// 內容 CONTENTS //
《聖誕島，自然而然》 Memorial to the Last Christmas Island
Pipistrelle, from the series Christmas Island, Naturally by Robert ZHAO
Renhui (趙仁輝作品)
// 訂量信息 QUANTITATIVE //
分兩件的作品 one artwork in two pieces
(蝙蝠聲音探测器和麥克風 bat sonar detector and microphone)
185 x 134 x 82 cm
// 出發點 START POINT //
香港鰂魚涌 Quarry Bay, Hong Kong
// 到達點 END POINT //
新加坡中山公園戴斯飯店 Days Hotel by Wyndham Singapore at
Zhongshan Park, Singapore
// 慢遞人員 COURIER //
易拎何子 PORTABLE
// 運輸狀態 SHIPPING STATUS //
派送成功 SUCCESSFULLY RECEIVED 2019-06-09，10:57
慢遞招募發布 ROUTE REQUESTED 2019-05-29，16:41
我本來沒想記錄這條線，因為突然間——也是機緣巧合——我接了一條付費的線路。但是在飛機上時，看到了一場異常漂亮的雲，像是被蝕刻的懸崖、翻滾的海浪、手提箱又或是UFO排著隊一個一個湧現，一個騎伏在另一個上面。我想著拍張照吧。我想象著熙熙攘攘的人們像雲朵一樣擁擠在這個光滑無菌的飛機場里，高高的、有弧度的天花板下然後，另一個慢遞員說他不確定這趟旅程是否能激發任何想法，因為乘坐的是飛機而非24小時的火車；飛機場真的太無菌了。然後，我回應他說我喜歡高昂情緒在這種無菌環境中所帶來的強烈對比。然後，我覺得再另一個慢遞員太天蠍了，在表達願意承接另一條線路時對「愛」這個詞的使用充滿算計。好像如果她不愛我了，那條線路也就終止了。我不確定因為愛而讓一個人捲入工作是否是可恥的，又或者如她所言，一再用荒唐的量化思維衡量事物，反映了我們自身的被奴役，而且不過是按照又一個資本主義邏輯在走。另一個慢遞員說，這個天蠍座慢遞員十分擅長太戀愛——就字面意思，談論浪漫的戀愛(演講，公開發表言論，表演)。但我們對愛到底能說什麼呢？我覺得她談論愛的時候是在利用我，但也許我拜託她慢遞時她也同樣覺得被利用。也許這就是愛的勞動⋯⋯這種愛的類型就是我們厭惡父母所有的那種，哪怕鬧翻天最後還是綁在一起。一直在一起。
這個慢遞員如此感慨於另一個慢遞員討論愛的能力，也說明她在情緒上遭遇了某種困頓。這些話不知道怎麼說。這也是勞動？感覺卡住，搜腸刮肚，想要一吐為快？就像是情緒進入了一個無菌的環境，熙熙攘攘在胃和掛在你嘴後面的那個小東西的大門之間奔波，可航班總是一再延誤。這真是項艱巨的任務。
我想起了一張飛機機翼指向雲海的照片，是一位朋友在2011年拍攝的，當時他48歲，第一次坐飛機。其實他是從北京到廣州去工作，但是在雲端，他寫了一首詩。
這會兒，飛機上的空調還是一向冷的讓人絕望，但我們正朝南飛行，太陽在我這一側。我一直緊靠窗戶以取暖，但我沒有拍雲。
I didn’t think about documenting the route this time, mostly because I felt shame to suddenly, by chance, be carrying a route for financial gain. But then while on the airplane, an especially beautiful explosion of clouds, like ravaging cliffs and waves and suitcases and UFOs waiting in line, one after another, bulbous one on top of another. I think about taking a photograph. I think about swathes of people like clouds rushing under the tall, curving glass ceilings of sleek and sterilised airports. About how another courier said he was not sure if he would be able to come up with inspired documentation this time, travelling by plane as opposed to the 24-hour train ride of his previous route; airports are too sterile. About how I then responded that I like the contrast of such high emotions in those sterile environments. About how I felt like she was being so scorpion in her calculated use of the word love when talking about her willingness to take another route. That courier route would stop when she stopped loving me, supposedly. I was not sure if it should be shameful to engage someone to work for love, or, as she said, to run again on something absurdly quantifiable, meaning facing up to our servitude, and just simply following another capitalist logic. Another courier says that scorpion courier is very good at 談戀愛——literally, to talk about romantic attachments (and the act 演講, of talking publicly, is to perform). But what can we really talk about love? I feel like she’s using me when she talks about love, but perhaps just as she feels used that I ask her about routes. That is the labour of love, perhaps…the kind that we resent our parents for, the kind that keeps them together after all those explosions and all this time. All this time.
The courier that is impressed with another’s ability to talk about love confesses that she gets stopped by emotion. All these words that don’t know how to come out. Is that a labour, too? To be stuck with our hiccups and having to work around not knowing how to liberate difficult words? Like emotion in a sterile environment, rushing all about somewhere between a stomach and the gate of that little thing that hangs in the back of your mouth, even though the flight paths are on perpetual, repeated delay. It is a lot of work.
I think about the photograph of the wing of the aircraft pointing toward a sea of clouds, the one photographed by a friend in 2011 on his first journey by plane at the age of 48. He was on his way from Beijing to Guangzhou for work, actually. But while up in the air he wrote a poem.
The air conditioning on this plane is as usual on high for sterility, but we’re flying south, and the sun is on my side. I keep leaning close to the window to keep warm, but I don’t take a photograph of clouds.
Posted by 丫 | reply »les mains négatives
by marguerite duras
the light of day – or, the most intense fiery sadness inside the palest of blue
the difficulty of writing. therefore words become physically written entities. are animated by the postures and movements of the hand. the word becomes image. is placed in perspective. the natural rhythms of speech and of reading contorted. a video on writing:
act 1:
the street is where it finally played out, no confining corners of a room, simply a street and a doorstep and a door. a door that remained closed. closed that night and all the nights after. closed for several years. there were a few words there on the street, an evening chill picking up, words uttered from mouths tightly locked into position, not once breaking out into smile, no more spontaneities. now i remember it was an iron. the last object that passed between us. an iron. your iron. my iron. no ironing board. the irony. an iron with no more spontaneities. all those years summed up into the exchange of a single iron. a pink iron.
act 2:
you entered the studio that day and it filled the room. eyes locked and we understood. a kind of understanding that was hard to come by in those days. “we paid people 50 kuai to cry”. leaving the party early i cycled to the apartment that night, shared by several, it was only you there, you and a dvd menu on loop, the same jingle over and over again, you kept emphasizing the word ‘taken’, ‘taken’, ‘taken’ – i guess it was the opposite of what i was getting – the other word that night ‘transgressive’ – you and bataille – he and whitman – i couldn’t do it – sorry bataille – sorry whitman – i couldn’t do it – so much for ‘transgression’ — whenever i revisit the room, you are both there, bataille and whitman, bataille, whitman and me and the king-size bed. the torrent of words finally gets me writing on afternoons alone in the house, just before the onset of twilight.
act 3:
a gallery space, half emptied out, i keep going back there, the mounted and framed photographs are placed on the floor, leaning against the wall, a few are supported by the pillar in the middle of the space, you try to get them to leave, to let them leave us behind, but there is simply no subtle way of doing it and you mutter at them clumsily, they leave, we are left, the afternoon sun is slowly disappearing, the lights are left off, we talk, walk around and shout, until we settle behind the reception counter, a chair and a wall for support, we can do this but we can’t do that, what do you want from me? don’t ask that of me! she tells me his knees were shaking all the way on subway ride back home, i was never shown shaking knees. now, i only ever meet you in that gallery space. we don’t exchange words just glances and parts of our bodies in a deafening silence, the afternoon sun perpetually setting.
act 4:
an early spring evening, i keep trying to leave: “i have a party,” “a party to go to,” “a housewarming party”, but something keeps me at your side all night, first we sit at the “less important people table” and are seated next to each other, after more guests stream in we are both upgraded to the “more important people table”, again placed next to one another. what luck! finally settling into a comfortable position we continue our conversation, your leg brushes against mine a few times, i recall her remark about “woody men”. and i can’t stop staring at the eyes. can’t stop. the whole night – no rooms here, but the chambers of eyes to revisit “an intense fiery sadness” i describe to her later “inside the palest of blue”.
.
measures of resistance
Zürich night
Photo courtesy of Nic Shepherd
Some 15 minutes after having been abandoned at the Perla Mode by an American living in Zürich, I found him again at another opening at a small exhibition space called Les Complices. He made some comment about how I was typically Canadian because of the desire I expressed (which admittedly had structured my last 5 years) to keep going out rather than back to North America. I had not assigned value to my statement, and in my view it could indeed be taken as a lack of control and capriciousness. The space, which had a DJ playing, was a queer art space. I was not sure if my jocular, drunk brotherness was appreciated, and I was in the mood to joke. Out front one of the drunk women, who turned out to be a Canadian from Montreal, tried to convince her acquaintances to go out to a non-gay place to dance. She appeared to be quite drunk, and unless I was mistaken, the other two were not very fond of her. She had pimples. The other two returned to their friends inside and I was left, so she asked me and I thought, why not, I’d like to go dancing. We walked arm in arm down the street to a place right on Langstrasse. She joked with the bouncer who tried to remain stern, they were obviously familiar with each other, and it made me feel that this was a small town. Inside it was hip hop night, and various large men rocked back and forth in the red velvet surroundings. She knew someone (although they claimed they hadn’t known each other before) and they began talking. She asked me to buy her a drink, but I really had no money on me. This other girl seemed to be looking for someone to go home with. They asked me if I wanted to fuck, said that it was what everyone in the room wants. I joked that I was a virgin and the girl believed me, appeared to take pity on me, which made me uncomfortable – when I retracted the statement she asked me what kind of lover I was. I motioned to some of the large men standing near the turntables “maybe they want to fuck.” She considered this and went to see about it. When the lesbian’s back was also turned I used the opportunity to slip out the front door with my backpack on. I walked home along the vacant street car lines. I kept thinking of the girl’s sad expression when she said she came to the bar quite regularly, but no one had interest in fucking her. It made me kind of sad too.
[courtesy of Michael Eddy, October 2009]
Posted by secretary | reply »to find and not find the centre of things, all things aside
above: putting up the exhibition (photo by 高灵 Gao Ling); below: walking back after finishing the installation ｜ 上海 shanghai，2009年9月
i am sorry. time is everything.
cannot go there, too much or too little, traveling, hanging there, a collection, hanging on. i seem to have an affinity for stories of people getting lost, perhaps a bit too direct a reference yet were i to introduce myself to you as that one who liked to find this little thing in the street it perhaps would remain too ridiculously nebulous.
direct.
direction.
we would have been looking in the wrong direction to go astray, to find the beside. aside, as in put in reserve, for future use, the collection of objects for which we may find value or function at another time. we never know what will become useful in the end, or the lessons come too late, i feel the top of her head and wonder what positions i layed in as a child, what positions i moved in sleep, next to you or dreaming without you. we cannot always think so functionally, in love and in war. i don’t strategize very well. but we may very well have a hunch.
a hunch is an open space of time, a forethought without expectation, like a collection of random things for which we may find use later. i suppose it could be important to figure out how to make use of them, but perhaps their being together could be enough. find meaning beyond use value, a cabinet of curiousities, our collection of oddities.
that’s the thing i’ve been missing lately. to take time for my collection of oddities, to try to go back to a certain kind of objectivity without expecting too much. i have a hunch. perhaps i was looking in the wrong direction and now find myself lost, a story that i liked to hear, her voice in two languages on loop. it’s my own aside that is now addressed to you, without letting the other characters hear, a story shared without knowing if anyone is listening. you, dear audience member or director, the lights are shining so bright…i cannot see if you are out there.
Posted by 丫 | reply »in praise of shadows
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