现实的创造
——关于李郁+刘波的作品
文/袁晓舫

李郁+刘波的《狗年十三个月》及其后续作品的灵感来源是几份地方大报的“社会新闻”。说大报并不是指其版面和内容，而是指发行量，其中最大的发行量有百万份之多。在都市里翻阅这些报纸的人群相当普及，从白领到小贩，从官员到平民，几乎遍及所有的阶层。

大众媒体以吸引人们的眼球为第一要务。报纸开辟与本地相关的“社会新闻”栏目都是为了最大限度满足人们的好奇心，以扩大发行量。发行量是一种竞争，“社会新闻”不过是竞争方阵中的一小块，这种竞争的背后是利益——发行量是媒体与广告代理商讨价还价的资本，目的在于办报利益的最大化。而我们的媒体从业人员常常被称为社会的精英，这些媒体精英自以为肩负引导大众的责任与使命，总是自行过滤他们觉得无意义或者无用的社会信息，以便为大众做出“正确的选择”。这是极少数对绝大数的一种媒体控制，也是我们大众媒体的现实。

所以，我们媒体惯用的手法是顾左右而言其他。媒体从众多的新闻线索中选择新闻发表，他们是否会遵循了“典型环境中的典型人物”这一现实主义原则，我们不得而知。李郁+刘波从发表的新闻中选择拍摄的脚本素材，这是一种选择的选择。为什么要选择这些作为他们工作的目标，这也体现了李郁+刘波他们的一种现实思考。

说到现实，其实我们每个人都与现实紧密相联，我们都有自己个体的现实，也有一个共同的现实，共同的现实由所有的个体现实组成。公共媒体有种能量，可以把一个个体事件传播成为一个公共事件。李郁+刘波想要呈现的既是一个个体事件，也是一种具体的现实，其真实性借用了媒体的真实，以至像戏剧化了的真实。与很多艺术家直接观察现实的方式不同的是，李郁+刘波他们是通过大众媒体来观察现实。这种好处在于，媒体呈现的现实人们一般不会怀疑它的真实性，就作品的观看者而言，这比李郁+刘波他们亲自观察到的现实更真实更可信。至于客观性，媒体是不作任何评论以保持客观，而李郁+刘波的作品从文字到图像的转换是一个完全主动的过程，从预想拍摄到拍摄完成，其意义已经发生了悄悄的变化。李郁+刘波他们也客观，只是他们的客观已经不同于媒体的立场了。就立场而言，我们对于媒体好像总是处于一种二元对立的境地，要么进行媒体批判，要么与媒体共谋。李郁+刘波他们既没有进行简单的批判，也没有与媒体共谋，他们只是关注，一种对具体现实的关注。

何谓是具体现实？具体现实就是我们今天的社会现实，也是一个问题的现实。没有一个现实是完美的，要完美就是一个真空，不是现实。所以，一个没有问题的现实不能称其为现实。具体的现实也指一些具体的社会事件。艺术与现实的关系一向久远，艺术要反映现实既是一种本能也是一种责任。艺术对现实的解读方式有很多种，每个艺术家对现实的态度也不尽相同。有直接介入现实的，有间接介入现实的；还有运用某些手法与现实保持一种联系，也有一种似是而非的状态——一种极其抽象的现实观。李郁+刘波的作品直接介入了现实，他们要介入的现实也是具体现实的一种，他们的作品不是要解决现实的问题，而是将具体的现实呈现在我们的面前。具体的现实是一个问题的现实，一个我们应该去面对的现实——面对就是一种勇气。

我们具有读文和读图的双重经验，都知道读文和读图的感受是不一样的。阅读文字的时候虽然也有形象思维，但你有很多想象的余地。而阅读图像的时候你的思维会被图像的制作者牵制，会有一个具体的限定，并会受到图像的引导。这也表明了图像所具有的一种力量。李郁+刘波运用了这种图像力量，他们制作的一个个图像让观众进入“故事”的叙事中，这种“故事性”能够引起观众的兴趣，同时也能启动观众自己对图像表达以外的思考。李郁+刘波所制作的图像到底要告诉我们什么？为什么有人如此漠视生命？为什么我们的精神如此的空虚？我们的同情心和道德底线到底在哪里？我们的教育出了什么问题？社会公平何以实现？我们要靠谁来建立我们社会的新秩序？如此等等，当我们面对李郁+刘波作品的时候会都有一个自己的思考。

在观看李郁+刘波作品的时候我们很难用传统的视觉经验进行判断。传统的视觉经验常常将人们的观看限定在视觉愉悦的范畴，而且这种愉悦带有很强的专业特征。这并不是说李郁+刘波他们作品不具有视觉的价值，而是他们已经超越了视觉的愉悦。因为我们面对现实的时候我们的判断不是是否愉悦，而是问题，所以，他们的作品并不是一种纯视觉的产物。应该说，在引导观众观看的方式上他们已经偏离了纯粹的视觉经验，这对于大量非专业观众来说尤为重要。在我看来，当代艺术不在于小众的接受，而在于大众的普遍认知。从这一点上说，我以为他们作品的意义不在于创造新的语言方式，而在于传达现实本身。李郁+刘波的作品制作借用了电影制作的流程，有导演、有脚本、有演员、有道具、有灯光、有摄影，使得他们的作品既完整又具可读性。他们的作品是认真的，这除了他们对艺术的严肃态度以外，其较高的制作成本也使得他们必须认真以对。有人说他们的语言方式与杰夫·沃尔等人相同，我觉得这并不重要，重要的是它已经介入了我们自己的具体现实。

关于当代艺术的讨论在现在有很多，在媒体、艺术交易场和人们的交谈中，当代艺术依然是一个火爆的词汇。而当代艺术在每个人心目中的情形是不一样的：有人看到了金钱，有人看到了权力，有人看到的是一种姿态，也有人看到的是一种责任。不管怎么说，当代艺术作为社会变革中的一种文本，它应该有一个方向，那就是对具体现实的关注。李郁+刘波的作品通过大众媒体来观察现实，运用媒体艺术的形式观照现实，为介入我们自己的具体现实提供了一种可能的参考。其实这些作品并不是他们的创造，而是现实的创造。

The Creation of Reality: on the work of Li Yu and Liu Bo
By Yuan Xiaofang

The ongoing work from the 13 Months in the Year of the Dog series are inspired by the social reportage of several local big newspapers. These newspapers are big not because of their page sizes and content but because of their huge circulation. One in particular is said to have millions of readers who come from every social class―white collars to peddlers, government officials to plebeians―nearly any person who is capable of and likes to read.??

The mass media is always seeking for ways to attract more readers and audiences. For a local newspaper, social reporting related to local city affairs most satisfies readers’ curiosities and enhances sales; the city news is merely one of the means utilized in circulation competition among different newspapers. A large circulation brings a newspaper high rates for advertisements and maximum profits, that’s why capitalists go to the newspaper. On the other hand, journalists and other media practitioners regarded as social elites shoulder the responsibility to lead the public and do consciously filter information they presume useless or insignificant, making choices for the public without real approval from the latter. This is a media control whereby the minority overrule the majority, and it has become the reality of mass media.??

Consequently, the media’s stock-in-trade lends itself to speaking insincerely. The media always has to choose a select few among the large amount of stories to report, and we as readers are in the dark as to whether or not they follow the same principles of typical people in typical conditions. Now, based on the media’s choices, Li Yu and Liu Bo have selected some published news as the scripts for their creations. By choosing the news media as their basis for creation, they reveal their reflected thoughts on reality.

Concerning reality, we admit that each of us is connected tightly to it, and each of us has an individual reality as well as a common one, and that the former are the ingredients of the latter. The public media has the power via communication to spread an individual incident into a public affair. What Li Yu and Liu Bo intend to present is not only a individual incident, but also a concrete reality in which the truth is dramatized based upon media “truths”. Different from many artists, Li Yu and Liu Bo observe reality through the lens of mass media. Because mass media truth is rarely challenged by the public, the works based upon these media reports should be more reliable than those, for example, developed from their own subjective observations. The meaning of objectivity assumed by a media that just “reports but doesn’t comment” is secretly challenged after the artist duo’s active process, from concept to production, of transforming news text into hyper-real visions. That doesn’t mean Li Yu and Liu Bo are not objective; on the contrary, they are still objective, but their stand is different from the media’s. We seem to have only two choices with a media who insist upon creating a situation full of dualistic opposition: critique or collusion. Li Yu and Liu Bo have jumped out of such a binary trap; they concentrate their attention on concrete reality.????

What does it mean to say “concrete reality”? Concrete reality is exactly the social reality we are living, as well as the reality that is frequently questioned. No reality is perfect. Perfection exists only in an imagined vacuum, not within the inconsistencies of reality, so a reality without any problems could not exist. Concrete reality also means a series of concrete social incidents. Art is connected to reality from the beginning and bears as well a responsibility to reflect reality. There are many ways for artists to interpret reality, and every artist has its own attitude to it. Some of them intervene into reality directly and others indirectly. Some of them try to keep close relations to reality to a certain degree, and others stay in more ambiguous situations, with extremely abstract senses of reality. Li Yu and Liu Bo‘s work intervenes with concrete reality in a direct way, but their motivation is not to solve realistic problems; rather, they choose to present them to us. Concrete reality is a reality of problems, a reality we should face fearlessly.???

The experience of reading is a double experience; we know it is different to read text and versus images. Text, though sometimes framed by visual thought, leave us more space to imagine. Pictures always limit and conduct our thoughts by means of visual ingredients, and pictures have a manipulative power. Li Yu and Liu Bo have utilized just such power to produce their photographs and lead the audience into the narratives which have stirred their interest in both visual terms and beyond. What do these photographs mean? Why do some people ignore life? Why are our spirits so vacuous? What is the bottom line of our sympathy and morality? What are the problems of education? How does one realize social justice? Who can be relied upon to help us establish new social order? These questions are numerous, and, when looking at the work of Li Yu and Liu Bo, we find we are given a space for individual thought.

At the same time, we also find it difficult to judge the pictures with the conventional visual tools which normally lead audiences with feelings of pleasure. That doesn’t mean that Li Yu and Liu Bo’s work have lost their ability to be aesthetically appreciated, but it is in fact that they have transcended visual pleasure. Our judgments on reality can be essentially concentrated on its problems, not merely the sense of pleasure; we can conclude that their work surpasses purely visual production. It should be mentioned that their way of introducing the photographs to audiences is aberrant to pure visual experience, and this is very important for non-professional audiences. In my opinion, contemporary art is not for appreciation by only a minority, but for open perception by a majority. From this point, the meaning in their photographs is not about the creation of a new language but about delivering the nature of reality. Li Yu and Liu Bo create their work in the way of movie making, implementing human and object resources during the production processes, such as a director, scripts, actors/actresses, props, lamps and photography. As a result, they create a series of complete and readable works. They are serious artists, not only because they have serious artistic attitudes, but also because they do not want to waste away the high costs of producing. Somebody pointed out that they used Jeff Wall’s vocabulary as a reference, but for me it doesn’t matter. The most important thing is that their work intervenes into our concrete reality.???????

In the numerous discussions on contemporary art among people of the media and market, the words “contemporary art” are very hot. Different people have different definitions, some circulating around money, some about power, status or even responsibility. Whatever the case, as these contexts develop from society, contemporary art should be likewise improved and developed in a certain direction, and that is, in this case, towards a concrete reality. Li Yu and Liu Bo observe reality via the mass media, interpreting it via media art and offering a reference for us to intervene in our own concrete realities. And in fact, it is reality, not the artists who create these photographs.??

翻译：麦巅?? 译校：何颖雅
Translation:Mai Dian? Revision: Elaine Wing-Ah Ho