Meditations in an Emergency, or an Auschwitz Moment: Questioning Art and Criticism

Meditations in an Emergency
UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing
21.05.20 – 30.08.20

Translated by Bridget Noetzel

In May 2020, after a long period of isolation, I returned to Beijing and to the still high-ceilinged halls of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art ( UCCA ). It felt unfamiliar in a way it never had before and, oddly, this sense of estrangement came from a sense of familiarity.

Meditations in an Emergency, called ‘the first major exhibition of 2020’, opened during Gallery Weekend Beijing 2020. The title for the show comes from a poem and anthology by the poet and former MoMA curator, Frank O’Hara. The exhibition is divided into five sections: ‘The Fragile Everyday’, ‘Vital Signs’, ‘Beyond Animality’, ‘Othered Movements’ and ‘Out of Focus’.

As a curator, I am familiar with all of the methods employed in this exhibition: the citation of poetry in the title, the structuring of the exhibition sections, the wording of the preface and section texts, the choice of works, the list of artists from China and abroad, the pleasing asymmetry of the installation, the different colours assigned to the exhibition sections, and the construction of geometric open-work walls.

As the title has already signalled, this exhibition is focused on the pandemic and wants to respond to the current situation. However, from what I could see in the final presentation and from what I could infer about the working methods, it was almost the same as any show that could have taken place before the pandemic. In an exhibition with a pandemic-related title, the impact of the pandemic was not evident, and the pandemic almost seems not to have happened in that space. This was really bizarre, and left me with a strong, profound sense of estrangement.

I would be remiss if I didn’t note that, as someone in the industry, I truly understand how curatorial teams work when faced with tight schedules. In that situation, there is a lot of uncertainty, hesitation and things one simply ‘has’ to do, so my discussion of this show does not come from a place of detached criticism; it is first and foremost a way to question myself and offer a confession of my own.
I wanted to focus on a systemic and methodological crisis and ask some general questions of those of us in the industry. We must begin with this question: Why did an exhibition, which is titled with reference to the pandemic and with all the hard, visible work that went into it, still look like something from the ‘before times’, without all of the emotions surrounding the pandemic itself and the disruptive energy of a decisive event? Does discussion itself scatter that energy, or is an immediate response fundamentally impossible? If the gallery is an autonomous time and space, how should it confront that vivid and concrete sense from several months before that something was constantly tormenting, attacking and enveloping every one of us?

Obviously, there are a few issues of format that transcend form.
First, a dissertation-style curatorial method has existed for a long time, including setting a key topic for discussion, with subtopics extending or radiating from it, like in a mind map. The sections often directly reflect the division of labour among members of staff.

The second issue is a way of thinking, reminiscent of a search engine, that centres on the same keyword. Curators then make sense of the scattered points of meaning through a kind of matching game.
These two symptoms typical of our era are quite difficult to avoid. They allow understandings of reality to proliferate, but their substance is divergent and removed. Specific kinds of entanglement and confusion disappear in this topic-focused working method, offset by certain works of art that are essentially citations. By transforming reality into something that can be discussed, or even a process that corresponds to certain artworks, these methods isolate a pain that is keenly felt yet difficult to articulate.
In the poem ‘Meditations in an Emergency’, O’Hara offers an autobiographical account of emotional tumult: ‘Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous ( and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list! ), but one of these days there’ll be nothing left with which to venture forth.’¹ This line could be appropriated into the contemporary art context in the same way, as a form of mutual encouragement.

This would produce a sense of even more meaninglessness. During normal times it would be accepted as something positive and new, but the pandemic, this extraordinary time of heaviness and pain, has revealed its true colours as optional alienation. No wonder the art it produced does not take direct aim at the human heart and evoke shared emotions.

A crucial question may underpin all of this: How are our actions – art, creativity, curation, criticism and related work – connected to reality? How can we establish a true sense of reality? These questions are asked of all of us – and they are very difficult – but fortunately there are a few clues in the exhibition.

Wolfgang Tillmans’s Time/Mirrored, Beijing ( 2020 ) features several sheets of photographic paper affixed to the wall in his typical fashion, highlighting some simple events that are seldom connected or associated. For example, the year 2000 was equally far from 1980 and 2020. In 1969 the same number of years had passed since the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Spanish flu pandemic. Martin Luther King said, ‘I have a dream’, twenty-seven years before 1990; and Donald Trump was sworn in as President of the United States twenty-seven years after 1990. In December 2020, John Lennon had been dead for as long as he had been alive. The Second World War ended seventy-five years ago; and seventy-five years from now, in 2095…

These latent and even circuitous facts in Time/Mirrored repeatedly establish the sense that a lifetime has passed; the work offers a picture that comes from a broader perspective and is delineated by an artist’s insights, but it also presents the comfort that comes from something greater. The calm space produced by this precarious, stifling time may be a position on which we can eventually rely. All we need is a few thin sheets of paper.

Lu Lei’s The Square, a work originally from 2005, conjures up a new context and experience when presented here. This lead-grey, cold and silent piled sculpture that evokes the Cold War era is also bound up in the synchronous clarification of interpersonal relationships and national boundaries during the pandemic, as well as the unprecedented negative oil prices in the futures market on the New York Mercantile Exchange ( NYMEX ). The work invites us to reimagine the energy economy that seems to have withered and died after long having been obscured by the digital economy and information society. Has the old politics that mixes broadcasts and loudspeakers, propaganda and surveillance, oil drums and incendiary bombs really faded away? Under the ancient spectre of revival, regional strategy and even war, we hear the artist silently asking ‘Why are the dimensions of oil drums so much like those of loudspeakers?’

What are meditations in times of emergency? The first requirement may be abstaining from action, stopping or suspending previous habits – just as our society stopped abruptly, worn out from constant acceleration. The first thing we must be clear on is not what we want to do or what we will continue doing, but rather what we will no longer do.

If we really understand the pandemic as an ‘important thing’, then we may consider the previous controversy over Theodor W. Adorno’s statement that ‘to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric’,² and make an extremely simple demarcation. Because this event, whether we view it as a brand or a scar, was so crucial, we must actively define it as an ‘Auschwitz moment’ in our own lives and make a promise to ourselves that things must be different before and after this event.

Perhaps it is only after we have maintained calm through strength and not weakness, preserved an inactive sense of distance and meditated as a latent practice that we have a reason to ask a question that has almost become a slogan: What is the meaning and purpose of action?

Next, we must confront the issue of reality, which sits back to back with the issue of impossibility. We must consider how, in the boundless everyday or moments of crisis, we can reach that impossible boundary line, where creativity is able to find a foothold for necessity and true resistance, both ethical and artistic.

1. Frank O’Hara, Meditations in an Emergency ( New York: Grove Press ), 1957, p. 38.
2. Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Cultural Criticism and Society’ ( 1949 ), in Prisms, trans. Samuel Weber and Shierry Weber ( Cambridge MA: The MIT Press ), 1981, p. 34.

紧急中的沉思,或一个“奥斯维辛坐标”—兼论艺术与批评何为

紧急中的沉思
尤伦斯当代艺术中心,北京
2021年5月20日-2020年8月30日

当我在2020年的5月,经过漫长隔离之后,再次来到久违的北京,步入UCCA挑高依旧的大厅,却感觉到了一种前所未有的陌生—奇特的地方在于,这种陌生感,恰恰来自于一种“熟悉”。

这是在重启后的2020北京画廊周同期开幕的,被人称为“2020年第一个大展”的“紧急中的沉思”( Meditations in an Emergency )。展览标题引自诗人、MoMA前策展人弗兰克·奥哈拉( Frank O’ Hara )的同名诗歌与诗集,展览分为五个章节:《暴风眼中的日常》《生命的体征》《超越动物性》《他者的迁徙》《失焦》。

目之所及:从标题对诗句的引用,展览的分章构造,前言与各章节的论述,到作品的选择,兼顾国际本土等方面的艺术家名单,布展上的错落有致,乃至展览分区与不同颜色的规划,镂空设计的几何形展墙的搭建……无不是我作为一个策展人所熟知的展览工作方式。

由标题已提示出,这是一个以疫情为题、期望回应现实状况的展览。但是,从眼前可感、可见的最终呈现,以及可以推测的工作方式和方法中,它似乎和疫情之前的展览同出一辙。也就是说:在一个以疫情为题的展览中,我们却看不到疫情产生的影响,疫情因此似乎在这里“没有发生过”—正是这一吊诡的状态,给了我强烈而巨大的“陌生”感。

需要声明的是:作为同行,我非常理解策展团队在相当紧张的时间情况中的工作状态,这其中巨大的不确定性、迟疑以及“不得不”。所以,此处的言说,绝非置身事外超然的“批评”,毋宁说,它首先是一次自我质疑和告解。

我希望针对的是一种系统与方法的危机,以及若干提给我们所有从业人的通用问题。它确实要从这个追问开始:为什么,一个以疫情为题的展览,在明显可见的尽心尽力的工作中,却会在“如昨”的现场中,消解了疫情本身的百感交集和它作为某种决定性事件所拥有的断裂能量?是谈论的本身就意味着消散,还是即时的反应从根本上是不可能的?如果展厅是一个自治的时空,它要如何面对在此前数月中我们日夜感受到的,那种真切的、具体的,对我们每个人身心的煎熬、冲击和挟裹?

显然,这里存在着若干个超出形式( Form )问题的格式( Format )问题:

其一,是一种长期存在的论文式的策展方式,包括核心议题的设置,如思维导图般略微发散与引申的子议题,章节的划分常常直接对应于不同人员的分工。

其二,是一种围绕着同一个关键词“搜索引擎”式的思考方式,进一步,在意义的散点之间,展开“连连看”式的“make sense(制造意义和感觉)”生产。

这两种典型的时代症候,实难自免。它们导致了对现实的增生性理解—其实质是偏离与消解:具体的纠结纷扰,在某种“议题”式的工作方式中消解,被某些本质上是“引用”的作品所偏移。在使现实变得可被谈论,甚至被某些作品所对应的过程中,那些难以言说和把握的切肤之痛,却被“隔离”了起来。
正如《紧急中的沉思》的原诗,是在自述意乱情迷的爱欲心事:“每次心碎之后,我的放纵都变本加厉( 而同样的名字怎么会重复出现在拉不完的名单上!),但总有一天继续冒险将落得一无所有……”( 许舜达 译,联邦走马 x 不是制作 出品 )—这句话,值得被以同样的方式“挪用”入当代艺术的语境体会,足资共勉。

这将产生一种“无意义的多”,在和平年代作为一种积极的“新”被接受,却在疫情这一“沉、痛”的非常时期,暴露出它的本来面目:一种可有可无的“异化”。无怪乎由它产生的艺术无法直指人心,引发共情。
这一切的背后,是一个今天可能至关重要的问题:我们的作为—艺术、创作、策展、批评及其相关的工作,与“现实”的关联何在?我们如何建立起真切的“现实感”?

这个问题向我们每一个人提问,并如此之难,幸运的是,在展览的现场已显端倪:

沃尔夫冈·提尔曼斯(Wolfgang Tillmans)的《时间/镜像,北京》( 2020 ),用几页以他的经典方式粘贴的打印纸,提示了一些简单却少被想起或联系在一起的事件:在2000年的时候,1980年和2020年同样遥远;1969年,距离一战结束的时间,和西班牙大流感距离1969年的时间一样久;1990年的27年之前,马丁·路德·金说出“我有一个梦想”,1990年的27年之后,川普宣誓担任美国总统;2020年12月,约翰·列侬死去的时间将和他活过的时间一样久;75年前,二战结束,75年后,是2095年……

这些隐微甚至让人觉得絮叨的事实,反复建立起“时间/镜像”的“恍若隔世”感,给出了某种由艺术家的洞见而被勾勒出的、来自更大视野之下的画面,也给出了一种因广大而来的宽慰—这在间不容发的窒息时刻,产生的从容空间,或许将是我们最后可依赖的阵地,而且,它只需要一些单薄轻飘的纸片。

陆垒2005年的旧作《广场》,在此次的置入中带出了全新的语境和体验:这个铅灰色的,冰冷、沉默的,带着冷战气息的堆积的雕塑体,伴随着疫情期间对于人际和国界的同步明确,伴随着纽约商业交易所( NYMEX )原油期货史无前例的“负油价”,引导我们再次想象:那被数码经济、信息社会遮蔽已久的、似乎早已老旧而故去的能源经济,那混杂着广播与喇叭、宣传和监听、油桶以及燃烧弹的“旧政治”,真的已经消逝了吗?在重温地缘战略乃至战争的古老阴影时,我们却听到艺术家悄悄地问道:油桶和喇叭的尺寸为何如此接近?

而在紧急时刻的“沉思”将是什么?或许,它首先要求的,是对行动的某种戒绝,对原先惯性的暂停、悬置—正如这个突然刹车的加速而倦怠的社会一样。首先需要被明确的,可能不是“要做什么”,或者再继续做什么,而是“不再做什么”。

如果我们真的认为疫情是一件“重要的事情”,那么,我们或许可以翻转早先关于阿多诺“奥斯维辛之后,写诗是野蛮的”的争论,做出一个极其简单的自我界定:由于这一事件,无论作为烙印或伤痕,是如此关键,因此,我们有必要在自己的生命中,主动划定一个“奥斯维辛坐标”,并自我承诺:在这之前和之后,必须要不一样。

经由依靠力量而非虚弱保持的一种冷静,一种非行动性的距离感,以及作为潜实践的沉思之后,或许,我们才有理由发出那个已经几乎成为口号的追问:“行动”的意义和目的何在?
进而,面对与“现实”问题背靠背的“不可能性”问题:也即,如何在无边的日常,或紧急的危机时刻,都能抵达那个“不可能”的边缘线—创造力得以获得必要性和真正对抗性的立足之地,这是伦理的,也是艺术的。