HD, Single Channel video, 3’45”, black & white, stereo
2012-2013
*
Chen Shaoxiong’s Ink Media and the Aesthetics of Protest
Small notes on Chinese Art（6） by Suman Gupta 《看画随笔之六》 July 27, 2013
These are two images from a series of ten which Chen Shaoxiong exhibited in 2012-13 at Pekin Fine Arts Gallery, Hong Kong, under the title Air-Dry History (see below for the others). These didn’t appear alongside each other. My plucking these out and putting them side by side might seem an inexcusable act of decontextualization and recontextualization. But my doing so doesn’t infringe too seriously on the integrity of this artwork. Decontextualization and recontextualization are implicit in the production and display of these (and such) works by Chen. The Artist’s Statement which appeared with this exhibition said as much. He plucked out photographs of protests in different parts of the world from the internet, seemingly more or less randomly. Then he painted those images with ink on rice paper, reasonably faithfully but with the stylistic licence that the medium offers. The effect was of, so to speak, flattening the various photographs and their different subjects into a uniform style – starkly black and white, with fluid brush strokes. The flattening effect deliberately distances the image of protests from the specificity of the protests depicted – from the time and place and impetus of the actual protests. Chen’s selection for the Air-Dry History exhibition was evidently made from a larger pool of such paintings for a larger Ink Media project. These images, Chen’s statement says, will later be incorporated into another artwork: an animation video composed of a sequence of paintings. Chen has made similar animation videos before, composed of ink paintings – Ink City《墨水城市》(2005), Ink Diary《墨水日记》(2006), Ink Things《墨水东西》(2007) and so on (Chen’s website features ananalysis of these by Xin Wang).
Decontextualization and recontextualization therefore seem to be consistent with the rationale of the painted images here at two levels.
First, the painted image is itself dislocated from the source photograph and, more importantly, from the specific protests recorded in that photograph; the painted image is apparently of protests in general and not of particular and immediately contextualized protests. In other words, the painted image ostensibly reaches for an essential aesthetics of representing protest at the expense of the specific political contexts and dynamics of protests. It doesn’t matter which protest is represented; the paintings seem to seive out an acontextual aesthetics of representing protest. To that end, the paintings are labelled and framed by the Artist’s Statement without regard for details of the protests represented. The medium and technique are foregrounded (“air-dry”, “media ink”, “mass media” and “social media”), not the content. The content is admittedly hit upon serendipitously or through an intractably subjective process. Chen Shaoxiong has been pursuing this acontextual aesthetics of representing protest seriously for a while: it also underpins his 2012 exhibition and project (as artist-in-residence) at the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas – Prepared: Strategies for Activists .
Second, each painted image has a fluid relation to the others, in being placed alongside others in exhibitions and video artworks. Given the removal of these images from their specific political contexts, it seems possible to combine them in any order or put them in any kind of sequence. The point of bringing them together is to foreground the consistency of the flattening stylistics.
My plucking out two images from Air-Dry History is therefore as justified as plucking out any selection or number. But I have a reason for choosing these here: these are two of the images that I am able to place in terms of their specific contexts of protest (I can do so for a few of the others too, but not all). That means I can reinsert the photographs and actual protests that these images were removed from, against the grain of their acontextual aesthetics of representing protest. Doing so, it seems to me, clarifies the mechanics of stylistic flattening that Chen Shaoxiong has performed here. The photographs these two images are based on can be seen below: the first (a black and white one) is of a Wall Street protest on 10 February 1967 by an anarchist group called the Black Mask; the second (in colour) is from the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York which began on 17 September 2011. The removal of the hues and textures of the photographs in the ink paintings, the painterly blur through which the photographs are translated into paintings, levels the images of protest in both. Some of the immediate assessments that could be made by merely looking at the two photographs, even if one didn’t know what they were photographs of, are wiped away in the painted images. Little details in the photographs (the colour tones, the apparel and postures of figures, etc.) immediately suggest that one is of a 1960s scene and the other of a very recent one. In Chen’s paintings these could be two images of roughly the same time and place, even of the same event since the placards are so alike. Effectively, Chen’s paintings visually and stylistically erase the differences between the contexts and dynamics of protests – so that they seem to foregorund a common aesthetics of the depicted protests, and, by implication, of any protests. It doesn’t, then, seem to matter that in 1967 the protest was made amidst the anti-Vietnam War and Civil Liberties movements, and in 2011 it was amidst the financial crisis that started in 2008. It doesn’t seem to matter that the resonances of “Wall Street” itself had changed in the interim, with a series of 1980s and 1990s deregulation measures (climaxing in 1999 with the withdrawal of the Glass-Steagall Act that ended the distinction between commerical and investment banking) which effectively brought about the latter crisis. In Chen’s images of protest, the aesthetics of representation works to disinvest protest from causes, actors, geopolitics, history – protest is flattened out of time and space into a single plane of representation which broods on its own technique and material.
How are we, Chen Shaoxiong’s audience, to understand this kind of representation of protest? It seems fair to say that Chen’s determined disinvestment of the aesthetics of protest from their real political contexts come with a politics of its own. This could be understood from two directions.
One: this aesthetics of representing protest could be a comment on the uneven flow of information across and within state boundaries, especially in China. The groundswell of protests in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, South Asia and elsewhere – against wars and invasions, against oppressive regimes, against corporate and state corruption, against the neoliberal flattening of the “world order” – through and since the 2000s perhaps seem remote in China. Perhaps these paintings are a gesture towards the regulation of information flows that makes protest seem remote in China. Perhaps these paintings suggest that in China significant protest always seems to be removed rather than immediate – mysteriously only apprehensible as decontextualised images. [Arguably that would be the peculiarly blinkered view of a comfortable intelligentsia; China has witnessed, as other countries have, numerous grassroots and ground-level protests over this period. But then the comfortable intelligentsia might say that even protests at the doorstep can be made to seem remote.]
Two: this aesthetics of representing protest could be a comment on the manner in which protest is mediatised and flattened everywhere now, globally. Perhaps it suggests that protest everywhere has gradually assumed a decontextualized life of its own as it proliferates; that protest is now centred on consensus abstractions (like “human rights”, “freedom”, “democracy”) which are actually emptied of meaning, made devoid of ideological agendas and political reasoning, endlessly co-optable by whatever alignment has the wherewithal to jump in; that protest is now only apprehensible through a flattened mainstream mediascape which perpetuates the emptiness and preempted self-obfuscation of protest while protests proliferate and grow. Indicatively, in Chen’s Artist’s Statement the very articulation/imaging of “protest” seems good in itself, irrespective of what the protest is about — just as the very word “activist” is often used nowadays as if it refers to a worthy person, irrespective of what that person is active about. In taking this attitude Chen merely reflects a widespread hollow moralism about protest in-itself – a moralism that is rife among many protesting constituencies around the world. That hollow moralism obscures the fact that the validity and effectiveness of protests and activism are utterly conditional on asking “where”, “when”, “why”, “how”, and especially “to what end”. “Protest” and “activism” are not words which mean anything morally positive in themselves, they don’t refer to gestures that are worthy per se; these have meaning only in terms of well-defined ideological considerations and rational political agendas and grounded historical contexts. Fascists and fundamentalists and racists organise protests too (often do), and, as things stand in Chen’s vision, could come to be depicted without distinction among the images of Ink Media artwork – would Chen worry if that happened? Perhaps Chen’s acontextual aesthetics of representing protest draws attention to this empty moralism of protest, or perhaps it is an unthinking symptom thereof.
Taking a different tack: to my eyes, Chen’s Ink Media images seem to chime with other images of protests/protesters in Chinese art history. These remind me of some woodblock print images by artists associated with the New Woodcut Movement (新木刻运动) initiated by Lu Xun (鲁迅) around 1931 in Shanghai, images from the 1930s and 1940s (before 1949). Five such images, representing protest and protesters, are given below. These too have a stark black and white appearance (unlike the typically black, white and red Cultural Revolution woodblock prints), and represent protesters in a stylistically flattened fashion. Despite circumstantial similarities between Chen’s ink-paper images and these 1930s-40s woodblock prints, the differences are considerably more striking and noteworthy. Contemplating those differences puts Chen’s images of protest, and their/our contemporary contexts, into a clearer perspective:
- The woodblock prints are clearly placed by their labels: three are from the 1930s and addressed to the Chinese resistance to Japanese occupation; two from the later 1940s amidst the civil war between Nationalists and Communists, on the cusp of the latter’s victory (Zhao Yannian’s (赵延年) Rice Riotrefers to riots in Nationalist-ruled Shanghai and other cities in May 1947, when rice prices climbed 300% within 4 months though wages stayed static). We know what the protesters are up to and where and why and when. In Chen’s Ink Media images we are discouraged from asking what the protesters are protesting about and where and why and when.
- The heavy lines of the woodblock prints make for a strong and well-defined visual impression, idealistically accentuating the power of the protesters’ bodies and postures and togetherness. These are protesters whose power is visually enhanced through art. Chen’s ink-paper images, worked from photographs, literally water-down the protesters’ bodies and postures – they seem blurred and muffled. There’s also a sort of idealization there, not of strong enhancement but of sentimentalized remoteness.
- The woodblock prints are part of the protest; the woodblock prints are themselves political and ideological interventions and instruments of protest. The politics of Chen’s Ink Media images is that of wistful and stylized removal from politics and ideology, from the undertaking of protest.
- The woodblock prints were designed to be easily replicated; their simplicity and material qualities were meant to be widely dispersed and available, to be found pasted on billboards and walls or distributed as leaflets. Chen’s Ink Media images speak of the artist’s labour, the time-consuming effort of replicating photographs in ink painting, so that each image is of a unique original. These convert the easily replicated photographic image into unreplicable original artworks. These artworks are then meant to be found in galleries by the cognoscenti.
–
这两幅图像取自陈劭雄的十幅系列《风干历史》，在原系列中，这两个画面不是这样并列排在一起的，我这样把它们摘出来并列放置，看起来是一个不可原谅的断章取义在先重组生义在后的行为。然而我的这个行动却并没有对这件美术作品的完备性产生多少损害，因为陈劭雄制作、展示这些作品的过程已经暗涵了断章取义和重组生义。正如他在个展的《艺术家声明》中所言，陈劭雄从互联网上摘取了世界上不同地方的抗议照片，这多多少少是随机的摘取。然后他用墨水在宣纸上，以水墨介质所给予的风格的自由，相当忠实地画出照片的画面。这个过程的效果，粗略地说，就是把各式各样的照片及其各异的主题压平并转化为同一的风格—-带着流动笔触的荒凉的黑与白。
这个压平效果，有意将抗议的画面与抗议的特境(实际抗议所发生的时间、地点、动因)拉开了距离。于是断章取义和重组生义似乎与产生这些墨水画面的理由在两个水平上相一致。
1.这些墨水图像本身已经与原照片发生了错位，更加重要的是，与原照片所记录的实际抗议事件发生了错位；墨水图像中的抗议活动显然是范义的抗议活动，而非与某个特境密切相关的抗议活动。换言之，墨水图像仿佛是在以牺牲特境的政治与势态为代价而寻求再现抗议活动的原质性的美学原则。画中所取的是哪次抗议无关紧要，这些画作好像滤出了一个无特境的再现抗议活动的美学原则。以此为目的，《艺术家声明》为这些画作进行了略去实际细节的装裱，被推至前景的是画作的介质与技巧（“风干”，“墨水媒体”，“大众媒体”，“社交媒体”），而不是画作的内容。画作容许观众或是因侥幸而知晓内容，或是因执着的主观过程读懂内容。
2.各个墨水画面之间的联系是流动的；在展览时或是在录像中被并列放置。既然这些画面已远离其原有特境，就有了以任何空间顺序与时间搭配排列的可能性。关键之处在于把这些画面的一致性的压平的风格体推至前景。
于是我从《风干历史》中摘取如上所示的两幅与其它的摘取顺序以及数量都可以说是正当有理。但我有特别的原因选择这两个图像：这是两个我可以查到实际特境的图像(还有几个我可以查到，但也有我无法查到的)。这意味着，我可以在墨水画面无特境的美学背景上重新嵌入被移除的实景。在我看来，这样做或许可以把陈劭雄进行风格化压平的机制弄明白。这两个图像的原照如下所示：一是1967年3月10日无政府主义者小组“黑色面具”在华尔街的抗议游行(黑白照)，一是始于2011年9月17日的纽约占领华尔街运动(彩色照)。色彩与质感被移除，照片经画笔的洇润而译成图画，把两幅照片中的影像皆都抹平。照片中的些微细节(色调、人物的衣着姿态等等)立刻提示观者一张是60年代的一张是最近的。在《风干历史》中相应的两幅画中的事件，有可能发生在同时同地，甚至有可能是同一事件，因为二者的标语牌是如此相似。从效果上，陈劭雄的墨水画从视觉上和风格上抹去了这两次抗议的在特境与势态上的区别，于是，这两个画面的前景暗示着一个共同的关于所有抗议活动的美学原理。那么，这些仿佛都无关紧要了：1967年的抗议出现于反越战和民权运动的大背景之下，2011的抗议源于始于2008年的金融危机。这些也仿佛无足轻重：经过80年90年代一系列的放权松绑，“华尔街”本身的内涵外延早已改变，而这些以撤销格拉斯—斯蒂格尔法案、取消商业银行与投资银行差别为高峰的放权松绑在效果上直接导致了现在的金融危机。陈劭雄的抗议画里，再现的美学将抗议釜底抽薪，动因、参演者、地缘政治、历史皆被抽出，抗议被压离时间与空间，压进一个再现的平面，一个对自身的技巧和材料抑郁忧思的平面。
我们，陈劭雄的观众，要怎样去领会这种对抗议的再现？或许这样说是公平的：陈劭雄坚决地从再现抗议的美学原则中抽去真实政治特境的本身就带着自己的政治，这个政治可以从两个方向去领悟。
一, 这个再现抗议的美学原则有可能是对信息穿过各个政国边界（尤其是中国）的不均性的评论。抗议发生在美国、欧洲、中东、南亚，其它的地方；抗议战争与侵略，抗议制度的压迫，抗议集团与政国的腐败，抗议新自由派主控“世界秩序”，在中国，自2000年以来，这些抗议显得日益遥远。也许这些画作是对令这些抗议在中国显得遥远的关于信息限制的种种规定的表态。也许这些画作提示观者，在中国，意义重大的抗议总是被远移错位，失去其紧迫性，被当做神秘零散的图像断章取义地去参悟。
二，这个再现抗议的美学原则可能是对当今全球各地抗议被以特定方式媒体化平板化的评论。也许这原则提示观者，无论在哪里，抗议示威在增殖的过程中都逐渐获取了一种断章取义式的生命；提示观者，现今，抗议示威笼统地以普遍认同的抽象词汇(诸如“人权”、“自由”、“民主”)为中心，而这些词汇实际上已被掏空了意义，既无意识形态的议题又无政治逻辑的推理，不断地被随便哪个具有手段能量的阵线所淘选；提示观者，时下，抗议示威只能通过主流媒体的平板的视框去参悟，在这样的自设视框中，各地迅猛增长的抗议示威不断被掏空内容、变得面目不清。具有表征意义的是，在陈劭雄的《艺术家声明》中，对“抗议”进行言语/图像表达本身似乎就值得赞扬，无论抗议所关何事，就好像“寻变活动家”这个词当下的用法，仿佛凡是寻变活动家就必定值得敬仰，不管他寻求的是何种变化。采用这样的思路，陈劭雄只是反映了一种广泛流传的关于抗议自身的道德主义，这种道德主义泛滥于世界各地的抗议参众之中。这个空洞的道德主义隐晦了一个基本事实，那就是抗议与寻变活动的正当性和有效性完全取决于对“何时”、“何地”、“为何”、“如何”的追问，尤其取决于对“以何为目标”的问。“抗议”与“寻变”这两个词语本身并不具有正面的道德，也不代表原质性的高尚；这两个词语只有在以定义明确的意识形态理由、理性的政治行动日程、坚实的历史特境为内涵之后才具有意义。法西斯主义者、原旨主义者、种族主义者同样(而且经常)组织抗议，运用陈劭雄的视觉想象，这些抗议也可以被绘出变成《墨水媒体》中的图像，这些图像与《墨水媒体》中的其它作品不会有明显区别，如果发生这样的过程，陈劭雄是否会感到担忧？陈劭雄用无特境美学原则再现抗议，或许是提醒观者注意这个关于抗议的空洞的道德主义，也或许是这个疏于思考的道德主义的病症。
换一个视角：在我眼中，陈劭雄的《墨水媒体》仿佛与中国艺术史上其它表现抗议/抗议者的图像遥相呼应。《墨水媒体》中的画面让我想起一些曾参与1931年左右由鲁迅在上海发起的新木刻运动的艺术家30年代到40年代(1949年之前)的木刻印画。本文选择了五幅再现抗议与抗议者的木刻印画。这些图像同样有着荒凉的黑白外观(相异于文革期间的黑红白三色典型木刻印画)，并以风格化的平面模式再现抗议者。尽管有着细节上的相似性，《墨水媒体》关于抗议的图像与30-40年代的木刻印画有着显著的差异，这些差异值得注意。思索这些差异可以把抗议图像与当时相应的特境的透视关系看清楚：
1.木刻印画有明确的标题，我们知道抗议者在干什么，知道时间地点和原因。《墨水媒体》中的图像则不鼓励我们追问抗议者为什么抗议，抗议发生在何时何地。
2.木刻印画粗重的线条给人以强烈明确的视觉印象，理想化地强调抗议者的身躯、姿态和一体性。抗议者的力量被艺术所强化。《墨水媒体》的图像源于照片，创作过程“水化”了抗议者的身躯和姿态，抗议者们看上去模糊臃肿。这里也有理想化的表达，不是大刀阔斧的强化而是情调绵绵的远化。
3.木刻印画是抗议的一部分，它们自身就是对政治和意识形态的干预，是抗议的工具。《墨水媒体》的政治是一种惆怅优雅的脱身，从政治与意识形态中脱身，从抗议的承诺中脱身。
4.木刻印画设计基点是它的易复制性，简略的画面和材质的低廉意味着这些印画可以广泛传播，可以变成海报随墙而贴，可以做成传单到处散发。《墨水媒体》叙述着艺术家的辛劳，叙述着把照片用墨水重画的耗时的努力，因此每一个画面都是独一无二的原创。上述过程把可以轻易复印的照片转化成无法复制的独一的艺术作品。这意味着这些艺术作品只能被行家在美术馆里找到。
–
No Real Body 