay.com

✦ Online Panel Talk ｜嘉宾线上对话座谈

July 5th 9:30 am --11:00 am

 New York, Eastern Time

7月 5日 21:00 pm --23:00 pm

北京时间, Beijing Time

✦ Location｜地点

YouTube 线上直播 @ Conversazione  

喜马拉雅语音直播@CONVERSAZIONE

*ZoomMeeting *Live stream on YouTube + Himalaya Live

* RSVP 这次活动，会议ID信息将会通Email Receipt 的形式送出！

*You will receive the specific Voov Meeting ID when you RSVP this event!

✧ Program Overview | 专题概览

共同叙事版块将着眼于叙事者和他/她所要面对的文本之间的关系，文本可以被认为是作品的素材。叙事者所要面对的文本，将在最广泛的意义上进行讨论，分为来自前辈的艺术传统和日常生活印象两类，包括叙事者所选取的故事模型、神话原型、传统、创作程式；日常生活印象、创伤记忆、价值观念等等。艺术传统对于作品语言的影响，以及生活印象对于语言的修正，而生活印象对当代艺术来说也许更为重要。我们对这些文本的限定和预期是：它们必定是经过叙事者的主观滤镜从而变形了的。叙事者可以是作者、主角、观者，文本自然随着叙事者身份的变化而变化。那么，如果假定文本是客观存在的、非虚构的，那么在经过叙事者的选择记忆、移情和汲取之后，似乎就不得不面临虚构的指控。

✧ 专题概览 | Program Overview

The section will focus on the relationship between the narrator and the texts he/she is going to face. Texts can be roughly treated as the materials of the oeuvre. The texts will be discussed within an extensive meaning, divided into two categories: legacy and impressions, including the chosen predecessor models, mythical prototypes, the past’s legacy, fixed formulas; impressions from the living environment, traumatic memories, values, etc. The legacy lies in the languages of art, and the impressions lie in the revision of the language, which is perhaps even more important for contemporary art. The qualification and expectation of these texts is that they must have been deformed through the subjective filter of the narrator. The narrator can be the author, the protagonist, and the viewer, thus the text will naturally change with the narrator's identity. If one assumes that the text is objectively existent and non-fictional, one would seem to have to face the charge of fiction after the narrator's choice of memory, empathy and extraction.

༄电影： 《共谋失忆症》| 王拓

Symptomatic Silence of Complicit Forgetting

Dir. Wang Tuo

✦ Synopsis ｜剧情梗概

一位陷入写作困境的作家,一位暗自神伤的妻子,他们虽同处一室,却仿佛在各 自的世界中尝试抚平某些不为人知的记忆伤痕。在这个既写实又虚幻的当代中 国家庭里,笼罩着人鬼共栖的诡异氛围。另一个时空里,一个年轻的红卫兵误入 一间堆满废弃书稿的房间,沉浸在一则古代故事的阅读中,忽然听到窗外的游街 声,夺门而出。一段半个世纪前的创伤记忆被抽丝剥茧。这是一个属于中国的故 事样板,遥远而切身,时至今日仍然留有难以觉察的幻痛,平静地藏匿在中国的 现实里。

德国文化学者 Aleida Assmann 在《遗忘的形式》(Forms of Forgetting)中曾提出 过一种共谋性遗忘,即当体制试图销毁某段过往记忆的同时,其中的受害者也往 往表现出创伤性的沉默。两者的沉默叠加而形成了一种共谋。正如作家无法通过 写作去疗愈记忆深处的伤痕,共同分享历史创伤的人也同样陷入无意识的集体 性沉默,这种沉默最终变成一种无法言说的、在时间中累积、在情感关系中转移 的病征。在这个记忆与现实交错的时空中,这种有关创伤经验的沉默从不被书写 到无法书写,最终难以追溯。就像影片中人鬼共栖的微妙关系:个人与历史伤痕 之间的对抗最终变得无力,和解变得不可能。

A writer with a writer’s block and a woman secretly in distraught, try to heal the wounds in their memories unbeknown to others in their respective worlds despite living in the same room. This contemporary Chinese family, both real and fictional, is engulfed under an alienating atmosphere inhabited by both men and ghosts. In another scenario, a young red guard mistakenly enters a room piled with abandoned books and manuscripts, captivated from reading an ancient story, he suddenly hears the marching sounds outside the window and steps out of the door. This traumatic memory from a half-century ago has again come undone. A blueprint unique to Chinese stories, as distant and personal as it may seem, remains prevalent in those undetected phantom suffering and discretely hidden in the Chinese realities.

The German scholar Aleida Assmann proposed the notion of Complicit Forgetting in Forms of Forgetting. According to whom, when the system attempts to destroy part of a memory from the past, its victims would often exhibit silence symptomatically. Their compounded silence becomes a kind of complicity. As the writer could not heal the wound in his memory through writing, those who share historical trauma would also fall into the unconscious collective silence, that eventually becomes ineffable. It festers over time, and metastasizes in emotional relationships.

  In the temporal and spatial dimensions where memories and reality overlap, the silence of traumatic experiences wanes from unwritten, unable to be written, and eventually becomes untraceable. Like the subtle relationship where man and ghost cohabit: the struggle between personal and historical trauma eventually becomes powerless, and their reconciliation becomes impossible.

✦ Director Bio｜导演介绍

王拓 WANG Tuo

1984 年生于吉林省长春市。2007 年毕业于东北师范大学 , 获生物学学士学位。2012 年毕业于清华大学美术学院，获绘画系硕士学位。2014  年毕业于波士顿大学艺术学院，获硕士学位。王拓的艺术实践以影像、行为、绘画为主，并涉及多种媒介，通过在预设情境下对他人真实生存经验以及文献行为化的介入来揭示当代人类境遇与精神遗产之间不稳定的关系。他的作品中经常基于对已有的文献（如文学、电影、戏剧、美术史）的引用，来建立一个多重叙事的情节迷宫，在那里，有关当代社会的戏剧化、幽默而荒诞的成分被展示出来。王拓的实践也同时探讨了人造观念和意识形态是如何从其历史背景中生发而出的，并与持续变化的社会状况相适应的主题。

Born in 1984, Changchun. Employs various mediums and a process that combined interview, reality show and the theatre of absurd to construct a maze of melodrama. Through his performative manipulation on individuals' lived experiences and intervention in intellectual legacies such as literature, film, theatre and art history, Wang's practice attempts to examine the unreliable relationship between the contemporary human status, myth and cultural archive. In the self-referential environments that he constructs, dramatic, often humorous as well as absurd aspects of the concept of society are exposed. Wang's practice also seeks to develop a discourse on how present ideology is derived from its historical context continues to adapt to changing condition.

༄电影： 《无名》| 何子彦

The Nameless | Dir. Ho Tzu Nyen

✦ Synopsis ｜剧情梗概

《无名》讲述的是莱特的故事，他在1939至1947年间曾担任马来西亚共产党总书记，莱特是他的50多个别名中的一个。关于这个面目模糊的人物的故事有一系列挪用的现成图像构成，讲述这个在多重效忠关系和多种身份中转换的人物。

《无名》同时也是关于电影和导演的作品。在全球电影文化最发达的几大地区中，或许是香港对于“妥协的个体”表现出了极大的迷恋，这一点从香港电影层出不穷的密探、双面间谍、线人及叛徒形象中可循到踪迹。

The Nameless is a video installation that revolves around a Sino-Vietnamese man named Lai Teck, who is played by iconic Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu Wai. Lai Teck was one of the 50 known aliases of the Secretary General of the Malayan Communist Party from 1939 to 1947, until he was killed in Thailand after being exposed as a triple agent. He had worked first for the French, then the British secret forces, and finally with the Japanese Kempeitai (secret police) during the years of the Malayan Occupation (1941–1945). Of all the great cinematic cultures of the world, it is perhaps Hong Kong cinema that has shown the most intense fascination with ‘comprised’ individuals. Taking its cues from the constant stream of Hong Kong films made about ‘stool pigeons,’ ‘double-agents,’ ‘informers,’ and ‘traitors,’ the work tells the story of an identity metamorphosis lurking beneath the veneer of nations and ideologies. By overlaying multiple languages and compiling images of a single actor against different Asian films made between 1989 and 2013, The Nameless attempts to represent the historical, shifting, multi-faceted figure as one who not only influenced a crucial period of Malayan history, but also as one who embodies the layered historical and ideological complexities of Southeast Asia.

✦ Director Bio｜导演介绍

何子彦 | Ho Tzu Nyen

通过戏剧性的乐谱和光效来呈现大量的历史参照是何子彦（1976年生于新加坡）创作录像和装置作品的主要手法。各不相同的录像作品向人们揭示鲜为人知的东南亚历史的同时，也在指出我们自身并未察觉的未知。何的作品脉络参考一系列文学、艺术史和音乐的文献，一种被扩大强化的模糊、戏剧性和不安的感受充斥于其中。何借由身心两方面来调动观众多种感知，并促使其思考那些我们已知的和更为重要的未知。

✏  Modeator Bio｜题引人介绍

杨旖旎

现当代艺术理论研究者。