一名温哥华的艺术工作者手记

今日还没走进办公室，便听到大新闻。加拿大国家美术馆的馆长Marc Mayer在昨日CBC的采访中，口出狂言，声称“加拿大之所以没有非白人艺术家，那是因为他们都不能够靠艺术在一个新国家为生，只好选择其他职业”， “我们做展览时只考虑优秀的艺术家”，“非白人艺术家在哪里？我怎么看不到？”。为此，在艺术家中当夜引起轩然大波，200多人已联合签名公开声讨 Mayer,估计Mayer先生今晚是睡不好觉了。刚听到这种言论，自然心头一火，好奇之下，去看了下采访的录像。

CBC对Mayer的采访

Mayer先生的确够惨的，说出来的话自然听起来又种族歧视又无知，尤其是预先假设了所有的非白人艺术家 都是刚到加拿大的新移民（分析员也说，这样的推设未免让人感觉不爽，毕竟很多非白人的艺术家都在加拿大好几代了）。但仔细想想，恐怕CBC的剪辑也不乏误 导的成分。首先，给Mayer盖上种族歧视的帽子有些仓促了。Mayer本人致力于发展国家美术馆的北美原著民艺术史的发展被一笔抹杀，至于“我们做展览时只考虑优秀的艺术家”这句话被大家广泛引用的时候被切成了两半，原文的后半句是”无论是欧洲人亚洲人还是南美洲人，我们一律一视同仁“。这话的另一层意思是－－如果有位非白人艺术家的作品被选中，其原因并不是因为他／她的肤色，而是由于他／她的艺术水平够高。

艺术人士致Mayer的公开信

上回说到冬奥期间全城出现大小多样各种公共艺术活动，我们中心也不例外，推出了World Tea Party这个活动。这也是本人消失了那么久的原因。从2月12到28日，我每天从中午12点到晚上10点都在上班，到家（之前还要和游客们共抢工交系统的服务）已经11点半，洗个澡然后看半部电影然后就倒头睡觉，持续了两个多星期。

World Tea Party从1993年就开始了，艺术家Bryan Mulvihill从60年代就开始历游各国，学习各个国家的茶道文化，终于在93年开始正式挂排致力于世界茶派对的推广，从好赖物，威尼斯双年展，巴黎铁塔，印度，多伦多，蒙特利尔，都出现过，并带动了加拿大许多城市茶文化的兴起和回归。茶是世界上最古老的饮料，也是最流行的饮料，中国，日本，韩国印度，中东，欧洲，乃至北美印地安人都有古老的茶文化历史。借用茶这个媒介，在美术馆的场地，以展览／行为艺术／表演艺术／多媒体艺术许多的形式，World Tea Party正验证了多年前Joseph Beuys提出的Social Sculpture这个概念，让观众的创造力和互动提供了展览的内容。

更具体的说，想像自己是一名游客，或当地或外地，走进一个美术馆。而这个美术馆与众不同的是，墙上并没有刷的雪白，也没有传统的画可看，取而代之的是一个沙龙般的环境，花香茶香飘逸。然后一两个穿着美丽优雅的主人走来，手持拖盘，上面放着多种精美的茶杯，里面有不同的茶可供选择。左边有人在演奏音乐，右边有人在演示日本茶道，墙上还有些显示屏展示媒体艺术作品。那气氛其实很象中国古时候的知识分子相聚的茶楼。在两个星期里，我们大概安排了20多个特别节目，包括不同国家茶道演示以及茶和文化／哲学／艺术之间的关系，网路派对，音乐表演（从古筝到电子乐都囊括了）等等。来现场的观众也是超级多原，有外国游客，本地居民，艺术家／非艺术家，政府官员，流浪汉，甚至加拿大总督的老公Jean-Daniel Lafond和挪威的女王Queen Sonja都大驾光临了一翻。各路人马聚集一堂，气氛融融，要说是个微型World Peace的演示也不会过分。说起来Queen Sonja的气质超好的，当场感叹绝对是aging gracefully的典范。

这两天加拿大人民心情超好的，因为成功举办了冬奥，得了最多的金牌，赢了冰球（这是重点），就算连New York Times和英国卫报连篇贬低，也可以暂时放一边了。

下回我来说说过去的三周里我究竟喝了多少种茶。

照片实在太多了，看这里吧。

Ken Lum是加拿大的艺术节的国宝级人物。出生在温哥华，成长于唐人街，任教于UBC, 展览于全世界，
他的作品通常将大众文化和高等艺术进行转化，在过程中产生两种思维和观点的冲突和碰撞。
在建立东温纪念碑的同时，他也被温哥华美术馆邀请，为美术馆的off-site项目度身定做一件艺术品。
Off-site, 顾名思义，就是不在美术馆馆区内，而是在市中心全市最高的一栋搂－香格里拉大饭店－的大门前。
Ken Lum的过人之处和高明的艺术风格由此可见：他并没有象上一任艺术家那样，贴一些大副的不软不硬的
中国农村小朋友肖像照，而是做了一个题为“从香格里拉到香格里拉”的装置作品。在钢筋水泥的现代建筑前，
搭建了三个水边的小木屋，从形式上拷贝了北温哥华临海的小城区Maplewood Mudflats squatters' community
的建筑特色。Maplewood在上世纪初到70年代，布满了人们搭建临时建筑，大量的艺术家，作家，政治运动家都在
那里生活过。这三个小屋的原形分别为作家Malcolm Lowry，画家Tom Burrows和和平运动倡导者Dr.Paul Spong
的故居。原始的木居结构和时髦现代的香格里拉大饭店相互映衬，造成了一个尖锐而滑稽的冲突局面，尤其引发人们
对似乎不可逆的城市发展进程的种种思考。

巧的是，Tom Burrows的儿子Elisha是我的一个朋友，是个摄影／道具师。在不知情被请去造小木屋，结果发现，
造的是自己父亲以前住过的房子......

最近由于冬奥会临近，市政府搞了好多公共艺术出来，以后有时间一个个讲过来。
很喜欢的一件作品是Ken Lum在Clark+Knights两街交界处建立的Momument for East Van (东温纪念碑）。
East Van就是East Vancouver的简称，和富豪大宅气派洋洋的西区相比，住在东区的大多是工薪阶层，劳动人民，
艺术家，学生，第一代移民等等，文化层次丰富，三教九流鱼龙混杂。80年代时，以下这个符号遍及了东区的涂鸦墙:

  E
VAN
  S
  T

利用基督教的十字架的结构建立起的简单概念，虽然和宗教其实无关，却抒发了东区人民对自己地盘的热爱，骄傲
和保护，和宗教信念的高度结合起来，同时也是对西区单一上流社会白人文化的一种挑衅。20年后的2010年，
在西区住房饱和，东区逐渐被开发商买进抛出（gentrification)，尤其在温哥华成为2010年冬奥会的主办方之后，
地价在短短10年间不断高涨，旧屋被拆，昂贵的商品房林立，东区原来的居民却买不起。很多人都失望的说，
east van已经变了，即将不复存在了。Ken Lum在此时把这个人们熟识的标记，做成一个巨大的霓虹灯，
高高树立起来，面朝西方，意义深长。

DZ: Western front is one of the earliest places to organize Art’s birthday celebration? What about other galleries and museums?

HB: The Front was the centre of it. And there were others in Vancouver. To go back to your other question about Kunstradio, Vienna came to the network very early. Robert Adrian was involved in the computer network, early email and slow scan event. He produced some very interesting events from his end. His wife Heidi Grundmann had a very legitimate radio show on the National Radio Station about art. She would go to the Documenta and biennales to interview the artists and so on. Then she realized that there were artists using that medium itself. She became very interested in artist using radio and sound. The show evolved very early on and became a sound art show even still today, a very important show. So we might be being broadcasted right now on Kunstradio which runs every Sunday night on the National Austrian Radio. If you go to their website (http://www.kunstradio.at) you will find a huge archive on Art’s Birthday. They’ve really become an important node. So this global network that we have today is largely because of the efforts of Kunstradio, and Western Front is very closely connected. Right now at Western Front there are other events happening for the Art’s Birthday.

DZ: One of the early telecommunication art theories is that instead of artists making objects, they are creating a space. From the first telecommunication project till now, almost 40 years, there has been big improvement in technology. For example, we are streaming live! That would never have happened 10 years ago. How does that affect telecommunication art? And also what is new right now?

HB: It all moved on very quickly. Sure Fluxus artists imagined a global network, a global brain a long time ago. You can see mail art as an early model for the Internet. But it’s true that we are in a completely new situation. Now everybody’s got a cell phone. You can just about stream from a cell phone. That interactive technology has become real so that the idea of Bertolt Brecht is real. Now it’s just huge. There’s a whole kind of vernacular creativity goes beyond the art world. The whole idea of the eternal network is happening in the global sense. You almost feel like some amazing balance that would tip at certain point that, suddenly, out of this accelerated hothouse, rapidly evolving communications and creativities, there would be some new thing. We will come out of it. Maybe it won’t take a million years to go back to life, maybe it will be sooner than we thought.

DZ: there’s also this interesting thing that we discovered through researching Internet streaming. I was calling up some internet companies to ask about how to set up wide bandwidth internet here at Centre A, one of the companies said that the service is extremely expensive, for example a commercial T1 line, and that’s because they don’t want to make it into a common commodity. Why do you think is that (besides the technological aspect)?

HB: I think it goes back to the theory artists making space. I think it’s a very nice image: artists making space, artists making life. There’s a sense of freedom about that idea. There’s a sense of freedom for me that now we are here having the world tea party. What is the world tea party? It is a space. There’s no big shows, no spectacle. There’s just this space where we could be together and have a cup of tea. Which is great right? Then we become the art. I think it’s very democratic. And of course there are thousands of people out there trying to figure out how to make money out of it. I am sure there are all sorts of people thinking “what do me do wrong? We allowed the Internet get out and it’s free and we are not making any money off it and it’s a problem. And they continue to try to. They commodify it and it’s surveillance. There’s this dystopia scenario that can very easily be rolled out. But seems to me that each time these forces of management, control and exploitation try to reinforce their position, the subversive voices comes in and very quickly dissolve the situation. Not just activists and legal system but also j-walkers wh invent something that goes around the system of control. I think that’s the creative space of play that we are in right now. Marshall McLuhan said long time ago that you have the surveillance of people looking down, but you also have the people looking up. With these technologies, they go both ways. So it’s very hard for the force of control to keep their stuff secret now.

DZ: Thank you for all the great and honest answers. I have one more question. What’s your view of artwork exhibited on the cyber space? Of course it’s very different than participating in an event. For example, people who are watching us at home and people who are sitting here physically. What’s your view on cyber-based art and exhibitions? I know it’s a big question.

HB I think it’s about what’s on your mind really. We used to do these radio shows called the LUXE Radio Plays. We get together with a bunch of people who are not professional actors. We made up stories, we scripted them and we performed them as live performance using old style sound effects. We had rolled-up carpets pouring rice down tubes and breaking glasses. It was actually quite a lot of fun to watch for the audience there. You would see some people holding sheets of paper reading to a microphone, and a bunch of other people with objects, but you might be imagining people going over the Alps on a hot air balloon or something coming in from outer space going to the bottom of the ocean. In your mind the scenario would be completely different from what you are seeing with your own eyes. So when you talk about art on the Internet, it’s kind of conceptual isn’t it? We imagine all kind of people in different cities celebrating art’s birthday. We can actually go into that space. I think a lot of interest for online art is among people who are online. People who are online are going to make online art and look at other people who are online and make online art. They live in this world which’s like an online cult of streaming audio freaks. So you might be typing a letter or doing a spreadsheet or something, but on the corner of your monitor, there’s stream coming from Antwerp. And you can look at it more closely if you want to, or sometimes you have three or four things ongoing at the same time. People live in that world but at the same time we are sitting here across from each other. There’s always this tension happening between what’s in the real world and what’s happening online. It’s interesting that a lot of commercial galleries are like“ oh interesting that we ill go online and sell all the work online”, and it hasn’t worked out. All the big commercial galleries closed their online sites because people need to meet to engage that. Its not a bout making a sale, it’s about what art does, and I think it’s really important to have this space in which we can actually meet in order for this online thing to work. You can’t have one without the other.

DZ: I think we had a similar discussion when we talked about performance art and who is the audience. Let’s go back to the Net-based art. There’s always this possibility that nobody out there is watching right? You can have 0 or 100 visitors on your website while doing this live event. Similar to a performance artist doing a performance in a forest with nobody watching. Does it still make it art if nobody is watching?

HB: Oh yeah totally. Actually I was just inspired by Kate Sansom on my Facebook. She has a piece called “to-do”. I didn’t really look up the work but I am going to borrow that idea. It’s great to have ideas, but you don’t actually have to make the ideas. Why not just make a list of the ideas? One idea I have is to shoot a series of photographs of pine trees in Vancouver which are normally located in very ugly gas stations and next to a street lamp or something like that, but you know what it’s a subject that’s been done to death. You don’t actually have to take the photographs. It’s just a nice idea. You can actually list hundreds of ideas and you don’t actually have to execute them. So is that art? Why not. I think art is about intention. What is it that you mean? What do you mean to do? So what you mean to do is being alone in the forest and drop a dry sponge into a bucket of water. And it’s art and it’s fine. It’s about what you are thinking. What’s in your mind and what’s coming out of your mind.

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