现实流转于幻象之间
文：麦巅 刘学蔚

??? 一个稍微不那么浑噩的人，他不会回避这样一个现实：低落，我们本能的力量在旷日持久的各种仪式或者规则形式的炙烤下从身体里蒸发出去，遁形于虚空。在疲于奔命的后现代生活里，眼皮需要功能饮料的支撑，否则它们无法阻止自己沉重地下滑至闭合，眼神需要色情或者惊悚的刺激，否则它们会在法律能够界定却无力保障的休闲时间里感到无所事事。具有远见卓识的思想家启示说，这一切拜技术所赐，我们在依托技术提拔日常生活的富裕指数的同时，也将自己禁锢了起来。禁锢的所在，正是在我们这些强烈仰仗技术的头脑里。技术――人类所拥有的独特优势――曾经帮助人类在与动物的领地争夺战中取得了胜利，或者将它们驱逐到对于人而言实在是险恶莫测的山林里，或者干脆将它们灭绝殆尽。技术也曾经帮助人类在彼此的资源抢夺中让它的拥有者占得先机，获得实惠。放眼望我们的当下，技术产品几乎完整地包装了我们的生活，从工作到娱乐，从建筑到新闻，它在暗处依然取代了曾经能量巨大的奥威尔式的新语而成为指引大众向未来前进的新神话。

但技术本身终究是没有灵魂的，当它成为了另一种被膜拜的宗教，膜拜者只能向它奉献自己的灵魂以示忠诚，得到的回报不是更高尚人格的馈赠，而是一种被削弱的意志的观照。观照的镜子，可以是动物园里那些无精打采的稀罕之生物，这些帝国主义意识形态的技术远征的战利品（约翰·伯格），被囚禁于方寸之间――伪造的，由墙壁或者铁丝网合围起来的野生环境――作为塑造人类知识体系的一种工具。这一面镜子，也可以是我们所读到大量报纸新闻，同样作为一种人类认知体系中的最重要的一环，在技术系统的管制下，它从民主的工具蜕化成了一种对公众的丰富意识进行围剿的象征性权力――正如乔姆斯基所批判的美国媒体，它们过滤掉任何可能导致公众反抗的内容，然后呈现给出的是那些可有可无，让公众若即若离的信息。公众陷入在一种无关紧要的不确定的情势之中，意识自主性和判断力被剪除，只剩下混杂而虚无的关于世界形象的碎片，这正是最为精巧的意识形态的工具性――以一种隐蔽的，如若不加思辨则无法意识到的侵略性的力量统制人类的世界观。地球成了身体发硬，呼吸发热的病人，动物们的处境成了星球居民会诊时的关键症状之一。而意识落病时，我们有必要观察自己所接受的知识链，其中的一环，便是铺天盖地，看起来似乎无所不包的新闻。

可以肯定的是，来自武汉的摄影艺术家李郁+刘波绝不是要颂扬那些从当地报纸上所摘取的新闻碎片，而是以一种阴郁且凝固的幽默来还原“新闻场”里所有当事人（无论是被展现的新闻主角，还是无固定所指，但确确实实与报纸的发行量相对应的大面积存在的读者以及新闻记者本身）不曾言明的窘迫之境。这些伪造的、经过刻意摆设的“新闻照片” 与专业主义（技术主义）的新闻图片实乃南辕北辙，毋庸置疑地，它们必为新闻界的“同行们”所不齿。然而，相比那些在意识形态和技术双重框架下讲究真实瞬间的新闻摄影，艺术家的作品貌似文艺小品，在戏虐之中，却透显着更有说服力的逻辑。

李郁＋刘波原本的立意可能并不在揭开新闻在政治/社会权力结构中的隐蔽功用，然而他们2006年的《狗年十三个月》以及2007年以“施害/受害者”为主题的一系列摄影作品却无意中实实在在地把一个装裱过的现实空间刺破了一个洞，让人从中窥见被象征性权力所流放的人性。当仔细凝视这些“新闻人物”的眼神时我们发现，无一例外地，它们低落、无助、冷漠、没有光彩，甚至其中很多，我们只看得见下垂的眼睑，在《狗年十三个月》系列作品中它们尤为模糊。与其说这种疲惫之态是这些主角的（而且，当事人的眼神绝非如此简单），毋宁说是报纸版面所面对的以发行量计数的阅读的眼睛的。尤其，对于那些成年的读者而言，更可能的阅读心态是事不关己、见怪不怪――这正是新闻作为产业生存的需要，也是权力秩序得以维持的关键。既然好奇心不再，判断力也式微，意志的力量薄弱下来，眼神清冷也再自然不过，这抑郁得难以排遣的低落，正是我们人生表演之余仅剩的实在心境。

当视线从照片中的那些眼神深处后退，看到整个场景时，我们面对的是一个个逼仄的空间，它们大多设立在待建的楼盘构架或狭小的房间之中，即使是在高速公路、高架桥或商业街的室外空间，也都被四边的暗角所压缩，变成了牢笼似的一隅，与动物园里动物的“宿舍”无异。动物园的隐蔽功能――让城市里的人去观照自己，在回应被关押的那些动物的眼神的时候“认识到自身的存在”――在这些照片里被彰显之于人：孤独如是！在倾泻如注的无逻辑可循的信息碎片的洪流面前，人们疲于应付直至无力招架，陷入茫然。信息的奴隶唯一的抵抗是我们仅剩的气若游丝的那一点与自己的生活场景相勾连的想象力――然而，局促的生活面，无限的理解障碍使得我们连这些也将失去。李郁＋刘波的作品，那种局促得让人呼吸紧张的景深所集聚的孤独感――所有的情节被设置在一个类似动物园囚笼的狭小空间里――正如罗素所说，自然地成就艺术家所引导的阅读方式：一种能够意识到或者只在潜意识里进行的对社会束缚的反抗。这些被艺术家抑制在黑暗里的色彩：红色的火光、血迹与房地产广告牌，青涩的旅馆墙面与少年强奸者的脸，倒卧民工的古铜色皮肤，等等，它们生发了一种迸于自抑与躁动之间的强大张力。这些漂亮得像明信片似的照片描绘着一个狂欢的市井：爱恨情仇、谋杀与精神错乱、欺骗与报复、童话与暴力、社会嬗变与宗教式信仰的迷途……然而，这处处生花的狂欢景象被艺术家克制在深处，覆以冷峻的画面色彩，最后被了无生气（或者说是被故意拉长了的迷茫之态）的人物脸色所隐藏。虔诚的和尚误入高速公路，他坚定而豪迈的行进步伐被摄影家置于车流与在建的大厦之前，显而易见的是“信仰陷入迷途”，而露而不宣的则是，这些本该在寺庙里研习禅宗的信徒竟也按捺不住寂寞而纷纷地“入世”，从至上的精神世界堕入纷繁芜杂的市面里了。《少女凌晨被人跟踪 晨练老人宝剑退歹徒》的背景同样是在建的楼盘，但缺少生气，灰头土脸的一堆混凝土构架，看起来煞是悲凉。抢夺的嫌犯与声张正义的老人样板戏式的造型，看起来甚是虚假――然而，当我们意识到暴力与邪恶的关系在连篇累牍的新闻报道中被形式化，那我们就能立刻推断出这种摆设倒是确确切切地说明了被模式化的道德律对人们的影响――它或许能够引起一阵对年轻人暴行的惊悸，旋而是片刻对老者秉持正义的赞赏，而最后，这些不断被复制的新闻故事被长久地搁在心里某个隐蔽的角落，引不起任何道德感的涟漪了。

欺骗、暴力、谋杀……这些新闻业大亨普利策与赫斯特曾经竞相追逐的爆料，至今已经成了一种行业致富的定律。人在不自由的时候不满，而在自由的时候则感到恐慌，而更甚之处，则在于我们需要别人的恐慌与痛苦来消解自己的手足无措。暴力/苦难类的新闻似乎有警世的功用，然而，这些许的惊醒之心，以及对深陷囹囵者的怜悯之心，很快就会被身体与意志的无力感所取代，继之而来的则是道德批判力的降低。仔细回想一下我们在阅读此类新闻时的反应就可以知道，有一些读起来甚至令人捧腹，一如本地报纸的“情感讲述”：一年三百六十五天的爱与背叛的复制。我们能在《见义勇为遭残忍报复 河南姑娘血洒江城街头》《美容店里叹惊奇 一边打砸一边“做头”》里看到失去道德判断力、气定神闲的围观者与残忍、暴戾的施害者之间和平得恐怖的零距离接触――这是消除了围观者与施害者之间仅剩的一点距离隔阂的“亲密接触”，让我们看到了艺术家黑色的幽默――既然都失去了道德心，索性融合在一起。但是，艺术家绝不是要做一个道德的批判者，作为另一向度的围观者，他们就像两个化学术士，将我们的新闻阅读想象收集提炼，然后在一种浓烈的气氛中以刻意的形式展现出来，使我们不得不长久地惊叹――而不再是一晃而过或仅做无关痛痒的想象。这种凝缩与构建在《凌晨游戏机室爬出血人 具体原因不详》以及《跟你进家门倒头便裸睡 哪里来的神秘女子？》中尽显无疑，尽管前者血腥无比，后者无厘头而且色情。在血人的照片中，与3D游戏里背景材质相仿的地板，匍匐挣扎着的被砍伤的游戏玩家，以及游戏室玻璃门上招贴画上的威风凛凛、杀气腾腾的“杀手”一起将游戏里外合三为一，构成一个即虚幻又现实的景象，这正是少年人所沉溺的世界。而在第二幅照片中，联想到武汉是中国著名的迷幻药重地，出现这样一个跟踪陌生人并退衣解裳的女子就不足为奇了。

消费社会对少年人过度的诱惑――报纸是其最主要的媒介之一－使得童话也随之变异：安徒生童话里的小姑娘用来照亮自己最后的一段生命的火柴变成了少女太保作恶的工具，引诱她的是时髦的娱乐，所谓的高档手机、服饰，甚至可能是摇头丸（《入室未偷到钱自恼怒 十三岁少女火烧同学家》）。美容产业更善于利用媒体来做广告，美不是错，但当瘦与胖变成势不两立的高贵与耻辱的分野时，我们就不得不反思自己越来越缺乏理性节制的审美了。排油素从身体里排走的恐怕远远不止于脂肪，更多的是生命本真。在《孪生姐妹不相象 妹妹排油大变样》中，摄影师有意地安排了一明一暗的角色站位：瘦妹妹出厅堂，胖姐姐站厨房。除去美容业的鼓噪，审美的历史也难辞其咎。消费社会则怂恿着劳动力从出生地的出走，寻找更能发挥自己的劳动力价值的工作点，农民们从土地长征至工地，继续着为了生存的斗争――所以，我们在《浓烟飘过 民工中毒倒地》中看到了沉痛而飘渺的一幕―－它酷似硝烟弥漫的战场下无名而毫无抵抗力的牺牲。联想到从报纸上所看到的连续不断的灾难，不禁心生疑窦：击倒这些古铜色强健体魄的到底是什么？是那些永不可能透明的污浊之气还是我们人性自私的弱点？

2007年系列的新作品，作为对施害人的施害进行反动的新的施害者们终于在艺术家的镜头里睁开了眼睛，虽然依然是平淡甚至悲伤的，虽然这些反制的意识常常出自一种粗野的反抗本能――以暴制恶。艺术家大概是不认同的，闹剧式的暴力不可能带来解决，可供我们解决问题的有保障力的选项却依然寥寥，在一种困顿之中，他们依然用黑暗装饰着美丽而冷静的，甚至有暧昧的色彩的边角，以重置情景：《因爱生恨杀害女友 作案后凶手投案自首》，《门诊室扔进汽油瓶 数人不同程度烧伤》以及《孩子被电灼伤要求赔偿 家长竟抱煤气坛讨说法》。施害/受害者的主题似乎过于沉重，于是两位摄影师在近期变得更加幽默，而且这种幽默有了些乐观的气息：相机闪光灯本是冷酷的旁观者，而到了非专业人士这里变成了救命的工具（《女子感情受挫欲跳桥 三警合力救下轻生女》）。截止当前的最后一幅作品，两位艺术家自己成了角色扮演者，同时也把这幅照片作为他们的工作照发布，谁也不能确定这到底是一则真实的新闻还是一个绝妙的讽刺：两个埋伏在银行门口的摩托劫匪，抢过一位牵着宠物狗的女士手里包着“钱”的报纸绝尘而去，到了没人的地方打开一看，报纸里包裹的，竟然是一堆狗屎……

艺术家本人很是喜爱戈达尔的电影，“轻浮，做作，空虚”，但在假装、狡诘的背面则是郑重地、一本正经地对文化经典的挞伐――而这两个劫匪似的（对于报纸而言）卡宾枪手从报纸本埠新闻版调转眼神，将这些粗野的武汉市井故事剪辑成一联串的明信片，然后摆到我们搁着报纸的桌边，让我们做一番有意思的对比。

Reality of Shattered Illusions
By Mai Dian and Liu Xuewei

Anyone who is not muddle-headed should not deny that in a slack reality our instincts are roasted by so many of prolonged rules and rituals in different varieties and consequently vaporized into nothing. In a life-worn postmodern society, our eyelids, if not for the support of energy drinks, can’t stop themselves from gliding closed, and, our eyeballs, if not for the stimulation of pornography and horror stories, just keep turning around in a limited and tiresome leisure time that the law can define but cannot protect. We are told by some wise ideologist that all of this is the fault of technology. When laying down our accounts with technology to exalt our index of richness and comfort in everyday life, we have mechanized ourselves by various high or low-technologies, just like prisoners’ lives are ruled by club laws under the state’s control. The prison of technology is nowhere to be located but in our own minds. It’s true that technology, as an exclusive agent of human beings, does help men and women win wars against animals for territory; some of the losers without hand-made killing machines have been annihilated, and the rest were driven into the remote mountains where machines are useless to guard men’s lives. And it’s also true that technology helped the group of men who possessed it to win wars against their brothers and sisters without machines for resources. Now, turning our heads to our current state, we find that our lives, from work to entertainment to architecture and even journalism, are almost wholly controlled by technology. The new god has become a mysterious baton, instead of the Orwellian style of newspeak, conducting our ways into the future.?????

However, technology doesn’t mind anything, even if it has been mythicized into a new religion. The god of technology would never give any more magnificent personality and identity to the human worshippers who offer their honesty from their deepest souls to him, but mirrors that imaged their weakened volition. The mirror could be inanimate animals in zoos. Or as captures during a military advance in name of an imperial ideology with the force of advanced technology, the surviving animals are jailed in small cages located on a plot of pseudo-wild nature enclosed by brick walls. They are utilized as the education tools for nature studies. The mirror also could be the newspapers we read every morning. As an important cognitive experience under the control of government technology, journalism has degenerated from a originally democratic tool to a symbolic power that is utilized to repress people’s free will. In Noam Chomsky’s opinion, the media filter of journalism is used by capitalism, political powers and legislation to sift content that may lead the public to rise up and revolt, presenting instead inessential news information to leave readers a sense of somewhere and nowhere. In unconfirmed situations depicted by journalists or specialists, the public’s self-determination is weakened by these samples of news stories, and consequentially, what we find is just shatters of the world’s imagination. The ways of imperial ideological control, through news and information, are so crafty that if we don’t think it over then we cannot dig out such covert and invasive governmental motivations. When the earth falters through increasing disaster and high temperatures, the animals’ tight squeeze help us to diagnose, but when it is our minds that are diagnosed to be sick, it is necessary to reappraise the knowledge with which we were indoctrinated, to examine whether it is one with the news we read everyday.?

It is no doubt that to simply reproduce news pieces from local newspapers is not the purpose of Li Yu and Liu Bo, the two artists from Wuhan. Going even further, they restage the embarrassing situations, and all the people in the news and the people who read the news and those who are involved in the stories but “filtered out” by the newspapers and thus ignored by the readers. These reenacted news photos in crafted situations are made in an absolutely opposite way to journalism. They defeat the media and proud photojournalists’ credibility. But compared to those who have purchased professional truth with cameras under the framework of governmental ideology and media technology, Li Yu and Liu Bo are trying to reveal another truth through their conspiratorial refute: photographs which create counterfeit scenarios and utilize the jargon of “that’s the story”.?

The artists might not have originally intended to expose journalism’s covert functions under? political and social power structures. Nonetheless, they have achieved it through their work entitled 13 Months in the Year of the Dog and another series of ongoing creations on the theme of role switching between inflictor and victim. From these impressive and counteractive pictures, we are brought back to a humanity that has been expelled and exiled out of our minds by the symbolic power of journalism. Poring at the people in the pictures, we find that their eyes are ceaselessly down, helpless, cold and lacking a happy fieriness; many of them, especially those from 13 Months in the Year of the Dog, are left with droopy eyelids. They look so tired and sick, both those in the news and the readers’ eyes behind local newspapers. For adult readers, a more likely reaction to the reports is to seek entertainment, because the mass of watchdogs (Pekinese dogs?) yelping doesn’t change anything. These readers are favored by a journalism industry fattened with entertainment and the governors who weigh down with inoperative means of maintaining reign. After the bomb of “the news”, people are left without curiosity, their senses frosted and with a weakened willpower. However, we need not fuss over these cold eye sights but be grateful that the artists have reminded us of the hyper-static aspects of real life.

Looking beyond these sad eyes, we find every scene framed in a closed space, such as a corner of a building under construction or inside a small room. Even the open-air spaces such as highway, viaducts, and shopping streets are compressed under the looming backgrounds, looking like irksome jails. It is as the concrete dorms for animals in zoos which serve an implicit function, according to John Berger, for humans to think about their modern existence when looking at animals. This kind of relative thinking is equally found in these photographs. Nothing is more fitting than the word “loneliness” to describe the modernity of such an era that swells with the flooding of unbalanced information, squeezing people’s minds empty and dry. As the slaves of information indoctrination, our only faint resistance is the slight imagination found in our everyday lives. However, daily life is penetrated and controlled by non-symmetrical information and communication obstruction and we are in the process of losing our last weapon, that is, the imagination, and any semblance of meaningful thinking ability. In Li Yu and Liu Bo’s work, in which all scenes are set up in hole-in-the-wall and zoo-like spaces, compell us to hold our breath with a sense of loneliness. This sense, as Bertrand Russell said, is a means of reading induced by artists, as essentially, a conscious or unconscious resistance against social bondage. In the colors that choke back in the gloomy luminescence—such as the flaming fire lights, blood-red and showy real estate billboards, cyan hotel walls, teenage rapists’ faces and the copper-colored skin of migrant workers poisoned with toxic gas and fallen down to the ground—a strained tension is burst forth, as if a sudden insurgence has burst out from the repression and agitation. These beautiful post-card-like pictures exactly depict the indulgent and crazy Babbitt society in which stories about live and hate, murder and insanity, cheating and revenge, justice and violence, social change and lost religion occur and are replayed in our newspapers everyday.These superficially shiny scenes are covered by the dispassionate layers of color of? imitation, for it is in actuality the dead and cream-faced people in the news stories. A devout monk who went the wrong way stepped out upon a dangerous highway and faced high speed running motors amidst looming buildings still under construction. Apparently, the story is about the precariousness of religion at the door of modernity, but, if we sink to the bottom, a deeper metaphor should be how religious spirit has been allured into this Babbitt society. Similarly, the story Girl Stalked in Early Morning - Elders Fight off Gangsters with Swords is setup under the same background—a building under endless construction—but this pile of grey concrete, which seemingly has been abandoned and will never be completed, looks more spiritless.? The model opera styled gesticulations of robbers and the valiant elders give a deceiving first impression, but when we noticed that in the news report the formalized relation among violence and evil amidst the upstanding community, then we can say such purposeful postures rightly illuminate the increasingly subdued effects of? any social mores on the population. It might agitate a moment of fear and anger about the gangsters’ violence and successive respect for the upright elders, but these feelings do not last that long; everything finally comes to calm. We have seen so many similar stories replayed everyday in every way. In the end, we read violence, fear it for a while, then leave it by the wayside in an ulterior corner of our memory without any sigh until one day when the gangster really surround us.

The stories of cheating, murder and violence that have been purchased as fateful competition weapons by Joseph Pulitzer and William R. Hearst are now still the cheapest ways of enrichment for news groups. It is said that people are indignant if without freedom, but panic if they obtain it, and furthermore, we need to utilize others’ panic to console our own impotence. The violence and tribulation related to the news seems to be a warning and reminder to people of their non-proper actions, but they actually released more panic than human awareness, intensifying the audiences’ sense of disability, and consequently, weakening any moral sense. We can see this simply by recounting our reactions when we read these pieces of news. Sometimes we may even laugh, for example, about the stories on love and betrayal in Love Story Confiding printed in all the Wuhan local newspapers, which mass produce the same plots of love and marriage 365 days of the year. In both Hair Salon Wonder - Hairdressing while Smashing and Henan Girl Stabbed in Revenge for Brave Behavior, we encounter such spectators, or rather we encounter ourselves, lost of our moral senses and acting so calmly disturbed that audiences must even condemn themselves. Enmeshed in the world of violent gangsters, the difference between spectators and perpetrators is totally eliminated. They look so inconceivably peaceful that we need to calm down in order to rethink the question of moral identity. The artists wisely implement a trick of the blackest humor; if there is no difference in moral identity, then we mix you, viewer and perpetrator, up. But the artists don’t intend to be moral critics, rather, they are two strange spectators acting like alchemists to collect our reading imagination, process them and present them to us again in a purposeful way. Now, we the audience have to breathe a prolonged sigh, not just a pass a moment of insignificant imagination. A similar condensation and construction could be found in other works, like the gruesome Bleeding Man Crawls Out of Video Arcade in Early Morning and Follows You, and the humorous and erotic Sleeps in Your Bed Naked. Who is This Lady?. In Bleeding Man, the trio of the side view video game background, the attacked video player and the commanding, homicidal combatant on the poster hanging at the door of the arcade constructs a realistic as well as visionary world—a world in which the young video-game generation obtains enjoyment and gets hurt. The journalist and editors gave the story a horrible but humorous title, in the same way horror movies are promoted. For the latter work, if we are reminded that Wuhan is one of most famous city for drug abuse, we would not be surprised by such a girl who followed a strange man to his home and stripped her clothing in his bed. She is absolutely not even one of the most monstrous drug-abusing girls of the debaucherous night clubs on the right bank of the Chang River.???

???? Consumerism unduly tempts the young generation—newspapers are the primary media—and consequently, the contents of these stories have been transformed into entertainment. The match that illuminated Hans Christian Andersen’s little girl dreams now becomes a criminal tool at the hands of a teenage girl who is lured by vogue entertainments, such as stylish cell phones, fashion, and even MDMA (Failing to Steal Anything, a Thirteen-year-old Girl Sets Fire to Classmate's Home). The beauty industry and newspapers are born to be friends in adversity. Actually, Beauty itself is not wrong, but when “fat” becomes a disgusting shame and “thin” comes to mean dignity, we have to rethink our reasonless aesthetics. The weight loss medicine Xenicol doesn’t just eject fat from the female body, but it also blocks her natural system. In Same Face, Different Weight, the artists purposively and sarcastically choreograph the thin younger sister standing in the living room, and the fat older sister in the kitchen. By the way, but the beauty industry, we also have to watch out some aspects of our own aesthetics.Consumerism instigates the millions of adult laborers to leave their homeland for a place to earn their fortune. These peasants migrate from farms, perhaps not so dissimilar to Mao’s Long March, to construction sites in sprawling cities and continue another never-ending struggle to earn a living. In Peasant Workers Poisoned by Unknown Smoke, we see a screen of mist, grief and nihility. The whole scene recalls a war-field, anonymous and full of a sacrifice whereby people have died without any resistance. We have seen too much of these similar tragedies, and thousands of workers die every year in mine collapse or explosion. What strikes these copper-skinned strong men down? Is it the never-transparent and polluted gas? Or the selfishness of the business owners? Or perhaps all of us as human beings?? ??

In the ongoing new creations during the year of boar, the people in the photographs, as new inflictors who actually are victims revenging upon their perpetrators, have finally opened their eyes in front of the artists’ cameras. Their eyes are similarly dispassionate and even sorrowful, for it is humans’ resistant nature that has driven them to revenge, to requite like for like. The artists may not agree, because violence does always feed new violence and doesn’t necessarily make any sense. Whatever, the state systems of government cannot, as the population may expect, offer mighty choices for victims to protect themselves; the system cannot even distinguish between victim and perpetrator. The artists find that these embarrassments have never been relieved, so they continue to decorate their scenes amidst this darkness and depressive atmosphere. This is what we feel when our eyes linger on pictures such as Hatred Caused by Love, Love Killer Delivered Himself to the Police, Outpatient Department Bombed by Gasoline Bottle, Several Injured, and Boy Injured by Electric Shock, Mother Claims for Compensation with Gas Jar. The artists would rather remain humorous than be depressed by the stories of victim and perpetrator, and furthermore, their new humor has never tasted so funny. In the piece Lovelorn Girl Saved by Three Armed Police After Attempting Suicide, a photoflash lamp was utilized as the salvation tool. In Victim Persuaded Attempted Robber to Surrender to Police, the victim becomes a Buddha-like citizen. In the last work so far, the two artists themselves play the two motor-robbers in the story, where a lady went into a bank with her dog, coming out a few moments later with something wrapped in newspapers. Just as she stepped out of the door, two young men riding on motor bike rushed by, snatched her package and rushed away. The culprits were astonished when they later stopped to unfold the papers and found a booty of dog shit. What a fantastic story!??

The artists are big fans of Jean Luc Godard’s films, which are regarded as something flighty, feigned and flatulent. Behind the face of pretense, however, the director seriously lashed the so-called classical culture of the time. Now, these two local newspapers robbers, like self-taught carabineers, turn their eyes from the city news pages to imitate their stories and produced them into Wuhan folk postcards, putting them beside the newspapers and letting us read and compare for ourselves.

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