All posts by admin

Dhol Dance Music 南亚伦敦腔

November 17, 2022 2022年11月17日

Massive barrel drums roll brusquely over pattering hand drums. Guttural chants well up and a bamboo flute loop flutters about. A heady kick drum drives the track along, hidden within the mix. This is “Dhol (part 2),” and it’s a conscious effort to combine the instrumentation and rhythms of South Asia with club music from Africa and the UK. The track was produced by British-Pakistani artist Ahad Elley, better known as Ahadadream, a London-based producer, DJ and organizer.

 

Listen to select tracks below:

筒鼓与手鼓的混响在空中此起彼伏、粗粝的吟唱声与循环往复的竹笛乐句完美契合、猛烈的鼓点将整首曲风不断推向异域。这首名为《Dhol (part 2)》的歌曲尝试将南亚律动与非洲、英国的俱乐部之声相融，其所用到的采样来自南亚婚礼现场使用的乐器，制作则以激进的舞曲形式迎人。它的创作者是英籍巴基斯坦音乐人 Ahad Elley （Ahadadream），这位现居伦敦的音乐制作人、DJ 和派对组织者深入挖掘自身南亚文化根源，尝试将其烙入英式地下俱乐部之声的大染缸之中。

 

点击即可试听 :

Elley immigrated with his family to England when he was 13 years old. Although he spoke English daily in Pakistan, it was a difficult transition coming on the heels of the Sept. 11 attacks. “Moving to the UK as a brown kid with a Pakistani accent wasn’t the easiest adjustment,” he explains. “I was also one of the only South Asian kids in my school,” which was in Bedfordshire, just north of London. But he jumped right in, trying to figure out where he belonged among all the different cliques in school. He eventually started a band, teaching himself guitar and writing all the tunes. But in his home life, he was still surrounded by music from Asia. “I was really into rock music, which was popular in Pakistan. Me and my cousins grew up watching MTV. But Bollywood was always playing in the car. My grandad was always listening to the older stuff. The dhol was always around. It really stuck with me.”

Ahad 十三岁时随家人移民英国。尽管年少就会讲几句英语，但作为在 911 事件后的新移民，他经历了异常艰难的过渡期，他回忆道：“作为一名带有巴基斯坦口音的棕色皮肤小孩，要适应搬到英国后的生活并不容易，况且学校里南亚孩子不多。”他的学校位于伦敦北部的贝德福德郡。校内，他试图寻找自己的圈子，先后自学了吉他和作曲，组建乐队。而在家里，他仍然会被各种亚洲音乐包裹，“我那时候沉迷摇滚，摇滚乐在巴基斯坦也蛮受欢迎的，从小和兄弟们看 MTV 长大。而在大人车里，也总能听到宝莱坞式的旋律。祖父曾喜欢在家里播一些南亚经典老歌，印度传统的 dhol 鼓声总是萦绕在我的耳边。”

At family weddings, he’d always choreograph dances, so when he discovered garage music at the local teen dance parties, he was quickly out on the floor soaking up the rhythm. Garage started in the mid-90s, but the syncopated British style of music blending 4/4 kicks with jungle and R&B was still popular, and this was Elley’s introduction to UK dance music. Like many kids, he followed garage to dubstep, which at the time was deeper and more attuned to reggae. He was a bit late to funky—which blended house with sped-up dancehall rhythms and followed dubstep in the British dance music continuum—but it would come to define his music up to this day. 

每逢亲朋婚礼，他总会为现场编排舞蹈。也因如此，当他第一次在英国俱乐部里接触到 UK Garage 这种舞曲类型时，双脚便没离开过舞池。Garage 诞生于 90 年代早中期，那个锐舞风潮正值浪尖的年代，也是 Ahad 接触的第一个英式舞曲风格。和许多年轻人一样，在接触 Garage 之后，他很快迷上了 Dubstep，当时的 Dubstep 受雷鬼影响痕迹还较重。后来，他开始爱上 UK Funky（一种将传统 House 舞曲与南美 Dancehall 律动相融合的曲风），也是 Ahad 目前的主打音乐风格。

When Elley went to university in Surrey, also just outside of London, there were no funky parties, so he started throwing his own, meeting many of the leading names in the scene. He didn’t start producing until he moved to a small industrial town in Germany, where he studied for a year. “I was on my own with nothing to do after class,” he says. “With production, I didn’t need a whole band, I could just open my laptop and start making tunes.”

In 2017, he dropped his first EP, Movements, introducing the world to his blend of stripped-back funky with global percussion, often from South Asia. Sometimes he outwardly combines them, like with “Dhol” and “Little Pakistani Boy,” other times it’s much more subtle. Since he deconstructs the instruments and pieces them back together in a British dance music context, it can be hard to distinguish them from other drums like the djembe or bongo, which he’s also fond of using. He further combines the sounds with African styles of electronic music like South African gqom and Angolan kuduro. Around the time of that first EP, he also started More Time Records, signing artists with a similar mindset.

Ahad 所就读的大学位于伦敦郊外，那里没有 UK Funky 派对，他便自己组织活动，也因此结识了许多圈内红人。后来他在德国一个工业小镇走读一年，期间他第一次开始尝试音乐制作。“当时上课放学总是我一个人，课余时间也比较多，”他说，“索性音乐制作不需要整支乐队，一台笔记本就够了。”

2017 年，他发行个人首张单曲《Movements》，将简洁俐落的 Funky 音乐与世界各地（主要是南亚）的打击乐巧妙融合，在歌曲《Dhol》和《Little Pakistani Boy》中均有明显体现。他的制作始于对各种乐器的解构，再以英国舞曲风格重新拼凑，带来一种“四不像”的感觉，有时乐迷甚至能在他的制作中听到非洲鼓和邦戈鼓的音色。在之后的创作中，他又进一步融入南非 gqom 和安哥拉 kuduro 等非洲电子音乐风格。第一张单曲 EP 发行前后，他还创建了 More Time Records 舞曲厂牌，联络了多位志同道合的朋友。

Two years later Elley launched the No ID party, leaning further into his Asian roots by showcasing all-South Asian DJ lineups. “All of us were doing our own things, so I wanted to see what would happen if we put everyone together,” he says. “I wanted to prove that we do a lot, because the diaspora is actually very complex and nuanced.” After the pandemic lockdowns, he was approached by a local government council who wanted to do something around South Asian artists in London. So he teamed up with Daytimers and Chalo and started the Dialled In festival, which added a live band element. It was also the first time he worked with artists from the region, not just diaspora artists.

Elley took it a step further this year, visiting Pakistan for the first time in a decade. “My parents moved back there so I have a place to stay, and I’m now old enough to do my own thing while there for the first time,” he smiles. He packed his three weeks there with parties, workshops, networking and fundraising. He curated the first Boiler Room in Pakistan with Dialled In featuring four live acts and five DJs. “It was intense! It was 45 degrees out and there were four power cuts during the event.” They also dropped a Boiler Room T-shirt, raising nearly $9,000 for Karachi Community Radio, which will help them buy CDJs. “Hopefully people can go there and use them and practice. It’s an ongoing skills exchange.”

两年后，Ahad 推出 No ID 派对活动，以全南亚 DJ 阵容，进一步追述自身的亚洲文化根源。“每个人都有自己的风格，所以想看看把大伙儿凑在一起会碰撞出怎样的火花，”他说，“这个圈子其实非常多样且丰富，呈现在音乐上更是大不相同。”欧洲疫情过后，伦敦当地一位政府议员来电，表示希望他能为伦敦的南亚艺术家做点什么。他拉来艺术家 Daytimers 和创意组织 Chalo，联合举办了 Dialled In 音乐节，增加了许多现场表演和互动环节，人与人之间的距离增进了不少。

今年，Ahad 在音乐事业上更进一步，他十年来首次回到巴基斯坦。“爸妈搬回去住了，我在故乡有了归宿，加上我现在有了我自己的事业，想看看回去能做点什么，”他笑着说。他在巴基斯坦度过了三个星期，期间参加了各种派对、论坛、讲座和筹款活动。他通过 Dialled In 策划举办了巴基斯坦的第一场 Boiler Room（地下电子音乐直播平台），一共包括四场现场设备表演和五名 DJ 表演。“气氛实在火爆！当时气温高达 45 度，活动期间甚至导致过四次停电。”他们还通过出售 BoilerRoom T恤，为卡拉奇社区电台（Karachi Community Radio）筹集近 9000 美元，用于帮助电台购买 CDJ 播放器。“希望没有条件的音乐爱好者都可以去电台练习，这是一次具有持续意义的技能交换活动。”

They also held two-day workshops in each city they visited with a priority on women and non-binary people. “They were super engaged, people came up to us saying they hadn’t produced in ages but were excited to get back into it,” Elley recounts. As inspiring as it was, he also points to difficult barriers there like small crowds, an alcohol prohibition and a lack of equipment. He believes there’s potential for building a community there though. “I don’t think many of them had ever seen people making a living off underground music. It made me realize the privilege we have in London, where we have access to everything we need to make music. But I can’t wait to spend more time there and get into the studio with people.”

除此之外，每到访一个城市，他们都会举办为期两天的讲座，女性和非二元人群被允许优先进入活动。“大家都很踊跃，有些人其实本身就会制作，但中途放弃过，在参加完活动后现在又打算重新拾起，”Ahad 回忆道。虽然这一切很鼓舞人心，但他也指出当地仍面临重重困难和障碍，例如舞客和观众基数少、禁酒令和设备短缺等等。但他相信，当地社区拥有巨大潜能，“他们中许多人可能都没亲眼见过全职地下音乐人。这也让我意识到我们在伦敦生活是多么幸运，我们可以获得创作音乐所需的一切。我多想未来能再回到故乡，这次要多呆一阵子，和当地艺术家一起在像样的工作室里创作。”

Like our stories? Follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Soundcloud: ~/ahadadream

 

Contributor: Mike Steyels
Photographer: Aiyush Pachnanda
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li

喜欢我们的故事？欢迎关注我们 Neocha 的微博与微信。

 

Soundcloud: ~/ahadadream

 

供稿人: Mike Steyels
摄影师: Aiyush Pachnanda
英译中: Olivia Li

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢

A Piece of Strange 在时尚圈内做个局外人

November 15, 2022 2022年11月15日

A girl rides a T-rex while a boy hangs on to its stout front legs. An elderly woman in red heels and sunglasses sits cross-armed, surrounded by piles of pastel toys. Men with horse heads sit within a car parked sideways across a night road, the interior glowing a crimson red. This is the surreal world of Nguyễn Anh Hào, a 22-year-old photographer based in Saigon. His work is always subtly off. Light comes from weird directions, gravity seems to have different rules, and characters are very out of place. It’s a strange and mysterious world with a touch of levity that bridges fashion and art photography.

当霸王龙成为女人的坐骑捕获年轻男子；穿着精致的老太太坐在地上，成堆的彩色玩具围绕在身旁；深夜，马男们西装革履，坐在泛着霓虹色灯光的商务轿车内——这些风格怪异的作品竟都是时尚大片，均来自 22 岁胡志明市摄影师 Nguyễn Anh Hào 所打造的超现实世界。他的作品总是透露出微妙的诡谲怪诞——不同寻常的光照、不再成立的重力定律、还有与周围环境格格不入的角色。在这个神秘且怪诞的世界，一切飘忽而难以捉摸，弥漫着时尚与艺术相融的摄影美学姿色。

Nguyễn picked up the camera three years ago when he dropped out of university and decided to strike out on his own instead. That characteristic independence colors his work, which peers into the mind of an outsider—someone who forges their own path despite the loneliness that can accompany such a lifestyle. But he’s drawn others into his orbit, working with edgy local brands like Feng System and legacy outlets like Le Official. “I didn’t really care about fashion until I got into photography,” he says. “But fashion and art combined leads to some great pictures.”

Nguyễn 三年前开始接触摄影，当时他从大学辍学，决定独自出去闯闯。如此特立独行的个性在作品中也有体现。他的作品透露着局外人的心态，即使缺乏旁人的理解，也要坚持自己的路线。这股子楞劲儿却在圈内引起关注，此前，他就曾获得 Feng System 等本地前卫品牌和 Le Official 等业内大牌合作的机会。“在拿起相机之前，我其实并不关心时尚，”他说道，“只不过，时尚和艺术的结合确实会产生一些很棒的效果。”

Although Nguyễn’s work is heavy on world creation, portraits are always front and center. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell when something is a personal series or an editorial shoot, and that’s part of the appeal. In Alita’s Scandal, a beautiful celebrity is followed around after the fallout of being publicly shamed. In one shot, she stands in a rainstorm wearing a metallic red-carpet dress as a beam of light from some unknown place illuminates her face. In another, she stands in a dirt field with black sweats and a winter hat, another cold beam of light glaring across her face. The final shot is erotic, and she sheds her worry for what people say, giving herself over to the passion of another woman.

在 Nguyễn 的创作构思中，个人始终是要考虑的因素。透过作品，有时甚至很难区分个人与商业时尚作品的界限，而这也恰恰是他作品的魅力所在。在系列作品《Alita’s Scandal（阿丽塔的丑闻）》中，他用镜头讲述一位遭遇公开羞辱的女星。其中一幅作品，女星穿着金属质感的连衣裙站在暴雨中，一束莫名的光线照亮她的面庞；另一张照片中，她身处荒郊，背后投来执勤人员意味不明的微笑；故事情节在系列最后一张照片中得以释怀，女星显然已对公众的视角视而不见，完全投入到同性之爱的怀抱。

Sex and sexuality are common themes for Nguyễn. “I think it reveals people’s raw and honest selves, it shows their most human side,” he says. One series features an elderly white man and a young Asian man grappling with their relationship. The old man is at once dominated by his latex-covered partner and then cradled as the partner dons a wedding gown. In the final shot, they lay face to face as the partner cries and a sign in the background reads, “Live, laugh, love.” It’s good advice but not always easy to live by.

The Cô Tấm series draws on Viet folktales for inspiration. It’s loosely based on the story of Tấm and Cám, which is very similar to Cinderella and features a poor stepdaughter who meets a king and loses a slipper. In the Vietnamese story, she’s trying to raise shrimp and fish but the step-sister keeps sabotaging her. Nguyễn substitutes dinosaurs for aquatic life, so a variety of plastic Jurassic creatures fill the pages. They’re outlandish and comical, both tiny and small, their painted skin glowing brightly under clear rays of mystical light. At the end of the series, Cám is off the ball in a black áo dài dress, walking through a war trench toward fireworks that light the sky like artillery.

性和性取向是他作品中的常见主题，Nguyễn 说：“性揭示了人们原始和真实的自我，是最人性化的一面。”他另一组系列展示了一位年长的白人男子和一名年轻亚裔男子之间的情感纠葛。亚裔男子身着 BDSM 套装与白人男性进行私密游戏，又会换上婚纱彼此拥抱。系列的最后一张照片，他们四目相对，亚裔男子泪水哭花了眼妆，身后粉色的标语赫然出现在门框上——“Live, laugh, love”（生活、笑、爱）。

《Cô Tấm》系列灵感来自越南民间故事《碎米与米糠》（Tấm and Cám）。故事与西方的“灰姑娘”非常相似，讲述了类似继女遇到王子并无意间丢掉鞋子的故事。原版故事主人翁叫做米糠，每日繁养鱼虾，却遭受同父异母姐姐的阻挠。照片中，Nguyễn 用恐龙模型代替虾和鱼的意象，在场景灯光的照射下闪闪发光。系列的最后照片中，米糠穿着黑色的越南传统奥黛裙，穿过战壕，走向黑暗中星星点点的烟火。

Even though a lot of Nguyễn’s work is for other people’s companies, it’s still very personal to him. Perhaps the most personal of his projects is the editorial for women’s wear brand Wephobia. It stars his grandmother and is shot in his hometown of Bù Đốp, a three hour drive north of Saigon. It begins with her flashing big smiles under cool, sunny skies. Her smile falters in a strange scene where she juggles a naked baby and baby goat. Things get weirder and more dejected as the shoot goes on. In one, she sits on the floor complacent but uncomfortable, surrounded by abandoned toys. In a diptych, she alternately sits slumped at a vanity desk and then lies listless on the floor in a pink room. Perhaps the strongest image finds her sitting alone, smoking in the dark as snow swirls and a cake sits uneaten. Themes of isolation are prominent, and yet its a celebratory project: “It was a present for her,” he says. “She was willing to do every pose I asked, not a single complaint! At the end, I think she was happy with the result. That’s what matters the most to me.”  

虽然 Nguyễn 的很多作品都是受客户公司委托创作，但对他来说仍然具有浓重的个人色彩，尤其是他为女装品牌 Wephobia 拍摄的作品，作品模特选自他的祖母，拍摄于他的家乡 Bù Đốp，距离胡志明市以北三小时车程。

系列第一张照片，是明媚的天空之下，祖母露出灿烂的笑容，身边有山羊与婴儿相伴；而随着镜头的切换，笑容则逐渐崩解，伴随的是场景的深沉，氛围转向了怪诞和哀伤。她坐在地上，一副怅然若失的模样，周围摆满了废弃玩具；或是坐在粉红色房间的梳妆台前暗自神伤。最令人难忘的一张照片中，祖母坐在黑暗中抽烟，四周雪花纷飞，旁边是一个人吃不完的蛋糕，透露出令人难忘的孤独，“我的这次创作一是为品牌拍摄，二是为祖母拍摄一套写真，”他说，“看似意想不到的转变，其实描写出人生的起伏。整个拍摄过程祖母都很开心，这对我来说是才最重要的。”

Like our stories? Follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Instagram: @nguyenanh_hao_

 

Contributor: Mike Steyels
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li

喜欢我们的故事？欢迎关注我们 Neocha 的微博与微信。

 

Instagram: @nguyenanh_hao_

 

供稿人: Mike Steyels
英译中: Olivia Li

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢

Pop Proof 不可思议的椅子

November 10, 2022 2022年11月10日

When people think of balloon art, they usually think of children’s entertainers at birthday parties, or else they’ll picture one of Jeff Koons’ chromatic balloon creatures. Only rarely will someone think of furniture. South Korean designer Seungjin Yang did. Since 2013 he’s been perfecting his Blowing series, a collection of colorful and glossy chairs, stools, and benches that look exactly like balloon art—and, in essence, that’s what they are.

提起气球艺术，人们通常会想到生日派对上的气球小丑，或是美国艺术家 Jeff Koons 的彩色气球动物雕塑，但很少人会想到使用气球来做家具。2013 年以来，韩国设计师 Seungjin Yang 一直专注于《Blowing》系列，整个系列围绕各式各样的椅子，它们缤纷怡人，统统用气球打造完成。

Yang makes everything using various brands of ordinary party balloons he picks right off the shelf. You can try, but it’s impossible to pop any of his pieces. In fact, they’re so resistant that you can take a seat and lean your entire body weight on them without risking them bursting loudly underneath you.

What seems like a magic trick is the result of a eureka moment that came as he experimented with combining unusual materials and shapes. “I was experimenting with epoxy, and then I thought of how interesting it would be to apply it to a balloon. I knew it would still keep its rounded shape,” he says. Epoxy resin is a substance that’s first highly viscous but solidifies itself, taking the appearance of glass. Therefore, as Yang discovered, it makes up the perfect material to create a hard coating that can prevent balloons from bursting.

Seungjin Yang 的创作原料都来自商店货架上各类品牌的普通派对气球。但与日常气球用途不同，他的作品你甚至可以完全坐下，将全身重量靠在上面，也不用担心爆裂的状况。因而对材质的坚固度很有讲究。

这些看似不可思议的气球家具，是他在尝试组合不同材料创作中的灵光乍现。他回忆道：“当时在考虑使用环氧树脂进行创作，如果把它用到气球上会很有趣，能保持气球圆润的形状。”环氧树脂具有高粘度，但也会自行固化，最终呈现出玻璃般的外观。这正是 Seungjin Yang 心中的理想材料，非常适合用作防止气球破裂的硬涂层。

Balloons, in turn, are flexible and easy to manipulate, which makes them particularly sculptural, and their fundamental qualities, especially their transparency and hollowness, enable exciting visual possibilities. However, these same traits make it very challenging to use them as raw materials for anything durable; they can easily burst, not to mention they’ll inevitably deflate with time.

One of Yang’s motivations for his Blowing series was precisely to turn these challenges around and create something entirely new and unexpected. By combining latex balloons with epoxy, he knew he could. “The unexpected interests people,” he says, before adding, “I think I turned this imperfect material into something sustainable for design.”

而气球刚好相反，既灵活又易于操纵，具有雕塑美感，加上气球本身透明和中空的特点，可打造出十分有趣的视觉效果。也正是这些特点，使得气球通常难以用来任何耐久的创作——不仅容易爆裂，且长时间很容易泄气。

Seungjin Yang 创作《Blowing》系列的动机之一，正是为了克服这些挑战，创造出新颖独特、出人意料的作品。他相信，乳胶气球与环氧树脂的结合可以做到这一点。“人们都喜欢意想不到的事物，”他接着补充道，“我想让这种不完美的材料变成了一种可持续的设计。”

Born in 1986, Yang grew up in Hongcheon County. He has enjoyed building things with his own hands ever since he can remember. Admittedly, though, his models were far more intricate than anything a regular child would create. Later, studying at the department of Metal Art and Design of Hongik University in Seoul, he had an unparalleled opportunity to make a career out of his passion. He not only experimented with the most varied types of materials but also studied their fundamental properties, following the institution’s purpose to open possibilities in the design field.

Seungjin Yang 出生于 1986年，从小在洪川郡长大。在他很小的时候，就喜欢摆弄各式各样的模型，而他做的模型往往比很多同龄小孩的模型复杂得多。后来，他进入了首尔弘益大学金属艺术与设计系，得以将自己的兴趣变成事业。他不仅喜欢尝试各种不同类型的材料，还会研究材料的基本特性，延续其母校关于在设计领域开拓创新的宗旨。

Creating his furniture pieces requires exquisite yet relatively simple craftsmanship. It all starts with him making simple sketches on a pad. They give him the visual representations he needs to know the number of parts for each piece, and their rough sizes and shapes. With the help of an air machine, he then blows up latex balloons to form such parts.

Yang then coats the blown balloons with a layer of epoxy resin, which can be pigmented or not. After this first coating layer, he lets the balloons dry in his studio, for about seven hours. Hanging there like (colorful) sausages in a butcher shop, they could be mistaken for an art installation.

Still, the process continues. Making one piece of furniture usually takes up to two weeks. That’s because he needs to repeat the coating technique seven to eight times until he reaches a consistency that’s hard enough to support the weight of an adult. The more layers he applies, the more resistant the piece will be.

Once the balloon parts are hard enough, he polishes out the dried epoxy drips to give them a smooth surface. He then assembles and glues them together, creating a functional piece. Finally, he applies a final coat of epoxy to reinforce the structure and give it a sense of unity. Yang adds no screws, joineries, or adornments to his pieces. He likes to keep their minimal aspect, just like balloon art.

他的作品所需的工艺其实很简单，但对细节的要求很高。通常，他会先画出简易的草图，以便自己能直观了解每件作品需要的部件数量，以及粗略尺寸和形状。然后，他会使用充气机来吹乳胶气球，做成一个个零件。

接着，Seungjin Yang 会在吹好的气球上涂上一层着色或无色的环氧树脂。涂完第一层之后，他会将气球进行干燥处理，像肉店里（五颜六色的）香肠一样挂起来，一般持续大约七个小时。乍看下，就像是气球装置艺术现场。

制作一件气球家具通常需要多达两周时间，因为涂层的工序需要重复七至八次，直到硬度足以支撑成年人体重。涂抹的层数越多，作品就越坚固。当气球部件变得足够坚硬，他就会打磨掉干掉的环氧树脂滴液，以呈现光滑的表面，然后将所有部件拼装并粘合在一起。

创作的最后一步，是涂上环氧树脂，加固整个结构，让整个作品看起来更统一。Seungjin Yang 的作品没有任何装饰物，他喜欢保持最简约的外观，让作品本身保留了原有的气球模样。

That’s not to say he doesn’t aim to create something visually striking. His furniture pieces come in different levels of transparency, translucency, and opacity, and it’s fascinating to see how they’re indeed empty on the inside. Such an effect delivers a sensation of fragility, and the overlapping of different translucent parts results in new shades and hues, adding to the visual impact of each piece.

Knowing bold colors are usually appealing to most people, Yang doesn’t shy away from bright reds, deep royal blues, or even pitch-blacks. He also likes to mix the most unexpected combinations, including fluorescent pinks, greens, and yellows, to achieve the ultimate “wow” effect. Beyond bright colors, the glossiness of Yang’s pieces never fails to evoke that inner child in all of us who’s fascinated by shiny things.

当然，这并不代表他不追求在视觉上的吸引力。他的家具作品呈现出不同程度的透明、半透明和不透明程度。这种效果透露出一种脆弱感，半透明的不同部件相互重叠，产生出新的色调，增添每件作品的视觉冲击力。

Seungjin Yang 知道对大多数人来说，大胆的颜色往往更有吸引力。他还喜欢搭配出人意料的色彩组合，比如荧光粉色、绿色和黄色，以达到令人眼前一亮的效果。除了鲜艳的色彩，作品外形与表面的光泽和梦幻，也会唤起人们内心着迷于闪亮事物的童真。

His designs are a source of curiosity for children and adults alike. Anyone who lays eyes on them will instantly wonder what they’re made of. Most people think they’re heavy and made of glass and assume they also break easily. That’s not the case at all. “My chairs are very strong, like any other chairs. They can support up to one hundred kilos,” Yang assures. “They’re also more comfortable than they look. Of course, it’s not like sitting on a cushion, but I still think I made them pretty comfortable.”

 Yang’s playful signature style didn’t go unnoticed even in more classical design circles. In 2021, Maison Dior invited him to reimagine the elegant Louis XVI Medallion Chair that has traditionally been used in its runway shows. It was a special commission to be exhibited at the Salone Del Mobile in Milan, together with works by Ma Yansong, Tokujin Yoshioka, and other prominent designers from all around the world. His version had white matted balloons filling the chair’s iconic oval shaped backrest.

无论大人、小孩，看到他的作品，也许都会好奇知道它们由什么材料制成。大多数人都会以为它们很重，由玻璃制成，或者觉得它们也很容易破裂。而事实并非如此。“我的椅子和其他椅子一样，非常坚固。它们可以承重一百公斤，”Seungjin Yang 说道，“而且它们坐上去比看起来舒服。”

Seungjin Yang 趣意十足的设计同样引起了经典设计领域的关注。2021年，Dior 邀请他重新设计品牌时装秀上的路易十六式椭圆型靠背椅。这是一次特别的委托，椅子会在米兰国际家具展上，与马岩松、吉冈德仁等世界著名设计师的作品一起展出。最终他用白色哑光气球填充了椅子标志性的椭圆形靠背，将个人风格拉满。

Although he admits liking the fact that taking a seat on one of his pieces for the first time can be a little unsettling, Yang says there’s no metaphor behind his work and no deep meaning stemming from the fact that he transforms fragile objects into solid and durable ones. He goes as far as refusing the assumption that what he creates is even art. His philosophy is much more straightforward: to create minimal and practical furniture.

To him, his work process can be thought of as a slightly more elaborate form of child’s play. “My process when creating a new piece is like when we play with toys as kids. It’s like playing with Lego, except that the shape of the balloon is very natural and rounded, which allows me to create nice chairs,” he says. Whether a chair, bench, or stool, Yang’s designs will undoubtedly stir up any decor with a good dose of playfulness and glossiness. In the end, that’s precisely his goal: he wants people to see them and feel like a child looking at a balloon.

Seungjin Yang 为人们第一次坐上他的作品时那种忐忑不安而暗自开心，但也表示，自己的作品并没有什么特别的隐喻，也不存在什么由易碎物体转化为坚固物体所引申的深刻寓意。他甚至拒绝将自己的椅子定义为艺术品。他的想法很简单直接：创造简约实用的家具。

对他来说，创作的过程只是更为精致复杂的儿童游戏，他说：“我在创作新作品时，就像小时候玩玩具一样。和玩乐高积木差不多，只不过气球的形状更自然和圆润，这样我可以制作出比较漂亮的椅子。”无论是摆放在怎样的环境中，Seungjin Yang 所设计的椅子、长凳或凳子都可以给空间增添趣意与亮眼的光泽。而这正是他的目标：他希望人们看到这些家具时，会变成看见气球的小孩。

Like our stories? Follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Website: www.seungjinyang.com

 

Contributors: Tomas Pinheiro, Lucas Tinoco
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li

喜欢我们的故事？欢迎关注我们 Neocha 的微博与微信。

 

网站: www.seungjinyang.com

 

供稿人: Tomas Pinheiro, Lucas Tinoco
英译中: Olivia Li

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢

From Vision to Fruition 霸王视觉

November 8, 2022 2022年11月8日

Thana Seangsorn refers to himself as a “visionary artist”. Not a visual artist or video artist, but visionary. The play on words is an apt description of the Thai artist’s work, which spans motion design, graphic design, mixed media, and more. His work is larger than life, visual art for the 21st century. It’s maximalist, huge, and mind-altering. Full of sharp, angular shapes and kaleidoscopic colors fluttering and spiraling at warp speeds, it tests the boundaries of human experience. His work has found a place on festival and mega-club LED screens, creative project-mapped sculptures, immersive physical installations, and digital NFTs.

不是视觉或是视频艺术家，来自泰国的 Thana Seangsorn（Pai Lactobacillus）喜欢称自己是“狂想艺术家”。用“狂想”来形容或十分贴切，其作品涵盖动态设计、平面设计、混合媒体等不同领域，追求极繁与磅礴力气，是令人目眩神迷的二十一世纪风格。各种尖锐线条、棱角分明的形状配合万花筒色彩，以扭曲、飘浮的姿态旋转，挑战肉眼感官界限。他的作品常出现在节日活动和大型俱乐部的 LED 屏幕、创意投射雕塑、沉浸式艺术装置和 NFT 领域当中。

Seangsorn, who goes by the alias Pai Lactobacillus, was born and raised in Bangkok. He originally studied ceramic design at university, creating miniature sculptures with similarly bold shapes and colors. But a news story his wife saw changed the trajectory of his life. It was about Indian craftsmen who made ivory sculptures of tiny Russian dolls losing their eyesight at 40. Fearing that staring a such small details would damage his health as well, she urged him to change careers. So he decided to enroll in graphic design classes advertised on bus stops and television across the city. “I hated computers back then,” he laughs. Not long after completing the class, he found opportunities with major record labels, who eventually asked him to do some commercial motion design work.

Thana 出生并成长于曼谷，大学时期学习了陶瓷工艺，曾创作过很各式各样色彩大胆醒目的微型雕塑。直到某日，他的妻子看到一则新闻，改变了他的艺术轨迹。据那则新闻报道，一位象牙迷你俄罗斯娃娃雕塑工匠在 40 岁时突然视力丧失。妻子担心如果他一直从事这种微型雕塑创作，可能会影响视力健康，希望他可以换个职业。听了妻子的劝告，Thana 报名参加了公交车站和电视上宣传的平面设计课程，他笑着说：“那时候我其实我很讨厌电脑。”不过在完成课程后不久，他就获得了与大型唱片公司合作的机会，应公司要求开始创作一些商业动态设计作品。

 

无法观看？前往微博

 

无法观看？前往微博

 

无法观看？前往微博

The medium captivated him and he started experimenting with basic content, usually in support of electronic DJs. “There’s been a small audio-visual community in Bangkok for about 15 years,” Seangsorn says. “It was very low tech back then, with just one low-power projector and one screen at underground venues where everyone knew each other.” 

These days, Seangsorn creates visuals for massive spaces, with screens that scale the walls of three-story clubs, bending onto the ceiling. He’s also recently made projection mapping work for four-meter-tall sculptures at festivals. Opportunities for this type of work began popping up in Thailand about eight year ago.

很快，他开始沉迷于这种媒介，尝试大量简单的创作，早期通常是与电子音乐制作人或是 DJ（唱片骑师）合作。他聊到：“曼谷的视觉、声音艺术社区很小，大概发展了十五年时间。以前用的装置技术含量很低，只一台低功率投影仪和一台笔记本，就是一个地下圈子，大家互相都认识。” 

如今，Thana 与大型场所合作，有时屏幕大到覆盖三层楼高的舞台墙壁，有时甚至将视觉延伸到天花板。最近，他还在一次活动上为四米高的雕塑制作了投影。而大概在八年前，泰国才渐渐开始出现此类型的工作机会。

 

无法观看？前往微博

Big events like these take a team and Seangsorn’s role is to create the graphic assets and motion design—which take two weeks of non-stop work. He then hands them over to video and light jockeys who manipulate and play them during the live performances. When designing these visuals, Seangsorn considers what type of genre and BPM range the DJs will be playing. Then he coordinates with the VJ and LJ, explaining what type of mood and tone he’s looking for. For LEDs, he says it’s important to tone the colors and brightness down because they can damage people’s eyes. But projection mapped lights travel away from people’s eyes, so his options are limitless with those tools.

大型活动往往需要团队。Thana 在团队中的角色负责平面素材和动态设计，通常一次创作需要他两周时间不间断工作。完成后，他会把作品交给 VJ（影像骑师）和灯光师，由他们在现场表演时进行操作。创作时，Thana 需要考虑 DJ 播放的音乐类型和节奏速度范围，然后与 VJ 和灯光师沟通希望营造的氛围和色调。他表示，使用 LED 灯时要调低颜色和亮度，否则会伤害眼睛。但投影的灯光不会直射眼睛，因而摆脱了许多限制。

For smaller, less commercialized events, Seangsorn himself performs with a MIDI controller and Resolume software. He was recently booked for The Visual Abstract City event in Vietnam alongside other international, regional, and local artists. There, he was the one on stage for a change, standing in front of a two-story projection, making his designs warp and dive for a live audience. “The audio-visual community is small there, but they started before us and have a more experimental bent,” he says. “We’re getting there in Thailand now though, there’s a whole new generation of artists.”

A few years ago, Seangsorn started bringing his work to life, giving it physical form in the real world. His first attempt was at a group show of mixed-media artists blending prints and sculptures with new media. One of his pieces was a multi-level, circular design with steps that led down the center like a stadium. At the bottom was an embedded screen with looped visuals to make the stairs decsend infinitely. His most recent installation was an immersive show called Lucid Dreamers, which featured inkjet-printed vinyl stickers covering every surface of the space, including the ceiling and floor. It felt like stepping into his trademark digital world of polychromatic colors and rigid shapes.

对于不那么商业化的小型活动，Thana 会亲自用 MIDI 控制器和 Resolume 软件进行表演。最近，他被邀请参加在越南举行的The Visual Abstract City （抽象视觉城市）活动，与世界各地和本地艺术家一起演出。这是他第一次站上舞台，在两层楼高的投影前，于现场观众面前操纵着自己的设备。他说：“越南在这方面起步比我们早，也有更多实验性倾向。现在泰国也慢慢赶上来了，涌现新一批艺术家。”

几年前，Thana 开始尝试将作品带入生活，在现实世界中赋予其物理形式。他的第一次尝试是在一个混合媒体艺术群展上，将版画、雕塑与新媒体相融。其中的一件作品是多维度环形设计，中间是向下的台阶至场馆中心，底部是嵌入式屏幕，循环播放视觉图像，让台阶在视觉上无限延伸。他最近的艺术装置更带来沉浸式体验，名为“Lucid Dreamers”，喷墨打印的乙烯基贴纸覆盖空间的每个表面，包括天花板和地板。置身其中，仿佛踏入他一贯的数字缤纷世界。

Seangsorn is far from abandoning the digital realm though. In addition to the digital art he’s creating for clubs and festivals, he’s also delving into the Thai NFT scene. There, he’s pushed his details even further with increasingly intricate designs and more active animations—everything unfolding in seemingly endless patterns. 

His work is often dependent on deep-pocketed sponsors. Giant LED screens, HD projectors, and meters of vinyl printouts cost a lot of money. Oftentimes, Seangsorn’s art ends up at expensive venues where patrons are more interested girls and booze than appreciating the creativity and ingenuity on display. And some of his festival designs wouldn’t look out of place in a white cube gallery. But he’s still breaking boundaries, whether they realize it or not. One day the cost will drop to the point where smaller, art-driven spaces will be able to embrace immersive designs like these, and he’ll be there, waiting and ready.

Thana 决定将数字艺术一直继续下去。除了为俱乐部和节日活动创作数字艺术作品外，他还投身于泰国的 NFT 场景，并进一步打造更精细的作品，设计细节越来越复杂，动画效果也越来越出彩，一切似乎以无穷无尽的图案在无限延展。

Thana 的作品往往需要有财力雄厚的赞助商，毕竟大型的 LED 屏幕、高清投影仪和数米的乙烯基印刷品都需要大笔的资金。他的作品通常都是出现在昂贵的场所，比起欣赏作品的创意与独创性，那里的顾客往往对美女和酒水更感兴趣。而他为一些活动设计的作品即使放在画廊中也绝不会显得格格不入，他一直在不断打破界限。伴随成本的下降，总有一天，小型的艺术空间也将能够接纳这样的沉浸式艺术。而在这之前，Thana 会一直做好准备，等待时机的出现。

Like our stories? Follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Behance: ~/lactobacillus

 

Contributor: Mike Steyels
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li

喜欢我们的故事？欢迎关注我们 Neocha 的微博与微信。

 

Behance: ~/lactobacillus

 

供稿人: Mike Steyels
英译中: Olivia Li

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢

Cuddle Me, Don’t Colonize Me 抱住我，别殖民我

November 3, 2022 2022年11月3日

“Documentation of the colonized was one of the earliest usages of photography,” says Han Zhang. “It was portrayed as a ‘scientific tool’ or ‘anthropology analysis,’ but in reality was a way to illustrate a biased construction of genetic superiority and inferiority.”

The power dynamics of those behind the lens and those being gazed upon continues to this day, and new technologies reinforce them, such as dating apps dominated by white males that set the tone for the rest of the world—including LGBTQ dating apps—which Zhang says has spread their values globally.

“摄影最早的用途之一是用来记录被殖民者，”来自上海的艺术家 Han Zhang 说道，“虽然人们将其美化作‘科学手段’或‘人类学研究’，但实际上却是一种制造优胜劣汰与文明偏见的方式。”

镜头背后，摄影师与被凝视者之间的权术角逐一直持续至今。而现代科技更使得这种现象愈演愈烈，譬如白人男性在世界各地约会软件上所占据的主导地位，同性约会软件亦是如此。在 Han Zhang 看来，这些软件不过是在全球范围内传播白人男性价值观罢了。

Zhang, who goes by the alias boihugo, is pushing back against these forces, while also exploring nuances on both sides. Their photography series Cuddle Me Don’t Colonize Me positions kindness and femininity as being praiseworthy with healing potential. They attempt to decouple themselves from a narrative set by those who view them as an “other.” “Mainstream white queer culture is mean and proud of it. That’s something I definitely don’t subscribe to,” they say. “I believe in the power of being nice and gentle to each other in our community of queer people of color. That sense of warmth, sisterhood and solidarity is a possible solution to gendered violence.” First comes the “them,” where they are separated by their gender and ethnicity. But following that exclusion is an idea of “us,” where they find purpose and supprt in each other.

Han Zhang（又名博惠果 Boihugo）渴望通过作品推翻这股力量，同时探索凝视与被凝视者之间的微妙连接。在其《抱住我，别殖民我（Cuddle Me Don’t Colonize Me）》摄影系列作品中，Ta 赞扬善良和女性的治愈力量，试图在叙事中消除主体与“他者”之间的界限。Han Zhang 解释道：“主流白人酷儿文化以尖酸苛刻为荣，而这是我不敢苟同的。相反，我认为有色人种酷儿社区应该彼此友善且温柔相待。这种温暖、情谊和团结的方式，才是解决性别暴力的办法。”Ta 希望酷儿群体应是从“他们”到“我们”的转变，前者是因性别和种族而分隔的“他们”，“我们”的概念则带有共同目标，相互支持的理想。

Black and white staged portraits of couples, close-ups of skin and food, and even depictions of nature explore these power relations and how they might be inverted. Glitter, shiny fabrics, candy, and toy jewelry elevate playfulness and femininity, relishing in camp rather than seriousness. The faceless subjects recall queer dating apps where the majority of profiles hide their faces. Food is sexualized.

Zhang shot the series on a consumer-level DSLR camera that their dad bought for family trips. The Shanghai-based artist aims for an amateur and imperfect aesthetic, particularly through the use of an on-camera flash. It’s a rejection of the smooth and elegant format of higher institutions that they feel unrepresented by, largely because of their marginalized status as a queer person of color.

从黑白色情人肖像照、皮肤和食物特写、再到风景照，Han Zhang 透过镜头探索这些权力关系以及它们之间如何被颠倒。各种亮片、闪亮面料、糖果和玩具首饰增添了画面的趣味性和女性气质，从中取乐，规避一味的严肃性。不露面的拍摄对象令人想起同性约会软件上面那些隐藏面部的个人资料页面。而食物则以一种“性”化的方式呈现出来。

Han Zhang 所用的相机是 Ta 父亲为家庭旅行购买的平价数码单反相机。Ta 通常喜欢以相机自带的闪光灯进行拍摄，想要刻意营造一种业余和不完美的美学气息。这是对高等学府精雕细琢的优雅作品的一种否定，以抗议公众机构对有色人种酷儿的边缘化和忽视。

The project got its start when Zhang was studying in London, where they started by exploring the dominant concept of masculinity framed by a white majority, which that they say both desexualizes and simultaneously fetishizes East Asian queer people. Although they still discuss these issues in a Western context, they’ve broadened their interests to reach a wider audience, including those within China.

In one close-up image, fishing wire is tied so tightly around skin that it takes on new, strange shapes. This is the slow violence that LGBTQ people experience in everyday life in China and much of the world. “It’s the slight discomfort that is not widely noticed or challenged,” they say. “It’s not anything intense but you can see the tension emerging.”

整个项目始于 Han Zhang 伦敦求学时期，最初以对白人为主的男性气质探索作为主题。在 Ta 看来，这种概念既剥夺了东亚酷儿的去性别身份，同时又体现出对东亚酷儿群体的一种迷恋。尽管以西方语境来探讨该话题，但 Ta 也尝试扩大自己的探索范围，以覆盖国内和更广泛的受众群体。

在一幅特写作品中，渔网线紧紧勒住皮肤，呈现出怪异且紧张的态势。据 Han Zhang 解释，这幅作品寓意了中国和世界大部分地区的 LGBTQ 群体在日常生活中所遭受的慢性暴力。Ta 接着说道：“这些轻微的不适也许不会引起太多注意和质疑。但即使表面温和，你仍然可以感受到暗涌的紧张态势。”

Ultimately Zhang hopes to discover how a gaze—colonial, sexual or racial—can be interchangeable, even finding common cause with those who’ve excluded them. This is perhaps most clearly expressed in the image with the businessman sitting with a smaller naked figure on top of them. “The white man in a suit could be the representation of a traditionally tough hegemonic form of masculinity,” they explain. “But if we think of him as a disposable element in a big firm, he could be immediately emasculated.” The body in the forefront may also be perceived as vulnerable because of their nude exposure, but they’re posed with an upright back and firmly placed hand to suggest agency and dominance. “The intention is to highlight the possible interchangeable power.”

Han Zhang 的最终目的是希望凝视者与被凝视者的身份互换，内容涉及殖民、性别和种族方面。Ta 希望通过作品让自我与排斥 Ta 的人达成一种和解。系列中一幅作品充分地诠释了这一点：一位身形娇小、全身赤裸的人坐在西装革履的男性身上，Ta 解释说：“身穿西装的白人代表了传统的强硬男性气质。但如果我们把他看作是一家公司中可被任意替代的员工，那他的力量会被瞬间消失得荡然无存。而身坐前面的人虽可能因为赤裸身体而被认定是脆弱的代表，但 Ta 正直的姿势与坚定有力的双手，暗示权力和支配的地位。其目的就是为了强调力量的互换。”

Like our stories? Follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Website: www.boihugo.com
Instagram: @boihugo

 

Contributor: David Yen
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li

喜欢我们的故事？欢迎关注我们 Neocha 的微博与微信。

 

网站: www.boihugo.com
Instagram: @boihugo

 

供稿人: David Yen
英译中: Olivia Li

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢

Digital Infusion 人脑智慧展示

November 1, 2022 2022年11月1日

A dense web of blue wires swirls around a chromatic mesh, forming the outline of a human face. Around the edge, a sharp digitized logo resembling a metal album frames the piece. The piece resembles a data visualization, depicting how it might look if the wealth of human knowledge were to coalesce into a new conciseness born to the cloud. This is the work of Sol Whi Park, a young Korean artist whose style rests on the main trends of the digital artist community but stands out for its substance, personality, and care.  

Park, who goes by the moniker Visualocto online, infuses his work with overwhelming saturation, rich textures, and tangible depth. He turns experiments with chrome typefaces, skeletal design motifs, and glitch art into arresting pieces that outpace the wealth of similar artists suggested by tunnel vision-prone algorithms. 

密集的蓝色线条旋转编制成彩色的网，抽丝剥茧出人物的面庞，锋利的金属字体修饰两旁。这幅像是由数字可视化技术完成的作品，描绘出人类智慧汇聚在云端的样子。作者是年轻的韩国艺术家朴乺辉（Sol Whi Park），他的创作立足于当代数字艺术浪潮，但又以其背后内涵、个人风格以及人文关怀在一众作品中脱颖而出。

朴乺辉在社交媒体上以 Visualocto 自居。他的作品与那些拘泥于算法创作的同类艺术家完全不同，以吞没式的高饱和度、丰富纹理和几近逼真的立体造型为特点，融合了实验性质的彩色字体、骷髅图案和故障艺术（Glitch Art）元素，往往令观众看得入迷。

Online creative communities revolving around popular trends are what drew Park to art in the first place. He says he used to doodle on schoolwork as a kid but had no real interest in art. In fact, he was prone to sleeping in art class. Exploring the new features of smartphones and tablets was more to his tastes. But the chance discovery of designer Olly Moss on Tumblr five years ago inspired him to give digital art a try, so he learned Photoshop and Illustrator through Youtube tutorials. When he discovered the Glitch Artists Community, he fully realized art that could be much more than just paintings on canvas. 

最初指引朴乺辉开始艺术创作的是网络上的流行文化创意社群。虽然从小就喜欢乱涂画，但一直没有对艺术产生过浓烈兴趣，甚至常常在美术课上睡大觉，反倒是更热衷于智能手机和平板电脑的新功能。而就在五年前，他偶然在 Tumblr 上发现设计师 Olly Moss 的作品后，内心对数字艺术的创作欲才被彻底激发。他开始在 YouTube 上观看教程，先后自学了 Photoshop 和 Illustrator 软件。他还在互联网上加入了“故障艺术家社群”。并逐渐明白了一个道理：艺术，绝不仅仅诞生在画布而已。

“There are no galleries or museums where I’m from in Incheon,” Park says. “To this day, I still have to travel to Seoul to see art shows and graffiti. That might be why I gravitate to digital art in the first place.” He points out that while there’s a lot of attention paid to teaching fine and traditional arts in Korea, digital art is overlooked in the education system. “I was never exposed to it before, so when I found it, it felt so new and fresh to me.”

朴乺辉聊道：“我住在仁川，这里没有画廊和博物馆，即使现在，看艺术展和涂鸦作品还得跑到首尔。这可能是我最初对数字艺术如此感兴趣的原因。”他指出，韩国的教育很注重美术和传统艺术的教学，却忽视了数字艺术教育，“我以前从未了解过这种艺术形式，所以一开始就感觉特别新鲜和好奇。”

Park started his two years of mandatory military service in 2020, living on a base that he couldn’t leave because of COVID-19. And he wasn’t able to create art due to software restrictions on his military laptop. But he could use his phone, and he watched as his friends and the scenes he was involved with progress without him on social media. “It was harsh.” When he finished service this May, he immediately jumped into new programs like Blender, C4D, and Maya.

2020 年，朴乺辉开始服兵役，为期两年。因为疫情，他不得不一直留守在部队，不得离开。而军队的笔记本电脑对下载软件有限制，因此无法保持艺术创作。唯一了解外面世界的途径就是手机，只能在社交媒体上眼睁睁地看着外界不断变化的一切，“感觉糟透了”，他感慨道。今年五月服役结束后，他立刻开始了 Blender、C4D和 Maya 等新型创作软件的学习。

“Glitch art was restrictive because you’re limited by the images you’re altering, but there are no limits with these programs,” Park says. “You can create whatever you can imagine.” He still works with photos—sometimes his own and other times collaborating with a photographer—but now his options are much broader. He learned C4D quickly, which he says was very similar to a program he used in the military for 3D designing. You can see the change in style and quality on his feed clearly; the month he was finished it was like he became a brand new artist. 

To create a piece, Park draws super rough sketches on paper, then he downloads objects or sculpts them himself in C4D, filling out the details in Blender. “I saturate my colors to levels that Photoshop has trouble handling,” he laughs. ” I want them to pop, but it affects the shaders, shadows, and lighting so it’s hard to control.” 

“故障艺术具有一定限制，基于创作的图片本身就会限制你，但软件的使用能让你摆脱这些限制，” 朴乺辉说道，“你可以创造任何你能想象到的东西。”

以前，他仍会以图片作为每次创作的基础，有时是他自己拍摄的照片，有时则是与其他摄影师合作完成的照片。不过在学会了 C4D 软件之后，他的创作素材变得更多。从他最近发表的作品不难看出创作风格上的明显变化。结束兵役的一个月后，他的创作仿佛完全摆脱了此前的限制，尝试突破想象力的边界。

创作时，朴乺辉通常会先在纸上画出粗略草图，然后下载素材或自己在 C4D 中建模，之后再转到 Blender 软件中补充所有细节。“我的色彩饱和度会高到 Photoshop 都难以处理的程度，”他笑着说，“我希望作品能足够抢眼，因此有时候着色器、阴影和光线等处理很难把握。”

Recently his work was featured in a monthly group show in Dubai called Project 22, where they displayed artwork in a circular room with a wrap-around screen and reflective floor and ceiling. The show was many firsts for Park. It was his first exhibit, the first time his work had been seen outside the internet, and his first NFT. The show’s theme was sustainability, which Park found ironic since cryptocurrencies have been notorious for carbon emissions: “I think NFTs have been great for artists and they’re one of the reasons digital art is so exciting right now, so I’m really hoping for a more environmentally friendly approach.”

最近，他的作品在迪拜一个名为 Project 22 的月度群展中展出。展厅为一个圆形房间，四周环绕屏幕，还设有反光地板和天花板。这是朴乺辉的第一次展览，也是他第一次将作品以线下形式公示于众，成就了他的第一个 NFT 系列。

可持续发展，是贯穿朴乺辉作品的主题。这对他来说略显讽刺，因为加密货币本身一直被指责造成了严重的碳排放问题（据统计，比特币挖矿每年会排放二十兆吨二氧化碳，相当于爱尔兰一个国家的碳排放量），“我认为 NFT 对艺术家来说是一件好事，也是数字艺术如此令人期待的原因之一，所以我相信之后定会出现更环保的解决办法。”

Like our stories? Follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Instagram: @visualocto

 

Contributor: Mike Steyels
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li

喜欢我们的故事？欢迎关注我们 Neocha 的微博与微信。

 

Instagram: @visualocto

 

供稿人: Mike Steyels
英译中: Olivia Li

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢

Sex Story 性爱摄影

October 20, 2022 2022年10月20日

It’s no secret that, over the past few decades, Taiwan has become a regional and global leader in promoting gender and sexual diversity. Here, artists and activists routinely push the boundaries of what it means to be human, with all the messy, beautiful, complex attachments and relationships that this entails. While much of the recent movement focus has been on marriage equality and family life, there are a number of artists challenging this narrow purview. Ning Wen, a Taipei-based artist, is someone whose work makes a forceful case that—no less than birth, marriage, and death—sexual relationships and dynamics are important milestones in life worth documenting and celebrating in their own right. His latest Sex Story exhibition dealt with this theme.

Despite the generally open-minded atmosphere of Taipei, this project wasn’t without its hiccups. While his exhibition was entirely legal, Ning Wen ran into at least one complaint that led to him having to make the case for his artistic vision to local police. Still, he’s undeterred—encouraged to have to the chance to showcase his work even in these circumstances to these enforcers of social propriety. Despite the potentially controversial subject matter, though, his work isn’t just about sex itself exactly or the merely pornographic, prurient side of contemporary art. It’s about what happens between real people before, during, and after sexual exploration and encounters. I spoke with him about this ongoing project.

毫无疑问，过去数十年里，台湾就性别和性多样化的话题上，举世瞩目。在这里，艺术家与活动家们站在同一联盟，以美丽的、多彩的、丰富的人际和恋爱关系，不断推动着人类生存意义的边界。尽管近来所举办的运动主要围绕婚姻平等、家庭生活展开，但仍有一部分艺术家尝试持续突破这一狭窄的范畴。居住在台北的艺术家宁文（Ning Wen）正在用自己的作品极力证明：性关系和性别的流动性，是和人类出生、结婚以及死亡同等重要的事情，值得被纪念与庆祝。他最近的“性爱摄影”（Sex Story）便是围绕该主题展开。

而就在台北一片开放的气氛当中，宁文的项目还是遭受阻碍。尽管作品合法展出，他依然收到至少一次投诉，因而不得不反复向警方辩解。他并没有因此退缩，在被动以及社会教条的处境下，他仍旧鼓励自己，只要一有机会就去展出。也许他的作品存在争议，但他的初衷绝不是表面的情色或淫荡，而是让观众关注性本身，以及更多发人思考的话题。其作品内容大多也是关于人在性探索和性接触之前、期间和之后发生的故事。我和他就这个正在进行的项目聊了起来。

Neocha: During our conversation at your exhibition, you talked about how the before and after of sex is something some of your works hoped to highlight: the care of showering together, for instance, or the immediate distancing that occurs after climax. What does it mean, to you, to decenter the “money shot”?

Ning: For photographers, certain moments have their own kind of romantic draw, particularly the pre-shoot and its aftermath. In these moments, it seems, the space and objects themselves become the true subjects of desire. 

Before shooting begins, there is simply the serene, empty set, but it is rife with metaphors. Ropes, toilets, body piercing tools, etc. become something like the mosaic blur of an adult film—sensual in their mystery. Meanwhile, the vacated scene after sexhas all kinds of smells, objects, and emotions which linger. Sometimes the most naked relationships and stories between people develop only after the climax.

Although in the mainstream erotic image market, the key shots are almost always the “meat shot” (close-up genital intercourse) and the “money shot” (ejaculation, orgasm shots), to me, the moments that are unique to photographers consist in emotion and fantasy. So, when I shoot these other elements, people are no longer the subject; desire is.

Perhaps the climax shot is like the waves hitting the shore. Full of force, fecund, fleeting, and often attention grabbing. But what fascinates me more is what remains stranded when the tide retreats.

Neocha: 在我们于展览现场的谈话中，你谈到部分作品里，性爱前与性爱后是你想强调的内容。像是一次浴中爱抚的挑逗性暗示，又或是高潮退去后瞬间拉开的距离感。对你而言，这部分作品刻意略过性行为高潮的部分，其背后的意义是什么？

宁文: 有一些特别的时刻，是摄影师眼里独有的浪漫，就比如“开拍之前”与“散场后”。好像在那两个时刻，空间与物件成为了欲望的主角。

摄影之前的场景看似平静，却充满隐喻。绳子、马桶、人体穿刺工具等等，好像被蒙上一层马赛克，变得未知而诱人。而摄影之后的空景，残留了各种气味、物件以及还未散去的情绪。有时候甚至在高潮结束后，才显影出人与人之间最赤裸的关系和故事。

在主流情欲影像市场上，关键镜头几乎都是 “Meat shot”（性器交合特写）与 “Money shot”（射精、高潮镜头）。但那些空景，其实也充满浓烈的幻想色。所以我在拍摄这些另类的关键镜头中，人不再是主体，欲望才是。

也许高潮镜头像是在拍打岸边的浪花，激情、绽放、稍纵即逝，常成为观众目光焦点。但更吸引我的，是当浪潮褪去，当一切搁浅后，留在岸上的是什么？

Neocha: Is it true, then, in your view, that as Foucault once remarked, “Sex is boring”—and that what’s really at stake is what accrues around sex?

Ning: Maybe because I am a person with a low libido, in my life experience, I often feel that sex itself is lifeless, while I am born through various sexual experiences. For example, in the process of participating in handjobs, sex work advocacy, rope binding, BDSM, erotic photography, and workshops designed to help better understand our bodies, I found that these experiences are not only physical pleasures, but, far more so, explorations of the self and taboos.

Sexuality is often seen as the most intimate part of the individual, but it also communicates the most pervasive problems in society. For example, during the more than two years of my Amateur AV Interview project, issues ranged from the individual body to the social body, including childhood sexual abuse and misogyny, the confessions of sex workers and consumers, depression, BDSM, and the role of the virtual. They reveal, say, the world’s two-dimensional eroticism, or the erotic undercurrents of the Hong Kong demonstrations… It turned out that what I was exploring was not about porn or erotica itself, but looking back at life experiences through these.

Neocha: 傅科（Foucault，法国哲学家）曾评论：“性是无趣的”，真正的要紧的并非性本身，而是性爱周围所产生的事物，你认同这样的观点吗？

宁文: 可能因为我是低欲望的人，在生命经验中，我常觉得性是死的，却又在各种性经验中诞生自我。像是“手天使”（NGO Hand Angel，一个台湾的障碍者性权团体）、“性劳推”（T S I W R A，兴产业劳动者权益推动协会）、绳缚、BDSM、性爱摄影、还有一些跟身体对话的工作坊的过程中，发现这些经验不止于身体愉悦，更多是对自我、禁忌的探索。

“性”常被视为是个人最私密的部分，这是现今社会最普遍存在的问题。在我耗时超过两年完成的“素人AV面试”系列中，主题涉及个人身体到社会集体，包含童年性侵和厌女情结、性工作者与顾客的自白、忧郁症、BDSM、虚拟世界的二次元情欲、香港示威游行时的情欲流动……后来才发现，我在探索的不是色情或情色本身，而是透过这些主题，来回述生命的经历罢了。

Neocha: You also spoke of transforming the gallery space into a kind of porn studio, where models and sex workers facilitated the artistic event and process. Can you discuss the reasoning behind this, and what, if anything, surprised you about the outcome?

Ning: From my Sex Story series to Amateur AV Interview series, I tried to develop invisible images, like hushed taboos and confessions. However, the object developed through this solo exhibition is no longer just people but also extends to space. The process is full of surprises and upsets, such as “tea party” urinals, semen landscape paintings, rope binding projections, body writing, human dogs…

In fact, none of these subjectivities were “performers” that I specially arranged, and some of them were originally live audiences. This time around, through participatory art, participants gradually changed the tonality of the space, moved the boundary between the public and private spheres, and allowed for the invisible appearance of the space. I feel that this boundary is like an invisible wall. Desire becomes a kind of material, and space becomes sculpture.

In the beginning, everyone quietly listened to my guidance through all this while viewing my works. The space was still the “exhibition space” in the gallery. Then, someone began to test the boundaries, and the space gradually turned into a basement darkroom, slowly developing an invisible latent image. Finally, each corner has a different erotic practice. Everyone habitually picks up their mobile phones to produce custom erotic images, like a Twitter museum. The space changed from displaying images to producing images, and gradually became a “set.”

Between seeing and being seen, the audience becomes the work; and the segmented images produced become mirrors of this participatory film. Participants move between “consumers” and “producers,” and at the same time shuffle between the identities of director, photographer, interviewee, and viewer, reconstructing relationships such as bodily boundaries, sex/gender, and imaginal power.

What surprised me the most was that in the last week of the exhibition, even the police joined in as part of the participatory creation! After public power intervenes in eroticism, it lays bear a process of extracting “sex” from taboo,  release, and suppression. I began to extend my thinking: Is the real danger the sex or the violation of the freedom of others? How does power exercise the reality of repression in the name of morality? How did porn become taboo? Sexual taboos in relation to history, culture, politics, religion, imperialist expansion… Many norms that are taken for granted, the more you understand the context behind them, the more surprising they became. At the end, I held a farewell ceremony for the exhibition.

Neocha: 你也提到，将画廊空间改造成色情片片场，以模特和性工作者的行为，激发出艺术事件和经过。是否可以稍微叙述一下这背后的理念？以及这个程中，最让你感到惊喜的事。

宁文: 从“性爱摄影”系列到“素人AV面试”系列 ，我试着去构建一种不可见的影像，像是社会的禁忌、个人的独白这种平日难以流露于表面的内容。对象不再只是“人”，而是扩展到“空间”。过程充满许多惊喜与不安，比如以尿液代替茶水的激斗、精液山水画、绳缚投影、人体签名本、人形犬等等。

当中其实没有一个人是我特地安排的“表演者”，有些人原本就是现场观众。这次透过参与式艺术，让参与者慢慢改变这个空间的调性，去质疑私密、公共空间的界限，显影空间不可见的样貌。我觉得这条界线像是一面隐形的墙壁，欲望是创作的原材料，而空间则成为雕塑。

刚开始，像所有展览一样，我向观众导览，观众静静聆听、观赏，展览空间也还是原样。紧接着，开始有人试探界线，空间渐变成地下室暗房，缓缓呈现出一些隐形的图像。之后，每个角落进行不同的情欲实践。大家习惯性的拿起手机生产自定义的情欲影像，像是座推特博物馆。空间从展示影像转为生产影像，逐渐成为所谓的“片场”。

在看与被看之间，观众成为作品；而生产的片段影像，成为这一部参与式影片的分镜。参与者在“消费者”与“生产者”之间摇摆，同时也切换着导演、摄影师、被摄者、观者的身份，重新建构身体界线、性、性别、影像权力等关系。

最让我感到意外的，是展览最后一周连警察也参与进来，成为这创作的一部分。当公权力介入情欲后，“性”会呈现出从禁忌到释放， 再到压制的过程。我开始延伸思考：真正危险的是性还是对他人自由的侵害？权力如何以道德之名行压制？色情如何成为禁忌？性禁忌与历史、文化、政治、宗教、帝国主义扩张的关系……许多被视为理所当然的规范，越深入了解背后的脉络，越让人惊喜。最后为了纪念这次展出，我专门还举办了一场告别仪式。

Neocha: In your work, you talk about the mysterious absence of sex photography relative to, say, marriage or funeral photography. And yet, you then bring this work, unlike most of those photographers, into a museum space. All this suggests a kind of re-contextualization of the space itself, in contrast to traditional gallery and museum models. Can you say a bit more about this?

Ning: Almost everyone can produce images these days, but many still turn to professional photographers to record important moments in their lives. It seems that photography is not just about producing images, but professional photography as a kind of ritual, written into the experience along with important moments of life.

However, these rituals have become taboo when it comes to “sex.” So, I created a “sex photographer” profession, releasing a series of virtual interviews, websites, exhibitions, and so on, using the approaches of “professional photography” as a concept and mode of artistic collection.

This program is not limited to sexual orientation, gender, or body, and includes all kinds of desires: vanilla sex, foot fetishes, rope bondage, human urinals, BDSM, wild nudes, fetish… I photograph all these desires, good and bad, as taxonimized by Gayle S. Rubin’s sexual class system, as if it were a scale of highs and lows, forming a movement of desire. However, these notes are not fixed, and different desires may switch classes depending on temporal and spatial backgrounds, becoming an ever-changing organic process.

Although the identity of “sex photographer” was born from the art space, I hope this persona is not only an artistic project, but also someone who participates in society in more diverse manners. In fact, I am very grateful to the participants who authorized the exhibition for honestly revealing the diversity of desires. The whole process felt confessional; some approached psychological counseling; some felt it was a social movement, possibility.

Neocha: 你提到过，相对于平时受聘于婚礼或葬礼的摄影师，性爱摄影在生活中却是空缺。但与此同时，你在画廊中进行的创作，与广义的摄影工作有别。这个过程中，你似乎将传统艺术空间重新构架。对此，能多聊聊你的想法吗？

宁文: 现在，几乎每个人都能生产影像，但在生命中的重要时刻，许多人还是会找专业摄影师来记录。好像摄影不只为了生产影像，而是将专业摄影作为某种仪式，与生命中的重要时刻一同载入记录。

然而这些仪式，却在触及“性”时成为禁忌。所以我构思了“性爱摄影师”这个职业身份，创作了一系列拟设专访、网站、展览等。并从“专业拍摄”的角度，让创作传递一种观念、甚至作为艺术品收藏。

该系列不限性向、性别、身体，包含各种欲望的表达形式：香草型性爱（vanilla sex）、恋足、绳缚、人形小便斗、BDSM、野裸、恋物等等。我拍摄关于鲁宾（Gayle S. Rubin，美国人类学、女性学教授）所提及的性阶级制度中好与坏的欲望，好像是高高低低的音阶，共谱成一首关于欲望的乐章。然而这些音符并不固定，不同欲望会在不同时空背景下切换阶级，成为一个不断变动的有机状态。

“性爱摄影师 ”这个身份虽然是从艺术空间中诞生，但我希望其不仅仅是个艺术项目，还会以更多元的形式影响社会。其实很感谢授权参展的被摄者们，诚实揭露欲望的多样性，整个过程有人觉得像自我的坦述、有人觉得像是一场心理咨询、有人觉得是社会运动。而我也正持续探索画廊、美术馆等空间的更多可能。

Neocha: Much of your work really flies in the face of a kind of traditional, static, one-sided viewing experience. In particular, your decision to upload whatever unfolds in the gallery on your website suggests a kind of inchoate, ongoing, and processual approach to work. How do you see your role as artist: facilitator, collaborator, mediator, voyeur, or something else?

Ning: My role in this work is not fixed but fluid, like the rest of the audience. Together, we switch between multiple identities, such as director, photographer, and viewer, in our works. And I am like a viewer who has been there for the longest time, seeing the work evolving from nothing at all and slowly growing into an individual with a very different personality from me, and then dying unexpectedly. Finally, at the farewell ceremony, I took a photo of the exhibition.

Neocha: 你的许多作品有违于传统、静态或个人的观看体验。将艺术空间里发生的事上传至网络，你的作品似乎带着渐进、持续、过程性的创作方向。你怎么看待自己作为艺术家的角色，是促进者、调解者、合作者、偷窥者还是其他角色？

宁文: 我在这次作品中的角色不是固定的，而是跟其他观众一样，身份不断流动。我们一同在作品中切换导演、摄影师、观者等多重身份。而我，则像是一个展内呆最久的观众。这些作品像是有血有肉，从无到有，慢慢成长，直到生命戛然而止。我也在告别式上，替这次展览拍下了遗照。

Neocha: In some of your works, including the VR piece, you interviewed anonymous porn amateurs about their experiences. Can you speak a little about anonymity and how this freed some of your interviewees?

Ning: I think sex can be public art or it can be a private collection. In the Amateur AV Interview project, I opened up to the participants the choice of freely choosing anonymity, vocal change, and revealing what’s beneath the mosaic blur. The focus of this work is not to deal with sexual desire, but to use the form of a fake interview to construct an imaginary that transcends the framework of one’s own identity, body, and gender.

The participants in Amateur AV Interview are not adult film actors, but “amateurs” who live within taboos. In fact, in these short three years, I can feel the movement within certain forbidden boundaries. But no matter how the taboo moves, there are always unpopular stories. This reminds me of the fables and mythology that Walter Benjamin mentioned in The Storyteller. Those AV fantasies and taboo stories under the table, although there are often marginal and taboo in various cultures, can more honestly reflect the collective subconscious of an entire generation.

In VR, I create an inner space that allows interviewees to express themselves and feel at ease with their “nakedness” through the “reversed panoramic mosaic”; at the same time, I also allow the off-screen audience to re-examine themselves and their voyeuristic “nudity.” In addition to being visually mosaic, narrative is also mosaic. The stories of everyone in the work are cut up and reassembled, like threads of different textures now spun into a new web. The viewer can see the outline of the story of the overall era, but cannot peep into the privacy of the individuals concerned.

A interviewee once told me that he was both worried and excited during an interview. While worried about the secrets being disclosed, he is excited about confessing his story. There were even other interviewees who brought friends to watch the VR, but these friends didn’t know that the pixelated person was him. It seems that mosaic blur has become a thin veil for the viewer and an interviewee through which they can play with taboos. If it’s too much or too little, it will lose its beauty.

Neocha: 在你的一些作品中（这当中也包含你的 VR 作品），你有采访了那些参与情色表演的匿名素人关于这次体验的看法。能否粗浅地为我们介绍这些匿名者吗，以及他们是如何从这次展览中得到释放的？

宁文: 我觉得性爱可以是公共艺术，也可以是私人收藏。在“素人AV面试 ”系列中，我让参与者选择开放，可以自由选择匿名、变声、选择需要反转马赛克的部位等等。作品的重点不在于安放性欲，而是以“虚拟采访”的形式，建构出超越自己身份、身体、性别等框架的想象。

“素人AV面试”系列 的参与者并非 AV 演员，而是生活在禁忌之内的普通人。其实在这短短三年间，我就可以感受到禁忌界线的移动。但无论禁忌如何移动，依然有些“不入流”的故事发生。让我想起瓦尔特·本雅明（Walter Benjamin，德国思想家、哲学家）在《说故事的人》中提到的寓言、民间传说。那些台面下的 AV 幻想与禁忌故事，虽时常存在各个文化边缘、禁忌之处，却更能诚实地反映了时代的集体潜意识。

在 VR 中，我通过“反转全景马赛克”，创造出一个自我、内在的“赤裸”空间；同时，让画外观众重新审视自身窥淫“裸体”（Nudity）的欲望。而除了视觉上被马赛克，叙事也同样被马赛克。作品中每个人的故事都被剪碎重新拼贴，像是一条条不同质地的线，交织成一整张全新的网。观者看得见时代下的故事轮廓，却无法窥视其中个体的隐私。

曾经有受试者跟我说，他在采访时感到既担心又兴奋。一边担心秘密被发现，一边兴奋于马赛克下的自我坦述。甚至有其他表演者会带朋友来观看 VR，但朋友并不知道马赛克下的人就是他。好像“马赛克”成为观者与受试者共同玩弄禁忌的一层薄膜，太多或太少都将失去美感。

Neocha: Who are some of your own influences and inspirations? How do you view your own projects vis-à-vis the wider artistic and cultural context in which you work?

Ning: If the “dying self” is a person, he is the most influential. Often when I make seemingly absurd decisions in my life, I think back to my former self and ask for his opinion. Because in the face of death, all obstacles will become small, and the choice becomes clear.

Besides, I think amateurs, actors, conservatives, police, family, people who have hurt me, and people who have loved me, they are all my inspirations.

Currently I feel like I’m in an ambiguous, fluid, and uncertain stage of exploration. I try to chart a new path between contemporary art and erotic film and television. For example, some works may be suitable for the artistic space, and some works are better suited for pornographic film festival in various countries.

Neocha: 哪些人是你的灵感来源，并对你产生过影响？在更为宽泛的艺术与文化语境下，你是如何看待自己作品的？

宁文: 如果人在“临死前的本体”也算是一个人的话，他是最具影响力的。我常常在做一些人生中看似荒谬的决定时，会回想起曾经面临死亡时的自己，并询问他意见。因为在死亡面前，所有的阻碍会变得渺小，而选择变得清晰。

除此之外，我觉得素人、演员、保守派民众、警察、家人、曾伤害我的人、爱过我的人，都是我的灵感来源。

目前我喜欢暧昧、流动、不明确的探索阶段。我试着在当代艺术跟情欲影像之间创作，找寻新的路径。像是有些作品可能适合被拿到艺术空间去，有些作品则适合流放在各国的情色电影艺术节上。

Neocha: Finally, where do you see your work going from here? What do you hope to explore going forward?

Ning: At this stage, Sex Story and Amateur AV Interview are just a starting point. No matter what form it eventually takes, I think I will continue to execute these until I die. It took longer to develop the parts I can’t see yet. In the end, it is no longer that I take ownership of the works worth exploring, but rather let the works lead me to explore. Through porn and erotica, in addition to exploring something external to yourself, you also delve more deeply into yourself.

Neocha: 最后，你认为未来你的作品会是怎样的？还有哪些是你想要去探索的？

宁文: 现阶段的“性爱摄影师”和“素人AV面试”系列只是起点，无论最终演变成什么形式，我想我会一直执行到死。这样，才能在更长时间中，表达出我现在还未曾触及的部分。最后不再是我通过作品去探索什么，而是让作品带我去探索。色情、情色，不只是向外的探索，更是向内挖掘自己。

Like our stories? Follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Website: www.ningwen.art

 

Contributor: Brandon Kemp
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li

喜欢我们的故事？欢迎关注我们的微博与微信。

 

网站: www.ningwen.art

 

供稿人: Brandon Kemp
英译中: Olivia Li

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢

Neighborhood Watch 记忆迷宫

October 18, 2022 2022年10月18日

What makes a neighborhood? Is it the people? The buildings? The streets? Korean artist Heo Hyeon-sook would argue that it’s all of the above. However, in her work, she focuses on the built environment as the representation of the human lives that inhabit it. Everyday details of an old home that we may overlook—such as household items, patches of gardens, and visible renovations—are records of the people who lived there and their existence can stretch back generations. “I refuse to see these things as old and obsolete; Iconsider them to be a wonderful archive containing unique stories and history of people from the past,” she argues.

街坊由什么构成？人、建筑、还是街道环境？在韩国艺术家许贤淑（Heo Hyeon-sook）看来，所有这些加起来共同构成了街坊的概念。她的作品将韩国街坊细致描绘，那里有低矮的平房、植被还有住过痕迹。瓦砾之间，处处是生活的点滴，后院摆放的坛坛罐罐、空调室外机、商店招牌，等等这些生活中看似不起眼的老旧细节，都埋藏在她的绘画里。“我不认为这些元素陈旧或只停留在过去式。在我看来，它们是生活的档案，讲述事物、人还有历史，”她说。

Her illustrations have a surreal feel to them, with buildings teetering in unrealistic ways and climbing up vertical slopes. Walls unfold like paper notes, crowding out any walking space. The areas Heo depicts are actually built into steep hills and the eagles-eye perspective are based on her own observations of city life, but she also uses her artistic license to include more information than our eyes or a camera could capture, such as splaying open a building to show all four walls and the roof all at once. “I don’t want to make a one-dimensional reproduction,” she says. “Instead, I express multi-faceted stories within a single artwork. There are so many stories contained in traces, features and functions of a single house, and my artwork contains all of them at once.”

许贤淑的作品看起来并不真实，建筑物像童话故事里的插图一样，给人一种摇摇欲坠的不规则感。建筑的屋顶、墙壁严丝合缝地粘连在一起，拥挤到完全没有行走的余地，就连后花园里也摆满了物品。

她笔下的街坊小巷，位于陡峭的山丘之上。在她的作品中，垂直与俯瞰视角处于同一平面，她希望通过多重视角，将街的多维度展示在同一平面上，建筑与周遭都被平摊呈现，这是相机和肉眼都无法完成的效果。许贤淑解释说：“我不想单一维度的创作。相反，我想在一件作品中表达多方面故事。一栋房子，从外观、用途到岁月的痕迹，如此丰富的信息量，我希望我的作品同样可以呈现。”

Heo zeros in on communal lives across Seoul, recreating neighborhoods gone or disappearing with pencil on beige Korean bark paper. It looks archival due to the traditional mediums and style, helping cement the recent past and the precarious present in our collective memory. Her work presents scenes of unimaginably dense, low-rise cityscapes in the style of traditional Korean landscape painting to record real and inferred histories at risk of being forgotten forever. Her style commits them to the past, overtly claiming them as historical, but keeps them alive with energy and passion.

许贤淑平时关注首尔公共生活，她喜欢把那些老街用铅笔画在树皮纸上。这让她的作品看似一部城市历史档案，引起观众对于过去和现在之间的思考，加深人们的集体记忆。绘画方式上，她选择韩国传统山水画风格，尝试与过去进行联系，并融入自己对画面的理解，为作品注入活力和创意，赋予其生命力。

Features of landscape painting, like the characteristic dark mountains and rivers that frame the edges and slide through a scene, are common in Heo’s metaphorical cities. Rivers and identical thoroughfares serve as a gathering space where people can unwind and socialize or shop. The river of her childhood was a place to do laundry and then became a communal park. “The works that I create are inspired by my town, and the river and the road are depicted as an ever-present existence,” she explains. They’re core features. Whereas European and American-designed cities feature large central squares, Korean cities revolved around and grew out of these rivers.

正如上述所说，一些中山水画经典元素频频出现在她的作品当中——譬如以深色勾勒的河流，它们偶尔位于画面的边缘，或是蜿蜒于城镇之间。在她童年的记忆里，河边最早是附近居民们洗晾衣服的地方，后来才逐渐演变成公园。“作品的灵感来自于我的家乡，那里的生活围绕河流展开，”她回忆道。在欧美国家，城市的设计以大型的中央广场为特色，而在一些国家，城市往往依水而建。

When Heo was just 9 years old, her family of three generations was unceremoniously and forcibly removed from their home, and they had to move a few times after that before finally settling again. She remembers those early years wistfully, surrounded by loving grandparents, caring neighbors, and parents’ friendly coworkers. When her grandparents passed, she realized there were no photographs or documents from her days with them. So she set out to recreate them through art based on memories and imagination.

“I wanted to leave meaningful recordings of my grandparents’ essence with detailed and painstaking reconstructions of their everyday life,” she says. “But I use the spaces they inhabited, rather than realistic portraits.”

As such, her early works are directly inspired by her childhood: The basement level house she was born in, the schoolyard slide she played on and the street market where her father was a vendor. 

许贤淑九岁时，一家三代人被迫离开家园，在经历数次搬家之后，最后才安顿下来。这些年恍惚的回忆中，慈爱的祖父母、热情的街坊邻居，都久久不能忘怀。当时过境迁，亲人朋友纷纷离去，许贤淑才意识到，并没有信物或是照片，来留住这份情意。凭借记忆和想象力，她决定以艺术来重建美好过去。

“想要把关于祖父母的一部分记忆表现出来，重现过去生活的样子，”她说道，“不是通过肖像，而是生活的真实写照，这样更温馨一点。”

她早期的作品正是基于她童年经历而创作完成的，包括她出生时住的类似电影《寄生虫》里刻画的地下公寓、学校里玩过的滑梯以及父亲曾经常摆摊的街市。她将自己去过的地方，交往过的邻居、亲戚和友人，纷纷反映在创作当中。

Relying on memories can be a tricky thing and her affection is colored by nostalgia. When you look at Heo’s drawings, the dilapidated buildings and tight alleyways don’t look pleasant. But to her, it was a wonderland of joy, an endless maze of paradise and adventure. The one building still standing from the neighborhood of her youth—located across the street from her current studio—is her old school, which she says felt gigantic but is actually quite small. The playground is now a vacant lot.

“I may have lived in a tiny and not-so-pleasant house with an outdoor bathroom. I may have lived in an alley too narrow for cars to fit through. Yet the mental space that represents my childhood is constructed with fond of memories of my youth,” Heo reasons. “But I feel sorry for having the best childhood imaginable when for my parents it was the absolute worst. The home of my childhood is an edited version of reality; a compilation of the best-of.”

The neighborhood and those who inhabit it were Heo’s extended family. She says her parents were always busy at the factory, and so the woman living above her, the lady living behind her, and the storeowners next door took care of her. “Back then the whole town was involved in raising the kids. The love that everyone in the neighborhood showered me with remains deep in my heart.”

但有时记忆并不确信，记忆也会因怀念而多出一层滤镜。观看许贤淑的画作，破旧建筑和狭窄街巷看起来并不那么赏心悦目，但对她来说，这里是充满乐趣的花园，是回味无穷、充满冒险的记忆迷宫。她如今的工作室，正对儿时生活区域里的一座学校。小时候，她总觉得学校很大，但现在看来学校其实很小，学校操场如今也已变成一块空地。

“以前的房子很小，住着不舒服，连浴室都是露天的。记得那会儿巷子很窄，有的连汽车都无法通行。但每当回忆起来，却倍感开心，”许贤淑说，“但对于父母来说，那却是一段非常艰难的经历，每次回想起来又觉得过意不去。童年对于我来说，经过了情感上的编辑，只保留了美好的部分。”

街坊居民对于许贤淑来说就跟家人一样。她回忆起那时父母忙于工厂的工作，因此自己总睡在邻居家里。“那个年代，镇上所有人都会相互帮忙照看孩子。他们的关怀让我今生难忘。”

Part of the reason there are no records of those days is because cameras were not widely available in 1980s Korea. “People were focused on survival,” Heo says. “It’s up to our generation, which grew up carefree and in prosperity to record them.” But it’s also because history is written by the victors. “The history of society is really the history of a regime.” 

Historic artifacts are remnants of what was enjoyed only by a select few and are not representative of the wider reality. Her childhood neighborhood was clearly not worthy of recording, but she made sure to correct that glaring oversight.

To keep it from happening to others, Heo has expanded her work to include the neighborhoods of others that are threatened by or have fallen victim to similarly rampant development. She explores the city and pours over historical documents for inspiration. The city portraits of her more recent work represent a social phenomena rather than depicting her own life, but they’re still heavily influenced by her childhood experience: “People’s hard work without self-preservation laid a foundation for progress, and they should be remembered and celebrated.” 

80 年代的韩国，并不是每家都有相机，“那个年代，人们一心只想着努力生存。这让我们这一代人肩负一种责任，对于我来说，责任便是记录过去。而那些广为流传的历史，通常是关于某某人的丰功伟业，社会的历史实际上是权力的历史，平凡人的历史却查无踪迹。”

历史文物不过是曾被少数精英所拥有的物品，并不能代表民众百姓。也并不是逛逛博物馆，就能了解一座城市的过去。而童年记忆里的街坊显然没有任何人来记录，她愿意用自己的作品来改变人们对于历史的观念。

为了“留住”更多地方的记忆，许贤淑扩大了她的创作范围，包括更多逐渐被城市现代化吞噬的街坊。她四处探索这座城市，翻阅历史文献来寻找灵感。她的作品也不再仅仅关于自己，而是关于整个社会。但童年的那段经历，仍对她启发最大，许贤淑说：“每一个人，都是社会默默无闻的贡献者，是城市进步的积淀，每一个人，都值得被铭记和赞颂。”

Like our stories? Follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Instagram: @heohyeonsookart

 

Contributor: Mike Steyels
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li

喜欢我们的故事？欢迎关注我们 Neocha 的微博与微信。

 

Instagram: @heohyeonsookart

 

供稿人: Mike Steyels
英译中: Olivia Li

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢

Eccentric Panels “救火”与“就餐”之间的奇妙连接

October 13, 2022 2022年10月13日

Monsters assembled from the severed limbs of its victims, humans riding flying cats, and planet-eating entities. These are the types of characters that inhabit the mind of Taiwanese comic artist Huang Liang-Chun, better known by his alias Karmarket. He’s an artist unafraid to explore the deep recesses of his mind, those dark corners of horror we usually strive to avoid. But he consciously gives his stories emotional breadth and meaningful depth. It’s also frequently infused with his own signature brand of humor.

残臂断足、飞猫坐骑、舔舐星球的庞然巨物——这些猎奇元素均来自台湾漫画家 Huang Liang-Chun（又名 Karmarket，藥島）的内心深处。对此，他毫不避讳，直面那些人们避之不及的黑暗角落。与此同时，他的作品丝毫不缺乏内容的深度与宽度，很多时候还会以意想不到的幽默感公示于众。

"I see a spark."
"There's a burning smell."
"I can feel the heat."
"Let's go help!"

Huang writes and draws all his comics, drawing inspiration from dreams and daydreams alike. His first comic, “Somewhere On Fire,” was inspired by photos he took of local street food vendors. It started as three standalone illustrations, but due to the inspiration of a surreal Japanese manga, he developed a full comic out of the scenes. It became an outlandish story about a man who sees smoke in the distance and jumps onto a flying cat to go to the rescue, only to discover the smoke is actually just steam from a restaurant. So instead, he just sits down and orders food.

“It doesn’t really have a clear plot or make much sense,” Huang laughs.” “I wanted to draw people eating street food and it grew into this.” At the end of the comic, news of a real fire is broadcast on television and the hero looks on, depressed. It’s a helplessness that mirrors Huang’s own feelings when watching the news.

从故事到绘画，所有创作均由藥島一人包揽。梦境、胡思乱想是他的灵感来源。他的第一部漫画《某处起火了》，其灵感来自当地小吃摊贩。漫画起初仅由三幅独立插图构成，后来在受到一部日本超现实漫画启发后，他决定将这个离奇的故事讲述完整：一个男人感受到不远的烧焦味，决然跳上飞猫前去救援，结果发现眼前的浓烟不过是餐厅里冒出的蒸汽，于是他竟索性坐下来点餐。

“这部漫画其实没有明确的情节，也没有特别的意义，” 藥島笑着说道，“只是想画一些在路边摊吃饭的人，画着画着没想到却画出故事感来。”漫画结尾，电视上播出真正的火灾新闻，看到新闻后，男人痛哭流涕、一副郁闷的表情。而这种无助感也是藥島自己在看到这类新闻时的内心独白。

"Heat..."
"I'm here to help!"
"Ah!"
"Interrupting your broadcast for breaking news."
"Snap crackle whooosh"

Since that first comic, Huang has completed two others. All are drawn in the same style, strictly black and white with an almost pointillist shading technique. “I’m a little color blind and my college professor told me my color sense is terrible,” he chuckles. “I was using a brush tip pen in high school, then used a fine tip, and when I switched to digital I continued the style.” 

第一部漫画之后，藥島又完成了另外两部作品。所有作品遵循一致的绘画风格，只有黑白两色，并采用了类似的点绘手法。“我有点色盲，我的大学教授说我对颜色的感觉糟糕透了，”他笑着说，“我在高中时用的是软头笔，后来又改用细头笔，后来又运用数字创作，一直延续着这种风格。”

"I've always wanted to leave earth."
"It's because I'm tired of seeing ghosts. Yup. I can see them all."
"They're everywhere. It's revolting."
"A decade plus later, my dream came true."
"I thought I could escape these entities in space and find my peace."
"I was mistaken. Wrong to a shocking degree."
"You're clear to dock. Docking successful. "
“Mir spacecraft MS01 has docked at 8.20pm. Welcome aboard."
"Finally making it to space..."

“Ghosts From Outer Space” drills deeper into feelings of despair and horror. In one panel, a giant, blob-like monster growing out of the Earth with tentacles that eat up ghosts in space. Circular orbs glom onto each other, creating the shape of growing ​​tendrils the stretch into the exosphere, which is packed with the white silhouettes of ghosts floating aimlessly in orbit. This illustration was the comic’s initial inspiration. Huang had drawn it for fun and decided to expand it into a full story afterward. “I was having trouble explaining to people what the drawing was about, so I created a whole story to back it up.” 

作品《宇宙的幽灵》表达了绝望与恐惧的深层感受。其灵感最初来自一张克苏鲁意味的概念作品：一个由数个球状体组成的怪物从地表冒出。球状体相互粘连，生长出漫无边界的触手，伸向外大气层外，那里漂浮无数个白色幽灵。藥島出于好玩画下了这幅作品，之后决定将其扩展成一个完整的故事。

"I saw millions of apparitions. They all had a faint white glow. Their numbers were so vast that I couldn't tell whether it was starlight or more of them in the distance."
“I think that when our physical bodies die, our spirits become untethered and float off into space."
"I supposed this is what people call heaven."
"Mom left and went to heaven."
"Yup. Heaven is right above us, so if you miss her, just look up..."
"...and you'll see her."
"Mom? What are you doing here!"
"Mom!"
"Why did you leave me by myself?"
"Why haven't you come see me?"
"Growing up, I saw so many spirits, but I never saw you. I miss you so much."
"At that moment, from the abyss of the galaxy, something crawled out of the darkness."

It’s the story of a woman who’s been haunted by spirits her whole life—their mangled, tortured bodies present at every waking moment. She joins NASA to escape from it all, hoping the vacuum of space will offer peace and quiet. Instead, she finds the entire history of human kind on Earth in orbit, including her mother. Then the blob grows into space eating the ghosts, mom and all. Her fellow astronauts can’t see the ghosts and think she’s gone insane, so they send her back to Earth, where babies start being born dead without souls.

故事讲述了一位生来被鬼魂缠身的女子，只要她睁开双眼，就能看到亡灵那残缺不全、饱受折磨的身体。为了逃避这一切，她加入 NASA，希望在宇宙里能重新找回生活的平静。然而事与愿违，在宇宙里，她却看到地球上死去的人类，化作幽灵漂浮在太空。她看到球状怪物将触手伸向这些这些亡灵，那其中有她曾去世的母亲。其他宇航员观察女人的一举一动，断定她是疯了，并将其送回地球。从那之后，地球上发生了怪事：只要是婴儿，一出生便消失的无影无踪。

"Mom!! Run!"
"Maybe it's because of earth's gravity, or interference from the planet's atmosphere, I've never seen anything like this. But in space... it's clear as day."
"What is it?..."
"What does it want? Why is it devouring human souls? Where did it come from? I had no answers."
"A week later, it came for human souls on earth. It was a massacre, of which I was the only witness. Billions of souls were eaten."
"My crew mates became worried about me. We trained together and underwent pre-flight therapy together, why was I the only one so out of it? I don't blame them. They're lucky that they don't see what I see."
"In the end, command sent me back down to earth. And you know the rest."
"This is your explanation? And we're supposed to believe it?"
"It doesn't matter what you believe. I'm not going back."
"In recent days, an unexplained disease has seemingly spread around the world that's affecting all newborns."
"They're seemingly without conscious. They don't cry or move. It's like they have no souls. There's no medical explanation."
"I miss mom... and even all the other spirits."

For “Phantom Limb,” Liang-Chun wanted to draw a full-fledged horror story. Although it’s pretty gruesome, full of blood and guts, it’s also about coming to terms with trauma. A man who’s been hospitalized with a lost limb after a car accident sees visions of monsters made from other people’s body parts. In the hero’s dream, he feels the soft and tender wet grass on his missing foot and wakes up happy. Originally, Liang-Chun just wanted to draw a bunch of hacked off limbs but added the deeper themes after getting that part out of his system. 

接下来的这部《幻肢》漫画则充满血腥和重口味元素，同时探讨了创伤应对的话题。医院里，一名因车祸失去右脚的男子瘫倒在病床上，脑海中，他看到一只由残肢断臂拼成的怪物。幻觉的同时，他缺失那只脚却真实感受到了潮湿柔软的草地的触感，这让他欣喜不已。这部作品的雏形，来自藥島在稿纸上乱画的残肢，后来在不断完善的过程中，增加了整部作品的深度和情感。

The cover page for "Phantom Limb."
"I dreamt that my severed leg was deep in the forest, rotting away."
"But it wasn't just my foot."

All of Huang’s comics are available on the Creative Comic Collection website, a government-sponsored comics portal. He printed a couple of them before working with CCC, but readers will have to wait for the rest to be published. He says they’ve approved ten stories, which he expects to be published in about a year. “The government pays me to draw,” he smiles. “I won’t be rich or anything but I get paid to draw what I want.”

现在，藥島的所有漫画都可以在 Creative Comic Collection 网站上找到，这是一个当地政府赞助的漫画网站。其中一部分漫画现已印刷出版，还有些作品将很快已纸质形式和读者见面。他表示，其中十个故事已经通过审批，预计将在一年左右出版。他笑着说道：“政府出钱让我画画。虽然我不会因此变得富有，但我可以靠画自己想画的作品获得报酬。”

"Like my foot, countless other limbs were also there, appendages that had no place to return to. All of their woes, hate, and pain binding them together."
"By way of lighting, we were given power and life."
"And I could walk again."
"The grass cut into my soles, and the soft mud with the mushy leaves felt wet and soft."
"That sensation brings me back."
"It felt as if I were a kid again, running through the backyard. No direction and no destination—just freedom."

Huang’s work delves into dark themes, with gore and destruction always a page away. Even when it’s just a scene of restaurant patrons enjoying tasty noodles, it looks ghastly and dangerous. Massive spreads of ghouls and blazing fires are regular. They’re fantastical stories, happy to explore unreal worlds with flying creatures and blurred lines between the living and the dead. But he always strives to bring a human element to his tales, something that speaks truth to our souls. His characters deal with trauma, whether that be the death of a loved one or a life-changing accident. Some find peace and others don’t, much like the real world. It’s a balance that lets readers escape but also keeps them thinking.

藥島的作品以一种意想不到的方式探讨黑暗主题。即使只是顾客在餐厅享用美味面条的场景，也可以看起来格外可怖和危险，巨型的食尸鬼和熊熊燃烧的大火更是时常可见。这些异想天开的故事探索着生与死的界限。与此同时，他总是努力在作品中加入对人性的探讨，一些能与我们的灵魂产生共鸣的故事：从亲人离世到改变人生的事故，他笔下的角色遭受了各种创伤。有的人重拾了内心的宁静，有的人却没有，这就正如现实世界一样。这种平衡一方面为读者提供了逃离现实的空间，同时又能启发他们思考现实与想象的冲突。

Like our stories? Follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Instagram: @karmarket

 

Contributor: Mike Steyels
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li

喜欢我们的故事？欢迎关注我们 Neocha 的微博与微信。

 

Instagram: @karmarket

 

供稿人: Mike Steyels
英译中: Olivia Li

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢

Meantime 与此同时

October 11, 2022 2022年10月11日
Issue 2 of Meantime Magazine 《Meantime》第二期“鬼故事”

Pang Xue Qiang wanted to create a passion project before graduating from university and starting his full-time job. He pitched this vague idea to his friends—who were studying journalism, design, and photography—and they were immediately all  on board. Considering their shared interest in print media, Qiang suggested, “why not a zine?”

It was imagined as a one-off project where they would write the stories themselves, design the layout, and scout for distributors to sell their zine. They met their goals, but it didn’t quite end up as a one-off issue. Two years and three issues later, Meantime Magazine continues to document Singapore stories lost to time.

早在大学毕业开始工作之前，Pang Xue Qiang 便希望做一个纯粹出于热爱的项目。他把想法告诉新闻、设计和摄影专业朋友，所有人当下一拍即合，决定 “做一本杂志！”

起初，团队仅把这本杂志当作一次“快闪”性质的项目，其内容全部由他们自己编写、排版并找分销商兜售。然而，在完成第一本杂志的制作后，他们却并未停下脚步，并在接下来的两年内发行三期。现在，《与此同时》（Meantime）杂志仍在继续，记录着新加坡那些迷失在岁月里的故事。

Issue 2 of Meantime Magazine 《Meantime》第二期“鬼故事”
Issue 2 of Meantime Magazine 《Meantime》第二期“鬼故事”

Now an annual publication, Meantime Magazine publishes interviews of Singapore locals who are open to sharing their past, traumatic and joyful times included. Qiang sees the magazine as an archivist, documenting memories of Singapore by focusing on personal stories. He says that whenever the editorial team approaches the interviewees, they are often surprised and ask them why the team is even interested in what they have to tell.

“They don’t see themselves as the protagonists,” Qiang says. “Nobody has given them the time and platform to voice their stories. If Meantime doesn’t exist, we feel that people will just go on with their lives and let these stories disappear because nobody will pay attention to them anymore.” Qiang hopes that decades down the road, people can rediscover Meantime —pick up a copy somehow in a library, someone’s home, or at a vintage magazine shop—and reminisce about what Singapore was like in the past.

《Meantime》是一本年刊杂志。杂志的报道对象都是新加坡当地人，讲述他们过去里喜怒哀乐的故事。Pang Xue Qiang 将这本杂志视为一份档案，透过个体的故事，记述新加坡的历史。他说，每当编辑团队联系受访者时，对方往往都会很意外，并问编辑团队为什么会对他们的故事感兴趣。

Pang Xue Qiang 说：“这些平凡的人从不认为自己是主角。生活在继续，但却没有专门的人去记录，这些故事最终会随时间烟消云散。”Pang Xue Qiang 希望，也许几十年后，会有人在图书馆、储物柜或是古董杂志店里发现《Meantime》，追忆起普通新加坡人的过去。

Issue 1 of Meantime Magazine 《Meantime》第一期“爱情故事”

For its first issue, the editorial team found inspiration from the New York Times “Modern Love” column, which told stories about relationships, feelings, revelations, and betrayals. “We felt connected to these love stories, even the ones that happened in New York City where we’ve never been,” he says. The personal revelations of the readers to their co-readers form a sense of community that Qiang wanted to recreate. He thinks that love stories are universal and that everyone has their own story about love. “We thought if we could look at Singapore, which is a small country that people might not even pinpoint where it is on the map, and talk about the love stories of those living there, we could create a space people could connect with. That was how the first issue, ‘Love Stories,’ came about,” he says.

Qiang notes that their team’s editorial process meanders. There’s no specific theme directing the content, but each issue always has an anchor story that guides the team on what stories and photos to include. For the “Love Stories” issue, the anchor is a story about a photo studio along Kerbau Road where young men from Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka have their portraits taken. The studio prints their pictures, and the men send them to their hometowns via post in the hopes of finding a bride.

“In Singapore, we have foreign workers from India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka who work in construction. We see them every day and meet them on the streets, but we don’t know their stories. When we found this photo studio, it was very interesting for us that it takes pictures of our young foreign workers so they can send them to their families for an arranged marriage. We wanted to tell the studio and the clients’ stories as one,” says Qiang. The team was told that once the families receive the images, they would show their pictures to their relatives and friends, and share how their son now works in Singapore, young, earning, and ready for marriage. Once the families find the right fit for the bride, the arranged marriage begins.

杂志初刊的灵感来自《纽约时报》的“现代爱情（Modern Love）”专栏，探讨了人际关系、情绪和背叛等话题。“爱情故事能让人产生共鸣，这是人类共同的话题，”他说。从读者的角度出发做一本杂志，Pang Xue Qiang 想通过杂志建立一种人与人之间的社区感。他认为爱情故事更具普世性，“新加坡不大，人们甚至可能找不到它在地图上的位置。但我们觉得，通过讲述生活在这里的人们的爱情故事，或许我们可以创造一个让人们相互联系的空间。这就是我们初刊主题 ‘爱情故事’（Love Stories）的由来。”

然而，杂志内容的采编过程并不轻松。每期杂志首先会围绕既定主题编写出先导故事，然后再由团队围绕该故事进行延伸。初刊的先导故事讲述了当地加宝路（Kerbau Rd）一家照相馆——来自泰米尔纳德邦和斯里兰卡的年轻男子会在这里拍下肖像照，并邮寄回家乡用来相亲。 

“新加坡有许多来自印度、孟加拉国和斯里兰卡的外籍劳工，在这里从事建筑业。每天都能在街上看到他们，但从来不知道他们的故事。当我们发现这个照相馆时，觉得特别有趣的是，年轻的外籍劳工会在这里拍摄照片，然后寄给家人来安排婚事。我们想将照相馆和顾客的故事结合起来讲述，”Pang Xue Qiang 说道。团队了解到，一些年轻男子的家人在收到照片后，会在亲朋好友之间奔走相告，告诉他们，儿子正在新加坡工作，年轻、有收入，已准备好结婚。一旦找到合适的新娘人选，就会安排结婚。“当人们谈论起爱情时，他们会变得脆弱、会变得敏感，这也能从侧面袒露出爱情的色彩”，Pang Xue Qiang 说道。

Issue 2 of Meantime Magazine 《Meantime》第二期“鬼故事”
Issue 2 of Meantime Magazine 《Meantime》第二期“鬼故事”
Issue 2 of Meantime Magazine 《Meantime》第二期“鬼故事”

A pivot from the mellow tone of the “Love Stories,” the editorial team wanted to shift to something haunting and gripping. “After the first issue, we realized that when people talk about love stories, they become vulnerable as they relieve their pasts, showing the tragedies of love as well,” he says. “We were inspired by this, so we decided to make the second issue ‘Ghost Stories,’” says Qiang, who adds that ghost stories don’t always mean haunted houses and paranormal activities.

Qiang wrote the anchor story himself, a feature that remains dear to him. He looked into the death penalty for drug traffickers in Singapore and how the system worked. Instead of interviewing a legal expert to help him investigate the death penalty system in the country, Qiang spoke with a retired Catholic nun who worked as a death row counselor for drug traffickers and prisoners in jail. “For months, she would counsel the prisoners who were convicted or on trial then on their last day, she would walk them to the room where they would be hanged or face death,” he says.

继“爱情故事”的温柔过后，编辑团队希望转变调性，讲述奇情、且扣人心弦的故事，于是决定制作第二期“鬼故事”（Ghost Stories）主题杂志，其并不一定是关于鬼怪和超自然现象的故事，也囊括了许多猎奇的轶事。

这一期先导故事由 Pang Xue Qiang 亲自编写，讲述了新加坡毒贩死刑制度及其运作方式。编写过程中，Pang Xue Qiang 并没有向法律专家征求意见，而与和一名退休的天主教修女攀谈起来，这名修女曾担任毒贩和死刑犯的心理疏导员。“在为期几个月的工作中，她一直担任囚犯的心理辅导，陪他们走到生命的最后一间房间，”Pang Xue Qiang 说。

Issue 2 of Meantime Magazine 《Meantime》第二期“鬼故事”

Qiang shifted the tone, once again, for the third issue. Smack dab in the middle of the pandemic, the editorial team found themselves locked in their own homes for months. “We didn’t want to do anything depressing after that,” says Qiang. They wanted to laugh again and share that contagious dose of happiness with their readers, so for the third issue, they focused on humor. Qiang seems to have reinvented the meaning of ‘funny stories.’ The third issue, “Funny Stories,” contains tales that don’t make the readers enjoy full-belly laughter. Instead, they might make them raise their eyebrows, wear a quizzical expression, or gasp in disbelief.

第三本杂志中，Pang Xue Qiang 再次改变风格。疫情期间，编辑团队被困在家中数月，“经历这些之后，我们不想再去讲一些令人沮丧的故事，”Pang Xue Qiang说。他们想再次放声大笑，并将这一份快乐与读者分享。第三期杂志内容以“滑稽故事”（Funny Stories）为主题，围绕幽默展开，其中内容并不会让读者捧腹大笑，反而是让他们摸不着头脑、无厘头，甚至是难以置信。

Issue 3 of Meantime Magazine 《Meantime》第三期“滑稽故事”
Issue 3 of Meantime Magazine 《Meantime》第三期“滑稽故事”

The anchor story is based on an anecdote about Singapore banning long hair for men in the 1970s. “It was called ‘Operation Snip Snip’ which was funny to us,” Qiang says. “We found out that Singapore didn’t want men to have long hair because, at the time, it was associated with drugs, low life, hippie culture, laziness, and not wanting to work hard. The government didn’t want to promote those values.” In present-day Singapore, Qiang and the editorial team scouted out men with long hair, and they were asked to recall their relationship dynamics with their fathers who lived through the ban.

这期先导故事讲述了新加坡在 1970 年代实行的禁止男性留长发的政策，Pang Xue Qiang 说：“政策被定名为‘ 剪刀行动’（Operation Snip Snip），光听就感觉很有意思。我们发现，新加坡之所以禁止男性留长发，是因为当时人们会将长发与毒品、不良生活、嬉皮士文化、懒惰和不想努力工作联系在一起，而政府不想助长这些风气。”于是，Pang Xue Qiang 和编辑团队在新加坡寻找留着长发的男子，听他们回忆起父辈的故事。

Issue 3 of Meantime Magazine 《Meantime》第三期“滑稽故事”
Issue 3 of Meantime Magazine 《Meantime》第三期“滑稽故事”
Issue 3 of Meantime Magazine 《Meantime》第三期“滑稽故事”

Surprises come but never go with every print issue of Meantime Magazine. The cover page of “Love Stories” is individually hand-torn to show the fragility of memories, and different copies have other surprises—some come with a paper boat, a pressed flower, or a pull-out love letter between the pages. The almost-black cover of “Ghost Stories” is temperature-sensitive and changes hue due to heat from the reader’s hands, the room they are in, or the weather, revealing images underneath the layer. For the recent issue, the upper right part of the whole print is chewed up, a prelude to the beguiling stories and photographs inside. “For every issue of Meantime, we try to have print designs and elements that push the boundaries of print. It’s a print magazine, after all. We hope to give reasons to our readers to buy the physical copies,” says Qiang.

每一期《Meantime》纸质杂志都会从外观、材质上带给读者惊喜。“爱情故事” 的封面由手工撕制而成，用来表达脆弱与回忆，而每本杂志又夹杂着不同的惊喜——纸船、压花或是可以拉出的情书。“鬼故事” 近乎全黑的封面采用热敏性材质，能根据读者双手的温度、室温或天气而变色，变色的同时，浮现封面和封底的图案。最新一期杂志的右上角像被咬掉，为杂志本身增添一抹无厘头、怪诞的气质。“对于每一期杂志而言，我们都想在设计和材质方面做出一些改变。毕竟，这是一本印刷杂志，我们希望给读者提供购买纸质杂志的理由，”Pang Xue Qiang 说。

Issue 3 of Meantime Magazine 《Meantime》第三期“滑稽故事”
Issue 3 of Meantime Magazine 《Meantime》第三期“滑稽故事”

Before starting on the first issue, Qiang and the editorial team sat down to come up with the title of their magazine. They wanted to explore and tell stories about Singapore from its people, archives, and history. They looked first into the concepts of the passing of time and consistent memory. Qiang thought that time was ‘mean,’ seeing it as a  malignant force that never stops and makes everyone and everything become forgotten as it moves forward. This thought culminated in the name of the publication.

“We were also fascinated with the phrase ‘in the meantime,’ as if it were a juncture that intervenes two periods, a pause or a break,” he laughs. “We wanted people to pause and read our stories, to take their time to savor them.” 

Qiang reveals that they’re almost done with the fourth issue, but that’s the only bit of information he’s willing to share. Rest assured, Meantime Magazine won’t be short of distinct stories dedicated to preserving the untold narratives of Singapore and its inhabitants.

在初刊开始制作之前，Pang Xue Qiang 和编辑团队曾一起就杂志名深入谈论。他们想从新加坡人、档案和历史中探索和讲述有关新加坡的故事，并首先考虑了时间流逝和不变记忆的概念。Pang Xue Qiang 认为时间是“卑鄙的”，因为它就像一股永不停歇的洪流，随着它的流逝，冲淡一切人与事。而这最终也成为了杂志名字的由来。

“我们也很喜欢‘in the meantime’（与此同时）这个表达，感觉就像是介于两个时间段的连接点，是一个停顿或中断，”他笑着说，“我们希望人们能停下来读读我们的故事，花一点时间细细品味。”据他透露，《Meantime》的第四期已即将完成。他们将一如继往，记录着新加坡和新加坡人不为人知的故事。

Like our stories? Follow us on Facebook and Instagram.


Instagram: @meantime.zine

 

Contributor: Matthew Burgos
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li

喜欢我们的故事？欢迎关注我们 Neocha 的微博与微信。

 

Instagram: @meantime.zine

 

供稿人: Matthew Burgos
英译中: Olivia Li

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢