All posts by allen

Uncommon Sense 凡几的生活哲学

July 26, 2018 2018年7月26日

Common Rare is a Shanghai-based creative team headed by Taiwanese-Americans Tiffany Wong and Vivian Sze. After falling in love with the craft fairs they saw in the States, the duo set out to create a similar experience in China, organizing events where creators and artisans could sell their work. Since 2016 they’ve hosted a series of arts-and-crafts markets in Shanghai, featuring independent brands that share their conviction that “small things matter.” In addition to their events, the pair also runs a bilingual media platform dedicated to stories from creative start-ups in China and around the world.

凡几 (Common Rare) 是一个由台湾裔美国人 Tiffany Wong 和 Vivian Sze 领导的上海创意团队。他们爱上了之前在美国常逛的那种工艺市集，想在中国创造类似的体验，于是这个双人组合开始组织让创作者和艺术家可以贩售自己作品的活动。自2016年以来，他们在上海举办了一系列艺术和手工艺品市集，很多独立品牌参与其中，共同分享着他们的理念 “小事情也很重要”。除了举办活动，他们还经营一个双语媒体平台，专门讲述来自中国和世界各地的创意新创企业的故事。

Tiffany Wong
Vivian Sze

Common Rare made their debut in Christmas 2016 with “Not Your Typical Holiday Market,” a bazaar that showcased a festive collection of crafts, handmade homewares, artisanal food, interactive art, and live entertainment. In subsequent events, they’ve brought on new vendors to reflect seasonal themes and visions. Their springtime “Industrial Bloom Festival” featured nature-based products, while their 2017 Christmas market, “Into the Woods” offered whimsical gifts.

In 2018, Common Rare officially rang in summer with “The Sweet & Salty,” a market featuring hand-crafted sweet and savory delights from 50 independent businesses. The two-day event, a collaboration with the group Woodstock of Eating, took place at Shanghai’s historic Colombia Circle, a refurbished American colonial social club originally built in 1924.

凡几的首次亮相是在2016年的圣诞节活动 “这不是圣诞市集” (Not Your Typical Holiday Market)。这是一个集合节庆工艺品、手工家居品、手作餐点、互动艺术和现场表演的市集。在随后的活动中，他们带进新的摊商以响应季节性的主题。“春季工业盛会” (Industrial Bloom Festival) 以自然的当令产品为特色；2017年的圣诞活动 “森林里的圣诞市集” (Into the Woods) 则提供各种有趣的节日送礼选择。

2018年，“The Sweet & Salty 上海甜点节” 让凡几正式步入夏日的序曲，共有来自50个独立品牌手工制作的甜品和咸食参与，为期两天的活动是与伍德吃托克（Woodstock of Eating）团队的合作，在上海历史悠久的哥伦比亚公园举办。

Wong and Sze’s down-to-earth approach and eye for detail have also caught the attention of brands like Nike, which collaborated with them on a creative market inspired by the classic Nike Cortez shoe. Each unique brand and designer at the two-day bazaar was handpicked to represent the “Cortez lifestyle” and its iconic red, white, and blue aesthetic.

Tiffany 和 Vivian 两人脚踏实地的做事方法和对细节的要求引起了像耐克这样大型品牌的关注，他们在一次的创意市集上合作，灵感来自经典的 Nike Cortez。市集中每一个独特品牌和设计师都经过精心挑选，以能符合 “Cortez 生活方式” 及其标志性的红、白、蓝三色美学。

After two years sharing life’s simple pleasures through their media platform and market events, the Common Rare team have launched their very own online store, appropriately named The Common Store. Their goal is to cast a spotlight on independent brands based in China that make homewares, skincare products, fashion, jewelry, magazines, and other lifestyle products.

The Common Store aims to be a permanent platform for customers to explore and support small-scale creators beyond each event. Their WeChat store currently features over 15 brands, including their very own Common Rare handmade soap range, created in collaboration with Hong Kong-based skincare brand Savon 1993.

两年以来，凡几通过媒体平台和市集活动致力于分享生活中的简单快乐，目前还推出了自己的线上商店，名为 The Common Store。他们的目标是聚焦中国的独立品牌，生产家居用品、护肤品、时装、珠宝、杂志和其他生活风格产品。

凡几希望能成为消费者在活动之外探索和支持小规模创作者的永久平台。 他们的微店目前拥有超过15个品牌，包括他们与香港护肤品牌 Savon 1993 合作的 Common Rare 手工皂系列。

Wong and Sze are a two-person powerhouse, and they know by heart the stories behind every brand in the Common Store. What started out as a small idea between longtime friends has evolved into a platform for slowing down and finding joy in the small pleasures in life.

From now until August 12th, those in Shanghai will be able to see the Common Store come to life during its three-week-long pop-up at the Rockbund Museum’s Associate Mission Building. Products from Asia-based creatives, including Zowoo, Form Maker, PÂTE, and LOST Magazine, will be on sale, as will creations from over 30 other independent clothing, skincare, accessory, furniture, and homeware brands. The Common Store pop-up is open daily from 11:00 am to 7:30 pm, and its products are also available on Weidian. 

Tiffany 和 Vivian 是一个小而强大的团队，他们清楚地了解凡几里每个品牌背后的故事。长期是朋友关系的两人当初萌生的一个小小想法，现在已经演变成一个平台，让你我能慢下步调，寻找到生活中的小乐趣。

从现在起到8月12日，凡几的限期快闪店在上海洛克外滩源开幕，借此你将能更真实接触到凡几的品牌哲学。在这为期三周的活动中，来自亚洲各地的创意品牌包括 Zowoo、Form Maker、PÂTE 和独立杂志 《LOST》，以及其他30多个独立服装、护肤品、家居品牌的产品将开始贩售。Common Store 快闪店于每天上午 11:00 至下午 7:30 开放，其产品也同步在微店上市。

Dates: July 21, 2018 ~ August 12, 2018
Hours: 11 am ~ 7:30 pm

Address:
Rockbund Waitanyuan
Room #104
No. 169 Yuanmingyuan Road
Huangpu District, Shanghai
People’s Republic of China

Website: common-rare.com
Instagram: @common.rare
Weibo:~/CommonRare
WeChat: CommonRare

 

Contributor & Photographer: Whitney Ng
Additional Images Courtesy of Common Rare

日期: 2018年7月21日——2018年8月12日
营业时间: 上午11点至下午7点半

地址:
中国
上海市黄埔区
圆明园路路169号
104室
洛克外滩源

网站: common-rare.com
Instagram: @common.rare
微博:~/CommonRare
微信: CommonRare

 

供稿人与摄影师: Whitney Ng
附加图片由凡几提供

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢

Captured Creatures 困生

July 24, 2018 2018年7月24日

Whenever you arrive in a new country or city, there are certain things you have to do, rituals you perform to experience a new culture or find new inspiration: visiting a museum, savoring a cup of local coffee, finding a lookout point and watching the sunset, picking up a knick-knack at a flea market. For Beijing-based artist Chai Mi, one of these little rituals, whenever she arrives somewhere new, is to visit the local zoo. Since she began performing her multimedia work Captured Creatures, Chai has visited over 30 zoos in several countries.

一个人每到新的国家或城市，都会有一些必须完成的事情。这些事在生活中就好像一种仪式，我们能通过它们去体验新的文化、得到新的灵感。例如去一间博物馆、喝一杯当地的咖啡、找到最高的观景台去欣赏日落的景色，或者去跳蚤市场买些有趣的东西。而北京艺术家柴觅的小仪式，则是每到一个地方就会去一趟当地的动物园。在《困生》多媒体项目期间内，她已经去了世界各国 30 多个动物园。

Chai’s art involves multiple media, including painting, animation, installation, and live performance. Captured Creatures, her third work of “audiovisual theater,” combines moving images, contemporary dance, and sound design. By creating an experimental atmosphere, she wants to draw viewers into a state that gives them a new perspective on the relationship between people and animals, and between living things and the environment.

Her recent performance of the show at Nanchang’s Snarte Space was her fourth. Chai arrived four days before the show and spent each day from morning to night constantly rehearsing or preparing the stage. Yet on the hectic evening before opening night, Chai readily agreed to an interview. We spoke about the creative concept behind Captured Creatures and about how the show has developed.

柴觅的艺术总是涉及多种媒介，包括绘画、动画、装置、现场演出等。《困生》是她的第三个影音剧场演出作品，结合了现场影像、当代舞蹈及声音设计。她想通过这种实验性的氛围，让观者进入情境，从不同的角度去看人与动物，以及生物与环境之间存在的关系。

这次《困生》在南昌的谞空间已经是第四次演出。柴觅提前四天就到现场准备，从早到晚一直在布置和排练。在紧张的演出前夕，柴觅爽快地同意了这次采访。于是，我们就与她聊了《困生》的创作概念和这个项目的成长过程。

 

无法观看？前往腾讯视频

Neocha: How did the idea for Captured Creatures come about?

Chai Mi: Usually my works come about in a fairly accidental way, as a result of some perhaps very trivial thing or feeling. The idea for Captured Creatures came about when it occurred to me one day that I had really happy memories of going to the zoo as a child. I decided to visit one again and see what it was like, but when I got there I couldn’t find that childhood happiness. Instead, I found several other feelings. So it got me wondering, why did I react the way I did? I wanted to find answers to those questions, so I started going to zoos, taking a camera along with me to record what I experienced. I went to more and more of them, and I found there’s a certain subtle connection between every city and its zoo. In Captured Creatures, I hope to be able to let everyone see or sense the relationship between people, animals, and the natural and built environments. That’s how this piece came about.

Neocha: 《困生》的主旨是怎么产生的？

柴觅: 一般来说我作品的开始都挺偶然的。从一个可能很小的事情或感受出发，模模糊糊地就开始了。比如《困生》这个项目，有一天我突然想起来小时候觉得去动物园是一件很开心的事情，所以我决定去动物园看看，去了却发现以前开心的感觉找不到了，反而产生很多其他情绪。于是我开始思考，为什么会有这些感觉？我想去追寻这些问题的答案，开始去动物园用相机记录那些我感受到的东西。去过越来越多动物园，我发现每个城市与其动物园之间都会有一些微妙的联系。我希望通过这个作品可以让大家看到或者感觉到人、动物、环境、建筑之间的关系，所以就有了《困生》这个项目。

Neocha: You’ve performed Captured Creatures in Kuala Lumpur, Beijing, and La Rochelle. This performance in Nanchang is the fourth. How does each one differ?

Chai Mi: Underlying each performance is a fundamental structure, a graphic model I’ve laid out that’s based on the relationship between people and animals. Let me explain. On a graph, I draw two circles, one for humans and one for animals. These two circles are positioned in one of four possible relationships. In the first, the two are separate—they don’t touch each other. In the second, the circles intersect and share a common area. In the third, the circle for animals is larger than the one for humans, and it encloses it. In the fourth, the circle for humans encloses the one for animals.

Each performance has four parts, one for each possible relationship. For each part, I come up with a style of performance that corresponds to that relationship, and the dancers perform accordingly. But the order of the parts, and the details of the dancers’ movements, vary from performance to performance.

A second difference is that I constantly update the source images—the images of animals, images of spaces, and the live real-time composition effects. An attentive observer may note that the animals in each performance are rather different, as is the length of time an image might appear on screen, because here there are a lot of impromptu components.

A third difference is that every time, the collaborating dancers bring their individual styles. I’ve found that every dancer has their own body language, just as each person has their personality. This performance has a degree of freedom, but at the same time it also has rules, and in each performance, the scope of freedom bumps up against the boundaries of the rules.

Neocha:《困生》之前曾在马来西亚吉隆坡、拉罗谢尔、和北京演出过，这次在南昌是第四次。每一次演出有哪些不同？

柴觅: 这个演出背后有一个最基本的结构，即我基于人和动物的关系，所设定的一个图形化的模型。我大概形容一下吧，我会在图形上把人和动物都做成两个圆形。这两个圆形会产生四种位置的关系。第一种是人的圆形和动物的圆形是分离的，它们互不干预对方。第二种是这两个圆形相交，它们有共同的一个区域。第三种是动物大于人，动物圆形是盖住人的。第四种是人的圆盖住动物的。

每一场演出都有四部分，每部分对应一种可能的关系。而每个部分，我都会对相应的关系去设计一套对应的演出方式，然后舞者会按照相关的条件去演出。然而，这四部分的顺序以及舞者的动作都会改变，因此每场演出都不一样。

其次还有不一样的，是源自演出所使用的影像素材的不断更新，包括动物影像、空间影像以及现场的实时合成效果。细心的人可能会发现每场演出里面的动物都不太一样，各个影像出现的时间点也不同，因为这里面有很多的即兴成分。

第三个不一样，是我每次合作的舞者带来的不同。我发现每个好舞者都有一套自己的身体的语言，就像每个人都有自己的性格一样。这个项目有自由度，但同时也有一定规则，每一次演出是都在自由的范围内碰撞规则的边界。

Neocha: Could you talk a little bit about the projection and lighting effects? What role do they play?

Chai Mi: I’m fascinated by light and shadow. In this piece the projector is like a sun: it’s the most important, or rather the only source of light. Only when there’s light can we show images, and light is itself temporal. Watching the animals flickering across the walls, you enter a state of contemplation. A question then arises: are they real or not? At first, you think they’re not, but after watching for a bit you can no longer tell, and the images take on an illusory reality. The dancers are real, and in the performance, they’re right there in front of you, but when the performance is recorded on video, everything becomes an illusion. The subtitle of Captured Creatures is “spacetime illusion.” It highlights temporality, spatiality, illusion, and reality, and the possibility of combining or switching between them.

Neocha: 可不可以谈谈作品中的投影和光线效果？它们有什么作用？

柴觅: 我对光影本身很着迷。在这个项目里投影就像一个太阳，是一个最重要，或者说是唯一的光源。有光的时候我们才能显出影像，光本身就有时间性。看到墙上不断出现的动物影像的时候，人会进入一种观看状态。一个问题于是出现：那是真的还是假的？一开始你肯定觉得是假的，但看多了之后你会不再分辨真假，它本身就是一个虚幻的真实存在。而舞者又是真实的，演出时他们就在我们面前。但当演出成为录像，一切就又被虚幻化了。《困生》还有个副标题叫《时空幻象》，它就是在强调时间性、空间性、虚幻性和真实性，以及它们之间互相转换、结合的可能。

Neocha: Why do you use live performance in this piece?

Chai Mi: I wanted to create a work that could share my experiences. Around 2012 I started doing some pieces with live performance and quickly realized that it can easily immerse the audience in an atmosphere. This kind of immersion is very different from painting, video, or installation pieces because when a performance occurs in a space, that space seems to suddenly become a world filled with related experiences. With this performance, I’m not trying to tell you anything, teach you anything, or lead you anywhere. I want to achieve an arbitrary state, a state that’s confusing and suddenly divorced from reality. In such an atmosphere, it’s easier for people to gain a new understanding. It’s a bit like blurring your previous understanding and making you enter that blurriness. When you come out you just might have a new view on things.

Neocha: 对于这个项目，你为什么采取现场演出的形式？

柴觅: 我很希望去创造一个作品能够分享我一些感受。我大概 2012 年开始做一些跟现场演出相关的作品，很快就发现这种艺术形式很容易让观众融入到一个氛围里面来。这种融入感和绘画、录像、装置等作品很不一样，因为当一个演出发生在一个空间里的时候，就像是突然把这个空间变成了一个充满着相关体验的世界。我通过这个演出不想告诉你什么，去教你什么，或者去引导你。我想得到随想的一个状态，突然脱离现实的，会有一点点懵懵懂懂的状态。在这样的一个氛围里会比较容易让人去产生一个新的认知。有点像是把你原有的认知全都模糊化，然后让你进入这个模糊里。当你出来的时候可能就会重新对事物构建一个新的想法。

Neocha: How do you view zoos today? Do you plan to focus on animals in your work in the future?

Chai Mi: When I travel to developed countries, I see that not many people go to zoos. A lot of zoos are gradually merging with parks and don’t even charge for entry. I’ve also been to a lot of zoos in developing countries, and those are like playgrounds—everybody’s consuming the animals as entertainment. But do we really need to go to zoos? Now there are a lot of park-like animal preserves. There’s no need to put animals in cages, since we can experience them in their natural state.

As for the second question, very possibly. I’ve recently started thinking about the relationship between women and animals. What’s interesting is that humans really like white animals, albino animals. It seems things become especially fascinating when they’re rare, weak, and pure—which is how women have been imagined at certain times in history. Some pieces may come out of that, though it’s hard to say—a work needs constant thought before it takes a definitive shape.

Neocha: 目前你对动物园有什么看法？你会继续往动物方向进行创作吗？

柴觅: 当我去一些发达国家时，发现没有那么多人去动物园了，很多动物园慢慢地变成了公园的一部分，而且是不收门票的。我也去了很多发展中国家，那里的动物园更像是一个游乐场，大家更多的是在探奇、狂欢和消费动物。不过，我们真的需要去动物园吗？现在有很多公园形式的动物保护区，不必再把动物关进笼子里，可以去体会大自然的状态。

至于第二个问题，很有可能。我最近开始思考女性和动物之间的关系，有意思的是，人类特别喜欢白色的动物，有白化病的动物。当一个东西变得稀有、柔弱，又纯洁， 似乎是特别迷人的，类似于历史上某些时候对于女性的观念。可能会有一些相关的影像作品出现，现在还不好说，作品需要在不断的思考下确定形态。

Website: www.chaimiart.com

 

Contributor & Photographer: Julia Golysh

Website: www.chaimiart.com

 

供稿人与摄影师: Julia Golysh

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢

Arts and Crafts 筌

July 16, 2018 2018年7月16日

When does a craft become art? For Feng Cheng-Tsung, whose bamboo-and-rattan sculptures draw on a tradition of Taiwanese handicrafts, the line between the two is unclear. In last year’s Fish Trap House, he used techniques learned from the Thao people of central Taiwan to create an installation piece that seems to float above the shoreline of Sun Moon Lake. This summer he’s erected a similar handmade structure outside Taipei’s Museum of Contemporary Art, which will be on display until July 22. In both installations, Feng breathes new life into a traditional handicraft, creating airy structures with a singular beauty.

工艺何时才能成为艺术？艺术家范承宗运用台湾传统工艺创作出竹藤雕塑，对他而言，工艺和艺术两者的分野并不明显。他在去年的《筌屋》里向台湾中部的邵族部落取经，创作出看似漂浮于日月潭湖岸的装置艺术作品。今年夏天，他在台北当代艺术馆外面架起一件类似的手工装置，该件作品将会展示到 7 月 22 日。艺术家在这两件装置作品，创造出如空气般轻盈的结构，呈现独特美感，替传统工艺带来新气象。

When he was commissioned to create an installation on the shore of Sun Moon Lake, Feng had no clear idea of what he would make. His sole requirement was that the piece reflect the local culture, so he and his team toured the area and met with nearby indigenous communities. “I saw the Thao people’s fish traps and thought they were very beautiful,” he says. They met an elder from the Ita Thao tribe, the last of his people who could still make such basket-like traps, and he taught them his technique. “Later we analyzed the fish-trap making process and transformed it into a large-scale installation piece. I invited 20-odd tourists at Sun Moon Lake to make it with us,” he recalls. “The elder came, too, and was happy to see everyone eagerly learning the craft he’d preserved.”

当范承宗接到委托要替日月潭创作地景装置的当下，他并不知道自己要做些什么，日月潭风景管理处只告诉他希望创作能反映当地文化。因此他和团队探访当地，并和在地原住民部落族人见面。“我看到邵族人渔筌，觉得很美。” 他们见了伊达邵部落的一位长者，他是部落里最后一位懂得制作渔筌的人。这位长老亲自教授范承宗和他的团队这项技艺。他回忆道，“之后，我们将渔筌的制作过程分析，转换成一件大型装置艺术，邀请了二十几位到日月潭的游客一起制作。长老也来了，看到大家开心的在学习他保留下工艺，他很是欣慰。”

The sculpture has two window-like holes: one at the top and one looking out over the lake. “When people enter, they can look through the window and see the scene we framed, which is one of the most beautiful views over the lake,” Feng explains. “There are no built structures like restaurants, hotels, or high rises—it looks just as Sun Moon Lake did long ago.” Feng will be returning later this year to create another installation piece—this time one that floats on the water’s surface.

这件地景雕塑有两个像窗户的圆洞，一个在头顶，另一个则望向湖面。“人们走进去之后能透过圆洞看见我们框起的最美的一块小小的景色。” 范承宗解释道。“画面里没有任何饭店旅馆大楼之类的人造物，就像很久很久以前的日月潭吧。” 艺术家今年也会在这创作另一件装置作品，只是这次的作品将会漂浮在湖面上。

Taipei’s Museum of Contemporary Art provides a very different setting for Feng’s sculpture, titled “Trap.” Rather than framing a natural lakeside landscape, it sits next to a solid brick structure, offering a sort of frail monument to impermanence. And rather than enclosing visitors in an intimate space, it rises above them in a vault. The work highlights traditional crafts by taking them out of context, placing them in dialogue with a neoclassical building that’s less than a century old. Light and translucent against the museum’s red brick, Feng’s “Trap” makes a striking contrast.

台北当代艺术馆则提供给范承宗的竹编雕塑另一种不同的环境。这件名为《筌》的作品，这次不再框住湖边自然风景，而是座落于坚固的红砖建筑旁，给了这件作品某种脆弱、易逝感。跟日月潭的《筌屋》不同，当代艺术馆的《筌》不把参观者关在一个私密空间，而是像一座拱顶罩住他们。这件作品使传统工艺离开原本的脉络，让它和不到一百年的新古典风格建筑产生对话，借此彰显这项工艺。当代艺术馆的红砖立面更加凸显这件作品的轻巧和通透性。

Feng’s studio, Studio Kao Gong Ji, is named after a fifth-century BCE text documenting how various tools were made. (The Kao Gong Ji is known in English as the “Artificer’s Record.”) “It contains a line that I think is a wonderful explanation of what craftsmanship is,” says Feng. “‘A favorable heaven, an auspicious earth, beautiful materials, skilled craft: combine these four and you can achieve quality.’” He explains: “The line says that a good object contains its age, its environment, its local roots, and an awareness and grasp of beauty.”

Feng is guided by this ethos of grounding creative work in a specific time and place. The results are works of art—or craft—that draw their beauty from a painstaking, thoughtful creation process. His current project is a four-part exhibition on the food, handicrafts, farming practices, and daily life of the people in and around Taitung.

范承宗将工作室取名为考工记工作室。《考工记》写于春秋战国时期，是一本记载如何制作各式工具的古书。“里头有写到段我认为对工艺很棒的诠释。” 艺术家说。“天有时，地有气，材有美，工有巧。合此四者，然后可以为良。” 他解释说，“这段话在说一个好的物件，包含了时代、环境、自然风土以及对材料美感的觉察与掌握。”

范承宗以这段话为准则，根据不同时节和环境进行创作。而他创作出的艺术品，也可称做工艺品，因为创作过程经过仔细思量而产生美感。艺术家目前正进行四项展览计划，主题关于食物、手工艺品、农耕习俗和台东人的日常生活。

“For me, the borders between art and craft—or design as well—are blurry and hard to distinguish clearly,” says Feng. Within those borders, though, he notes that each has different strengths. From design, he’s learned the value of planning and an analytical mindset, and from art, he’s learned the value of openness and abstraction. Yet craft occupies a central place in his work. “Personally, I think craftsmanship definitely needs to involve attention to materials and to production process and methods. If a piece doesn’t have this, I have a hard time calling it craft.”

By that definition, Feng’s fish traps are certainly examples of “craft,” but they’re also works of art. He transforms traditional practices into something beyond tradition, structures that catch the visitor in a moment of wonder.

“艺术和工艺，或者再加上设计，对我来说的边界是模糊而难以清楚分割的。” 范承宗说。在这些边界里，他发现每个领域都有不同的力量。他从设计里学到规划和分析性思考的重要性，从艺术里学到开放和抽象的价值。然而，工艺是他的创作核心。“我个人认为，工艺其不可或缺的部分，正是对材料和制作过程和方法的关系，若一件作品少了这部分，我就比较难以将它和工艺做联想。”

根据这样的定义，范承宗的渔筌无疑是工艺品，而且也是一件艺术品。他让传统技艺超越了本身的传统意涵，而转换成能够让参观者惊叹不已的装置作品。

Website: chengtsung.com
Instagram: @lasicfan

 

Contributor: Allen Young

网站: chengtsung.com
Instagram: @lasicfan

 

投稿人: Allen Young

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢

Private Symbols 什么组成了你的精神生活？

July 3, 2018 2018年7月3日
A close-up of Control of Attention

There’s something familiar about Mark Arcamo‘s paintings, a whiff of avant-garde anarchy that recalls the early twentieth century. Jumbles of letters and images crowd together in a chaos reminiscent of Hannah Hoch, while the faceless figures and floating geometric shapes—constants throughout his work—partake of the dream logic of Salvador Dalí or René Magritte.

Arcamo, a contemporary Filipino artist, doesn’t preface his work with the fiery manifestoes of the surrealists or the dadaists, and he may not share their revolutionary temperament. Yet in a quieter way, he does share something of their methods: he too explores a psychological landscape using a private symbolic language all his own.

Mark Arcamo 的画作有一种熟悉感，散发一股20世纪初前卫、自由至上的味道。叠合交错的字母和图像使人想起达达主义艺术家汉娜·霍克（Hannah Höch）的拼贴作品，而贯穿其作品的那些不露面的人像与浮动的几何形状，又展现着超现实主义画家萨尔瓦多·达利（Salvador Dalí）或雷内·马格利特（René Magritte）的梦幻逻辑。

当代菲律宾艺术家 Arcamo 不像超现实主义或达达主义者那样利用作品去引出激进的宣言，他也没有他们那种革命家性格。然而，他以一种更低调的方式，分享着相同的创作手法：用自己独特的符号语言去探讨内在的精神世界。

Synthetic Soul 1
Synthetic Soul 4

When choosing his subject matter, Arcamo lets his instincts guide him. “I usually start by collecting random images from books, magazines, the internet, screenshots of movies, television shows, and documentaries, or anything that catches my attention, then I let the goblins in my head take over,” he says. “I’m attracted to the idea of my work having an unpredictable outcome.”

Those images include a series of recurring elements: torsos, chess pieces, men in suits, and—most notably—abstract solids: cubes, cylinders, and pyramids, suspended in mid-air or propelled outward in a sudden blast. “Every element in my work elicits an emotional and intellectual response from me,” he says.  Others may not share his personal symbolic vocabulary, but that doesn’t bother him. “As an artist, I want my art to be open to interpretation,” he says.

在选择题材时，Arcamo 总是听任自己的直觉。他说: “我通常都是先在书本、杂志、互联网、电影屏幕截图、电视节目、纪录片或任何吸引我注意的事物上随机收集一些图像，然后任由创意和想像力发挥。最让我着迷的一点是我的作品成果总是无法预期。”

这些图像包括一系列重复的元素: 人体躯干、西洋棋、穿着西装的男人和那些最显而易见的抽象固体形状——悬浮在半空中或呈爆炸状的立方体、圆柱和金字塔等等。他说: “我作品中的每一个元素都能引起我在情绪和思想上的反应。” 其他人可能并不理解他个人的符号语言，但他并不在意。“作为一名艺术家，我希望我的艺术能够让观众有自己的理解。”他说。

Iridescent
Relent
Lustrous

Gray dominates many of these works, sometimes complemented by a matte red or blue, as in Self-Deceived 2. The human figures in particular are nearly always gray, which makes them feel like something from the past—photographs or statues, or recollections that flash by only in fragments. It’s almost as though Arcamo had set out to paint the gears and springs of memory, the mechanisms of mental life.

在他的许多作品中，灰色是主要色调，有时也会辅以黯淡的红色或蓝色，譬如《Self-Deceived 2》这幅作品。画面中的人形几乎全都是灰色，仿佛他们都来自过去的年代，如同闪过脑海的旧照片、雕像或回忆的碎片一样。这几乎就像 Arcamo 要画的是回忆世界的齿轮和弹簧，或者说，精神生活的组成零件。

Self-Deceived 2
Mindsight
Control of Attention

Arcamo loved art as a child, and he studied it formally in college. After graduation, he honed his technique working as a muralist for commercial clients. That’s when he began painting in acrylic. “It allowed me the freedom to experiment and manipulate images. It dried faster and made the job easier to finish,” he says. “At the time, I was also developing my own style—visual collage. As the work dries quickly, I can work in multiple successive layers without muddying the colors.”

Arcamo 从小就喜欢艺术，并在大学里修读了艺术专业。毕业后，他作为壁画师，曾给客户创作作品。也正是那时候起，他开始用丙烯颜料画画。 “这种颜料让我可以自由地去试验和处理图像。它干燥的速度更快，所以我也能更快完成作品。 ” 他说，“同时，我也在慢慢地确立自己的艺术风格——视觉拼贴。因为颜料干得更快，我可以同时连续完成多个图层，也不用怕弄脏颜色。”

Synthetic Soul 3
Synthetic Soul 2
Image Source 2

In his recent work, some of which debuted at the 2018 Art Fair Philippines, Arcamo has taken a turn toward the abstract. Image Source 2, for instance, shows a field of white that partly covers a sepia-toned portrait, while narrow strips of other images litter the canvas. The work has rougher edges, without the careful human outlines of his earlier paintings. Gone too are the shattered shapes suspended in dramatic three-dimensional perspectives. In their place is textured, layered flatness that paradoxically seems to have more depth. Compartmentalized is similarly abstract, and bolder in its use of color.

他最近的一些作品于 2018 Art Fair Philippines（菲律宾艺术博览会）首次亮相，看得出来 Arcamo 的创作开始走向抽象。譬如，在《Image Source 2》中，他以一片白色覆盖深褐色人像，而从其它图像剪裁出的窄条则布满了画布。在这幅作品中，和他早期绘画那些精致的人体轮廓不同，画面的边界更为粗糙，也没有了那些在三维视角中戏剧性地悬浮着的几何碎片。取而代之的是有纹理的、分层的平面色块，然而看上去却有更深的层次感。而另一幅作品《Compartmentalized》也采取类似的表现方式，同样抽象，但用色更为大胆。

Compartmentalized

These new collages, like his previous work, make use of a modernist visual idiom. Largely abandoning the human form, they nevertheless remain accessible and engaging. Arcamo seems to be searching for a new balance between color and composition, and the insight his work points to is one that, a century ago, avant-garde artists knew well: sometimes abstraction, more than representation, can deepen a work’s emotional power.

和他之前的作品一样，这些拼贴画新作也同样利用了现代主义的视觉语言。它们在很大程度上放弃了人类的轮廓，但仍然能让人理解，也十分引人入胜。Arcamo 似乎在寻找色彩和构图之间的新平衡，他的作品响应着一个世纪前，前卫艺术家的理念：有时抽象比写实更能加深作品的情感力量。

Medicated Peaceful Moment

Instagram: @md_arcamo

供稿人: Allen Young

Instagram: @md_arcamo

供稿人: Allen Young

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢

Bound in Beat 十五岁的口技达人

June 29, 2018 2018年6月29日

 

无法观看？前往秒拍

Beatboxing and Chinese culture collide in the western city of Chengdu in the award-winning short documentary Bound in Beat. Along the way, producer and beatboxer Dmitrii Anikeev and director Gleb Torubarov tell a powerful story about friendship and belonging and offer audiences a glimpse into China’s growing beatboxing community.

Beatboxing is a form of vocal percussion that involves mimicking the use of drum machines (or ‘beatboxes’), turntables, or other musical instruments. It first became popular in the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s with the rise of hip-hop culture, though its roots may go back even further. While in China beatboxing isn’t new­—it first arrived in the country in the early 2000s—it continues to struggle to gain popularity and respect.

获奖纪录短片《Bound in Beat》呈现了在成都这座城市，口技（beatbox）与中国在地文化精彩的碰撞。导演格列布·托卢巴洛夫（Gleb Torubarov）与口技达人（beatboxer）身兼制片人的 Dmitrii Anikeev 通过镜头讲述了一个关于友情和归属感的故事，向观众展示这个小众却充满活力的中国 beatbox 社群。

Beatbox 节奏口技是一种模仿电子鼓、打碟机等乐器的人声音乐技巧。在 20 世纪 70、80 年代，随着嘻哈文化的兴起，beatbox 最先在美国流行起来，但其起源可以再往前追溯。而 beatbox 在中国最早出现于 21 世纪初期，虽然至今已经存在了一段时间，但这种音乐文化始终难以获得普及和认可。

Anikeev encountered the art of beatboxing back in his hometown in Russia nearly a decade ago and was immediately hooked. “I first discovered beatboxing in 2009, when someone showed me how it was done,” he recalls. “I was amazed. From that moment on, it has been an important part of my life.”

After relocating to Chengdu to study in 2015, Anikeev connected with members of CNBeatbox (or CNB), a community of Chinese beatboxers with a growing following. Together they’ve staged numerous events, including the annual Sichuan International Beatbox Battle.

十年前，Anikeev 在俄罗斯首次接触到 beatbox，就立即爱上了这门艺术。他回忆道：“我第一次接触 beatbox 是在 2009 年，第一次看到有人表演 Beatbox，我当时非常震惊。从那一刻起 beatbox 就一直是我生命中重要的一部分。”

2015 年，Anikeev 到成都留学，结识了中国当地的 beatboxer 团体 CNBeatbox（CNB）的成员。之后便开始与他们一起登台表演，包括参加一年一度的四川国际 Beatbox 大赛。

Through his work in the community, Anikeev met Li Erkun, a fifteen-year-old boy in search of a beatboxing instructor. Anikeev agreed to take him on as a student in 2017. Shortly after his first lesson with Li, Anikeev contacted Torubarov—a Suzhou-based filmmaker and a close friend from his university days—with the idea of shooting a documentary about his new student.

“It was just one of many conversations Dmitrii and I had,” Torubarov says. “He told me he was teaching beatboxing to a boy in Chengdu in whom he saw something of himself and he wanted to inspire not only the boy, but also other people, by making a documentary.”

Anikeev 活跃在 CNB 社群之中，途中认识了一个十五岁的男孩黎尔焜，当时他正在为自己寻找 beatbox 导师。2017 年 Anikeev 决定收尔焜为学生，在两人上完第一节课后不久，他就联系了自己大学时代的好友，同时也是在苏州的电影制片人 Torubarov，提议一起拍摄这一部关于他的新学生的纪录片。

Torubarov 说：“我和 Dmitrii 常常一起聊新的想法，这只是其中一个。他当时跟我说，他正在教一个成都男孩练习 beatbox，在这个男孩身上他看到了自己一些影子，他希望能通过拍摄纪录片鼓舞到更多人。”

Torubarov loved the idea, but he wanted to avoid resorting to cheap visuals or exploitative techniques to provoke a response from viewers—especially when it came to the film’s treatment of Li Erkun’s use of a wheelchair. “Li Erkun is a boy with a disability, but I didn’t want to have any shots of the wheelchair alone or tilting shots from his legs up—for me, it’s artificial and not important,” emphasizes Torubarov. “I wanted to tell a story about Dmitrii and Erkun—not a story about Dmitrii and Erkun, a boy with disabilities.”

Torubarov 很喜欢这个想法，但他想避免利用庸俗煽情的视觉效果来激起观众的反应，尤其是在影片里针对黎尔焜使用轮椅这些画面的处理。“黎尔焜是一个有身体残疾的男孩，但我不想有任何单独的轮椅特写，或是从他的腿往上拍摄的镜头。对我来说，这样的画面太做作，也没有任何意义。”  Torubarov 强调说，“我想讲述的是一个关于 Dmitrii 和尔焜之间的故事，而不是 Dmitrii 和轮椅男孩尔焜的故事。”

When they began shooting in 2017, Torubarov and Anikeev didn’t have a clear idea of the direction the story would take. At first they just intended to record a series of interviews to inspire other beatboxing fans. “If you’re doing an honest documentary—without trying to make things up or force people to do something for the camera—you won’t know what you’re really getting into,” Torubarov explains. “The only way for us to find out whether we might get somewhere was to start with an interview—so we started by interviewing Li Erkun.”

That interview gave Anikeev and Torubarov insight into Li’s idols—a list which included Chinese beatboxing champion and CNB member Ah Xin. It also gave them an idea. They decided to make a film about bringing Ah Xin to Chengdu for a surprise visit with one of his biggest fans.

2017年他们着手开始拍摄，当时 Torubarov 和 Anikeev 其实对于整个故事的进行方向还没有清楚的认知。起初他们只是打算拍摄一系列的访谈，以此来激励其他 beatbox 爱好者。 “如果你要拍摄一部诚实的纪录片，这意味着你不能虚构情节，也不能强迫别人去做一些事情，这种情况下，你是不会知道影片最后会呈现出什么的。”  Torubarov 解释道，“要知道这个答案，唯一的方法就是从一场采访开始，所以，我们先跟黎尔焜做了一次采访。”

那次采访让 Anikeev 和 Torubarov 了解到尔焜的偶像，其中包括中国的 beatbox 冠军和 CNB 成员阿鑫。这也让他们有了一个想法，他们决定邀请阿鑫到成都来，与他的忠实粉丝进行一次惊喜见面，然后将这个故事拍摄下来。

Since its release, the film has racked up nearly two million views across various platforms and has screened at numerous film festivals both in China and around the world.

Though the film is available online, Anikeev and Torubarov are continuing to plan screenings, in the hopes that more people will have the chance to see it with an audience, and on something bigger than just their computer monitor. Ultimately, they hope the film will be an inspiration to others.

从发布以来，这部纪录片在不同的平台上已经获得近 200 万次的观看量，并在中国和世界各地的众多电影节上放映。

虽然纪录片已经被发布到网上，但 Anikeev 和 Torubarov 还在持续他们的线下放映计划，希望能让更多人看到，可以在电脑以外更大的屏幕上欣赏到这部纪录片。最终，他们希望这部纪录片能够成为他人的启发力量。

Anikeev‘s experience working on Bound in Beat has inspired him to look for new ways in which beatboxing can have a lasting and positive impact. “I have an idea for another project in which I’ll try to discover how beatboxing can help people with stuttering,” he says. “I think it can be used as a therapy, but I’m still working on the concept.”

As for Torubarov, he says “I want this story to inspire people to follow their dreams, be kind to others, and continue self-development no matter what. I hope more people will support others without thinking about profit or benefit.”

Anikeev 拍摄《Bound in Beat》的经历启发了他走上新的方向，希望能让 beatbox 发挥更持久、积极的影响力。 “我已经有做另一个项目的新的想法，主要是关于 beatbox 如何帮助有口吃问题的人。我觉得 beatbox 也可以作为一种治疗，但具体我还在构想中。”

至于导演 Torubarov，他希望这个故事能激励人们去追随自己的梦想，“希望人们可以不断提升自己，同时去善待他人，能够尽力去成为别人的支柱，无论任何利益或好处。”

Director: Gleb Torubarov

Website: glebtorubarov.com

 

Contributor: Michael Thede

导演: Gleb Torubarov

网站: glebtorubarov.com

 

供稿人: Michael Thede

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢

Balancing Act 水与墨的有机交融

June 22, 2018 2018年6月22日
Holes

Shanghai-based artist and designer Tan Chengyan paints only a handful of subjects: women’s bodies, mushrooms, circles, and holes. Simple shapes fit her abstract style. She views her art as a balancing act between emotion and logic, and a desire for balance likewise runs through her life, both as she alternates between art and design and as she selects the tools to produce her work.

上海艺术家和设计师谭成彦笔下的主题——女性身体、蘑菇、圆圈和洞——寥寥可数，与她的抽象派风格相得益彰。艺术对她来说，是感性与理性之间的平衡，也是贯穿了她的生活的渴求：无论是艺术和设计之间的思维转换，或是具体到绘画创作时的工具选择。

Mushroom Mushroom Mushroom 1
Women on the Blue Tree

Water and ink represent her emotional side. The first thing she does when creating a new painting is to dampen the paper with water and draw the main shapes in ink. Then she watches as the ink bleeds onto the wet surface. “The procedure of brushing paper with water is particularly important—it leads me to a state beyond consciousness,” says Tan. Seeing ink merging with water, her mind enters a zen space, and that’s when the shapes start to materialize.

Then her logical side, represented by acrylic, gouache, and colored pencils, takes over. She draws the shapes with acrylic or gouache on top of the initial layer and waits until their edges blur. Only at that point does she have a clear idea about the painting’s subject. She then adds details and clarifies subjects with colored pencils.

Underneath these soft and feminine shapes lies a slow process of creation that she describes as “primitive and organic,” and which gives her works their vital simplicity. These themes are also part of an organic process.

水和墨如同她感性的一面。作画时，她会先把画布和纸全部涂湿，用墨在上面做出基本图形，看着水和墨互相交融，形成自己的模样，“上水这一步对我来说特别重要，因为它是让我进入到 ‘意识外’ 状态最关键的一步。”当墨与水相互交融，她慢慢沉浸其中，画面便开始在脑中成形。

而丙烯、水粉和彩色铅笔则代表了她理性的一面。用丙烯或水粉在第一层上画出形状后，随着图形边缘慢慢晕开，她脑中才会出现对主题的定义。最后则会用彩色铅笔铅勾线，去以凸显图形并让主题更加清晰。

她的画作常由柔软、婀娜的形状组成。其中循序渐进的创作过程——用她自己的话说是 “原始、有机的”——带来了简洁、充满生命力的效果。而这个主题的成形也是一个有机的过程。

A Big Woman and an Orange Girl
A Big Woman and an Orange Girl (process)
A Big Woman and an Orange Girl (process)

Tan first began drawing circular, hole-like shapes in high school, though at the time she didn’t know what prompted them. In middle school, she had struggled under the intense pressures of academic competition, and when she was admitted to an arts high school, the relaxed, free environment made her feel as though “she had suddenly opened up.”

从高中开始，她就在纸上记录这些图形，虽然当时并不知道特别原因。在那之前，她就读的是普通初中，常常被排名和学业的压力闷得透不过气，而在高中考上了艺术院校后，自由和放松的环境让她感觉 “自己一下子就释放了”。

States 7, No. 2
State 5, No. 8
States 5, No. 9
States 8, No. 2

Looking back, Tan thinks her adolescent years set the stage for her later work. A budding sexuality left her at times feeling lost and at times full of hot-blooded passion: “I just felt an energy I needed to release. What was it? I don’t know, but on the paper before me, I saw those forms.”

College was another dark period, and Tan took refuge in the library, where she discovered, in art books and journals, the work of pioneering artists like Yayoi Kusama and Georgia O’Keeffe, who profoundly influenced her approach to artistic expression.

回望过去，她觉得对性懵懵懂懂，时而失落、时而满血复活的青春期，奠定了她后来创作主题的雏形——“觉得心中有种能量想要释放出来，那是什么样的东西呢？我不知道，但就这样自然而然地出现在了我面前的纸上。”

大学对于她来说，是另一个黑暗时期。于是，图书馆变成了谭成彦最爱去的地方，她也在当时大量接触了草间弥生（Yayoi Kusama）、乔治亚·欧姬芙（Georgia O’Keeffe）等以女性主题闻名的先锋艺术家家的作品。这对她自身的艺术表达方式造成了深远的影响。

Three Women and the Sunset

A turning point came in 2009, when, after graduating from college, Tan decided to move to the Netherlands to pursue a master’s in fine arts. Not only was this her “most prolific” period, it also, more importantly, helped her give expression to the forms she had been seeing in her mind all those years.

“Women’s bodies, mushroom shapes, holes, and circles: all these connect me to energy of the universe. When I paint these shapes, I always feel I’m elevated to a higher spiritual plane beyond material things,” she says, “I start to think that a lot of problems in my life aren’t really problems, because when I enter that level I’m more tolerant of everything that occurs in life.”

2009年可以说是她艺术创作的转折点，当时大学毕业后，谭成彦选择了去荷兰就读艺术硕士。这段时间不仅是她最“多产”的时候，也让长驻脑中的图形一一呈现。

“女性的身体、蘑菇形状、洞和圆圈接通我和宇宙能量。每当创作这些图形我就感觉自己被带到了超越物质层面的更深层的精神空间” 谭成彦说，“我会开始觉得现实中的很多问题都不再是问题了，因为到了那个层次之后，对生活中的一切都变得更加包容。”

Do the female forms she creates represent herself, then?  Tan doesn’t think so. “It would be too restrictive to say this is me.  Through the female shapes I paint, I want to explore a path to the universe.”

In terms of life, if art is her emotional side, her logical self comes forward through design. In 2017, Tan and her partner, Carmelo Ferreri, founded the design studio Melo & Yan, which specializes in branding and illustration. In her opinion, and in her practice, art and design are not opposed to one another, but rather nourish each other. “Design reflects the times, and can also inspire my art. It’s a balance,” she says. That’s also her attitude toward art: “It’s only good when all elements reach a balance.”

那么，画中的女性代表了她自己吗？她并不这么觉得：“如果说这是自己，有点太限制了，因为我想通过创作的女性图像探索通往宇宙的通道。”

在生活层面，如果说她在艺术创作时是感性的，那么她理性的自己则会在做设计时出现。谭成彦在 2017 年和另一半 Carmelo Ferreri 成立 Melo & Yan 设计工作室，专注品牌设计与插画。在她眼里，艺术与创作并不矛盾，而是有着相互滋养的关系：“设计更加能体现时代的信息，也可以给创作带来灵感。就是个平衡，” 这也是她对画的态度，“一张画，能达到平衡才是比较优秀的作品”。

Website: chengyantan.com
Instagram: @chengyan_tan

 

Contributor & Photographer: Jiang Yaling
Additional Images Courtesy of Tan Chengyan

网站: chengyantan.com
Instagram: @chengyan_tan

 

供稿人: Jiang Yaling
附加图片由 Tan Chengyan 提供

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢

An Architecture of the Mind 见山不是山？

June 19, 2018 2018年6月19日
Timeless Migration

Kenny Low is an artist from Singapore who creates saturated, sprawling, psychedelic compositions. Reaching up to three meters across, his works rely on fractal-like repetition: some call to mind the sea creatures of Ernst Hæckel’s Art Forms in Nature, others look like a screenshot from a video game, while still others suggest a contemporary take on Chinese or Japanese inkwash painting.

As a young child, Low discovered a knack for drawing, and he spent his free time doodling cartoon characters he’d seen on television, like Snoopy or Mickey Mouse. He continued making art throughout secondary school and went on to do a degree at the Glasgow School of Art. His work is on display at the Art Seasons Gallery in Singapore through June 22.

来自新加坡的艺术家 Kenny Low 喜欢采用高饱和度的色彩，放射状的构图，打造出风格迷幻的画作。他的作品可达 3 米长，并由重复叠加的类分形组成。所以，有些作品看上去会令人想起生物学家兼插画家的恩斯特·海克尔 (Ernst Hæckel) 在《自然界的艺术形态》 里绘画的那些海洋生物；有些看起来又像是视频游戏的截图，还有一些则似乎是对当代中国或日本水墨绘画的演绎。

Kenny 从小就展现出画画的天赋，闲时，他会去画那些在电视上看到的 卡通角色，譬如史努比和米老鼠。中学时，他依然没有停止艺术创作。毕业后进入格拉斯哥艺 术学院（Glasgow School of Art）继续学习深造。他的作品现在在新加坡 Art Seasons 画廊 展出，展览持续至 6 月 22 日。

 

Pactolus Egg
Prisma Egg
Raijin and Fujin
Under the Influence of the Little Boy and Fat Man

Perhaps surprisingly, all his works are made up of photographs taken in and around his home city, multiplied and repeated to the point of abstraction. Upon closer inspection, the jellyfish-like shapes swimming through Equinox Dream, for example, consist of superimposed images of spiral staircases arranged under what appears to be a sort of awning.  “Each image is taken by me with my digital camera while exploring Singapore,” he says. He shoots all kinds of buildings, “from construction sites to old Chinatown shophouses to historical temples to modern sites, like the Marina Bay Sands complex and the Gardens by the Bay.” After carefully cropping his photographs, he begins the painstaking process of arranging them in a work, making a sort of digital collage loosely based on a prior sketch. “Each image can take up to two to four months to complete, depending on the scale of the work,” he says.

令人惊奇的是，他的所有作品都是运用他在家乡拍摄的照片，通过不断的叠加和重复，最终形成抽象的作品。譬如在《Equinox Dream》中，如果你仔细看， 画面中那些游动着的水母形状的图案其实是用多幅螺旋楼梯的照片叠 加而成，水母头部则是一个类似遮阳篷的照片。“每一张照片都是在我探索新加坡时用数码相机拍摄下来的。”他解释道。“建筑地盘、唐人街的老旧商店、历史悠久的寺庙，也有现代建筑， 譬如滨海湾金沙社区（Marina Bay Sands） 和滨海湾花园（Gardens By The Bay） 。”这些建筑都曾出现在他的照片里，并被他精心的剪裁出不同的区域，接下来是最费时间的一个步骤：将这些照片组合成一幅作品，大致按照事先设计好的草图，创作成数字拼贴画。“这取决于作品的规模，每幅作品最多可能需要两到四个月才能完成。”他说。

Equinox Dream
Twin Amaterasu

If there seems to be something vaguely Japanese about some of Low’s pictures, that’s not an accident. “My art was born out of my curiosity and love of Japan,” he says. As a child he developed a deep fascination with anime, manga, J-pop, and J-drama. “I remember the first anime I watched. I remember the first Japanese song I heard. The visuals were out of this world—it was an indescribable experience,” he remembers. “Since then, I’ve been very drawn to everything Japanese, from their design to their culture to their cities. I love every bit of it. And naturally, my art is heavily influenced by them.”

如果你在他的作品中看到一些日本的元素，那也不是偶然的。他说：“我的艺术创作源于我对日本的好奇和热爱。”从小，他就对日本的动画、漫画、流行音乐和日剧十分迷恋。他回忆说：“我还记得看的第一部日本动漫、听的第一首日文歌。那些视觉效果真是太赞了。那是一种无法用语言形容的体验。从那时起，我就对日本的一切十分感兴趣，不论是日本设计、文化或是日本的城市。我喜欢日本的一切。所以，我的艺术在很大程度上也是深受日本的影响。”

Orb of Light
Peaceful Fuchsia

Midnight Sun seems to recreate a traditional Japanese or Chinese landscape painting. An enormous red sun stamped with Chinese characters hangs in the background, while cranes, a symbol of longevity and good fortune, dot the skies. At two meters tall, the work defies our expectations of scale and prevents us from taking in the entire image at once: only from afar can we appreciate the composition of the landscape, only up close can discern the intricate photographs of skyscrapers that make up each mountain.

而他的《Midnight Sun》似乎是对一幅传统日本画或中国山水画的重新演绎。印着中文的巨型红色太阳悬挂在画面背景，而象征着长寿和吉祥的仙鹤则点缀着天空。这幅作品高近两米，在规模上比普通的艺术作品大出很多，也正因如此，在欣赏这幅画时，观众无法马上看完整幅画，他们需要站远一点，才能欣赏到整幅画的构图；然后再走近一点，才能观察每座山中建筑。

Midnight Sun

Since Low began creating his large digital works, his thinking about art has become more sophisticated. He’s moved beyond just following his instincts for what looks good. “My thoughts about what I want to portray in my images are more precise now,” he says. “I’ve grown to understand that an image needs to be more than beautiful—it has to have a story for people to relate to. It needs something to give it life.”

The stories in Low’s works seem to be dispatches from a strange, dizzying, futuristic world—and they’re all the more compelling for being slightly beyond our grasp.

自从 Kenny 开始创作大型数字作品以来，他对艺术创作的看法也渐趋成熟。在创作时，他不再单纯地听从自己的本能去追求仅仅好看的作品。他说: “我现在对于自己在画面中要呈现的内容有了更清晰明确的想法。我渐渐明白，一幅画不仅要好看，它还必须有故事，让人们产生共鸣。它需要被赋予生命。”

Kenny 在作品中讲述的故事都像是来自一个奇怪的、令人眼花缭乱的未来世界，有点难以掌握，也因此变得更加引人入胜。

Galaxsea
Phos, Guardian of Life
Prisma, Guardian of Hope

Kenny Low’s exhibition is currently showing at Art Seasons Gallery in Singapore and will end on June 22nd.

 

Event: Genesis I
Exhibition Dates: April 28th, 2018 ~ June 22nd, 2018

 

Address:
50 Genting Lane, #03-02
Cideco Industrial Complex
Singapore 349558

 

Contributor: Allen Young

Kenny Low 的个人展目前在新加坡的 Art Seasons 画廊 展出，展览至 6月 22 日结束。

 

活动名称: “Genesis I”
展览日期: 2018年4月28日——2018年6月22日

 

地址:
50 Genting Lane, #03-02
Cideco Industrial Complex
Singapore 349558

 

投稿人: Allen Young

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢

Still Life with Digital Ghost 画框里的幽灵

June 8, 2018 2018年6月8日
Every Last Drop

Spectral, iridescent, shimmering, a woman in a blue wig is polishing the furniture. She swabs a surface, crouches down to inspect the shine, adds a few squirts from a spray bottle, waves her hand to clear the air.

What she’s cleaning isn’t a coffee table or a china cabinet but a cluster of buildings, a complete model cityscape with trees, trash bins, street lamps, and cars. Painted in acrylic, presumably from a photograph, the street scene has a static, two-dimensional solidity, while the figure floating in the background seems to exist on a different plane.

There’s something magical about the way she goes about her business, polishing the buildings like the caretaker of a miniature world. Partly it’s the silence, partly it’s the length of the animation—the full version, which you can watch here, lasts well over a minute—that give the piece its peculiar charm. It’s not a work of video art, and it’s not just a GIF meme. It calls to mind a silent film—or, if you prefer, the looping hologram of Princess Leia telling Obi Wan Kenobi he’s her only hope.

一个戴着蓝色假发、身体闪烁着斑斓虹光的女人，正忙着料理她的家务。她仔细擦拭家具的表面，时而蹲下来检查亮泽，按压几下喷雾瓶，时而挥动她的手来清新空气。

然而，她所擦拭的家具既非咖啡桌，也不是橱柜，而是由一栋栋建筑配上微小树木、垃圾桶、路灯和汽车的城市景观模型。这幅画作品推测是参照照片所画的，街道场景呈现出一种静态的二维平面感。而出现在背景的女性身影，却像是存在于不同时空维度上那样的飘忽不定。

令人入迷的，是她如此细致地照顾这些模型的样子，就像她是这个微型世界的看管者。也许是无声的原因，也许是因为动画的长度，赋予这幅动画独特的魅力——你可以点击这里观看到一分钟的完整版本。这不是一件视频艺术作品，也不仅是一幅 GIF 图片。它令人联想到无声电影，或者说是电影《星球大战》中，莱娅公主（Princess Leia）发给欧比王·克诺比（Obi Wan Kenobi）说他是她唯一的希望时，那个令人印象深刻的三维全息投影。

A Modern-Day Song Jiang
Mid-Autumn Sketches
Uniform
Remains of the Future

The work is one of a series of pieces of LED art produced by the Shanghai-based art collective Liu Dao, or Island6. Founded in 2006, it began as a residency program and has since evolved into an art laboratory, with a rotating group of artists and curators from around the world, its number of members fluctuating from six to 26. From its studio in M50, the art complex on Moganshan Road, Liu Dao generates a staggering stream of work, which visitors can view in the attached gallery.

这些作品是由上海艺术团体 “六岛”（Island6）制作的 LED 艺术作品系列之一。六岛成立于2006年，最开始是一个驻地项目，现在已发展成为一个艺术实验室，由一群来自世界各地的艺术家和策展人轮换组成。其成员数量起伏不定，从最初的6名发展到现在的26名。在他们位于上海莫干山路的 M50 创意园工作室内，六岛创作出一系列精彩的作品，并就近于旁边所附设的画廊展出，供观众欣赏。

Dignity of the Fuel

Creation is everything.

The day I visited their studio, I saw rows of delicately wrapped frames standing on their end, and I asked where they were headed. “Some of them are going to buyers, the rest are going into storage,” said Irmantas Bortnikas, the marketing director. “Once the artists finish something, they set it aside and keep working. If you worry about whether something sells, then you stop producing. And the important thing for them is to keep producing.” The curator and art director play a key role in this process, not only by handling administrative matters, but also in working with the artists to give their pieces a distinctive group identity. “Here at island6, even though each artist only makes a fragment of each artwork, the art directors and the curators are able to organize all the pieces of the puzzle together,” they say.

创作就是一切。

前往参观他们工作室的那天，我看到一排排细心包裹好的作品，我询问这些作品要去到哪里。市场总监 Irmantas Bortnikas 说：“一部分是准备给买家的，其余的就放到仓库。艺术家每完成一件作品，就会把它们放在一边，然后继续开始下一件作品的创作。如果你一直去操心某件作品卖不卖得出去，你就会停止创作。而对艺术家来说最重要的就是保持在创作的轨道上。”在这里，策展人和艺术总监扮演着关键的角色，他们不仅负责处理行政事务，还要与艺术家保持畅通的合作，确保他们的作品保有独特的团队风格。“在六岛，虽然每个艺术家都只负责一件作品的一部分，但艺术总监和策展人总是能够将它们组合的很好。”他们说。

Was His

Liu Dao’s LED works combine a static image, such as a painting, a photograph, or a paper cutting, with a pastel-colored moving image produced by an array of lights. The brown paper background is opaque enough to hide the circuitry, transparent enough for the LED lights to shine through. These works inspire a childlike delight, especially in person, though it’s hard to explain quite why. No doubt the surprise of seeing a moving image dance across a paper screen accounts for much of the charm, and the composition and color choices likewise play a role. All the technical aspects are handled with extreme care, so that the finished product is feels both high-tech and hand-crafted.

Beyond LED art, Liu Dao also produces laser drawings, neon sculptures, and three-dimensional assemblages—such as traditional Chinese vases imprisoned in a rusty cage—not to mention electronic dance tracks. One might even read their wordy “blurbs” as another work of art, an enigmatic prose poem that often only glances at the work it describes.

六岛的 LED 作品将绘画、照片或剪纸等静态图像，与色彩柔和的动态图像结合在一起。牛皮纸背景的透明度恰好能隐藏电路，又足以让 LED 灯光闪透出来。这些作品能让人激发出孩童般的喜悦，特别是当你欣赏到实体作品时，虽然很难解释为什么。毫无疑问，一个移动的图像在一个纸屏幕上跃动，这种神奇的组合本身就具有极大的魅力。当然画面的构成与颜色的选择也有影响，所有的技术都经过极其谨慎的处理，使成品感觉既有前卫的高科技感，又充满手工艺的质朴韵味。

除了 LED 艺术，六岛也会创作激光画、霓虹灯雕塑、或立体的组合装置艺术，譬如将传统中国花瓶装在一个生锈的笼子里的作品。他们甚至还会创作电子舞曲，就连用来描述作品的散文短诗，也可以被看成是另一件艺术作品。

Crosscourt Meditation
Shine Inn

Each season, the artists decide on a focus and collaborate to produce a set of pieces. “Whenever we come up with an idea for a new exhibition, we first brainstorm the theme,” the artists explain. Last year that theme was the woman in the blue wig, who appears in over dozens of works. “When we figure out what the exhibition should be about, the art directors commission the artists to make artworks for the exhibition, and the curators elaborate on the intellectual background.” Collaboration gives their work a distinctive and highly unified style. (True to their group ethos, answers to questions about the creative process come from the collective as a whole, not from any member in particular.)

每一季六岛会挑选一个主题，再交由艺术家去共同创作一系列作品。“每当我们有关于展览的新想法，我们会聚在一起集思广益。” 去年的主题是戴蓝色假发的女人，这个女性形象最终出现在几十件作品中。“当我们确定展览的主题后，艺术总监会委托艺术家针对主题来创作，然后策展人负责进一步构思出展览的叙事背景。” 即使是分工合作的工作模式，他们的作品依然呈现出高度的一致性。（所有关于创作的问题也都是集体回答的，而不是基于任何一位成员，这一点十分符合他们的团体精神。）

Bicycle Kingdom

 

无法观看？前往优酷

Over the last decade or so, Liu Dao has witnessed Shanghai’s art scene blossom into a diverse and global space. The oldest galleries date back only in the 1990s. Even in the mid-2000s, when Liu Dao opened its doors on Moganshan Road, its first location resembled a jungle. “People joked that they needed a machete to get past the wild plants that blocked the path to the gallery and the workshop,” they recall. “Today the situation has dramatically changed. Shanghai’s art scene is already home to amazing museums, such as Yuz Museum, the Power Station of Art, and the Long Museum, that showcase the most prominent artists from around the world.”

在过去十年左右的时间里，六岛见证了上海发展急速的艺术场景，现在这座城市已经成为了一个全球性的多样化空间。但在过去，最早的画廊也只能追溯到20世纪90年代，甚至是21世纪初期。六岛十二年前在莫干山路成立第一个工作室，当时那里看上去像是一片原始的丛林，他们回忆道：“人们开玩笑说，你需要一把镰刀才能穿过那些蔓生在通往画廊和工作室路上的植物。时至今日，上海的艺术场景已经剧烈的改变了——许多令人惊叹的博物馆，譬如余德耀美术馆（Yuz Museum）、上海当代艺术博物、龙美术馆一一开设。在这些博物馆里，你有机会接触到来自世界各地最著名的艺术家的作品。”

Luminous Magnum Opus Nihonshu

Liu Dao is itself a product of this booming international scene. Most of the artists are Chinese, but the collective describes itself as “pretty indifferent to where artists are from,” and it includes a strong international presence. The founding art director, Thomas Charvériat, is French, and the current curator, András Gál, is Hungarian. “Many artworks use plot elements from Western movies and references to Western art history, with blurbs written in English alongside the artworks,” they say. ”Simultaneously, we use traditional crafts and materials such as paper cutting or Chinese realist painting.”

Mixing traditions and practices is key to their philosophy. They recently put on a calligraphy performance that combined Chinese brushwork, Franz Kline-inspired action painting, and Japanese Zen symbols. The point was to play with forms that look alike but carry very different significance. “Even though the outcome may look similar, the meaning behind the art may be different in each culture,” they say. “So why not mix it up and make a cross-cultural performance out of it? This is what island6 is all about.”

六岛本身就是这样一个蓬勃发展的国际艺术舞台的产物。六岛里大多数的艺术家都是中国艺术家，但该团体自称 “不关心艺术家到底来自哪里”，团体中也有许多其他国籍的艺术家。创始人兼艺术总监 Thomas Charvériat 来自法国，而当前的策展人 András Gál 则来自匈牙利。他们说：“许多艺术作品借鉴了西方电影中的剧情元素和西方艺术史，作品旁边会放上英语简介。同时，我们也会运用中国传统工艺品和材料，例如剪纸或写实主义的中国绘画。”

融合传统并付诸实践，是他们创作理念的关键。他们最近展出一个中国书法表演，结合了传统中国书法的笔画、以美国抽象画派艺术家 Franz Kline 为灵感创作的行动绘画，以及日本禅宗符号。重点在于运用这些看起来相似，实际上却拥有截然不同含义的艺术形式。“尽管最终的成品可能看起来很类似，但对于不同文化情境来说，代表的意义可能是不同的。所以何不相结合，创作出跨文化的作品呢？毕竟这正是六岛的精髓所在。”

A Full Turn
Unspoken Word
The Great Recycler
The Ambition Stain

Website: island6.org
Instagram: @island6_gallery

Contributor: Allen Young

网站: island6.org
Instagram: @island6_gallery

投稿人: Allen Young

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢

Revolutionary Chic “毛时代”的艺术设计

May 30, 2018 2018年5月30日

In a tiny storefront on Fumin Road, next to the shoebox cafés and hipster bars of Shanghai’s former French Concession, Linda Johnson sells an unusual mix of old and new: antique furniture, vintage maps, cellphone cases, photographs, handmade jewelry, baby onesies, chapbooks, small-press zines, fountain pens, wrapping paper, and much more. Madame Mao’s Dowry, as her boutique is called, first opened its doors in 2001, and in its nearly two decades of operation, Johnson has witnessed a dramatic transformation, both in the surrounding neighborhood and in Chinese design generally. While the shop has changed to keep up with the times—sometimes involuntarily, as when rising rent forced it to shrink to half its original size—Johnson has stayed true to her founding mission: to showcase “design that’s proudly Chinese for living in modern China.”

在上海静安区富民路的一家小店面，在逼仄的咖啡馆和时尚酒吧的边上，Linda Johnson 的店卖的则是不同寻常的新旧组合：古董家具、旧地图、手机盒、照片、手工首饰、婴儿连体衣、诗歌别册、独立杂志、自来水笔、包装纸……等等。这家店在 2001 年首次开张，名为“毛太设计”（Madame Mao’s Dowry）。开业近二十年，Linda 见证了周边社群和中国设计业的戏剧性转变。随着时间的推移，商店不断地衍化调整（有时是不得已而为止：比如几年前由于房租上涨店铺面积缩小到原来的一半）但 Linda 一直忠于初心：“以中国身份为荣的本土当代设计”。

“In the old days, my partner and I would scout university departments and art studios looking for designers, or follow leads given to us by artists from Shanghai and Beijing. We would use our shop, then on Fuxing Road, like a gallery, holding regular exhibitions of designed products,” Johnson recalls. “Interest in the whole design market was growing rapidly.” Yet in the early 2000s, that interest came largely from foreigners, and it didn’t extend much beyond Qing-dynasty porcelain and textile patterns. “Our aim was to challenge that, and to say that China’s modern history had a significant impact on art practice,” she explains.

“在过去的日子里，我和我的搭档会去找大学的设计院系和艺术工作室寻找设计师，或者跟着上海和北京的艺术家给我们的线索去找人。我们会在我们的店铺，或在复兴路，像一个画廊一样定期举办有关设计的产品展览。” Linda 回忆说，“人们对整个设计市场的兴趣迅速增长。”但是在新世纪初，这些设计感兴趣的主要还是外国人，除了清朝的瓷器和织锦纹样之外，并没有延伸开去。“我们的目标是挑战这种状况，并告诉大家中国现代历史对艺术实践产生了重大影响。”她解释说。

Johnson’s boutique seeks to highlight the Mao era’s contributions to contemporary design (hence the name). It puts particular emphasis on art and artifacts from the Cultural Revolution, the calamitous decade from 1966 to 1976 that plunged the country into a protracted state of chaos. Customers react to this focus in different ways. “Some can be quite angry and disparaging, assuming that we’re glorifying the horrors, which of course we are not,” says Johnson. “Others are curious to learn more, and our collection of posters and news photographs has provided a resource, especially for local people, to understand something about ordinary life during the period.”

Chinese art from that era, with its smiling peasants and steely-eyed soldiers, today looks colorfully unreal, if not downright camp. Yet Johnson cautions against writing it off as mere propaganda. She believes it can and should be regarded separately from its political origins. “Our focus is the art and design of the period and its impact on contemporary aesthetics, not on the decision-making of its leaders,” she states.

Linda 的精品店试图突出“毛时代”对当代设计的贡献（也因此而得名）。它特别重视文革时期的艺术和艺术品，1966 年至 1976 年那充满灾难的十年，使国家陷入了长期的混乱状态。而顾客对此以呈现不同的反应。Linda 说：“有些人可能会非常愤怒或不屑，以为我们在称赞这种暴行，但我们当然不是这个意思。而另一些人则会想了解更多，那么我们收集的海报和新闻照片就提供了资源渠道，特别是对当地人来说，让他们了解这一时期的日常生活。”

那个时代的中国艺术作品，总会有面带微笑的农民和目光坚定的士兵，从现在的角度来看颇有些奇幻色彩，甚至可说是矫揉造作。然而，Linda 想要警示人们，不要把它仅仅当作宣传画来看。她认为，这种艺术形式可以而且应该同其政治渊源分开看待。“我们的重点是这个时期的艺术和设计及其对当代美学的影响，而不是领导人的决策。”她说。

Of course, not all the products in the boutique are from the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, most of them aren’t. Madame Mao’s Dowry features work by contemporary jewelers, ceramic sculptors, printmakers, poets, graphic artists, fashion designers, and more, and their work runs the gamut of different styles. For Johnson, this diversity is proof of how much Shanghai’s design scene has grown over the last two decades. “Design is a very different concept here today,” she notes, “and what’s produced is much more varied and much more sophisticated. There’s also a much broader mix of nationalities of young designers living in Shanghai.”

当然，店里并非所有的产品都是上世纪六七十年代的，事实上，绝大部分都不是。“毛太设计”以当代珠宝商、陶瓷雕刻家、版画师、诗人、平面艺术家、时装设计师的作品为特色，并涵盖了各种不同的风格。对 Linda 来说，这种多样性证明了过去二十年中上海设计界的巨大进步。“在如今，设计是一个非常不同的概念。”她说，“它所产生的是更加多样化和复杂得多的东西。生活在上海的年轻设计师的国籍也要广泛得多。”

Beyond providing a space for local designers to sell their wares, Madame Mao’s also hosts events, such as poetry readings for Literary Shanghai or the Shanghai Literary Review. The aim is to provide a space for creative people working in Shanghai. “Many visitors have remarked that Madame Mao’s Dowry is more like a museum than a shop,” says Johnson. “It’s about valuing the culture China produces, not just selling it.”

除了为当地设计师提供销售商品的空间外，“毛太设计”还举办活动，如《文学上海》或《上海文艺评论》的诗歌阅读会。其目的是为在上海工作的创意人才提供一个空间。“很多游客都说，‘毛太设计’与其说是一家商店，倒不如说更像是一个博物馆。” Linda 如是说，“这是对中国生产的文化的珍视，而不仅仅是销售产品。”

As Shanghai continues to change, Madame Mao’s, with its mix of antique and contemporary design, provides a bridge between the city’s past and its future. Johnson says that the visitors she values most, even though they rarely purchase anything, are the locals who have lived in the neighborhood for most of their lives: “they share stories with me of their experiences, which are often tinged with nostalgia and regularly surprising.” In a city single-mindedly turned toward the future, insisting on the relevance of mid-twentieth-century art is a way of keeping the past alive.

随着上海的不断变化，“毛夫人嫁妆”和当代设计的结合，为这座城市的过去和未来提供了一座桥梁。Linda 说，她最看重的是来此的顾客，即使他们很少购买任何东西，但他们是那些在附近生活了大半生的当地人：“他们和我分享他们的经历，这些经历常常带有怀旧的味道，而且经常令人惊讶。”在这个一心扑向未来的城市里，坚持与上世纪中期的艺术作品有所关联，可谓是一种铭记过往的方式。

Address:
207 Fumin Road
Jing’an District, Shanghai
People’s Republic of China

Hours: Monday ~ Sunday, 10 am ~ 7 pm

Website: madamemaosdowry.com

 

Contributor: Allen Young
Photographer: David Yen

地址:
中国
上海市静安区
富民路 207 号

营业时间: 周一至周日，早上10点至晚上7点

网站: madamemaosdowry.com

 

供稿人: Allen Young
摄影师: David Yen

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢

The Shanghai Literary Review 上海文艺评论

May 25, 2018 2018年5月25日

“When I first came to Shanghai two years ago, I didn’t find a very visible English-language literary community,” says Juli Min, the editor of the Shanghai Literary Review, “so I wanted to create that space.” Twice a year, her journal publishes poetry, fiction, essays, book reviews, and translations, along with an assortment of visual art. Its pieces run the gamut from an essay by Zou Jingzhi, the playwright and screenwriter known for The Grandmaster, to an interview with Eleanor Goodman, the acclaimed translator of Chinese poetry, to paintings by artists who are still at university. It’s become a beacon for creators from around the world, a community both within each printed volume and in the Shanghai bars and cafés where it holds events. This spring has been a flurry of activity: issue no. 3 will come out in June, while a special volume about Chinese cities, titled Concrete, hits the press at the end of May.

“两年前我第一次来到上海，我找不到任何英语的文学团体，所以我就想自己创立一个。”《上海文艺评论》编辑 Juli Min 说道。这本杂志每年出版两期，内容包括诗歌、小说、散文、书评、译文，以及各种视觉艺术。杂志的内容题材广泛，既有《一代宗师》的编剧邹静之的散文作品，也有著名中文诗词译者顾爱玲（Eleanor Goodman）的访谈，甚至能看到还在念大学的年轻艺术家的画作。现在，《上海文艺评论》已经成为全球创意工作者的一盏明灯，它不将自己局限于纸本杂志上，还在上海各处的酒吧和咖啡馆举办活动。今年春季，对杂志来说格外忙碌：第三期杂志将于6月份发行；以中国城市为主题的特刊《Concrete》(《混凝土》)，也将于5月底发行。

Of course, you can’t create a community by yourself, and Min has had some help. In late 2016 she founded the Shanghai Literary Review with fellow writers Kenny Ong, Ryan Thorpe, and Mike Fu, and over the last year and a half the journal’s masthead has grown to four more editors—Alex Gobin, Brian Haman, Colum Murphy, Nina Powles, and Fuping Shao—and a rotating cohort of assistants and interns. Together they organize poetry readings, open mics, book clubs, author talks, and an array of events that draw both expats and locals. They regularly collaborate with kindred organizations like Literary Shanghai (a separate group with a similar name) or the storytelling collective Unravel. In April they teamed up with Spittoon, a literary magazine from Beijing, to organize a music and poetry soirée called “Spit-tunes.”

当然，单靠一个人的力量要打造这样一个群体是不可能的， Min 也是如此。2016年末，她与作家好友 Kenny Ong、Ryan Thorpe 以及 Mike Fu 一起创办《上海文艺评论》，经历一年半的时间，杂志目前又多了五名编辑 Alex Gobin、Brian Haman、Colum Murphy、Nina Powles、以及 Fuping Shao，以及一个助理和实习生团队。他们在一起组织诗歌阅读、开放麦 (open mics) 、读书俱乐部、作者会谈，以及吸引到众多外籍和当地文学爱好者的活动。他们也经常与类似组织合作，譬如文艺上海（名称相似的文学组织）、或是 Unravel（每月会定期举办故事分享会的团体）。四月份，他们与来自北京的文学杂志《Spittoon》合作，组织了一个叫做 “Spit-tunes” 的音乐诗歌活动。

Despite the name, the journal isn’t just about Shanghai: its stories and art look far beyond the city, its contributors come from around the world, and its editors are scattered across China, the US, and the UK. Nor does the journal aspire to speak for the city or its readers. “We’ve never fooled ourselves into thinking that we were the voice of Shanghai or representative of China’s literary scene,” clarifies Min. “Our magazine is an English-language magazine, for an English-reading audience. We also don’t think of ourselves as representing expat writers per se, in that we don’t privilege expat voices or stories when selecting works.” Instead, the title is an attempt to create a cosmopolitan space for artists from around the world, particularly those based in Asia.

The Shanghai they claim is both a real city, with its daily rhythms and its grit and glamour, and an imagined space of dislocation and convergence, where people may spend years living side-by-side and never meet. In its small way, the Shanghai Literary Review provides a space for global lives and stories to be shared.

虽然名为《上海文艺评论》，但杂志本身的地域性绝对超越这座城市。编辑遍布中国、美国和英国各地，其中收录的故事和艺术、和作者群也来自世界各地。况且，为上海及所在的读者发言，也并非杂志本身的意图。“我们从未认为自己是在替上海发声，或是代表中国文学界。” Min 说，“我们是一本英文杂志，目标是英文读者。但同样地，我们也不认为自己代表外国作家，因为我们在选择作品的时候不会特别偏向外国作家的作品。” 相反的，之所以取这个杂志名，只是试图为来自世界各地的艺术家，特别是那些位于亚洲的艺术家创造一个世界性的空间。

他们所说的 “上海” 既是指现实中的这座城市，一座快节奏、充满毅力和魅力的城市；也是一个人来人往的想象空间，人们共同生活在这里却从未打过照面，彼此不断错过、相遇、再错过。《上海文艺评论》提供了一个平台，为的是把人们聚集起来，分享这些来自世界各地的生活与故事。

Min and her colleagues have now shepherded two issues to print, and two more are on the way. As soon as she started the first one, she was hooked. “I just love the whole process—reading, editing, layout, proofing,” she says. “It’s a lot of work, but I love seeing text and art come together into something physical, collectible, something you can give to a loved one, something that brings joy. After we did issue one, I couldn’t get enough. I wanted to do more—I had an insatiable appetite to produce.”

Min 和团队已经发表了两期杂志，接下来还有两期正在筹备当中。从她开始制作第一期杂志开始，她就完全着迷了。她说：“我真的很享受整个过程——阅读、编辑、排版、校对。工作量很大，但我喜欢看到文字和艺术结合在一起，变成实实在在、可以收藏起来的东西，一些你可以用来送给所爱的人，以及带来快乐的物品。发行第一期的杂志之后，我总觉得还不够。我想做更多。关于创作，我会有点‘贪得无厌’。”

That appetite led Min and her colleagues to put together a special volume between issues two and three. Concrete, which comes out at the end of May, centers on China’s cities. “I worked on the book together with Alex, our Visual Editor. We settled on the idea of lyric essays paired with photography,” she recalls. “Memoir and photography both capture reality as well as distort it, and we thought that these two forms would work well in conversation.” The result is a distinctly literary and artistic view on China’s breakneck urbanization.

这种 “贪得无厌”，让 Min 和团队决定在杂志的第二期和第三期之间推出一个特刊——那就是将在五月底发行、以中国城市为主题的《Concrete》。“我和视觉编辑 Alex 一起商量如何制作这期特刊。我们最后决定采用抒情散文搭配摄影作品的作法。” 她回忆道，“回忆录和摄影，既能捕捉现实也能扭曲事实，所以我们觉得这两种形式的对话会挺不错的。” 最终的成果就是这本以文学与艺术角度，去讲述中国快速城市化进程的杂志。

Even with the narrow theme, the texts take a range of approaches. “The pieces are incredibly diverse in style, subject, voice, and I’m really proud to have them all,” says Min. “One of my favorites is ‘The Bureaucrats’ Daughters,’ by Lynn Zhao. She writes about her and her friends’ childhoods growing up on Beijing’s Wanshou Road as daughters of high-level Party officials. Though Zhao is a young writer, there’s a great sense of nostalgia that pervades her writing.” That young writers can find a welcome in the journal speaks to its inclusiveness—and its cosmopolitanism.

即使只讲述单一个主题，但杂志内的文字仍然展现出极其丰富的创作方式。Min 说：“这些作品在风格、主题、语调方面非常多样化，我真的很自豪能将它们全部呈现出来。我最喜欢的作品之一是 Lynn Zhao 的《The Bureaucrats’ Daughters》（《官场的女儿》）。作者讲述了自己作为高官党员的女儿和其他同样身份的朋友，发生在北京万寿路的童年故事。虽然 Zhao 还很年轻，但她写作的字里行间弥漫着浓厚的怀旧情绪。” 一本杂志能够欢迎如此年轻的作家，恰恰印证了它的包容性及其世界主义。

The Shanghai Literary Review is cosmopolitan in the best sense of the word: it brings together voices from around the world, both established and novice, and its events are open to all. And with activities spanning at least three continents, it’s hard to keep up with. Concrete will launch in Shanghai on May 31, at an event the journal is putting on with local storytelling group Unravel, while issue 3 comes out in June. The summer and fall will see more events in Shanghai, New York, and London. “What we wanted to do was build a literary community and stay connected to the global literary world,” says Min. By any measure, they’ve succeeded.

《上海文艺评论》很好地诠释了 “世界性” 一词: 它汇集了来自世界各地的声音，其中有些是早有建树的艺术家，有些是刚刚崭露头角的新人。它所举办的活动向所有人开放，足迹遍布三大洲，范围之广很难让人跟上他们的脚步。《Concrete》将于5月31日在上海发行，在杂志与上海故事分享组织 Unravel 合作举办的活动中推出。第三期《上海文艺评论》也将于6月发行。夏秋之际，杂志还将在上海、纽约和伦敦举办更多活动。“我们想要做的是建立一个文学团体，一个与全球文学世界保持联系的社团。” Min 说。无论如何，他们都成功了。

Concrete is now available for pre-purchase on the Neocha Shop.

To pay via PayPal or international credit card, please check out through our Shopify. To pay with AliPay or WeChat, please visit our Weidian. Orders will ship after May 31st, 2018.

《Concrete》现已于 Neocha商店 发行预售版。

如需使用 PayPal 或国际信用卡支付，请转至我们的 Shopify 页面；如需使用支付宝或微信支付，请至我们的微店。将于2018年5月31日后发货。

Details:

  • Year of Publication: 2018
  • Pages: 164
  • Size: 17cm x 24cm

详情：

  • 出版年份：2018
  • 页数：164
  • 尺寸： 17 x 24 厘米

/**/

《上海文艺评论》特刊 “Concrete”

￥100

立刻购买

Event: Lost in Translation: A Storytelling Collaboration with Unravel and the Shanghai Literary Review
Date: Thursday, May 31, 2018
Time: 6:30 PM
Ticket: Advance tickets are available for purchase here.

Address:
The Parlour
Block 24, 1F-103
1262 West Yan’an Road (near Panyu Road)
Changning District, Shanghai
People’s Republic of China

活动: Lost in Translation: A Storytelling Collaboration with Unravel and the Shanghai Literary Review
日期: 2018年5月31日（星期四）
时间: 下午六点半
门票: 请点击此处提前购票

地址:
中国
上海市长宁区
延安西路1262号（近番禺路）
24幢1F-103室
The Parlour

Website: shanghailiterary.com
Facebook: ~/shanghailiterary

 

Contributor: Allen Young
Photographer: David Yen

网站: shanghailiterary.com
脸书: ~/shanghailiterary

 

Contributor: Allen Young
Photographer: David Yen

You Might Also Like你可能会喜欢