Fact Sheet: Qiu Anxiong’s Staring into Amnesia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Place of production: Changchun, China

Place of storage and use: Shenyang, China

Type of compartment: YZ22 hard-seat

Year of design: 1958

Period of production: 1960-1983

Number produced: 1002

Number of passengers: 118

Maximum speed: 120 km/h

Weight: 42.5 tons

Size: 24.5 m (L) x 3.2 m (W) x 4.5 m (H)

Color: green and white

Media equipment: 24 projectors, 24 DVD players, 24        sound speakers, 12 CD players

Methods of transport: Ship + truck, in four containers

Duration of transport, Shenyang to Basel: 30+ days

Number of workers involved: 17

Length of time required for on-site build-up: 7 days

 

 

 

 

 

A weathered, green train car—typical of the ubiquitous vehicles that traversed China’s railways throughout the latter half of the twentieth century—sits motionless on the concrete floor. The room is dark, but flickering lights emanate from the windows of the train. The visitor is drawn to the entrance at the rear of the car, and finds the interior immaculately clean, but is nevertheless overwhelmed by the physically uncomfortable exaggeration of a genuine train ride. The window over each of the twenty-four seating compartments has been replaced with a projection screen, and as many unique video loops continuously illuminate the windows. Some of the footage comes from historical archival documentation of the bloodiest and most brutal moments of the past century of East Asian history; some appears to come from World War II- and Cultural Revolution-era propaganda footage; some mimics contemporary footage of the view from a train window; some recalls the artist’s own serial ink painting with hand drawn animations of maps and diagrams. At the same time, twelve audio loops cycle through the public announcement system, entirely out of sync with the synthetic scenery projected onto the windows. Some of the music might be traditional folk songs, while other tracks seem like experimental sound art.

 

Confronted by this excess of sensory experience, the viewer is suddenly struck by the realization that she is, indeed, staring into amnesia. Via video editing techniques, the images with which she is inundated have been stripped of all context. They have been torn from history, removed from their original narratives, and presented as isolated instances of violence and memory. At the same time, they have also been released from their filmic origin, having been rearranged into new sequences and stripped of all sound. The figurative images and abstract soundtrack are forced into conflict, erasing the false logic of progress and certainty. The time and space behind the historical phantasmagoria playing across the windows have vanished, both violently and silently. Origin disappears, along with the ability to make sense of these images by circumscribing their flattened landscapes and inserting their characters into a definable and recognizable semiotic position.

 

Through this project, Qiu Anxiong interrogates the relationship between past, present, and future on a cultural matrix that is at once both spatial and temporal, questioning the roles of memory and imagination in our perceptions of the passage of time. Particular images within the train interact with others unpredictably, further reinforcing the subjective nature of memory and questioning this phenomenology of experience. When the sound tracks are also taken into account, this audiovisual experience seems to simultaneously create and reject an imagined history. All of these images, like the physical environment in which they are installed, have been absorbed into the collective memory of several generations—some who directly experienced these historical events, and some who have only read about them in history textbooks. Authenticity, however, is rejected by the cleansing of amnesia: this tangible archive of affect releases its surplus and empties into a vacuum at the far end of the train. When facing this black hole of imagined memory, the role of the viewer is that of the contemporary subject: to untangle the various strands of life and layers of signification, to trace them back to a nonexistent origin, to separate the modern from the historical, the fantastic from the lived, the vanished from the new.

 

Originally entitled Memory for Forgetting, the piece forces its audience to remember—or to invent a forged memory—just to forget it, to reject it, to deconstruct its ephemeral presence by making it physical and leaving it behind. It might not be too much of a stretch to call the work China’s definitive dialogue with the Euro-American tradition of relational aesthetics, forcing viewers into a vigorous struggle with their own memories, with the mediated images with which they have been inundated, and finally wit h each other. Far from mimicking the projects Bourriaud describes under this theoretical rubric, however, Qiu Anxiong seems to be working in a rather different intellectual strain: that paradox of continental philosophy known affectionately as religion without religion. It seems strangely appropriate, as China has itself been caught in the grips of a series of secular or quasi-secular religions and anti-religions for a sizable portion of its own history; perhaps the lessons of post-Christian Europe are more applicable in confronting Chinese history are more viable than might be readily assumed.

 

Jacques Derrida writes often of “the gift of death” and its relationally necessary counterpart “the work of mourning.” These two positions are not separated into a subject-object dichotomy, but rather rest on the same plane of active passivity. In both cases, the task is that of moving on; not of lingering over the body of the dead—here manifested as the image, transformed into light and refracted via the medium of celluloid memory—but of leaving corporeality behind. This is a fundamentally religious perspective; the moment of secular religion appears only when nothing exists beyond this ephemerality. The work of mourning, then, is letting go of a pressing nostalgia for a nonexistent origin, which requires a letting go of language. In Staring into Amnesia, Qiu Anxiong has already completed this first step: he destroys the linear logic of language, of the textual sign, and instead replaces it with the twisted semiotic renderings of filmic code. This translation does not, of course, eliminate language, but it does prepare the viewer to complete her own task—that of recognizing the impossibility of entrusting memory to narrative.

 

If Derrida supplies a framework through which the piece might be read, it is Michel de Certeau who offers a conceptually interesting non-resolution. In his essay “The Weakness of Believing,” the philosopher writes: “…the ‘follow me’ comes from a voice which has been effaced, forever irrecoverable.” Although he intends to refer the the Christian impetus towards blind faith, his words are unintentionally provocative in the context of Chinese collective memory. Moreover, his analysis of the origins of belief is even more prescient. Certeau defined the signifying event of faith not as death or resurrection, but rather as the empty tomb. This “signifying event,” which corresponds to the event-based historical narrative demolished by Qiu Anxiong’s video projections, might better be translated into this theoretical space as a simple turning point, or perhaps even as a moment of slippage. This moment, in which the work of theological deconstruction occurs, is a turn from mourning to emptiness; from belief in the call of language to recognition of the specters of imagination.

 

After confronting the black hole at the far end of the train—the blank wall that signified all that is lost and all that is gained by the rejection of imagined experienced and the cleansing of memory—the viewer steps back into the prosaic space of the exhibition hall. She refuses to look back. That which is left behind remains behind. The empty tomb cannot recover any value as a source of belief without affirming its very origin as emptiness—and an empty origin, of course, is no origin at all. The train is empty. Those who utilized its potential for motion have themselves passed on, from corporeality into the play of light that flickers along the interior walls of the train car. Their voices have been followed along the narrow passageway through the middle of the compartment, but they themselves are absent. Nothing remains to be seen. The tomb is empty.

 

 

一节绿色的、老旧的火车车厢,静静地停在展厅的水泥地面上——这样的火车在上个世纪的最后50年里曾纵横中国大陆。展厅很暗，从火车车窗中透出斑驳的灯光。步入车厢，观众会看到打扫得非常洁净的车厢内部，但即使这样，这件装置所带来的被放大的火车旅行感还是给观众带来一种不舒服的感觉。间隔火车空间的二十四扇车窗被当作了投影仪的屏幕，每个屏幕上不间断地循环播放着各自的影像。有些影像来自于上个世纪发生在东亚大陆上那些血腥的、最残忍的历史档案纪录片，有些影像内容看上去来自第二次世界大战和文化大革命时期，有些影像模仿了现在火车旅行时人们能从车窗中看到的风景，还有一些影像是由艺术家手绘的地图与图表组成的动画。与这些“人造的风景”影像同步的，是由12套音频设备循环播放着的音乐。有些也许是古老的民歌，有些则是实验音乐。

 

《前尘——新大陆架的沉降》是一件被赋予了过剩的感觉经验的作品，观众会猛地被作品呈现的内容所打动。通过技术编辑，图像被从原有的文本关系中释放出来。这些图像从历史里跳出来，脱离了原本对它们所进行的叙述，被孤立地当作为暴力与记忆所举的例证。同时，它们也脱离了原本的纪录片，图像被重新剪辑，并且去掉了声音。有形的图像与抽象化的音乐之间的冲突，抵消掉了错误逻辑所带来的假象，无论激动或是静默，车窗上上演的这些影像的时间与空间的历史背景消失了。随着其起源的消失，通过认识其特征，并将此特征置入到一个可被辨识的符号学位置，从而去感受图像的能力也消失了。

 

通过《前尘——新大陆架的沉降》这一方案，邱黯雄审视了“过去”、“现在”、“未来”三者在历史性的文化意味中的关系，以此质询当我们的感知穿越时间隧道时，“记忆”与“想象”所扮演的角色。火车内部这种独特的情景与每扇车窗上不可预知的、没有逻辑的不同的影像相结合，更进一步加强了主观记忆及对经验现象的质疑。当还有同步播放的声音介入这一感知时，这一视听体验似乎是要同时创造与否认一部想象的历史。所有的这些图像，就像它们现在栖身的环境那样，已经成为了几代人的集体记忆——有些人亲身经历过上述的历史事件，有些人则只是从历史书中得到这些记忆。的确，无论怎样这些图像是不能被忘却的，这些切实存在的档案将它所含有的过剩情感释放到火车尽头黑暗的真空中。面对想象记忆的黑洞，观众所扮演的角色是在当代主题下，解开缠绕于生命的繁复线索及不同层面的含义，回溯到一个不存在的本源，将现代与历史、幻想与现实、已消失的与新生的区分开来。

 

作品最初被命名为《为了忘却的记忆》，是因为作品要求观众去想起，或者也可以说是去臆想出一段被遗忘的记忆——这样做的目的只是为了忘记它，通过将之物化并弃之于身后，去解构它短暂的存在。不过分地说，这也许是中国当代最贴近欧美传统“关系美学”的一件作品。它使观众与他们的记忆展开抗争，与将他们淹没其中的动画影像展开抗争，直至最后彼此之间展开抗争。欧洲哲学体系中，悖论被当作一种不是宗教的“宗教”去崇尚，邱黯雄非但没有模仿尼古拉斯·波瑞奥德(Nicolas Bourriaud)在其理论体系下的描述，反而是在用一种完全不同的智力应变的方式进行创作。用这一理论来解释此作品似乎是奇怪但又适当的，介于中国文化自身即长期存在这样一种模式——被推崇一些准宗教式的信仰与反宗教这双重特征所控制。或许欧洲后基督教时代的范例更适合注释这样的中国历史。

雅克·德里达(Jacques Derrida) 的理论中经常出现 “死亡之礼”这一说法及与必要对应的理论“悲恸的力量”。这两个命题不是将之分成“主语”与“对象”，而是被共同放置在“积极的被动”这一层面。对双方来说，任务不是因为死亡而使生命停滞不前，而是应该努力向前，积极面对——就像这件作品的图像所证明的，通过影像记载的模糊记忆，换一个角度审视历史，而不是超越其具象的存在。这是一种基本的宗教观，只能当认识到死亡的本质时，并非宗教的哲学观信仰才会出现。于是，悲恸所扮演的角色，即是去释放一种没有缘由的压抑之情，这需要脱离语言的层面。在《前尘——新大陆架的沉降》中，邱黯雄已经完成了第一步：他摧毁了语言、文本符号的线性逻辑，取而代之的是复杂、交错的电影语言与符号。这就准备了让观众去完成他们自己的任务——承认转述记忆的不可能性。

 

德里达给出一个理论框架可以用来解释这件作品，米歇尔· 德·塞图（Michel De Certeau）提出的概念化“非解决”理论也能诠释出此作品的含义。 在塞图的文章《信仰的弱点》中，这位哲学家写道：“‘跟着我’来自一种被打破的、无法拯救的声音。”尽管他个人想要提出的是基督教推动了盲目崇拜，但他的理论也无意中触动到了中国人的集体记忆。他关于信仰起源这一论题的分析也是十分带有预见性的。塞图并不是将信仰这一“有意味”的事定义为死亡或者重生，而是一座“空的坟墓”（耶稣死后3天复活，这里所指的既是他的坟墓）。“有意味” 的事对应的是以事件为基础的历史叙述，它被邱黯雄的这部影像新作推翻，也许更好地说法是将这一理论空间转化为一个简单的转折点，或者一个“开始发生变化的瞬间”。这是一种从悲恸到虚空、从对语言召唤的信仰到承认对想象的恐惧的转化。

 

面对一直通向车厢尽头的黑洞，观众退回到展厅的平地上，空白的四壁消失了，取代它们的是投影在车窗上的想象的历史与观众自身记忆的被清空。不回头看已经过去并且仍留在那里的过去，除了断定它起源自虚空，一种虚空的起源外，这座空的坟墓不能重新获得作为一种信仰源泉的任何价值。曾经乘坐过这辆火车的人也许已经不在了，成为了投影光束中的点点斑驳。他们的声音沿着狭窄的车厢穿过火车，但他们本身不在这里。这里看不到历史的痕迹，没有什么留在这座“空墓”中。