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Unity in Diversity 当我们拥抱他人的不同

October 29, 2019 2019年10月29日

The quiet faces and still bodies depicted in portraiture are deceptively intimate. It’s satisfying to look deeply at another human, but the experience is filtered through multiple layers, and the viewer and the painter both project their own ideas onto the subject. “Human faces can have so many narratives. It’s a good vehicle to try to share an experience with my audience,” says Kim Hyunji, a Korean oil painter who specializes in portraits of people from different cultures and backgrounds. These works, featuring purple-tinted subjects within expanses of white, are a way for Hyunji to explore her identity, normalize diversity, and challenge stereotypes.


平静的表情,静止的身体,这些肖像画让人有种亲密的错觉。深入地去观察另一个人能让人有一种满足感,但这种观察往往会经过多重滤镜,观众和画家都会将自己的想法加诸于画中的人物。“人的面孔可以包含非常多的故事。这是我和观众分享经历很好的媒介。” Kim Hyunji 说道,这位韩国油画家很擅长描画来自不同文化和不同背景的人物肖像。这些作品多是以白色画布为背景,以紫色为主要色调,是她探索自己的身份认同、倡导多元文化和挑战刻板印象的一种方式。

Hyunji grew up in Korea but moved to Australia when she was 21. This was a life-changing experience for her. “After being so accustomed to only seeing Korean people while growing up in a single-race country, interacting with people from a diverse range of ethnicities was new for me,” she recalls. Korea ranks as one of the least diverse countries in the world, and because of that, she thinks many Koreans can benefit from interacting with people of different cultures. 


Kim 在韩国长大,在 21 岁的时候移居澳大利亚。对她来说,这是一个人生的转折点。“自小在单一种族的国家长大,我习惯了只看到韩国人,和多元化种族的人交流对我来说是一种全新体验。”她回忆道。韩国被评为世界上最不具备文化多元性的国家之一。正因为如此,她认为韩国人们可以通过和不同文化背景的人互动而获益。

But living in Australia also carried with it a difficult set of challenges. “People yelling ‘ni hao at me on the street has been part of my everyday life in whatever Australian city I’ve lived in, so you can guess what it’s like here,” Hyunji says. Most Asians in Australia have experienced discrimination, including a significant number of school-age kids. While she says she faces similar issues as second-generation peers, she understands that her circumstances are different. “People of color here have been negatively stereotyped and need to work way harder,” she says.


但是,在澳大利亚生活也伴随种艰难的挑战。“人们在街上见到我就大喊‘你好’,不论是澳大利亚哪座城市,几乎每天生活都会碰到这种情况,所以你也大概能知道在这里生活是什么感觉。” Kim 说。大多数在澳大利亚生活的亚洲人都曾遭到歧视,包括很多在上学的小孩。虽然她说自己也面临其他二代移民同龄人遇到的问题,她也明白,自己的情况有所不同。“在这里,有色人种往往被加诸了负面的刻板印象,所以需要比其他人更加努力地工作。”她说。

These experiences are reflected in her art. Her paintings, featuring people with different skin tones, hairstyles, and body types, are as much a celebration of diversity as they are a subversion of beauty norms. She says that painting people of color is important as a way to normalize their appearance in Western media, where Asian and other non-white representation is lacking and distorted. In Hollywood, the first film with an all-Asian cast, Crazy Rich Asians, didn’t come out until 2018, while in adaptations of Ghost in the Shell and Aloha, Asian lead roles were given to white actors. There’s also consistent stereotyping of the Asian faces that are given space, like of South Asians in The Simpsons with the Apu character. Through her art, Hyunji seeks to redress and challenge this state of affairs.


这些经历都被反映在她艺术作品中。她在画里描绘着不同肤色、发型和身材的人物,既是对多元文化的赞颂,也是对传统美丽规范的颠覆。她说,画有色人种是为了提高他们在西方媒体的曝光度,因为在这些媒体报道中,亚洲人和其他非白人人种的形象要么是缺失,要么就是被扭曲。在好莱坞,直到 2018 年才有了第一部全由亚洲演员拍摄的电影《摘金奇缘》,而在改编的电影《攻壳机动队》和《阿罗哈》中,本来为亚洲人的主角却找了白人演员。不仅如此,影片往往会以刻板印象来表现亚洲人角色,譬如《辛普森一家》中的南亚裔角色 Apu。Kim 正是通过自己的艺术在改变和挑战这种现状。

A few years back, Hyunji moved from Perth to Melbourne. Although many of the issues she faced in Perth followed her, the newfound diversity gave her some grounding. “Melbourne has started to acknowledge white privilege, but it’s still Australia,” she says. “I don’t think my life was any easier in Melbourne, but while living there, I started interacting with the queer community, and it’s helped me accept myself and overcome a lot of insecurity.”


近日,Kim 从珀斯搬到墨尔本。尽管她在珀斯遇到的许多问题在这里仍然存在,但墨尔本的环境更多元,因而她对生活能相对变得轻松一点。“墨尔本已经开始承认白人特权的问题。搬到这里生活后,我开始与酷儿社区往来,这样做能让我学会接受自己,也克服了很多不安感。”她说。

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Contributor: Mike Steyels
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li


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供稿人: Mike Steyels
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Fou Gallery 否画廊:生活和艺术互为补充

October 21, 2019 2019年10月21日

Tucked away on a tree-lined street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Fou Gallery offers more than the usual openings, artist talks, and receptions. It’s also a space for relaxation and community, hosting private dinners, tea ceremonies, and a monthly performance series. Founded in 2013 by Echo Hé, the gallery defines itself against the mainstream New York art scene.

“Traditionally, commercial art galleries operate on a very simple business model: sell artworks to a very small group of collectors to support the gallery’s operation. Normally the gallery is in a simple white cube to make the business straightforward,” she says. “Collectors tend to buy works from big galleries with a track record of artists that have ‘investment value,’ and smaller galleries struggle to be part of the game.”


否画廊”(Fou Gallery)藏匿于布鲁克林道贝德福—斯都维森(Bedford-Stuyvesant)一条林荫小道中,这里除了举办各种展览开幕、艺术家对话和招待会之外,也是休闲放松和社区活动空间,举办各种私人宴会、茶会和每月定期的影像放映、音乐会和其他表演活动。画廊由何雨创办于 2013 年,是一家独立于主流纽约艺术圈之外的画廊。

“传统上来说,商业艺术画廊都是以非常简单的商业模式运营:将艺术作品卖给一小撮收藏家,以支持画廊运营。而通常情况下,画廊都是在一个‘白盒子’里,让交易更直接明了。收藏家倾向于从大型画廊购买具有‘投资价值’的艺术家作品,而较小的画廊则难以参与其中。” 她说。

Hé wants Fou to be different. While the gallery sells artworks to sustain itself, Fou also presents cultural, culinary, and other programming to attract a diverse group of people. The Chinese character it’s named for, 否, means negation, and is made of the components 不 (bu, no) and 口 (kou, mouth). “So, silent,” Hé explains. “We wanted to more silently promote ourselves. Plus fou means crazy in French and drunk in Scottish.”

Fou specializes in works by Chinese artists, as well as other artists working in traditional Chinese mediums. “A lot of Chinese artists in New York, especially the young generation who came here to study, can’t find places to show their work,” says Hé. “It’s hard for them to break into the community.” At Fou, artists can show their work and build relationships with their peers.


何雨对否画廊有不一样的期望。虽然否画廊也会出售艺术品来维持运营,但同时还会举办文化、美食及其他活动,吸引不同人群。中文里的“否”意为否定,由“不”字和“口”字组成。“加在一起就是沉默的意思。”何雨解释说,“我们希望默默地推广自己。而且,‘fou’在法语意指疯狂,在苏格兰语里又有喝醉的意思。”

否画廊主要代理中国艺术家的作品,以及以传统中国艺术媒介和概念创作的艺术家作品。“在纽约有很多中国艺术家,尤其是到这里来读书的年轻一代,他们比较难找到地方来展示自己的作品。他们比较难能融入当地社区。”何雨说。而在否画廊,艺术家不但可以展示自己的作品,还能认识其他艺术家。

Fernando Villela & Zhe Zhu: Time Flies So First Things First / Photographer: Eugene Neduv 《费尔南多·维利纳和朱喆:先办正事》/ 摄影师: Eugene Neduv
Liu Chang: The Light of Small Things / Photographer: Nadia Peichao Lin 《刘唱:微物之光》/ 摄影师: 林沛超
Han Qin's exhibition Ethereal Evolution / Photographer: Nadia Peichao Lin 韩沁个展《演·化》/ 摄影师: 林沛超

Liu Chang, an artist who held her first solo exhibition at Fou in 2016, is a firm believer in the gallery’s vision. “Many young artists, including myself, held their debut solo exhibition at Fou,” she says. “Instead of being limited by the constraints imposed by traditional or profit-driven galleries, artists are given the opportunity to showcase their work the way they want to here.”

Recent exhibits have showcased work by glass artist Du Meng, photographers Zhe Zhu and Fernando Villela, painter Chen Dongfan, multi-media performance artist Han Qin, and more. But the gallery also helps support collaborating artists in less tangible ways. “When I did a two-month artist residency and worked on a few exhibitions in China over the summer, I sent my portfolio to Echo,” Han recalls. “She told me that it should be updated; my two latest exhibitions weren’t in there. I was touched. It felt like I had someone truly on my side, someone who’s invested in my growth, an industry insider who can offer expert advice. It can feel quite lonely as an artist sometimes, so having a mentor like that is uplifting.”


艺术家刘唱在 2016 年举办的首次个展就在否画廊,她非常肯定画廊一直在做的事情。“有很多像我一样年轻的艺术家,他们人生中第一次个展都在否画廊举办。”她说,“与那些被利益和传统所向导的画廊不同,在这里艺术家们并不会受到限制,他们能够有机会以自己希望的方式呈现个人作品。”

近期以来,画廊内陈列了玻璃艺术家杜蒙、摄影师朱喆和 Fernando Villela、画家陈栋帆以及多媒体艺术家韩沁等多名艺术家的作品。同时,画廊还以各种方式帮助艺术家们。“之前有一整个夏天,我都在国内进行着艺术家驻地项目和一些展览。” 韩沁回忆道,“当时我把作品集发给了何雨,她发现我在作品集中遗漏了我最近的展览信息,并让我加进去。我觉得能有人为我和我的个人发展考虑,并为我提供专业的意见,令我非常触动。有时候做艺术是一件孤独的事,但能有一位这样的导师陪伴在身边,我倍感鼓舞。”

Traditional Chinese artistic values, with their emphasis on connections to the natural world, are central to Fou’s goals. Echo believes the gallery offers an alternative to the monetary emphasis of the mainstream art scene. “Nowadays, there are two main religions: technology and money. So there is a deep need for people to go back to their hearts. And I think old Chinese aesthetics can help with that,” she says. “What I’m trying to create or present in this space is old-soul tradition. It’s about an appreciation of god—not a singular god from any religion, but a universal connection to the earth and back to the universe.”


中国传统的艺术价值强调与自然世界的连接,这也是画廊创立理念的核心。何雨认为,他们提供了一个秉持“金钱至上观”的主流艺术界以外的艺术空间。“目前人类有两大信仰:科技和金钱。因此,人们有一种更深层的需要,是回归自己内心。我认为传统的中国美学会有帮助。”她说,“我在画廊想要创造或展示的正是这种古老的传统。这是一种对神的敬畏,但这种神不属于任何宗教,而是指与地球万物的联系,对宇宙的回归。”

On the day of my visit, Michael Eade’s past is present is future was on display, and it’s hard to miss what Hé is going for by showing this kind of work. Eade’s paintings depict different versions of the Tree of Life, incorporating world mythologies and exploring different cultural relationships with nature. These images of trees and forests from around the world are paired with the real trees from the garden outside tickling the gallery’s windows. More than simply presenting art by ethnically Chinese artists, Hé’s goal is to foster real connections between art, humans, and the natural world.


去否画廊采访时,那里正在举办 Michael Eade 的《刹那》(“past is present is future”)展览。从这次展览的作品,不难看出何雨的这些艺术理念。Eade 的画作描绘了不同版本的生命之树,结合世界神话,探索人类与自然在文化层面的不同关系。这些描画树木和森林的作品与从画廊外探进屋里的真实树木相互映衬。何雨并不是单纯要推广中国艺术家的作品,她的目标是促进一种艺术与人,人与自然世界真正的连接。

The gallery also operates outside its own walls, striving to bring art to alternative locations. “For instance, we supported artist Chen Dongfan to present public art project The Song of Dragon and Flowers with a NYDOT and Chinatown Partnership, changing the 64-meter Doyers Street into a mural.” Fou also hosted a one-day program for Wix Academy’s design students, which included an art workshop and concert, and it will curate a special art program for the China Institute’s 2019 Blue Cloud Gala, which will showcase works from Yang Renqian and Liu Chang.


否画廊的活动空间并不局限于画廊本身,还会在其它场地运营,努力将艺术带到不同的地方。“比如,我们在纽约市交通管理局和华埠共同发展机构的协助下,支持艺术家陈栋帆展示其公共艺术项目《龙与花之歌》,在宰也街(Doyers Street)街面创作了 64 米长的壁画。否画廊还为 Wix Academy 学院设计专业的学生专门举办了“一天计划”,其中包括艺术工作坊和音乐会,还将协助华美协进社 2019 年的 Blue Cloud Gala 慈善晚会策划特殊的艺术项目,呈现刘唱和杨人倩的作品。

One day with Wix Design Playground / Photographer: Yotam Kellner 否画廊为 Wix Design Playground 策划的一天活动 / 摄影师: Yotam Kellner
One day with Wix Design Playground / Photographer: Yotam Kellner 否画廊为 Wix Design Playground 策划的一天活动 / 摄影师: Yotam Kellner

Hé studied business at Peking University. She was well on her way to her master’s program at the Guanghua School of Management when she realized she had chosen that path not for herself but to please others. After a stint abroad in Amsterdam, she returned to Beijing, graduated from her program, and moved into an underground artist community for a year.

That’s when she chose art. She interned at Pace Gallery Beijing and eventually applied to study Visual Arts Administration at NYU. “In New York, I continued to work part-time at Pace and also did an internship at Christie’s,” she says. “That’s where I found out that I did not want to pursue a career in auction houses. Monetary value becomes the main concern there, rather than aesthetic value, and there aren’t many opportunities to work directly with artists. Art becomes part of the capital game.”


何雨毕业于北京大学的商科专业。在攻读北大光华管理学院的国际博士学位时,她意识到自己选择的这条道路只是为了取悦他人,并不是自己真正的兴趣所在。在阿姆斯特丹生活了一段时间后,她回到北京,在一个地下艺术家社区生活了一年。她决定了选择艺术。之后她进入北京佩斯画廊实习,最终申请入读了纽约大学的视觉艺术管理专业。“在纽约,我继续在佩斯画廊兼职工作,后来也在佳士得拍卖行实习。”她说,“也是在那时候,我意识到自己在拍卖行工作并不是我想追求的职业生涯。艺术作品只剩下金钱价值,而且也没有办法跟艺术家合作。艺术沦为了一种资本收益。”

Hé came up with the idea of opening an apartment gallery with classmate Jiaxi Yang, and they launched Fou in 2013. The gallery moved to its current location, a historic brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant, in 2016. Yet finding a permanent home was not easy, and after months of searching for a suitable and affordable site, Hé was close to giving up. “I still clearly remember that winter day in 2016. I met up with Du Meng, who was also graduating from school. We both had visa problems. On that windy street, I told her if I found a new space then we had to do a show together.” And they did: Du held her first solo show at Fou.

“This is a space where life and art become indispensable to each other. And it’s not staged dependence—it’s real. From the very beginning I wanted the gallery to have a kitchen,” Hé says. She wants Fou to feel like a home, and it probably helps that it is one: the space also serves as Hé’s apartment.


后来,何雨和同学杨嘉茜一起想到了创办一间公寓画廊,并在 2013 年成立否画廊。2016 年,画廊搬到了贝德福—斯都维森的新址。要为画廊找一个永久的家并不容易。何雨曾经为了找合适又负担得起的场地奔波了好几个月,最后几乎快要放弃了。“我还清楚地记得,那是 2016 年的冬季。我遇到了同样刚毕业的玻璃艺术家杜蒙。我们俩都有一些签证的问题。那天风很大,我俩走在街上,我告诉她,我找到了画廊的理想场地。我跟她说,如果能重新开空间,我们要一起做个展览。”后来,杜蒙就在否画廊举办了自己首个个人作品展

“这个画廊是一个生活和艺术互为补充的空间。这种相互性不是假装的,而是真实的。从一开始,我就想让画廊有一间厨房。”何雨说道,因为她希望否画廊感觉像一个家,因此,这个画廊也是她的公寓。

An installation by Lin Jing at Artificial Boundary / Photographer: Lin Jing 林璟展在《仿真边界》的作品 / 摄影师: 林璟
Du Meng: The Climb, The Fall / Photographer: Liu Zhangbolong 《杜蒙:退火》/ 摄影师: 刘张铂泷

Hé hopes Fou can be a space where artists, writers, performers, musicians, scientists, architects, and creative people of different professions can meet and collaborate. She believes too much of modern life occurs on the internet, accessible to everyone but genuinely experienced by no one. “The real joy of life is not to think of yourself, but to consider the wholeness of the world,” she says. “That’s what this gallery really wants to do.”


何雨希望否画廊能成为囊括艺术家、作家、音乐家、科学家、农业研究者、建筑师,还有各行各业的创意人士相聚、协作的空间。她认为互联网占掉了现代生活的太大部分,所有人都可以出现在网上,但却没有人真正在体验生活本身。“生命中真正的快乐不能只想着自己,而是要考虑世界的整体性。”她说。“这就是否画廊真正想做的事。”

Address:

410 Jefferson Avenue #1
Brooklyn, New York
United States of America

Hours:

Closed Sunday through Monday
Saturday, 11am ~ 6pm (or appointment by e-mail)


地址:

美国
纽约布鲁克林区
Jefferson 大道 410 号 #1

营业时间:

周日至周一不对外开放
周六,上午 11 点至下午 6 点(其余时间请邮件预约

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Websitewww.fougallery.com
Instagram@fougallery
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Contributor: Johanna Costigan
Photographer: Anrong Xu
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li
Additional Images Courtesy of Fou Gallery


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网站www.fougallery.com
Instagram@fougallery
脸书: ~/fougallery
微博: ~/fougallery
微信: fougallery

 

供稿人: Johanna Costigan
摄影师: Anrong Xu
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li
附加图片由 否画廊 提供

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Young Blood 百货商城中的我才算真实

October 18, 2019 2019年10月18日

Recently, Japanese rapper Tohji performed in a park in central Tokyo, rapping a capella without a mic as a group of teenagers jumped around and sang along, belting out his lyrics in a ringing chorus. The performance started as a free show at the Levi flagship store in Shinjuku, but the venue couldn’t accommodate everyone who showed up. Tohji didn’t want the fans stuck outside to be left out, so he moved the show to a nearby park. After just one song, the police arrived to shut things down.

Tohji isn’t much older than the teenagers who came to see him. At 22, he’s not even out of college yet, and he’s already making waves in the Japanese music scene with his DIY tactics and unconventional path to success. Even more impressive is the fact that he only started making music two years ago.


今年 7 月,日本说唱歌手 Tohji 在东京市中心一个公园里表演,随着他的无伴奏说唱(Acapella)声响起,一大帮年轻人围了过来,大伙们边跳边唱,一同高声喊出他的歌词。这场原定于新宿 Levi’s 旗舰店的免费表演,因为场地无法容纳所有人,导致一些乐迷无法参加。但 Tohji 不想冷落门外的歌迷,他把表演场地搬到了附近的一个公园内。然而,第一首歌曲刚刚结束,警察就赶来中止了演出。

Tohji 的年纪其实并不比在场的歌迷大出多少。他的同龄人甚至还没踏出大学校门,而这位 22 岁的说唱歌手就已经引起日本说唱圈内的阵阵波澜。他独特的创作方式为成功另辟蹊径。更令人意外的是,从他开始创作至今也只有仅仅两年的时间。

Tohji first got inspired by the new crop of US rappers who had found global success through SoundCloud. Anyone could create a hit, he realized. So he set aside his studies and got to work producing beats and writing lyrics. As his local fanbase grew, he started throwing monthly parties with live rap performances and DJ sets at a popular venue in Shibuya called WWW. “I think that was the most important part of my career,” he says. “It’s unique because it was the first rap party in Tokyo thrown by kids and not adults. We started in the smaller room but have moved up to the big one now.”

This is youth culture in its purest form: it’s not music picked by corporate suits and marketed to kids. And a venue for live music is key to a thriving music scene, giving fans a place to meet and forge stronger bonds with each other and with artists.


Tohji 最初的灵感来自一批成名于 SoundCloud 的美国说唱歌手们。他们在全球范围内的大获成功让 Tohji 意识到,任何人都可以一夜成名。于是,他放弃了学业搬去东京,一门心思专注制作和填词。 当粉丝群体逐渐建立起来之后,Tohji 开始每月在涩谷颇受欢迎的场地 WWW 内举办说唱和 DJ 表演。“那段时间是我职业生涯中最重要的时光。” Tohji 说,“它之所以这么特别,是因为这是东京第一次由青少年而非大人举办的说唱聚会。刚开始活动场地还比较小,现在就大很多了。”

这或许是青年文化最纯粹的形式:没有大公司包装、没有推销的形式。当然,一个像样的音乐现场也在整个场景的发展中起到关键作用:它能为乐迷提供一个相互交流的场地,维系大伙儿之间的友谊。

Last year Tohji teamed up with the rapper Gummyboy to form the duo Mall Boyz, and their song “Higher” became a hit. “Before our generation came up, everyone was copying US styles,” Tohji says. “Every Japanese rapper talked about growing up in Tokyo or Osaka, imitating US-style hometown pride. That’s not real to me. But the mall is real to me.” Their style draws inspiration from the early 2000s, often referencing pop-culture icons like the Black Eyed Peas and Pokémon that are familiar to Gen Z-ers and late millennials around the world.


去年,Tohji 与 Gummyboy 组成 Mall Boyz 二人团体,他们的单曲《Higher》在互联网上掀起一阵热浪。“在我们这一代说唱歌手之前,大家还都在模仿美国的说唱风格。”Tohji 说,“每个日本说唱歌手都在模仿美国说唱那种故乡骄傲的主题,讲述在东京或大阪成长的故事。但我觉得这不是很 real。对我来说,那种大型的百货商城(Mall)才是我日常生活的写照。” Mall Boyz 的音乐还从千禧年初期汲取灵感,常常会借鉴例如黑眼豆豆(Black Eyed Peas)和宠物小精灵(Pokemon)等耳熟能详的流行文化元素。

In the Mall Boyz, Tohji tends to rap about light-hearted subjects and feature brighter melodies. His solo work, on the other hand, is more personal and leans on darker beats. On his first mixtape, angel, he reveals a level of self-awareness and maturity that may surprise fans only familiar with his Mall Boyz persona.

The beats on angel frantically shift tempo and mood, but when paired with his lyricism and impeccable delivery, it all flows together to form a cohesive soundscape. Pop-culture references also appear, like a song named after Hi-Chew candy and another built on a sample from “Sugar, Sugar.”


轻松欢乐的主题和旋律在 Mall Boyz 的说唱中比较常见。但相比较在团体中的表现,Tohji 的个人作品则更注重自我,曲风更偏向黑暗的 trap 节奏。在他的首支混音带《Angel》(天使)中,他所展现出的自我与成熟的气质,让熟悉 Mall Boyz 的粉丝感到意外。

在《Angel》中,节奏和情绪快速切换,搭配 Tohji 无懈可击的演唱和引人思考的歌词,让所有元素一气呵成。混音带中也体现了对流行文化的借鉴,例如一首以嗨啾糖(《Hi-Chew candy》)命名的歌曲、另一首歌曲则采样自 60 年代动画片《The Archie Comedy Hour 》主题曲《Sugar,Sugar》。

Listen to some of our favorite tracks from Tohji below:


点击即可试听几首 Tohji 的作品:

Tohji’s insistence on collaboration is evident throughout his work. He worked closely alongside producer Murvsaki in creating angel. “We made it together, discussing ideas as we went. We worked on it every day here in my apartment over two months,” Tohji says. ” Murvsaki moved in while working on it because he’s from Osaka and had nowhere else to stay in Tokyo. My roommates were pretty nice about it.” 

That understanding of the power of collaboration extends to the project’s videos. “Anton Reva came here from Russia and saw me perform,” Tohji says, describing how the video for “Snowboarding” came together. “He messaged me afterward, and since we really liked each other’s work, we decided to do something together. We flew him out here, got him a hotel, and got to work. I told him my concept and he made it happen, fleshing out all the details.” Tohji is now directing music videos for other Japanese rappers, such as “Black Hole” by Shaka Bose.


“合作” 是 Tohji 作品中的关键字眼,嘻哈文化亦是如此。混音带《angel》便是由他与制作人 MURVSAKI 共同完成的作品。“在那两个月的时间里,我们每天都呆在公寓里,一起创作,一起讨论。” Tohji 说,“专辑制作的时候,MURVSAKI 搬进了公寓,因为他在大阪生活,在东京没有落脚的地方。对于这一点,我的室友也都很理解。”

这股合作的力量同样延伸到了歌曲 MV 的制作上。“俄罗斯的 Anton Reva 来日本的时候看了我的演出。” Tohji 谈论起《Snowboarding》(滑雪)的 MV 制作经历,“之后他就发消息给我,我们都很喜欢彼此的作品,于是决定一起做点什么。我们邀请他住在日本,给他安排了酒店,并开始一起创作。我跟他讲了我的概念,让他来帮我实现,包括其中所有的细节。”Tohji 也开始帮助一些本土说唱歌手制作 MV,譬如 Shaka Bose 的《Black Hole》(黑洞)。

 

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Tohji’s success represents a shift not only in the style of rap in Japan, but also the business behind it. “The Japanese music industry is very closed-minded, and labels are still doing things in very old ways. It’s crazy!” he says, pointing out that music consumption in the country still revolves around CDs, while most of the world has moved on to streaming. “Japanese artists are usually more receptive to what big labels and companies want. These companies look toward the US market and hope for English lyrics, but I want to go global naturally. We’re making deals with big companies on an equal footing but not compromising our own creative vision. I don’t just want to make money, I want to do something with cultural meaning.”


Tohji 的成功不仅代表着日本说唱场景的转变,也映射出其背后音乐产业的发展。“日本音乐产业向来比较保守,许多唱片公司还是用过时的方式来工作,真的让人很无语!”他指出,目前日本国内的音乐消费依然以 CD 光盘为主,而在世界上大多数国家都已经转到流媒体。“日本的艺术家通常会听从音乐厂牌和唱片公司的要求;而这些公司的目光都在美国市场身上,甚至会刻意在歌曲中加入英文。但我想用真实的方式来打造国际化的音乐。我们希望在平等的基础上与大公司合作,不应该牺牲我们自己的创作构想。我不只是想赚钱,那些有文化、有内容的作品才是我真正想做的。”

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Instagram: @_tohji_
Soundcloud: ~/11_tohji_11

 

Contributor: Mike Steyels
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li
Images Courtesy of Tohji


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Instagram: @_tohji_
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供稿人: Mike Steyels
英译中: Olivia Li
图片由 Tohji 提供

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Technicolor Tokyo 当你步入科幻色彩

October 16, 2019 2019年10月16日

To view Liam Wong‘s photography is to enter a new universe. Although he creates work that’s tethered to the here and now, Wong isn’t afraid to take artistic liberties and tread outside the bounds of reality. The majority of his work features Tokyo after midnight, a time that even locals may rarely see. Through masterful command of color, his images of the city’s lights and signage drip with a heightened sense of mood and mystery. They hint at stories and worlds just beyond reach. As a former art director at Ubisoft, his work is directly inspired by video games and the escape they offer.


Liam Wong 的摄影作品让人有种时空转换的错觉。虽然拍摄的是当下的世界,但摄影师却大胆发挥自己的艺术创意,游走于现实的界限之外。他的大部分作品都拍摄于东京的午夜,往往在这个时间段,街上当地人的身影也寥寥无几……通过对色彩的出色把控,他照片中所拍摄的东京城市的灯光和商铺招牌,涌动着丰富的情绪和神秘感。似乎在暗示一段画面以外的故事和世界。作为 Ubisoft 前任艺术总监,他的作品灵感正来源于电子游戏和其中的虚拟世界。

Wong almost never traveled as a child. But when he landed a job after graduation and moved to Montreal, Canada, the world opened up for him. “I didn’t really have the money to travel growing up,” Wong recalls. “The first time I went to Tokyo was in 2014 for business, and I immediately knew I wanted to come back.” These work trips inspired him to take photos, mainly on his phone at first. But beyond creating visual travel logs for himself and close friends, he also shot reference images for work. “One time in Tokyo I did a full sweep of an alley, up and down every surface to capture the weather and texture and grime. Everyone who works in games takes reference photos.”


小时候,Liam 一直没有机会外出旅游。但当他毕业后来到加拿大蒙特利尔工作,眼前像是打开了全新的世界。“我小时候真的没有钱去旅游。直到 2014 年出差时才第一次去了东京,我当时就觉得我会再来的。”Liam Wong 回忆道。出差途中他开始拍摄照片,最初主要都是用手机来拍摄。除了拍照给自己留念或分享给好友,他还会拍摄工作用的参考图片。“一次东京之行,我在一条小巷子里来回拍照,用相机捕捉下每一个角落,包括天气、周围环境的表面和污垢。因为从事游戏行业工作,需要用照片的形式进行参考。”

Once Wong made the leap and bought a DSLR camera, his coworkers taught him the basics of photography. “That was a steep learning curve, but there were a lot of people around me who didn’t mind answering my stupid questions,” he laughs. “Sometimes at lunch we’d walk around alleyways and they’d show me tricks. I already knew what was wrong with the photos I took. It was the technical side that was the hard part.” Eventually, he started an Instagram and the immediate feedback the platform offered motivated him to take his photography further. 

Soon the desire to focus on his own creative endeavors took hold and Wong decided to leave his job. “We had just wrapped up a big game and I had a bunch of compensation time, plus my apartment lease was about to run out, so it was like, now or never,” he says. He moved back to the UK for a while and then spent a few months in Japan, trying to figure out what he wanted to do. All the while, he continued to take photos, building a body of work that was slowly gaining a loyal online following. “It felt  much better working on my own ideas.”


随着 Liam 的摄影技术快速进步,他又买了一台单反相机,请同事教他摄影的基础知识。“那是拍照技术直线提升的时期,幸好我身边有许多人不介意回答我各种愚蠢的问题。”他笑着说,“有时候吃完午饭,我们会在小巷里闲逛,他们就会跟我分享一些拍照的技巧。我知道自己拍摄的照片问题出在哪里。技术是最困难的部分。”后来,他开设了一个 Instagram 帐号,在上面分享照片,从平台上获得的即时反馈,也促使他更进一步提升自己的摄影水平。

不久后, Liam 想要专注于自己的创作,遂辞去了工作。“我们当时刚刚结束了一个大型的游戏项目,我有一堆补休的时间,再加上我的公寓租期快到了,所以我当时就觉得机不可失,时不再来。”他说道。搬回英国生活了一段时间,他又去日本呆了几个月,试图理清自己想做的事情。在这期间,他没有中断摄影,慢慢累积自己的作品,在网上也吸引了越来越多的忠实粉丝。“能够按照自己的想法来创作,这感觉好多了。”

When Wong comes across a scene he likes,  it’s not as straightforward as pressing the shutter button. It’s often a game of patience. He’ll wait for the right moment—for a person to enter the frame or for day to turn to night.  Sometimes, though, he admits there is an element of luck. “There’s one picture of a girl in a taxi that I didn’t even know I took until I went back and looked at my camera roll.”


遇到喜欢的场景时,Liam 不会急于按下快门,这是一个讲究耐心的游戏。他要等待合适的时机,譬如等一个人进入画面,或是等待白天变成夜晚。不过,他承认有时候运气也很重要。“有一张照片是一个坐在出租车里的女孩,我当时都不知道自己拍了这张照片,直到我回去,翻看相机里的图片才知道。”

Rather than simply capturing reality as is, Wong’s snapshots are often just a base he uses to build his final image. “For the longest time, I didn’t consider myself a photographer, because I thought photography is about the shot itself with limited editing. I never thought to take artistic liberties,” he says. It wasn’t until he found a book of work by Syd Mead, a concept artist of Blade Runner fame, that Wong began seeing the creative possibilities of the medium. “My approach to photography is similar to filmmaking, in how they take a shot and build off it with color grades and adding effects. It’s less photography in the traditional sense and more of a hybrid. I’m not a photojournalist.”


Liam 的摄影并非简单地捕捉现实,而是他用来创作最终作品的基础。“在很长的时间,我不认为自己是一个摄影师,因为我觉得摄影主要是拍摄,对照片只能做少量的后期编辑。我从未想过真正的艺术自由创作。”他说。直到他读了《银翼杀手》的概念艺术指导赛得·米德(Syd Mead)的一本作品集,他才开始看到媒介创作的可能性。“我的摄影方式与电影制作类似,在电影制作中,人们拍摄影像后,通过颜色处理和添加特效来打造最终的成品。从传统意义上来说,这不算摄影,更多是一种混合创作。毕竟我也不是摄影记者。”

Earlier this year, he announced a photo book titled TO:KY:OO, which marks the first time he worked with print. “There are some photos that look better on the screen than they do in print,” he says.“I even had to re-edit shots for the book.” His publishers are also helping him put together gallery shows, which he plans to debut in different cities early next year. “In Canada, they printed up one image the size of a door frame. I’d never seen one of my photos with that much detail before. I pretty much stick to a 13-inch Macbook screen, so it was overwhelming. The possibilities of print are exciting.” The book is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.

These days, photography has completely taken over his life. Wong can’t go anywhere without a camera. If he doesn’t at the very least have a phone to take photos, he feels guilty: “It’s very hard to turn off now. The thing I love most is getting that one perfect shot and going home to look at it. It’s really rewarding.”


今年早些时候,他为摄影作品集《TO:KY:OO》做了预推广,这是他第一次接触印刷作品。“有一些照片在屏幕上看起来比打印出来的效果更好。”他说,“我甚至要为出版的书重新编辑了一些照片。”他的出版商也在帮他策划画廊展览,计划于明年初在不同城市亮相。“在加拿大,照片会被放大到门框那么大的尺寸。我从来没有见过我的照片呈现出如此多的细节。我一直都是用 13 英寸的 Macbook 笔记本处理图片,所以打印出来的照片让我很震撼。印刷作品的效果真是令人兴奋。”本书现在已可在亚马逊接受预定。

现在,摄影已经成为了他生活的重心。无论去到哪里,Liam 都要带着自己的相机。如果身边连手机这样能拍照片的设备都没有,他就会油然而生一种罪恶感:“我已经无法停止摄影了。我现在最想做的事情是拍到理想的照片,然后回家看,真的很有成就感。”

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Website: www.liamwong.com
Instagram: @liamwong

 

Contributor: Mike Steyels
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li


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网站: www.liamwong.com
Instagram: @liamwong

 

供稿人: Mike Steyels
英译中: Olivia Li

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Your Attention, Please 看与被看,现实与影像

October 14, 2019 2019年10月14日

Whether we’re broadcasting on social media or captured by closed-circuit cameras, we’re always being watched. How do we act when we know there’s always an audience?

This is the theme of RECONSCIOUS, the SS20 collection from fashion designer Ximon Lee, released under his eponymous fashion label. Now that social media allow us to seek attention and validation from friends and strangers, Lee asks whether the images we show online are our true selves.


当代社会,无论在社交媒体上还是在监控设备下,人们的一举一动都被他人注视。而面对无处不在的观众,人们的注意力反而成为媒体争相抢夺的稀缺资源,在这样的情况下,我们究竟该怎么办?

设计师 Ximon Lee 将这一主题贯穿在 2020 年春夏系列 “RECONSCIOUS” 当中,并由他的同名品牌 XIMONLEE 推出。Lee 认为,社交媒体、镜头既然能够帮助我们获得更多来自朋友和陌生人的关注,那我们在线上的形象是真实还是虚假的呢?

At the recent runway show for the new collection, Lee brought this question into sharp relief by installing surveillance equipment throughout the space and broadcasting the audience’s every move and gesture on screens in real-time. As attendees watched the show, the cameras were watching them. Models filed past in crushed velvet, delicate knits, cold metal, and glossy leather, showing off flawless silhouettes. Vibrant reds popped out of the otherwise restrained palette, while blurry black-and-white designs evoked the oversized surveillance footage playing on the screens behind them. Beyond his materials and colors, Lee’s distinctive textures give this series a bewitching luxurious quality.


在本季秀场里,Ximon 将这一思考呈现出来——秀场内各个角落都安放了监控设备,将人们的一举一动即时转播在不同屏幕上。当在座嘉宾观看走秀的同时,镜头也在盯着他们看。模特们一身利落穿行其间,无论是压碎的天鹅绒、细腻的针织、闪亮的皮革还是冰冷的的金属,无不精细考究地勾勒出身体的形态,节制的色彩应用使得那抹鲜红的出现如油画高光一般令人兴奋。低清的黑白印花元素引人联想至那些巨大的实时画面。而在材质与色彩之外,Ximon 一如既往的独创性面料更额外为整个系列添上一些神秘的高级质感。

所有这些元素结合在一起,在凝视与被凝视间碰撞再生。

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Instagram@ximonlee
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Contributor: Shou Xing
Photographer: Chan Qu


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供稿人: 寿星
摄影师: 凤阳

A Study in Contradictions 混凝土丛林中的传道士

October 11, 2019 2019年10月11日

When I first sat down with Howie Lee in Beijing, I asked him about the EP he’d released a few days earlier. He blinked at me in confusion, and I began to wonder whether I had made some mistake. “Socialism Core Values III?” I said tentatively, and he laughed. “Oh, that’s garbage,” he said. “Just edits, simple stuff.”

I had, in fact, made a mistake: Socialism Core Values III was part of a trio of more casual mixtapes, full of tracks sampling music from grandiose socialist anthems sung in televised Spring Festival galas, 1980s Chinese pop hits, and old folk songs. The night before our meeting, I had watched him litter a DJ set at Beijing’s Zhao Dai club with these tracks and more like them. The audience had responded with joyous disbelief. At one point he played an old Chinese rock song he hadn’t touched up at all—just put the song on and stepped back, watching as the Chinese in the crowd roared the lyrics, and grinned widely, raising his arms to the ceiling and belting out the chorus with them.


第一次在北京和 Howie Lee(李化迪)见面时,我问起他前几天发行的单曲。他懵然地看着我,让我怀疑自己是不是说错了什么。“《社会主义核心价值观III》?”我试探着说,他听后大笑起来。“哦,那是随便弄的。”他说,“就简单编辑了一下。”

事实上,我确实弄错了。《社会主义核心价值观III》只是他即兴打造的混音带三部曲之一,其中采样了春节晚会上气势宏伟的歌曲,还有 1980 年代的中国流行乐和民歌,都是一些不常被用来混音的声音片段。我们见面的前一晚,他在北京 “招待所” 俱乐部(Zhao Dai club)里放歌,整晚放的都是这些音乐。台下观众始料未及,反响十分热烈。表演过程中,李化迪甚至直接播放了一首完全没有经过混音的中国老摇滚曲目。当播放键按下,台下的观众狂喜着大吼歌词,他在 DJ 台上后退一步并举高双手,与大伙儿一起合唱起来。

The audience clearly found something culturally validating, even empowering, about hearing Lee update this type of music, so often regarded as cloying or tacky, into something danceable. But Lee’s point is that, when DJing, he plays a mix of experimental, underground music and old Chinese songs; in China, he says, this works better than anything else. “If you go to the UK, or anywhere else, you hear the local hits. We play Western hits too because we grew up with them—but we don’t want to abandon our Chinese memories.” When I mentioned that I had Chinese friends who rolled their eyes at such music, he laughed, and then grew serious. He admitted that he too had gone through a period of deriding the saccharine side of Chinese music but now sees such an attitude as unproductive hatred of his own country’s past. “At one point I thought, well, this kind of music is too much, but it’s who I am.”

Lee’s simple remixes reflect his audience’s nostalgia as well as his own. “So many times,” he recalls, “I’d get out of the club drunk at three a.m., get in a taxi, and hear these songs. I’d feel like crying, and not know why.” Sampling them now is a mark of respect: why would he sample a song he doesn’t like?


李化迪将这些一度被视为俗气甚至是令人腻烦的音乐进行重新演绎,加入了强劲的律动,混合了实验、地下音乐和经典中文老歌。他认为这样的音乐在中国很吃香,能让观众的自身文化受到肯定,同时带有一种震慑心扉的能量,“在英国,或者其他国家,你都可以在排队上听到当地的流行音乐。我们也会放欧美流行音乐,因为我们从小就是听这些音乐长大的,但同时我们也不想放弃中国本土的特色。”当我提到我的一些中国朋友很鄙视这样的音乐时,他放声大笑,尔后表情又严肃起来。他承认自己也有段时间看不起这种过于矫情的中国音乐,但现在的他却觉得这样的态度,纯粹是对国家过去的不满,毫无益处。“后来我就想,好吧,虽然这样的音乐是太过了,但这是我们的音乐。”

在李化迪最近的混音带中,总能反映出他和观众对过去的挽怀。他回忆道:“有很多次,我在凌晨三点,醉着走出俱乐部,上了出租车,耳边就响起这些歌曲。我想哭,但不知道为什么。”现在,他以这些音乐采样是出于尊重的心情。毕竟,用自己不喜欢的声音来创作,对他来说太没必要了。

Lee initially came to DJing by way of punk and rock music. “Nothing has hit me harder than rock did,” he told me, pointing out the rock hits I’d heard him play the night before, the kind of thing he used to DJ in college parties. “I used to play bass in a punk band for a few years in university, we would play underground clubs, Mao Livehouse, places like that.” He left the band around the time he graduated college when they entered talks with a major Taiwanese label that Lee felt was too mainstream. “I didn’t want to sign to that stupid thing,” he says, waving a hand dismissively. “So I quit.”

It was then, around 2009, that he started DJing and producing in earnest. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given his past as a bass player, his 2010 release 0010111 00100000 010001000 0110001 01111001 0111011 is full of bass-heavy tracks that sound as though they belong in a club setting.  Coming up in the EDM trap wave, by 2012 Lee had gone so far as to secure an official remix for hip-hop great Snoop Dogg. Then came a geographical shift: feeling inspired by the scene in the UK, he moved to London to do a master’s degree in sound art. Starting in 2014, his tracks became cleaner and smoother, with finer detail, more groove, and a noticeable attention to the design of the sound.

But Lee says with a shrug that he found the UK scene less complicated than he had imagined, so rather than stay for very long, he learned what he could in a year and decided to bring it back home.  Upon his return to China, his label Do Hits Records solidified a reputation as a touchstone of China’s underground music scene, releasing volume after volume of compilation albums featuring a wide array of forward-thinking producers.


起初,李化迪是从朋克和摇滚乐转向电子音乐的。“没有什么音乐比摇滚更能打动我。”他指着那些摇滚唱片对我说道,这是他昨天晚上播放的音乐。“我曾经在大学的朋克乐队里担任贝斯手,我们当时就在地下俱乐部、Mao Livehouse 这些地方表演。”大学毕业时他退出了乐队,当时乐队开始和台湾一间大型的唱片公司接触,但李化迪觉得这家唱片公司太主流了。“我不想签那种烂合约。”他说,挥手表示不屑,“所以我就退出了乐队。”

2009 年左右,他开始尝试 DJ 和音乐制作。2010 年,曾经的贝司手发行了一张贝斯味儿十足的专辑《0010111 00100000 010001000 0110001 01111001 0111011》,留下了俱乐部音乐的足迹。随着在 EDM trap 浪潮中崭露头角过后,2012 年,李化迪被说唱歌手 Snoop Dogg 力邀参加了官方 Remix 的制作。之后,他来到英国,在当地多元的音乐场景的熏陶下,让李化迪倍受激发,于是他来到伦敦攻读声音艺术的硕士学位。从 2014 年开始,他的音乐变得越来越简洁、流畅,细节更出众,听上去变得更有律动,对声音的布置也显得更为突出。

但李化迪逐渐发现,英国的音乐场景并没有像想象中那样高深莫测,所以并不适合长时间居住。一年后,他又带着自己学到的知识回到了中国。回国后的他创立了电子音乐厂牌 Do Hits Records,该厂牌迅速晋升为中国地下音乐圈的中流砥柱,接二连三地发行了数张合集,这些作品是都来自五湖四海具有前瞻性的音乐制作人们。

Listen to some of our Howie Lee’s earlier works below:


点击即可试听几首李化迪的早期作品:

Over the years, Lee slowly started to add in more sounds inspired by Chinese music. Concerned that the West has undermined Chinese people’s confidence in their own musical traditions, he set out to “bring China back from Western cultural colonization.” Lee once described himself as a nationalist, though in our conversation he amends this to “civilizationalist,” noting that Chinese culture extends beyond the People’s Republic, as well as the malleability throughout the history of China’s borders, which have included very different people at different times. Still, he says, “We have to accept that we’re different, politically, historically, culturally.”He cites the theory that Westerners exist more as individuals, whereas Chinese people exist in a Confucian relationship to those around them. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing. We can still be friends.” This conviction has led him to absorb and replicate the sounds of China and the rest of the world. He does not shy from synthesizing these diverse sounds with the kind of music he was making before, but he does avoid privileging sounds of the West over the rest.


多年以来,李化迪开始慢慢吸收中国音乐精髓。在他看来,欧美音乐的影响让中国人对自己的音乐失去了信心,于是,他开始着手于 “让中国摆脱西方文化殖民” 的创作方式。李化迪曾说自己是一个 “民族主义者”,而在我们的谈话中,他把这种说法改为了 “文明主义”。他认为中华文化的范畴远远超出于了共和国的定义,它的延伸性超越了历史上中国的边界,涵盖着不同时代下的特定人群。他说:“必须承认,我们在政治、历史、文化背景上的不同。”他指出,西方更强调个人,而中国则更强调以儒家伦理维系的人际关系。“但我不认为这是一件坏事。大家还是可以做朋友的。”这种信念促使他不断吸收和运用中国和世界其他地区的音乐元素,毫不闭塞地将各种多元的声音与他自身的音乐风格融合,创作时也会有意避免让欧美音乐元素喧宾夺主。

With his 2015 release Mù Chè Shān Chū, by far his longest project at the time, he incorporated more eclectic sounds from a wider range of influences. The listener hears not just punk and electronic, but also hip-hop, classical, folk, and a noticeable increase in Chinese strings and percussion. On his following two EPs, Homeless (2017) and Natural Disaster (2018), he honed an aesthetic that’s at times disturbing, full of distorted samples of folk music from China and its neighbors. He increasingly used vocals, but stretched and pitched them bizarrely, pairing them with strings and percussion edited to climax at unexpected times or in unexpected ways.


2015 年,李化迪推出个人迄今为止最长的专辑《木屮山出》,融合了来自领域更广、更丰富的音乐元素。你不仅能听到朋克和电子音乐,还有嘻哈音乐、古典音乐、民俗音乐的融入,其中中国味的弦乐和打击乐元素也明显增多。在随后推出的两张 EP(《无家》(2017)和《自然灾害》(2018))中,他琢磨出一种富有煽动力的美学风格,运用了大量来自中国及其他亚州地区民间音乐,进行了风格上大刀阔斧的改编。相比于以往,他在作品中加入了更多人声采样,以拉伸和扭曲的怪异方式呈现,搭配古老的弦乐和打击乐,以出人意料的方式达至高潮。

Listen to select tracks from Mù Chè Shān Chū, Homeless, and Natural Disaster below:


点击即可试听几首来自《木屮山出》、《无家》与《自然灾害》的精选歌曲:

Technology has opened doors to more and more sounds, and Lee seems intent on using them all. His music is a thousand things at once, with familiar sounds finding a new expression. Lee says as much when speaking of his transformation of folk, which he describes as a “kind of a deconstruction—destroy the old stuff to build the new old.”

“A lot of people doing traditional folk music don’t like what I do. They’re really hardcore,” he says, with obvious relish. “I appreciate that so much. I think they should preserve their tradition because they come from that background. But I don’t come from that background. One day maybe they’ll understand me.” Lee’s folk sounds are thrilling and unsettling—clearly drawn from tradition but unfamiliar enough to make you sit up and listen.

The result is a global amalgam of sound, at once archaic and futuristic, pure and broken, melding ancient sounds with the noise of industry and the internet age. The contradiction is a reflection of a society struggling with how its cultural norms and traditions collide with technology, increased access to the rest of the world, and its own swift development. Given how well these elements blend in his music, there’s reason to hope they can do so in the rest of the world, too. Lee sees the contradiction as something that goes hand-in-hand with the immense amount of capital circulating in China. “It’s destroying a lot of stuff, but it’s destroying and rebuilding.”


科技的发展让声音的纬度变得更加丰富多彩,而对李化迪来说,所有声音都可以成为素材。他的音乐海纳百川,擅长在熟悉的乐曲中摸索出新的表达方式。在谈到自己对民俗音乐的重新演绎时,李化迪形容那是 “一种解构主义”——通过摧毁旧事物,构建出旧事物的新面貌。“很多做传统民俗音乐的人不喜欢我的音乐,他们是真的硬核。”他笑嘻嘻地说道,“我很欣赏他们。我觉得他们就应该保留自己的传统,因为那是他们的文化背景。但我没有那样的背景,也许有一天他们可以理解我的创作。”李化迪的民俗音乐作品总能营造出令人鼓舞又不安的气氛——这显然受到传统音乐的影响,让人熟悉却又感到陌生,让听者想要抓住歌曲的每一个细节。

李化迪的音乐成品是全球音乐的杂交体,既古老又充满未来主义,纯粹、破碎,将古老的经典音乐与工业和互联网时代的噪音融为一体。彼此矛盾的元素,折射出这个社会的现状——文化道德准则、传统在科技与社会快速发展情形下的苦苦挣扎。这些元素在他的音乐中融合得如此出色,令人忍不住期待在世界其他地方也能出现这样的音乐。李化迪认为这种矛盾与中国社会资本的大量流动息息相关。“这种现象破坏了很多东西,但它在破坏同时也是在重建。”

Listeners can expect further explorations of these collisions to continue on Howie Lee’s new album, titled Tian Di Bu Ren. Lee’s shift from pure electronic to the inclusion of more natural sounds was on full display on the Do Hits 8th anniversary tour earlier this year. Though he mostly performed surrounded by keyboards and MIDI controllers before a huge screen full of computer-generated imagery, he also came to the front of the stage to sing unmic’d, kneeling with a stringed instrument on his lap. He recites for me a list of instruments he used in the recording process—“a lot of drums, jazzy drums, saxophones, a little bit of zurna flute, bass, guitar”—then adds that he’s been playing with programs on his iPad and more complicated editing. He’s even incorporated artificial intelligence software, which he feeds samples to manipulate and copy. “It generates this weird-sounding, wild, and crazy stuff. Something a human cannot make.”

He is also beginning to experiment more with lyrics. Previously, on tracks like “A Junkie’s Whispering” on the Homeless EP, inspired by a fascination with music in languages he did not know, he rapped in technologically pitched-down nonsense syllables. “I listen to music in other languages and have no idea what they’re saying but it’s so great—so why can’t I make something up? That was my point, for a while. But now I’ve started to write lyrics, I think lyrics can do good things,” he says. Thematically, some songs on the new album are inspired by ethnic groups such as the Miao living in China’s mountains, and by the influx of those people to the cities, where they live in the new mountains: apartment buildings. “They have this culture in the mountains in China where they sing to the women, back and forth—I’m kind of writing the ‘loneliness mountain songs’ for people living in the concrete jungle.”


在李化迪的新专辑《天地不仁》中,你会听到他对这些对立面的进一步探索。今年早些时候,李化迪在 Do Hits 八周年巡演派对上将全电子声效的表演方式抛之脑后,并融入更多现实的声音。即便你还会在大屏幕前,看到他忙不迭地操作着键盘和 MIDI 控制器,但那些未经处理的人声以及架在大腿上的弦乐器,不由让人眼前一亮。他为我一一罗列了演出中用到的乐器——“各类鼓、爵士鼓、萨克斯、唢呐、贝斯、吉他”,然后在 iPad 上进行更为复杂的编曲。他甚至加入人工智能软件,输入采样,让软件自行操作和复制。“软件可以生成各种奇怪、夸张和疯狂的效果。这是人类做不到的。”

这一次,李化迪还尝试了更多歌词方面的创作。此前在 EP《无家》中,出于对未知语言的迷恋,他用胡编乱造的喃喃废话创作了歌曲《A Junkie’s Whispering》。李化迪说:“有时候我听外语歌,也不知道他们在唱什么,但是听起来很棒,就想我为什么不能也胡编乱造一下呢?有一阵子我都是这么想的。但现在我开始写歌词了,我觉得歌词也可以很有用。”从主题上讲,新专辑中部分歌曲灵感为居住在中国山区的少数民族,以及这些少数民族涌入城市后居住在 “新大山”——公寓楼的现象。“在中国的山区有一种文化,男人会和女人对唱山歌,我这算是为生活在混凝土丛林中的人们写的寂寞山歌吧。”

At the time of writing, three singles have been released in advance of the album. The first, “Tomorrow Can Not Be Waited” [sic], featured a curious music video that explored the relationship between Daoism and virtual reality. Next came “Enter the Tigerwoods” and “21st Century Suicide,” both of which blur the lines between electronic music and more traditional recording techniques. They both display fascinating continuation of Lee’s work, but “21st Century Suicide” is especially striking as a three-act piece. Beginning with a single staticky bass note, it features Lee’s heartbreaking vocals and a mix of Chinese and Western instruments, and ends with a flute playing over a blast of synthesizers and frenetic drumming that build up and then fade out into a single breathy bass note that seems to disappear into the wind.


写下本文的时候,专辑的三首单曲已先于专辑发布。第一首单曲《明日不可待》配套了一支令人着魔的 MV,其中探讨了道教与虚拟现实之间的关系。接下来是《入老虎林》和《二十一世纪自杀》。两首作品都展示出李化迪一贯迷人的音乐风格,但《二十一世纪自杀》三幕式的结构尤其突出。歌曲以冷静的低音开始,随后李化迪令人心碎的人声悄然来临,长笛在合成器和鼓声中狂舞,节奏逐渐加快,又逐渐转淡,化为如呼吸般沉迷的低音,一下子消失在风中。

Listen to some of our favorite tracks from Howie Lee’s Tian Di Bu Ren below:


点击即可试听几首来自《天地不仁》的歌曲:

When I point out to Lee that his professed faith in the collective identities of culture and nation might be at odds with his idiosyncratic sound, he makes no attempt to reconcile these contradictions. He compares it to the search for the Way, as expressed in Daoism and Buddhism, and relates the story of one of Buddha’s followers asking him in confusion why he was telling people about the Way if it was truly so unexplainable. “The common argument is that once you start to talk about the Way, it disappears—the real Way is not something you can explain, but the Buddha still has to tell people it exists . . . This is the big conflict,” he says earnestly. “This is something I have to explore through my art, and the more I do it, the more I will understand.”

Lee’s music is something he creates to say what he can’t put into words yet, a manifestation of his search for the Way. He tells the story of his search to make sense of all the clashing elements of our modern world, complete with the sonic textures of everything from mountains to cities, from the real to the virtual, from the ancient to the futuristic. It’s a world so full of contradictions that, when one attempts description, it defies clear portrayal, slipping through the listener’s ears and ultimately beyond their grasp.

Tian Di Bu Ren can now be streamed on Apple Music, Spotify, NetEase Cloud Music, Xiami, and more.


我对李化迪说,他对文化和民族的集体认同信仰似乎与他特立独行的音乐格格不入,他却没有试图调和这些矛盾。他将这种矛盾比喻为道教和佛教中对“道”的探索,还讲了一个佛教故事:有佛教信徒困惑地问佛,如果“道”当真无法用言语解释,那他为什么还要向人们传“道”。“普遍的说法是,一旦您开始谈论‘道’,‘道’就消失了。真正的‘道’是无法解释的,但是佛仍然必须告诉人们道的存在……这是最大的矛盾。”他认真地说道,“这是我必须通过艺术进行探讨的问题。当我进行创作越多,也越来越明白。”

李化迪通过音乐来表达他无法言喻的事情,这是他对 “道” 的追寻。在讲述自己寻 “道” 的故事时,他融入了现代社会各种冲突的要素,从山脉到城市、从真实到虚拟、从古老到未来,并力求理解它们的真正意义。世界本身就存在很多矛盾体,当你试图描述时,它们好像并没有那么明确。这些相互矛盾的声音闯入听者耳廓,让人猝不及防。

《天地不仁》现已登陆网易云虾米SpotifyApple Music 等各大国内外音乐平台。

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Contributor: Kiril Bolotnikov
Photographer: David Yen
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li


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供稿人: Kiril Bolotnikov
摄影师: David Yen
英译中: Olivia Li

Drawing a Crowd 微胖界的狂欢节

October 4, 2019 2019年10月4日

Shin He-mi is a Korean illustrator and muralist who has a tough time staying organizedbut you’d never guess it from her art. Working under the name Seenaeme, she creates crowded compositions populated by adorable, pudgy characters that seem to be battling for space with the mishmash of landscapes, buildings, and objects that form the backdrop. Despite the visual congestion, the work never feels too busy or cluttered. It’s a distinct aesthetic that appears across Shin’s body of work, which ranges from pen-and-paper doodles, to digital illustrations, to larger-than-life murals.


韩国插画师兼墙绘艺术家 Shin He-mi 一向非常努力地让自己变得井井有条——即使你从她的作品里永远也感受不到她是这样的人。以 Seenaeme 为艺名的她,作品中满是可爱的矮胖角色,画中的角色似乎正与背景中各种景观、建筑和物体争夺空间。尽管画面很丰富,但不会让人觉得太过拥挤和杂乱。这种独特的审美贯穿在 He-mi 的作品当中,囊括了她的纸笔手稿、数字插图,以及大过身高的壁画。

Storytelling is a vital part of Shin’s creative process. Starting with a specific narrative has led to some of her best work, and now, devising a complete story is the first step to any project. “When I see a blank canvas, I view it like it’s a cinema screen,” she says. “Inside that screen, I think about how I can start to develop my story and characters.” This penchant for great storytelling is also what inspired her to create homages to some of her favorite tales of all time, including Star Wars, Little Mermaid, Final Fantasy VII, and more.


讲故事是 He-mi 创作中至关重要的部分。一些她最好的作品,都会从一个具体的故事提纲展开,而现在,完整的故事也只是任何项目开始的第一步。“当我面对一块空白的画布时,我会把它想像成电影屏幕,”她说。“在那个屏幕里,我会思考如何开始发展我的故事和角色。” He-mi 喜爱出色的讲述方式,这也激发她重新塑造那些优秀的作品,包括《星球大战》、《小美人鱼》和《最终幻想VII》等等。

It’s not just works of fantasy that get her creative juices flowing. Many of her works are based on ordinary moments that she’s observed in her day-to-day to life. Yet she doesn’t believe in being a detached spectator, and building connections with others is of equal importance to her. It’s also the primary reason for her interest in mural art. “When I draw in the streets, I get direct feedback from the crowd. The fact that my drawings are immediately on display to them fills me with excitement. It’s also fascinating to me that any random passerby can inadvertently become an audience member.”


除了脑洞大开的作品,He-mi 还从各种素材中迸发灵感。她的很多作品都是基于日常生活中观察到的平凡时刻。但她不认为自己是一个冷漠的旁观者,对她来说,与他人建立联系也是同等重要的。这也是她对墙绘艺术感兴趣的主要原因。“当我在大街上画画时,我能从人群中得到非常直接的反馈。我也能非常兴奋地向他们展出我当下的作品。任何路过的人都可能无意中成为观众,这对我来说是一件很令人着迷的事。”

Like our stories? Follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Website: www.seenaeme.net
Behance: ~/seenaeme
Instagram: @seenaeme

 

Contributor: David Yen
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li
Images Courtesy of Seenaeme


喜欢我们的故事?欢迎关注我们 Neocha 的微博微信

 

网站: www.seenaeme.net
Behance: ~/seenaeme
Instagram: @seenaeme

 

供稿人: David Yen
英翻中: Olivia Li
图片由 Seenaeme 提供

 

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Studio by Sol “这真的是文身吗?”

September 30, 2019 2019年9月30日

On a busy street in Hongdae sits a large café with bare white walls. Despite the underwhelming decor, dozens of people come and go every hour, and most of the visitors seem to share a common trait: they’ve all got tattoos.

This is Studio by Sol, the biggest tattoo shop in South Korea. Founded by tattoo artist Sol and his business partner Inho, the atelier has taken on dozens of apprentices since it opened in 2017. It’s now home to more than 30 tattoo artists and attracts thousands of domestic and international customers every year.


在韩国弘大一条繁忙的街道上,有一间四面白墙的大型咖啡馆。每隔一小时,就会有几十人来来去去,他们中大部分人似乎都有一个共同的特点:身上都有文身。

这里是韩国最大的文身店 Studio by Sol,由文身艺术家 Sol 和他的合作伙伴 Inho 共同创立。从 2017 年开业至今,这间工作室已经招了几十名学徒,现在拥有超过 30 名文身艺术家,每年都会吸引数千名来自国内外的客户。

Sol had never considered pursuing a career as a tattoo artist until he met Inho during his year of obligatory military service. He had been pursuing a degree in sculpture and had just taken a leave of absence, because he felt uncertain about the future. All that changed the first time he saw a tattoo. “Inho had gotten a tattoo while he was home for the holidays,” he recalls. “I got to see it when he came back to the base, and I remember thinking, ‘I can do it better.’”


Sol 以前从未想过成为一名文身艺术家,直到他在服兵役那一年认识了 Inho。当时他正在攻读雕塑学位,因为对未来的迷茫感而刚刚申请了休假。转变的契机是他看到的第一个文身。“Inho 放假回家的时候刺了一个文身。回来军队时,我看到了它,我记得自己当时就在想,‘我可以刺得更好。’” 他回忆道。

So he decided to learn to tattoo. At the time, most South Korean tattoo artists worked with the Irezumi and Old School styles, but what Sol wanted to express in his tattoos was altogether different, and he decided he’d learn by himself.

“I wanted to focus on smaller designs, because of the social stigma around tattoos in South Korea,” he says. “Something that’s small and easy to hide, but something I put a lot of effort in. Naturally, the tattoos became very detailed.” Sol also emphasizes the importance of texture. “I wanted to work on tattoos that were no different from what you could draw on paper with colored pencils. I wanted people to wonder, ‘Is that really a tattoo?’ when they saw my work.”

After inking his first design on a friend, Sol fell in love with the human element of the medium. “I thought I’d just work on tattoos to make money for my sculpting career, but it took over because it was so fun,” he says.” You get immediate feedback and you get to interact with clients, who I learn so much from.”


于是,他决定学习文身。当时,大多数韩国文身艺术家主要都是创作日式文身(Irezumi)或是西式的 Old School 风格,但 Sol 想要创作截然不同的风格,于是他决定自学。

Sol 表示:“因为韩国的社会对文身存在偏见,所以我想设计精致一点的文身,小小的,容易隐藏,但也需要我花一定的功夫才能完成。所以,最终的图案会非常细致。”Sol 还很强调质感的重要性,“我想让文身最后看上去跟你用彩色铅笔在纸上画的画差不多。我希望人们在看到我的作品时会想,‘这真的是文身吗?’”。

给他的一个朋友刺了第一个文身作品之后,Sol 爱上了这种充满人性元素的艺术。“我一开始是想通过文身打工挣钱来支持我的雕塑艺术,但现在已经反过来了,因为文身真是太有趣了。”他说,“你可以得到即时的反馈,还可以和客户有很多互动,从他们身上我常常能学到很多东西。”

Sol recalls one of the more meaningful experiences he had early in his career. A couple flew in from abroad, wanting to get matching tattoos of their cat. “They were originally a cis heterosexual couple, but one of the partners was transitioning. Yet, they stayed together, and I was so inspired by the breadth of their love and understanding, that I was happy to work on a tattoo symbolizing their love and their relationship.”

This love of building human connections is also part of what led Sol to teach. “I wanted to share my knowledge,” he says. “But I didn’t want to teach art—style is something that should be developed by the artist, instead of being taught.  I could teach the technical skills for those who already had distinct artistic styles and wanted to express their art in tattoo form.”

A new artist will typically train for about three months at Studio by Sol. “For a new artist’s first tattoo, I’ll be right next to them to help out. I know what mistakes they’re going to make, since I’ve made them myself. But they’re talented artists, so they catch on quickly. Basically, all I’m helping out with is how to set up the machine. There have been no accidents so far—no lost friendships or anything,” he says with a grin.


Sol 回忆起他从事文身工作后一次很有意义的经历。一对夫妇从国外来到韩国,想文下他们养的猫。“他们原本是一对普通的异性恋情侣,但其中一个人正在变性的过程中。可他们还是在一起。这种大爱和相互理解让我很受启发,我很高兴可以给他们纹这样一个象征着爱和联系的文身。”

出于这种对人与人之间的联系的热爱,Sol 教的一部分。他说:“我想分享我的知识,但我不想传授我的美学风格。因为我觉得美学风格应该由艺术家个人自行培养,那不是可以被教导的东西。我只可以教那些已经有个人艺术风格和想通过文身表达自己艺术的人。”

每位新文身艺术家通常会在 Studio by Sol 接受约三个月的培训。“新手文身师刺第一个文身时,我都会在旁边帮忙。我知道他们可能要犯的错误,毕竟我都经历过。但他们都是很有才华的艺术家,所以很快就能掌握好。基本上,我要帮忙的只是设置好机器。到目前为止都还没有出过任何意外,也没有发生什么让友谊破碎或不快的事情。”他咧嘴笑着说。

Sol never imagined his tattoo shop would host so many resident artists. Tattooists typically went out and created their own studios after an apprenticeship. “That’s what I did, and that’s what was common in this field,” he says. “But many of the new artists at the time were women, and they seemed to be worried about having a space where they could work safely, especially given the legal issues in South Korea.” (In Korea, among other barriers, it is illegal to work as a tattoo artist without a medical license).


Sol 从未想过他的文身工作室可以吸引到这么多常驻文身师。一般来说,文身师当完学徒后都会离开去创立自己的工作室。“我就是这么做的,这也是这个行业的惯例。但现在有许多新文身师都是女性,她们似乎比较担心能不能找到一个可以安心工作的地方,特别是考虑到韩国相关法律的问题。”(在韩国,除了其他要求之外,没有医疗执照的情况下从事文身工作也是违法的。)

In establishing their shop, Sol and Inho sought to build a welcoming space that would attract even people who aren’t into tattoos. “So many new artists end up not succeeding because they fail to attract customers, even though they’ve got the skills,” Inho says. “From a businessperson’s perspective, I thought what Sol was trying to do made sense for everyone. It was important that we made the place approachable, especially given the social stigma around tattoos. So we decided to set up a café as well.”

Sol also hopes that their space can promote artists outside of the tattoo scene. “I was lucky enough to find success as a tattoo artist, but as someone who’s been trained in art, I know how hard it can be to find platforms to share your work,” he says. “That’s why the café in the shop is also meant to double as an art gallery, though it’s empty at the moment. And it’s my dream to fill it with different artists’ works, to make art as a whole more accessible to the public.”


在成立工作室时,Sol 和 Inho 的想法是打造一个温馨的空间,让即使是对文身没有兴趣的人也被吸引进来。Inho 说:“许多年轻艺术家失败的原因是他们不能吸引顾客,即使他们很有才华。从商人的角度来看,我认为 Sol 试图做的事情能让所有人产生共鸣。重要的是,我们要让这个地方能吸引到所有人,尤其是考虑到韩国社会对文身的偏见,所以我们决定同时开设一家咖啡馆。”

Sol 也希望自己的工作室可以推广文身艺术之外的艺术家。“我很幸运能够成为一名成功的文身艺术家,但作为一名读过艺术专业的人,我也很清楚要找到平台分享自己的作品是一件很困难的事情。”他说,“正因如此,我们希望咖啡馆同时成为一间艺术画廊,虽然现在还是空的。但我的梦想是在这里展示出不同艺术家的作品,拉近艺术与公众的距离。”

Like our stories? Follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Instagram: @studiobysol

 

Contributor: Joe Park
Images Courtesy of Studio by Sol


喜欢我们的故事?欢迎关注我们 Neocha 的微博微信

 

Instagram: @studiobysol

 

供稿人: Joe Park
图片由 Studio by Sol 提供

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Bangkok Phosphors 夜色下的魔力曼谷

September 27, 2019 2019年9月27日

Cody Ellingham’s first impression of Bangkok wasn’t visual, but literary, through Yukio Mishima’s Temple of Dawn, which takes place in Bangkok in the 1940s and 1950s. The vivid description of the city’s canals and temples left an impression on this globetrotting photographer. “I wanted to come here and see how the modern city had changed with my own eyes,” he says. “I found that the canals had been mostly replaced by congested concrete roads, but still the city had a kind of magic to it.”


环球旅行摄影师 Cody Ellingham 对曼谷的第一印象并非来自视觉,而是来自三岛由纪夫的文学著作《Temple of Dawn》,书中描绘了上世纪四十至五十年代曼谷的城市面貌,生动的文字让 Cody Ellingham 对那里的运河与寺庙记忆犹存。他说:“我希望来到这里亲眼看看这座城市的当代变迁。如今,我发现很多运河都被拥挤不堪的混凝土马路替代,但整座城市依然有一种魔力存在。”

It’s a magic that he captures in Bangkok Phosphors, a stunning portrait of the Thai capital after dark. Similar to his documentations of other Asian metropolises, such as DERIVE and Shanghai Streets, his approach to seeking out shots was largely guided by instinct. “Bangkok was totally unknown for me, as it was my first time here,” he says. “I explored. I wandered, I talked to locals, and I took my time figuring out the city’s layout.”


这样的魔力被 Ellingham 用相机记录在《Bangkok Phosphors》系列作品中,描绘出泰国首都入夜时分令人着迷的城市肖像。与他曾为其他亚洲大都会拍摄的作品类似,比如《DERIVE》和《Shanghai Streets》,Ellingham 通常会根据自己的直觉和本能寻找镜头,“拍摄的时候是我第一次去曼谷,对我来说是完全未知的状态。想要搞清楚城市的布局,要多花点时间,我会把自己沉浸在城市的街道里,与当地人讲话,不断寻找探索的机会。”

As it does in Ellingham’s past works, architecture plays a key role in this photo essay. Bangkok Phosphors juxtaposes dilapidated buildings with futuristic structures to highlight the city’s tug-of-war between modernity and older ways of life, a competition which the former is winning. His palette, which in this series consists of cobalt blues and fluorescent cyans, is another crucial atmospheric detail. These cold tones call to mind the seamy metropolises of cyberpunk fiction, and it’s by design: by drawing comparisons between present-day reality and dystopian sci-fi, Ellingham seems to be asking viewers to think about how our choices today influence the future, and whether or not that’s a future we want to live in.

Cody Ellingham is now raising funds to turn Bangkok Phosphors into a photo book. Learn more on his Kickstarter.


在 Ellingham 过去的作品中,建筑往往是主角。《Bangkok Phosphor》系列作品是一场关于现代与传统的碰撞,让破败不堪的建筑在未来感的框架中胜出。同时,钴蓝和荧光色拼凑成他的调色板,洋溢在每幅画面的细枝末梢处,这样的冷色调唤起人们对大都市赛博朋克风格的种种畅想。Ellingham 用真实写照与反乌托邦式的科幻画笔,带观者以现实角度选择关于未来的去向,引人们思考这是否是我们想要到达的未来境地。

Like our stories? Follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Website: cbje.tokyo
Instagram: @cbje.tokyo

 

Contributor: David Yen
Chinese Translation: Pete Zhang


喜欢我们的故事?欢迎关注我们 Neocha 的微博微信

 

Website: cbje.tokyo
Instagram
: @cbje.tokyo

 

供稿人: David Yen
英译中: Pete Zhang

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Who Are You Looking At? 不食人间烟火的肖像

September 23, 2019 2019年9月23日

The women in Kelly Belter‘s prints sit alone, eyes closed or lost in the distance, with a look of apathy or boredom written across their faces. Or perhaps it’s not apathy or boredom, but something else entirely—expressions that aren’t so much enigmatic as they are ambiguous, unavailable. Drawn in simple lines and with a minimal palate, the subjects offer no insight into their thoughts. They’re not there to be looked at.

A Korean-American illustrator, Belter grew up in mainly in Dallas, and then moved to Korea to teach for a few years after college. That’s where she began to work seriously as an artist. Previously art had been only a hobby, and it wasn’t until she moved to Seoul, where she had plenty of time to spend drawing, that it started to seem like a realistic career choice. She enrolled in a graduate degree program and began freelancing seriously. “I invested more time in illustration,” she says. “I started picking up odd jobs and commissions while I was in school, upgraded my work materials, and transitioned into full-time work doing corporate design and freelance illustration projects after graduating.”


Kelly Belter 画中的女人们总是孤独地坐在一旁,她们双眼紧闭,又或迷失在远方,一副淡泊是非、百无聊赖的表情挂在脸上。即便并非如此,你也会从她们身上,稍许读出几分不食人间烟火的意味。Belter 用简单的线条和审美趣味,轻描淡绘出每一位女性主人翁的心头思绪。她们就伫立在那儿,不希望被他人察觉。

韩裔美国插画师 Belter 的青少年时光大部分在达拉斯度过。大学毕业后的几年里,她移居到韩国从事教学工作,并在那里开始作为一名艺术家进行创作。搬去首尔之后,Belter 拥有大量时间进行创作,艺术对她来说从兴趣爱好转变为职业选择。随后,她进行了硕士学位的学习,并开始着手于自由职业的工作,上学的时候,我在插画方面投入了更多时间,用兼职的钱来升级我的创作用具。毕业后,公司的全职工作和兼职基本上是同时进行的

At first she created most of her work digitally, using illustration software. But eventually she grew tired of relying on a computer, and in 2018 she began experimenting with alternatives. That’s how she fell in love with print-making—particularly silkscreens and risographs. “The physical process of hand-crafting each image is really satisfying. I like the visual effect of bold, bright color blocking within an image,” she says. Printing by hand also also allows for slight variations of color and texture within each work. On her website, she sells risographs and limited edition prints.

Her figures have a static, wallpaper-like quality, an effect heightened by the floral patterns on her subjects’ clothes. “Creating a more ‘flat’ image allows me to better balance details, texture, and color palette,” she explains.


起初,Belter 用电脑插画软件绘制的大部分作品还有一股数字的味道,但后来,她渐渐对电脑的过度依赖感到厌倦,于是在 2018 年另辟蹊径,陷入了一场与孔版、丝网印刷的恋曲。她说:“亲手制作每张照片的过程让人心存满足,那些大胆以及色彩鲜明的视觉效果是我的心头好。”通过这种操作手感强烈的创作方式,你会在每一幅作品中,发现不同纹理与颜色之间细微的变化。在 Belter 的个人网站上,一些丝网印刷的限量作品正在公开售卖。

她的作品总有一种静态、墙纸一般的质感,女主人翁们身上穿着的花卉图案印映而出。“在平坦的纸质上作画,能让我更好地在细节、纹理和调色之间找到平衡”。

This flatness also makes the subjects more inaccessible to the viewer. Very subtly, Belter inverts a tradition of portraiture that leaves women on display as a passive object for an implicitly male spectator.

Belter has long been fascinated by nineteenth-century Orientalist art, and especially by the paintings of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), who often depicted non-European women in a romantic, exotic fashion. Belter’s work is in dialogue with Ingres, and she seeks to invert his representational conventions. “He often used the perspective of a window looking into a room of women,” she explains. “I hope to present women from a different perspective, and I’ve played with the idea by grounding the women within the room, often with a window behind them. The women I draw are self-concerned. They are looking at themselves, rather than being looked at by someone else.” While her subjects are seldom engaged in any action—they’re more likely to be gazing into space—they’re also not passively on display.


同时,平坦的纸质还会让人物看起来区别于凡尘,高贵且端详。细枝末梢处,Belter 颠覆了传统的肖像画法,以含蓄的男性视角展现女性外貌。

长期以来,Belter 一直沉迷于十九世纪东方主义(Orientalist)艺术,尤其是 Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres(1780-1867)的作品,这位法国画家曾时常描绘欧洲地区之外的女性肖像,具有丰富的浪漫色彩和异域风尚。而 Belter 的作品则像是与 Ingres 的对话,对话中 Belter 尝试颠覆后者的传统绘法。“Ingres 经常能以窗户的视角望去女性角色的闺房,而我则希望以不同的方法呈现,在我的作品中,窗子往往在女性的背后。我笔下的女性,都是关注自我的。她们与自己对话,并不希望被他人看到。” 同时,Belter 的人物通常没有任何动作,她们更像在空中凝视,并不想被展示在画卷里。

The eclectic objects in each print are also the product of considerable thought. Belter wants each image to suggest a brief, simple story, and she gets inspiration from photos she snaps of odd items that catch her eye when walking around Seoul. In “Oranges and Antibodies,” for example, a self-indulgent obsession with health is visible in the choice of props: “an acupuncture hand sculpture and diagram seen in a traditional medical office, pill boxes, Korean Hallabong oranges and the filter-masks everyone in Seoul wears. I wanted to contrast that self-concern and decadence with the environmental chaos outside and our propensity to ignore it.”


画中的物品也同样是经过 Belter 深思熟虑的,她希望通过画面去呈现言简意赅的故事。每当漫步在首尔街头,她都会用相机记录下那些夺人眼球的物件。在作品《橘子和抗体(Oranges and Antibodies)》中,过度迷恋健康的心理状态被安放在了可见的道具上面,“你会看到人体和手部穴位模具,药箱以及韩国人人都有的过滤面罩。我想用这些道具延伸出一些思考 —— 自我意识、外界环境的混乱、以及人们司空见惯的态度,让这三者之间形成反差的对立面”。

With her newfound love of printmaking, Belter is eager to continue experimenting with new techniques and media. She’s now at work on a screen-printed zine, which she also plans to release as a risograph. And at least one of her prints is also available in tote bag form.

If you can’t catch her at one of the art book festivals she’s been attending across Korea and throughout Asia, you can find her prints available on her website.


在她与版画制作的恋曲中,Belter 也希望持续在作品中加入新的技术与媒介。目前,她正忙着一本丝网印刷杂志的制作,孔版印刷的打印版本也在计划之中。同时,一些作品还会被印在托特包上面。如果你没能参加她在韩国和其他亚洲地区的艺术书展,你还可以在 Kelly Belter 的网站上浏览她的作品。

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Website: kelbelter.com
Instagram: @bybelter

 

Contributor: Allen Young
Chinese Translation: Pete Zhang


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网站: kelbelter.com
Instagram: @bybelter

 

Contributor: Allen Young
Chinese Translation: Pete Zhang