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匿名
发表于 2013-7-2 10:12:28
话 说“笔 墨 之 道”
——遭遇“美人计”
二○○六年间,我于生活的觉悟日趋无为而随性鬼混。时逢到处歌舞升平,闲逛去了山寨的“天上人间”,巧遇民间小妹拉扯玩弄性感“笔墨功夫”秀。
未等惊魂落定,便被掀翻在地,使出大马金刀,腹背摊肉为纸,一阵虎步龙行,前後胡写乱画。窥其招,犹如鸾舞蛇奔,不输“颠张狂素”。探其势,极尽女儿烂漫,实在生猛了得。弹指一挥间,原本堂堂阳春白雪之术早已不成体统,乐得俺老孙哈哈大笑,虽也自惭形秽,却又妙不可言,疑是梦游妖境。有道是,不识艺术真面目,只缘身在此术中。
那晚,辗转反侧,乱箭追心,缘何如此?……。窃想:倘若“借鸡下蛋”,重置料理出江湖,试看可否消解那于道德与信仰、权力与权威和方法与准则等诸多让人们宠辱若惊的偏见或误会?亦或可否拂去那于尊贵与卑贱、高雅与下流和美与丑等各种令我辈莫名其妙的是非招摇?让生灵稍事摆脱源於虚影的在乎和劳役的徒然而活得些许自在。忽闻漫天狂风起,扫得遍地败叶残。哇塞!幸亏仙姑点拨,喜获醍醐灌顶,使得茅塞顿开,有所恍然大悟。
此后,我似鬼使神差,心随飞鸟出林,邀其合作变法,演绎“笔墨之道”。
然而,本來無一物,何處惹塵埃?终归不平常,是非難割舍。只怕是,意淫从未了,又中“美人计”。
孙平 二○一三年五月十七日修改於北京寓所
The Way of the Brush
I had devolved upon a gradual state of “Incognizance” through the agency of life’s small epiphanies. It was in my aimless meanderings that I chanced with astonishment and delight upon a proletarian gamine in a village night-club performing with her marker pen held within her sex. It appeared to me then that those who are in the midst of art become unaware of art, art to be found within life itself, and I was ashamed of the artists with whom I was keeping company, men who looked down upon this woman without a thought, a performer whose act had more validity than all their artifice.
During the long hours of a sleepless night, I thought: what if I played with this a little - transposed the person of this “calligraphe demi-mondaine” into the exhibition venue and substituted a brush for her marker pen? Fused the “Base” with the “Noble”, the “Vulgar” with the “Refined”, the “Gross” with the “Beautiful”, the “Carnal” with the “Pure”, and the “Transgressive” with “Classical Culture” in order to create a new and enduring paradigm, a work of art to challenge commonplace assumptions regarding power and authority and value and significance and mastery and technique. I would blow away all that gibberish concerning what is of true worth and what is beneath contempt, the unquestioning reverence for Art and philosophy and erudition, for power and wealth and tradition. Appropriation and metamorphosis. I would juxtapose these conflicts and contradictions in order to confuse and embarrass, to invert society’s value system and to conjure a more carefree existence away from those empty shadows and unfounded bigotry.
There is a Buddhist saying: All is immaterial, so whence arises the dust? The Daoist removes himself from worldly concerns, but I fear that I have yet again succumbed to the lure of the temptress as it remains for me to transcend the carnal sphere.
Sun Ping 17/05/2013 written at the foot of Beijing (Translation: Arthur Hwang)
Background and concepts behind “The Way of the Brush”
“Bi Mo Zhi Dao” (笔墨之道) or “The Way of the Brush” is a multimedia conceptual series of which the “Internationale” – today’s performance, is the latest iteration.
It involves calligraphy made by a performer holding a traditional Chinese brush in her sex. Texts for the series were chosen for their symbolism, and performances were recorded in the form of video and still photography. There have only been two exhibitions of the works within the series in China - to a closed audience of artists and critics - due to concerns regarding issues of censorship. The calligraphy will be printed and bound in traditional Chinese book form, as well as being carved onto a stone stele and etched onto steel plates, symbolic acts of reverence which are in essence ultimate acts of subversion and iconoclasm.
In December of 2006, Sun Ping was taken to a performance of a sexual nature, whereby girls held felt-tip pens in their sex with which they wrote lewd messages onto the bodies of patrons at their request. Sun immediately felt that not only did these performances constitute a type of “Performance Art”, but that this particular “Performance Art” was both more valid and more honest than the “Performance Art” ordinarily conceived of by professional artists, as the latter was inherently artificial, whereas this represented reality as it was lived by those in a rapidly changing society who had few other choices. He was also struck by the intelligence of one of the sex workers with whom he entered into conversation. These initial feelings were to give rise to the seeds of what was to become the series “The Way of the Brush”.
Reflecting on the system of values inherent in traditional Chinese society, and indeed, in most societies, whereby prostitutes and sex-workers are considered to be beneath contempt whilst art, philosophy, erudition, wealth, and power are held in unquestioned reverence, Sun deliberately chose literary passages symbolic of such refinements and vanities to be reproduced by this method of “Body calligraphy” as a contemplation on our value systems. The set design for each performance, and indeed, the use of “calligraphy” itself, traditionally a preserve of the privileged, represent a challenge to the status quo.
Calligraphic performances in the series include the original piece “Bu Zhi Dao” (不知到), which means “I don’t know” in everyday parlance. It was also the answer given by the philosopher Laozi to his disciple Zhuangzi in response to the latter’s question as to what constituted the “Dao” or the “Way”. In answering as he did, the master indicated that transcendent wisdom could not be attained by intellectual means. This “Way of Non-Knowing” has thus a particular resonance with the Buddhist concept of “Emptiness”.
The “Wu Zi Bei” (无字碑)or “Wordless Stele”, (onto a facsimile of which the words “Bu Zhi Dao” as written via “body calligraphy” will be carved) was the funerary stele of the Tang Dynasty Empress Wu Zetian, the only woman in Chinese history who ruled in her own right. She decreed that there should be no epitaph on her stele as her deeds would speak for themselves in posterity. In its intention to contravene both history and tradition, this piece subverts the ultimate symbol of the manifestation of imperial power and arrogance.
“Liu Fa Lun” (六法论), the “Treatise of the Six Laws” as expounded by Xie He (479 – 502), the great art theorist of ancient China, sets down the criteria for great painting. As such, it represents the concept of “High Art”.
“Lan Ting Xu” (兰亭序)- “The Preface to the Orchid Pavilion”, recognized as the greatest calligraphic work by Wang Xi Zhi (321 – 379), the greatest of Chinese calligraphers, represents the most revered work of art in China.
“The lowly are the most intelligent, the exalted are the most stupid” - Mao Zedong thought.
“I like to breath” (Marcel Duchamp)
By rendering these paradigms of traditional values in “erotic calligraphy”, these performances represent acts of subversion, mockery, and iconoclasm aimed at symbols of philosophy, power, eminence, Art, ideology, and the idea of subversion itself; at the same time, however, they also constitute a recognition of the place of these schemata within the larger and continuing cultural space.
Today’s performance of the “Internationale”, the anthem of Socialism, and by extension, a reference to the Communist Party, is a new work within the series created for the Venice Biennale.
Arthur Hwang in conversation with the artist Sun Ping
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