展览评论-没有网络

Zhang Peili’s solo NO NETWORK exhibition after impression

by Peng Xiaoyang

Although the initial interpretation of a piece of art comes from its artist, an audience can provide individual and alternative explanations from their perspectives, which spring from their personal knowledge and experience. These explanations include appreciation, conjecture, and even hypotheses. On November 4th, 2017, Zhang Peili opened his exhibition, No Network, at The Bunker, located in the grounds of the historical residence of Duan Qirui, Chinese Premier between 1916-1918. The featured installation is titled Unsuitable Place to Stay. When an audience enters the space, the electro-magnetic door automatically locks and does not open for the next five minutes. Moreover, the lights within this space are movement sensitive, so that whenever someone moves, the dim lights brighten up. Conversely, when people stand still the lights dim and a countdown can be heard throughout the five minute duration before the door unlocks, declaring the remaining time. Here I would like to offer my understanding of this installation.

1. The artist titles this exhibition Unsuitable Place to Stay, and the venue is called The Bunker. Built in 1941, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, by order of Yasuji Okamura, then commander-in-chief of the Northern China Area Army, within a compound first constructed in 1906 as the Qing Empire’s army and navy command center. Later during the rule of the Republic of China the compound was transformed into the office of premier Duan Qirui. After 1949, the compound was expropriated as the campus of Renmin University of China.

A bunker should provide security and protection from attacks during a war. It pertains to such concepts as avoidance, defense and safety, but how does this place become an unsuitable place to stay? It is because the state of being and living has changed, state of war substituted with state of peace. And under normal circumstances, darkness, concealment, a lack of Internet, and constricted movement make it an unsuitable place to stay. The artist is utilizing the innate relationship between the space and his work to instigate contemplation about the evolution of space and environment in his audience.

2. On the transformation of the space’s physical, historical, and social attributes into an artistic idea. First he confronts the blackness of the space. In an interview, Zhang Peili said “even if the space is completely empty, and a person...without much experience or associative thoughts...enters, he or she would easily feel oppressed. If you walk inside, room after room you enter, through low doors...enough to evoke instinctive sensory reactions. Who could feel truly comfortable in a space like this, with no windows, walls all around, thick walls, and within such tunnels? Who could stay relaxed? Probably no one.” He grasps the space’s physical properties along with people’s natural responses and integrates it with his semiotic exploration of darkness and claustrophobia. Secondly, sound in this installation is to inform the audience and urge them to move. However, in a confined space, this sound becomes a kind of command, forcing and manipulating the audience. Not only does it comply with the physical space, it also corresponds to the history of the compound as a state-run campus filled with indoctrination. Thirdly, the automatic lockdown for five minutes transforms the identity of the audience. They are deprived of the freedom to leave thus become prisoners. Their compulsory participation constitutes the logic within this space. Furthermore, there is no cell signal under the cemented ceiling of this space. Zhang was aware of this factor and worked it into the title of this installation. It reveals the seclusion from networked information and transforms the social condition outside as metaphorical background inside. Last but not least, Zhang uses old- fashioned incandescent lights. He says that he chose them because he wants people “to imagine it along the lineage of time. Because I think these are the lights closest to the ones being used when this place was first built. I chose the lights of very low wattage and I also use microwave sensors that interacts with people’s physical presence and movement directly. If they stay put for a few seconds, the lights will dim out.” This element of reminiscence also becomes an integral part of the installation.

3. During a media interview Zhang said, “if you think about it, there is a certain exchange happening between the society or the environment and you — I make certain compromise and receive something in return. You have to be constantly making sacrifices to ‘seemingly’ obtain something. In this installation, the price of exchange is five minutes of your time. You enter and you agree to yield five minutes to me. Maybe you think five minutes is an acceptable price, it’s just five minutes. But when you think about it, people are making such exchanges all their lives.” In this installation, the audience is required to yield five minutes of freedom and become restricted and confined while sound is forced into their ears. This imposed indoctrination is built on the foundation of an implicit relinquishment of rights. Thomas Hobbes wrote about such social contract mechanism in the book, Leviathan, that the power of the nation is neither a natural product, nor is it bestowed from heaven or derived from ancestral legacy. For Hobbes, the power of the nation has to comprises these factors: that the individual must recognize the authority of the nation; that the individual must relinquish certain personal rights and yield them to the nation; that the individual must comply with the rule of the nation. This is exactly the logic behind this installation. Our feeling of suppression is the direct result of the mechanism that runs on the power we yield.

4. Aside from the spatial environment or history and reality, this installation is also in conversation with Zhang’s personal lineage of artistic creation. When he was doing his work titled 30≠30 (1988), he planned to lock the participants of Huangshan Conference (a conference of modern art practitioners held in Anhui, Huangshan, 1988) for three hours. However, due to the participants’ request to fast-forward his video piece, his plan did not come into fruition. Now he finally obtains the power to lock people up for five minutes, but he does not think five minutes is enough. In any case, whether it is the boredom of the contents of 30≠30 or the oppression in Unsuitable Place to Stay, Zhang’s focus remains in the relationship between the repetitive sensory experience and time.

5. One will notice that the exhibition and installation have separate titles. Light and sound together could occupy space and Zhang utilizes the blackness and seclusion of the space, and fills the space with dim lights and flickering sound. To be more accurate, he transforms a space into a visual entity of his installation thus makes the exhibition into an observation and experience of the space. The different titles of the exhibition and installation reveal different semantics and unifies the concepts of exhibition, installation and space.

A space with an area of no more than a hundred square meters, an installation with minimal amount of material, and yet such inclusiveness: the richness in semantics, totality of contents that contains both history and contemporary realism, philosophical contemplation and human experience. By compressing significant conceptual ideas into such a small budget and space, what one experiences is the artist’s creativity and mastery of his artistic language.

Translated by Qu Zhi

“没有网络”观后

文 / 彭晓阳

一件作品，艺术家虽然提供了最基本的解读，但作为观众仍然可以从自己的角度结合个人的知识和经验判断给出不同的阐释。这里既包含了领悟，也包含了推测甚至臆断。2017年11月4号张培力个展“没有网络”在北京段祺瑞执政府旧址里的掩体空间开幕，作品是一件声音装置《不宜久留的场所》。观众进入空间后电磁锁会将门自动锁上，五分钟后才会打开。空间内部的灯是感应的，观众身体稍作移动，昏暗的灯光会亮起，停滞不前则灯光熄灭。声音系统以倒计时的方式不断提醒观众剩余的时间。我作为一个观众，基于自身对这个空间的熟悉与了解，来谈几点个人对这件作品的思考和理解：

1.此次展览作品的名字叫《不宜久留的场所》，而展览空间叫掩体空间。这个空间的建筑是1941年日据时期，驻华北日军司令冈村宁次修建的地下防御工事。这个空间所在的大院及建筑群建于1906年，曾是清政府的陆军部和海军部所在地，进入民国后，这里是段祺瑞执政府的总理府，1949年中共建政后，这里变为了人民大学的校园。掩体在战争状态下是给人提供安全保障、躲避攻击的地方，掩体意味着躲避、防御、安全；而为什么变为了不宜久留的场所呢？艺术家利用作品与空间原有性质的对应关系引发了观众对生存环境以及时空变迁的思考。因为生存状态发生了改变，战争状态早已被正常生活状态替代，正常的生活状态下黑暗、憋闷、没有网络、行动受限随即成为了不宜久留的理由。

2.对掩体的物理属性和社会环境的艺术语言转换。首先，是黑的转换，张培力在接受记者采访时说“哪怕就是（空间里）什么都没有，如果进去一个人……没有太多的经验，或者联想，对于这个本身很奇怪的空间，很容易感到压抑：往里走、是一间一间套着的、然后特别矮的门……这也足够让人产生一种很本能的、感官上的反应。你说，谁会在这么一种没有窗户，四面都是墙、这么厚的墙，然后又在这么一个个通道下面……感到舒适？或者说，感到这里是可以轻松逗留的？一般來说都不会。”张培力准确抓住了空间的物理特性以及它带給人的直觉感受并加以巧妙利用，使黑暗、低矮、憋闷在符号学上的意义得以彰显，黑以及黑暗带來的感受都转换为作品內容的一个重要部分。第二，声音直接的作用是提醒观众，催促其移动，但它在封闭的环境里又是一种强制灌输，操控、诱导观众的语言表述。它针对了空间的现实外部环境，也针对了此地作为体制内大学校园这样一个思想灌输的场所的历史。第三，进入空间后，大门自动锁死5分钟是使观众转换身份的关键步骤，观众从此时就失去了离开的自由，变成了一个被禁锢者，参观者被强制转换为作品的一个部分，参与到了作品逻辑演进之中。第四，空间由于是水泥浇筑加之地下，没有通信信号，张培力从一开始就注意到了这一点，并把它作为展览题目，明确地提示了作品所隐喻的环境是处在一种信息封闭的状态，通过标题点明空间物理特性的方法驾轻就熟地把社会现实转换为作品的“布景”。第五，灯泡用了很老式的钨丝白织灯，张培力自己说：“我选择了一种最老式的灯，要人从时间上对它产生联想，因为我想，在那个时候、防空洞刚建成的时候，不可能用很时髦的灯，而只能用我们以前说的钨丝灯。我挑了一盏瓦数特别低的。使用了微波感应。微波感应可以和人的身体直接发生联系，如果几秒钟人不动，灯就关了”。他很明确地用老式的灯泡引导人们回望过去，把这里的历史也作为作品的一个元素包容进来。

3.张培力在接受媒体采访时说：“实际上，当你去细想，你和这个社会和整个环境，就是一种交换——我做出一些妥协，然后我得到一些东西。你还是要做出一些牺牲，才能‘很像’换到一些东西，不断如此。这一次作品就是交换所有进入空间的人5分钟的时间。进到了，就表示你愿意和我交换、你生命中的5分钟。其实这5分钟的时间，他/她觉得还好啦，就5分钟嘛——但是你想，很多人一辈子都是在做交换。”关于交换、权力的出让，这件作品给了我们更多思考的空间，作品自身的运行逻辑首先要求观众自愿让渡出5分钟的自由活动的权利，在5分时间里观众要被禁闭、要被强制聆听一个声音……这种强制和灌输的系统运转恰恰是观众通过一个隐性的权利让渡而实现的。这些和十六世纪英国思想家霍布斯在《利维坦》里阐述的国家权力形成的社会契约理论何等一致。霍布斯描述的国家权力不是天然存在的，也不是上天赐予的，更不是前辈的献血铸就的，在霍布斯看来，造就国家权力需要有以下条件：个人必须承认国家的权威；个人得放弃自己的权力，把这个权力让渡给国家；个人必须服从国家的管理。以上理论不正是这件作品的逻辑演进所呈现给我们的吗？置身在这个作品中，我们能直接感受到带给我们压迫感的系统正是通过我们每个观众出让自己的部分权力而运行的。

4.张培力这件作品不仅针对了空间和外部环境，针对了历史和现实，而且还针对了自身的创作脉络。1988年他做《30x30》时，本想把出席黄山会议(1988年在安徽黄山召开的现代艺术实践者研讨会)的人员锁在房间里3个小时，但后来由于与会者要求快进播放这个录像作品，他的这个锁门的计划没能实施。今天在这个作品里他终于如愿以偿把人锁在了房间里，尽管他觉得5分钟还是不够长。无论是《30x30》里的内容乏味无聊，还是今天空间带给人的压抑、恐惧，感官感受的不断重复和时间的关系仍旧是张培力作品始终关注的问题。

5.很多人注意到了展览名字和作品名字的不同。只有声和光才能占满一个空间，张培力充分利用了空间的黑和封闭，用微弱的灯光和跳动的声音使作品占满整个空间，更准确地说是把空间转化为作品的视觉形态，使展览成为对空间的观看和体验。展览名字和作品名称以不同的角度揭示空间的语义，使展览、作品、空间三个概念完美地结为一体。

一个100平米的小空间，一个几乎没有使用什么材料的作品，却形成的巨大的包容度，语义的多层、丰富，内容涵盖的全面、广泛，既有历史、又有现实，既有哲学思考又有人生体验，艺术语言直接、简洁；没有故弄玄虚，炫耀理论，也没有流于空乏，不得要领。在今天能承载大观念却低成本的制作，更多让人感受到的是艺术家的创造力和艺术语言的掌控力。