临演社会
Play Time



2017-CURRENT



Act III Double Reality, Shanghai Power Station of Art
第三幕|塔与案,上海当代艺术博物馆

Act II Gentle Material Recovery, Shenzhen
第二幕|温柔物资回收,深圳

Act II What If the Sunlight is Also A Stage Set, Xiamen
第一幕|如果日光也是布景,厦门






















塔与案
Act IIIDouble Reality
2022


上海当代艺术博物馆
Power Station of Art, Shanghai


艺术家:杨健、王雨萱
时间:2022年12月16日-2023年3月17日
“桌面剧场”艺术家:陈逸飞、何昆霖、喜鹊、孙大肆、犀子、杨洋、杨子敏、子杰、朱湘、周蓬岸
* “桌面剧场”艺术家名单持续更新中。
Time:2022.12.16-2023.03.17
Artists:Yang Jian, Wang YuxuanTheater on Table:Chen Yifei, He Kunlin, Happy Bird, Sun Dasi, Xi Zi, Yang Yang, Yang Zimin, Zi Jie, Zhu Xiang,Zhou Pengan
* The Artists list of "Theater on Table" is constantly being updated.



1、K与S,残篇与续影

1922年,卡夫卡宣布《城堡》①停笔。土地测量员K淹没在“近在咫尺而又遥不可及”的城堡那不断扩大的缩影中,一个如此不可信的行途朝世界敞开。

1922年,鲁迅在小说集《呐喊》的开篇自序里,对前半生进行了一次回忆或回心。他在写到“在S会馆有三间屋”之前,加设了一个空行②,并以这个空行为界,切割出那自弦灵魂的世界与个体。

两部百年前的“残篇/续影”,似乎都有着某种关于“没有目的之道路和没有道路之目的”的恐惧。卡夫卡在不久后的1924年病逝,这本该被烧毁的文稿幸存,与那些删去的文字和他者的叙述一起,让后续无数人深陷未完成的终局;鲁迅则不论是于其自身,还是那个时代,都呐喊出了一次重启,“……呐喊几声,聊以慰藉那在寂寞里奔驰的猛士,使他不惮于前驱”;而关于独行者的形象,在几年后的另一部文集《野草》里,诗剧《过客》描绘了一条永续之路,在那里,以绝望而反抗者将再次向着没有希望的目标——坟墓踽踽独行。

2、塔与案,拼凑与复活

在展厅的空地或方形里,建造起两座在不久后即会拆除的纪念碑,它们的材料是从建筑废墟的边角料和工厂生产线的标准板材里获得。

第一座塔是由废弃脚手架和铅片构造的巨大怪兽——杨健的装置《拼拼凑凑的利维坦》(2018年),在其旁边是一组描绘着残躯的绘画,它们散落,并填充,成为这只“怪兽”中空外壳内部的器官与肉身。

另一座是由彩钢板和圆管构筑的蓝色碑体,它的顶部是被外壳包裹的铁皮屋,而其底座如同拆除或修造一半的违章建筑,走入塔体,其中环绕着一颗圣物状的橙/橘——王雨萱的行为录像《复活》(2021年)拍摄的是早已食尽果肉后残留的果皮,它们被小心翼翼用针重新扎穿缝合,“还原”成完整却有无数罅隙的“渊薮”。

除了方形(square)中的两座塔之外,现场还设置了一处桌面剧场。“2022”行将结束,它不应又是一个过去的数字,例外状况将变成继续伴随、扰乱和蚕食实践领域的“幽灵”常态,但这也更加要求了我们,必须采取更具探索性的行动。或许,我们首先就要明确提出观点:如何能既探寻现实背后某种普遍现实,也可索引那些由个体差异和地方差异所生成的“提案的时间”。

因此,“桌面剧场”这项特别计划将邀请十余位艺术家、行动者(喜鹊、孙大肆、逸飞、犀子、子杰、子敏......),他们通过邮寄的方式,将各自的提案送达,在桌面展开;以此作为对现实标记、整理、备忘、提示和构造的“档案-展示”方案,新的使用结构,必然会造成新的变化,并从中迸发出新的行动空间。

于是,案-桌面成为了一种策略,主动性的位移,用时间换空间,在空白处创造某种游击与待伏的情境——它将是“影的告别”与方形矗立的2座巨大碑塔,那无处不在的“幽灵幻影”③一起,召唤虚构的力量:塔关于空间,案关于时间——而墙与影虚构着一块被反复擦-写的白板(tabula rasa)。

3、剧中剧,桃花源与死信局

七年前,“厦门肉食公司”在PSA并不存在的展馆4楼,通过一部小说虚造的“桃花源/愚人船”,以围挡与水马的方式被临时建造。而此刻,这些建筑材料被现实广泛应用,尽管它们的临时性,使得其材质的肉体(Body/fresh)和阻碍的功能终将消失;但临时建造的过程,却伴生并使得某种幽灵(Spirit/soul)的罅隙/裂缝已然长存,如同人身体那不分内外,且最易忽视的“肚脐”——是伤口?是连通?是断裂?是供养?这一关键的纽带,成为了一种灵与肉、虚构小说与现实群治④之间晦明的装置。

“厦门肉食公司”小说里那个没有肚脐却在酒池肉林的现实里游荡的屠夫——一个从现实残影的虚构中走出来的形象,有着其角色的谱系——即每个相异的个体跟整个世界之间,曾经存在的统一性出现了断裂:桃花源记的渔人、莱蒙托夫《当代英雄》的多余的人、鲁迅的过客、卡夫卡《城堡》的K、加缪的局外人、约瑟夫·海勒《第二十二条军规》的尤索林、《飞向太空》的凯尔文、梅尔维尔的抄写员巴特比.....它们从乌有之处,纷沓将各自的世界寄出,但现实的收信者遗失了,信件只能被长久的收容到那个叫名叫死信局(Dead Letter)或某个404的地方,如同一宗悬案。回忆和遗忘在此同时发生:一个由物流、档案、小说、志怪、传奇、山水、戏曲、电台、游戏、绘本、流言、八卦构成的关于自身另一个世界的解剖台。

让虚构不断排演,缩小再缩小,成为一种临演状态——而黑暗中那个人将重新面临着选择的困难,信件呼喊着他——烧毁、碎纸、封存、拆开、阅读、解密、字迹模糊、无人问津——的每一个结局,时间会让这些信件加速他的消亡。

①这部原稿本并没有名字,只是在谈话中卡夫卡经常将之称作《城堡》。

②鲁迅文学的诞生——读《<呐喊>自序》(汪晖)

③现场行走人群的巨大投影,将与两座巨物彼此切割和遮蔽

④引自梁启超《论小说与群治之关系》




I.K and S: Fragments and Sequels

In 1922, Kafka announced that he had stopped writing The Castle. K, the land surveyor, was submerged in the ever-expanding shadow of the nearby but unreachable castle, and an unbelievable journey opened up to the world.

In 1922, Lu Xun recalled the first half of his life in the preface of his collection Call to Arms. Before he wrote, "In S Hostel there were three rooms..." he added an empty line to separate the world and the free soul.

The two fragments or sequels from a century ago seem to share a certain fear of “A path without a purpose and a purpose without a path." Kafka passed away shortly afterward in 1924. The manuscript, The Castle, should have been burned but it survived, along with the deleted words and the descriptions from others, leaving countless people in the unfinished endgame. Lu Xun cried out for a reset, both for himself and for his time: "I sometimes call out to encourage those fighters who are galloping on in loneliness, so that they do not lose heart." And a few years later, in the poetic drama "The Passer-by" from Wild Grass, a loner followed a never-ending path where the resister will again move alone toward the hopeless destination, the grave.

II.Double Reality: Piece Together and Back to Life

Two monuments constructed in the open spaces or squares of the exhibition hall will dismantle shortly. The material was obtained from the scraps of architectural ruins and standard boards from factory production lines.

The first tower is an installation work, Composite Leviathan (2018) from Yang Jian. It is a massive monster, constructed from discarded scaffolding and lead sheets. Next to it is a set of scattered paintings depicting mutilated bodies, forming the organs and flesh inside the monster's hollow shell.

The other is a blue monument made of color plates and tubes. Its top is a tin house wrapped in a shell, and its base is like a half-demolished or rebuilt illegal building. Walking into the tower, a sacred orange surrounded by videos. Wang Yuxuan's performance video Resurrection (2021) captures the remaining peels of the orange after the flesh has long been consumed. They are carefully re-pierced and sewn together with a needle, restoring them into a complete den with numerous cracks.

Other than these towers in the square, there is a theater on table. The year 2022 is coming to its end, but it should not be treated as a mere number from the past. Exceptions will become the ghostly constants that continue to accompany, disrupt, and encroach on the field of practice, but this also reinforces the need for more exploratory action. Maybe, what we should put forward a clear problem firstly, i.e. how to find the universal principle behind reality, as well as the indexes when the proposal was created by individual and local differences.

Therefore, the special project of " Theater on Table" will invite over ten artists and actors (Xi Que, Sun Dasi, Yi Fei, Xi Zi, ZI Jie, Zi Min...) to send their proposals by post. These proposals will then be revealed in the exhibition one by one. It is an archiving-presentation program of marking, organizing, recording, reminding, and constructing the reality that will become a new structure of using that triggers new changes and action space.

Theater on Table has become a strategy of shifting the initiative, exchanging space with time, and creating in the blank a context of guerrilla and ambush. In the exhibition, it refers to the two giant towers of the square standing for the farewell of shadow. Along with the ghostly shadow, they call for the power of fiction together. The tower is about space and the table is about time, while the wall and the shadow make up a piece of tabula rasa to be repeatedly written and erased.

III. Play within a Play: The Peach Blossom Land and the Dead Letter

7 years ago, The Amoy Meat Factory was temporarily constructed in the form of plastic traffic barriers on the non-existent  4th floor of PSA through a fictional "Peach Blossom Garden/Ship of Fools". But now, these building materials are widely used in reality. Though the temporary nature makes the function of their material/body fresh and the obstruction disappear, the process of temporary construction keeps the crack of the spirit/soul alive. It is like the navel of human body, which is not distinguished between inside and outside, and is most easily ignored - is it a wound? Is it a connection? Is it a rupture? Is it a supply? This crucial bond becomes a kind of obscure installation between spirit and flesh, fiction and realpolitik(IV).

The butcher- a fictional character from the remnants of reality, in the novel The Amoy Meat Factory, has no navel but wanders in an extravagant orgy. His character genealogy represents the failure of the unity that once existed between each disparate individual and the whole world. There are more of them, for instance, the fisherman of Peach Blossom Spring, the redundant man of Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time, the passer-by of Lu Xun's Wild Grass, K of Kafka's The Castle, the outsider of Camus's The Stranger, Ursuline of Josef Heller's Catch-22, Kelvin of Solaris, the scrivener of Melville's Barltleby... All of them have sent out their worlds from the stories, but the real recipients are lost. Their letters can only be shelved in Dead Letter or somewhere 404 for a long, just like the unsolved cases. Reminiscing and forgetting happen at the same time here: an anatomical table about another world consisting of logistics, archives, novels, monsters, legends, landscapes, operas, radio stations, games, picture books, rumors, and gossip.

Let the fiction keep rehearsing and shrinking moreover until it becomes an impromptu state. Meanwhile, the people in darkness will again face the dilemma of making a choice when the letters cry out every possible ending including burned, shredded, sealed, unwrapped, read, decrypted, illegible, unattended... Eventually, these letters will speed up his demise as time passes.

1.This original manuscript text has no name, except that in conversation Kafka often refers to it as The Castle.
2. "The Birth of Lu Xun's Literature - Reading the Preface of Call to Arms" (WANG Hui)
3.The huge projection of the walking crowd on site will cut and obscure each other with the two giants.
4.IV Quote from On the Relationship between Novels and the Control od The Masses by Liang Qichao