文/宋振熙
1972年，伊塔洛·卡尔维诺（Italo Calvino），首次发表了他的小说《看不见的城市》。这位才气横溢的文学大师，用后现代的手法为我们带来了叙事想象所包裹下，对世界秩序的认知及反思。小说虚构了忽必烈大帝与马可·波罗之间的对话，让两种世界观在叙事城市的奇幻中发生碰撞，精彩至极。然而，卡尔维诺的小说仿佛成为了某种预言，在今天全球化城市景观中显得更加真实：城市的发展进程带着社会每一个个体，走向了文化记忆的反面，真正看不见的城市来临了。当我和艺术家石玩玩在澳门共谋本次艺术项目时，便想让艺术家通过自己的艺术创作方式，让卡尔维诺书中的马可·波罗走到现实中，以一种社会介入的方式唤起我们对社群、地域、空间、个体在文化和经济关系中别样形状的思考。让艺术行动成为叙事者的笔记，让看不见的城市得以显现。
石玩玩的艺术创作有自己的一套系统方法。对于他来说，艺术创作的结果并不是其价值的核心部分，重要的是过程。展厅中的作品指向的是每个艺术行动中的观念脉络。在他本次澳门驻地展览之前的作品中，我们可以发现，社会介入是其常用的一种创作手段。这是一种建立在关系美学之上新的公共艺术模式。2017年 与金范九合作的《香雪海计划》则是一个代表之作。从一个旧物溯源，找寻时代情境下人与人之间看不见的社会关联以及情感记忆。石玩玩在社会空间中发展出对观念艺术的层层建构，让艺术行动成为创作过程中的核心能量。更具有吸引力的是，他非常强调创作的叙事性。他挑起的是人类所一直拥有的故事欲望，几乎每一件作品，石玩玩都在用自己的论述方式呈现一个完整并带有现实性的故事。2017年，《桃花树计划》则是利用旧城改造的废墟中长出的小野花绘制成画，透过网路贩售，再将贩售所得在未来的新城中种植桃花树。在陶渊明的家乡，呼应《桃花源记》的文本，将被扭曲的城市化进程以及群体性情感勾勒，并厚实可感。所以艺术家就像《看不见的城市》中不断述说的主人公马可·波罗，只不过他的讲述是以艺术行为的方法得以呈现。
在叙事中，石玩玩有三种方式保障其抒写的故事更具有美学上的活力。其一是他常常让更多的社会群体参与到其艺术行动中来，成为其作品创作的主体之一，消解艺术家作为创作者的主体身份。艺术作品的过程将会遭遇到更多的不确定性，石玩玩需要随时应对不可预知的“写作”走向。作为最终的陈述者，艺术家要再次构造艺术作品的动机、过程和结果。这就是我们常常在当代艺术创作中所发现的“不确定性”的美学意义。第二，石玩玩擅长用多重转换的手法来制造艺术作品观念的表达内容，他善于设定艺术行为中的游戏规则，参与者和自己在不同阶段之中形成内容的转换，让人们在一系列转换中更加清晰的看到观念的形状。《香雪海计划》中，旧冰箱最终被点亮成为新冰箱，看似回到原点的过程中，那些当年制造它的人们重新被聚集，情感和记忆重新被杂糅，交织出新的样貌。观念从物走向了非物的关系再回到物化本身。参与者和作品观看者，都在这样的转化中，体会到了艺术家在叙事背后所制造出的反思内涵。其三，石玩玩擅长用重复行为(repetition action)作为创作语言。在当代艺术中，重复行为的语言并不少见，在反复无效中来解构艺术家观念所指，无效性是一种强烈的否定语言，是拆解命题的手段。但石玩玩的重复行为更像是寓言故事写作中常常出现反复描述，以循环来强化观念的意义。这次澳门即将展出的作品《一千次抚平你的心》则是重复行为创作语言的代表。每一次无效，都是强调自身内在情感的表达。看似无效，却对叙事积极有效。三种手法建构了石玩玩创作的标志性风格，也给观者在最终的作品展示界面中，寻求到了多样性切入观看的可能。随着石玩玩创作历程的深入，他个人作品的风格特征更加强烈。
本次在澳门举办的个展项目，正是将石玩玩置于一个看不见的驻客角色，一个澳门城市历史与当下阅读者的角色，一个再度抒写“看不见的城市”形貌的角色。石玩玩以笔记的概念引入整场展览叙事，三件作品都把海作为叙述内容的引子，让“自我”这样一个临时驻客的个人经验和城市历史文化记忆联系在一起，让三件作品之间形成看不见的紧密关联，反复勾勒地域文化和个体之间的思考形状。从欧洲的爱琴海到北方渤海，再到澳门南中国海，三片看似无法构成连贯性的海域，却由一个驻客由内向外的联系在了一起。《一千次抚平你的心》以个人情绪表达作为本次展览的切入口，艺术家开始平静讲述自己和海之间的经验关系。作品《礼物》是将对海的想象作为对象，是一次自身与海对话的思考笔记。作为本次展览的核心作品《海边笔记》则是基于前两者更加递进式的观念思考。艺术家运用了田野调查的方式，社会性介入到了澳门地域、人文、社会的末梢神经当中，让历史和当下在大海的符号情境下获得了重新对话的可能。作为这个笔记的撰写者，石玩玩调动了自我想象和历史文本，让城市的固化形态有所松动，参与笔记的城市个体也将获得了一次对城市历史文化记忆重新塑形的机会。展览在这个作品面前获得了某种意义上的深化，对话自我、对话大海、对话历史，这如同《看不见的城市》中，那个忽必烈大帝——俨然被虚构的对象，在这里所留下的只有叙事者石玩玩自我和其产生的思想观念的对话。
回看石玩玩的多年创作脉络，在地性仿佛是艺术营养，是其不会放弃的观念塑造基础。无论是在北京、上海、湖南常德、菲律宾马尼拉、南京、苏州、杭州、土耳其伊斯坦布尔、韩国首尔、越南胡志明、甘肃叶家堡、甘肃石节子村、台北、香港和澳门，他正向一个游历的驻客，在每一个地方畅想出不同的故事，城市的过往和现世能够有新的述说，他说给这个城市倾听，说给这里的生活的人们倾听，说给自己倾听。石玩玩的内心之中，艺术不再是一个禁锢在墙面上的装饰之物，它是流淌进过自己身体进入地域空间、串联公共生存情境下的行为历程。驻客是不被看见的临时存在，但只有他的介入，那看不见的城市才会带着生命力走向回归。
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宋振熙 策展人 中国美术学院媒体城市研发中心策展部主任
本文为石玩玩在澳门后牛房实验坊个展前言
by Song Zhenxi
In 1972, Italo Calvino published his novel Invisible Cities. The talented literary master presented to us with post-modern techniques his perception and reflection on world order wrapped in a narration of imaginary journeys. The novel fictionalizes a conversation between the emperor Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, where two worldviews collide in cities of fantasy under narration, which is extremely exciting. However, Calvino’s novel seems to have become a prophecy that virtually turns into reality in today’s globalized urban landscape: the development of cities carries every individual in society to the other side of cultural memory, announcing the advent of invisible cities. When discussing with Shi Wanwan about this art project in Macao, I proposed his launching Marco Polo in Calvino’s book into reality through his own works of art, so as to, via a kind of social intervention, inspire us to reflect on communities, locality, spaces, and individuals’ different thoughts in cultural and economic relations. The idea was to transform artistic actions into narratives, and make invisible cities visible.
Shi Wanwan has his own systematic methods for artistic creation. Creative results are not what he values most as what matters to him is the process. Works in the exhibition room point to the conceptual context of each artistic action. In his works before this artist-in-residence exhibition in Macao, we found that social intervention was a creative approach he often used. That is a new approach to public art based on relational aesthetics. The Xiangxuehai Project, co-created with Jin Fanjiu in 2017, was a representative work in this regard. Tracing an old object’s history, the work explores invisible social connections and emotional memories between individuals within context of times. In the piece, Shi Wanwan developed a multi-layered structure for conceptual art in the social space, enabling his artistic action to become the core energy in the creative process. What's more appealing is, he emphasizes narrative power in his art. Provoking mankind’s desire for story, in almost every work, he presents a complete, realistic story using his own narration method. In another 2017 work, the Peach Blossom Tree Project, the artist turned into paintings small wild flowers grown in ruins amid old city renovation, sold them online, and then with the sales income planted peach blossom trees in the future new city. The piece, created in Eastern Jin dynasty poet Tao Yuanming's hometown, echos with the ancient poet’s prose Peach Blossom Spring (Tao Hua Yuan), delineating distorted urbanization process and collective emotions, profoundly and tangibly. Therefore Shi is acting like Marco Polo in Invisible Cities who constantly narrates, except that his narration is presented through artistic action.
In his narrative, Shi Wanwan used three methods to ensure more aesthetic vigor for his stories.
First, he often allows more social groups into his artistic activity to become creative subjects in his work, in order to dillute his subjectivity as the artist. Such doing exposes the creative process to uncertainties, resulting in unpredictable ‘writing’ possibilities for him to deal with at any time. And as the final narrator, Shi Wanwan must re-establish the motive, process and result of the artwork. This is where lies the aesthetic meaning of ‘uncertainty’ often found in contemporary art creation.
Second, Shi Wanwan is good at using the method of multiple conversion to create contents to express his artwork’s concept. He is adept at setting game rules for artistic actions, facilitating conversion of contents by participants and himself in different stages. That allows people to see more clearly conceptual shapes in the series of conversions. In the Xiangxuehai Project, the old refrigerator is finally lit, becoming a new one. In the process of seemingly returning to its original status, its past makers are converged again, and emotions and memories are mixed anew, altogether creating a new form. The concept has moved from the material to the non-material relation before reverting to materialization. Participants in and viewers of the work thus come to understand the connotation of reflection presented by the artist behind his narrative during such conversions.
Third, Shiwanwan is good at using repetition action as a creative language. In contemporary art, the language of repetition action is often used, to deconstruct artist's concept in repetitive invalidity, where invalidity serve as a strong language of negation and a means disassembling the topic. However, Shi’s repetitive action looks more like repetitive description often seen in the writing of fables which uses cycle (repetition) to enhance the significance of ideas. Soothe Your Heart a Thousand Times shown in this Macao exhibition is a representative work using the creative language of repetitive action. Every invalidity helps accentuate the artist’s expression of inner emotions. It may look invalid, yet in fact it actively and effectively strengthens the narrative.
These three methods combine to define Shiwanwan’s signature style, while also providing viewers with possibilities to appreciate the work from different angles on the final display interface. Needless to say, as Shi delves deeper in his creative process, his personal style can only become stronger.
This solo exhibition held in Macao gives the artist opportunities to play the roles as an invisible guest-in-residence, a reader of Macao’s current urban status and history as well as a writer re-depicting ‘invisible cities’. Shi Wanwan begins the exhibition narrative drawing on the concept of notes. Starting with the sea as the lead-in to the narrative, all the three works on display weave personal experience of a short-term guest-in-residence (the ‘self’) with the historical and cultural memory of the city, forming an invisibly close interrelationship while repeatedly sketching thoughts in between local culture and individuals. From the Aegean Sea in Europe to the Bohai Sea in northern China, and to the South China Sea surrounding Macao, the three apparently unconnected seas are linked together both internally and externally by a visitor. The exhibition starts with personal expression of emotions in Soothe Your Heart a Thousand Times, where the artist begins by calmly narrating his experience and relationship with the sea. On the other hand, the work Gift deals with his imaginations of the sea, which are virtually notes of thoughts on a dialogue between the artist himself and the sea. And, Seaside Notes, considered the central piece of this exhibition, constitutes a progressive conceptual speculation built upon the other two works. Using field research method in Gift, the artist socially intervenes in the peripheral nerves of Macao locality, culture, and society, allowing for a possible dialogue between history and the present in the symbolic context of the sea. As the writer of the notes, Shi Wanwan mobilized his own imagination and historical texts to free up city stereotypes, which in turn gives individuals who participate in ‘writing’ the notes an opportunity to reshape historical and cultural memory of the city. With this work conversing with self, the sea and history, the meaning of the exhibition is deepened somehow. However, all is fictitious, just like emperor Kublai Khan in Invisible Cities. What remains here is only the dialogue between narrator Shi Wanwan’s self and his thoughts, concepts.
Looking back at Shi Wanwan’s creative trajectory along the years, localness seems to be his artistic nutrition, and the basis for his conceptual construction – something that he will never give up. Being in Beijing, Shanghai, Changde in Hunan, Manila in the Philippines, Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Istanbul in Turkey, Seoul in South Korea, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Yej
iabao in Gansu, Shijiezi Village in Gansu, Taipei, Hong Kong and Macao, he has always been a travelling guest-in-residence, imagining different stories in every place, creating new narrations for the cities’ past and present and telling them to each respective city, to its residents and to himself. In Shi’s heart, art is no longer a decoration confined to the wall, but a journey filled with actions that flow through his body into local spaces connecting with the public’s living conditions. Being a visitor is an invisible temporary existence, but his very intervention enables the return of invisible cities with vitality.
pSong Zhenxi
curator and director of the Curatorial Department of Media City Research &
Development Center, China Academy of Art