仪式中的世俗
——论刘波李郁的作品
文/李原

如果我们翻阅一份经常以社会新闻著称在当地发行量很大的报纸的时候，我们会为上面的各色故事所着迷，并跟随着它们进入到这个社会的本质性里，抛开华丽的外衣，随着流动的社会图景，我们尽情的面对各种各样诸如色迷、欺骗、肮脏、虚假，人性的本质在这些新闻中发挥得淋漓尽致，如同城市中心花坛中绚烂开放的花朵，花香伴随着同样禁止触摸的标牌。

?刘波和李郁作为艺术家生活在这份报纸所在的城市里，每天他们会面对着这些缤纷多彩的新闻，直到他们有一天将这些新闻做成了作品，通常是一副图片加上一段新闻原文，呈现在我们无法确定的视线之内，无论是杀人放火或者是跳楼强暴，欺诈拐卖世事奇闻，一切的社会因素都构成了他们创作时的材料，如同滴水之如大海，致幻的感觉通过这些大千世界的各式因素充分为我们展示了题材之外世界迷人的本质。

狗年十三个月的计划是艺术家们最初的尝试，在这个计划中，艺术家们使用了 24个新闻故事来展示他们的幻觉和对现实世界的进一步解释，这 24个场景，如同 24个虚幻的仪式在尘俗世界中开放。当受众面对这一系列时，重要性在作品中考验着观众的眼睛，经验的阅读在作品前会显得苍白无力，视觉图景和新闻内容所构成的上下文内容深入到平凡社会生活的每一个场景中，无论是人还是物体都在作品中将脉络延伸到我们曾经触及的内在生活。报纸上新闻中的经验被艺术家们选择应用到作品中的任何领域，事件的背景和发生通过作品的表现性和作者的阐释欲望面对着每一位观众。精心布置的每一次事件在一瞬间呈现在画面中，传奇的故事，美好的听闻，流血的夜晚，炸弹的灰土都如同艺术家一如既往的向往，将他们的幻觉在故事的催动下放大到一定程度。

当我们从头到尾的观看作品和阅读文字，“作品始终在描绘着表象背后疏离的幻象”，这种潜伏的感觉会引导观看者进入到作者的世界中。这并不是一种传统意义上真实的世界空间，至少不是我们预计之内的人类美好世界，而是存在与我们的视野之外心理反映之内的异样场景，这种场景往往也存在于我们心理的适应度和意料性之外，并与我们的正常表象阅读背道而驰。同时这种出现带给我们对平常阅读的疑问，并将这种疑问性提到质疑的程度，通过这种质疑，进而使我们更为接近俗世世界的明确性。

艺术家在这里将自己的想象空间用于到对世界真实性的实验之中。这种想象空间之与作品的背景，始终存在与新闻事实和社会当下性之间，艺术家使用了这种社会上流动的不确定现实，来描绘他们理想之中的真实存在。正如作品中那则，进门就倒头而睡的吸毒女子，药物的作用带来幻觉世界，在这里致幻药物作为一种特殊经验反抗了现实的世界景观，女子眼中的世界景象已经完全被改写，倒头就睡的不是自己家却胜似自己家，又如一切神话中的迷离幻景，疏离之间，但见人间一切。

同时作品也作为一种仪式也开放了自身的膜拜性，我们会在作品中去膜拜一副暴力或者荒诞场景，被枪杀的生命，残害的人性，伪装的外表，奇异的事件，这些早已存在的事实在作品的概念中已经不再重要，由模特所构成的摆放拍摄已经将过去的流血欺骗转化为一种真正的事实，即我们这个世界的真实性，如同祭坛上的鲜花，和从旁而起的和乐，虚假欺骗，人性之恶在这里也能成为仪式中的美丽。世俗百态的总和在作品中汇聚，信息在不停变化的事件中相互传递，作品作为一种集聚观念的形式存在于艺术家的想象视野中，一种新的思考伴随着无尽的描述带领我们进入到作品中，如同手中传播的构想路径。

现实的压力和荒诞本质造就世俗社会引人入胜的新闻，与此相反，艺术家则使用了自己的理想主义和想象能力作为通往幸福天堂的手段，典型性的图像加上为吸引读者而写的新闻文字，构造了我们通往美好存在的可能道路，这样的一种可能性存在于作者的推断之中，仪式中的呈现，则给予我们相反的视觉经验，恐慌、惊吓、无所适从会伴随着大众体验每一幅作品，这种心理和我们向往美好世界的愿望同时呈现在苍白的世态面前。无论是放心肉，无名女尸，土炸弹还是作品中奇异午夜开放的昙花，所有的一切，都正如艺术家自己所说的，“历史是一个任人打扮的女孩。现在，就让我们给这个被扯破裙子的女孩再换上一身漂亮的衣服吧”。

Secularity of Rituals: on Liu Bo and Li Yu’s photographs
By Li Yuan

When thumbing through a local newspaper famous for its city news, we are made cloudy about the diverse stories, attempting to follow the social essence of each plot. Stripped of the layer of superb narrative, we find another social prospect in which flows the tatters of eroticism, deception, falsity and squalidity. In these bits of news, the essence of human beings is flamingly presented, like gorgeous flora in public flower beds adorned with “Do not touch” warning signs dipped in perfume .?

Liu Bo and Li Yu live in this city with this newspaper as two artists. They read it everyday, and have personally encountered many fantastic stories. Now they’ve turned some of them into their photographic work, attached with the original texts and presented to our unsure eyes. All of the ingredients of society’s best stories, such as anecdotes about murder, arson, rape, suicide, deception and kidnapping, become their source material for their creations. Mixed with the kaleidoscope of the local, these hallucinations illustrate an enchanting essence of the whole world.

The artists debut their interpretations of 24 pieces of news with all their hallucinations and reality in the project 13 Months in the Year of the Dog. Twenty-four scenes are presented to the secular world as 24 illusive rituals. Eyeing this series of photographs, the audience must think hard to discover its importance, and previous reading experiences don’t necessarily help. The context of visual and news content is quite close to commonplace happenings at any given minute of our society, and all the elements of these pictures, either the people or objects, extend themselves into our lives. The artists have filtered the experiences of the reports in the newspaper and penetrated them into every spectacle of their work. With the help of their artistic expression and interpretation, the audience is confronted with a different access point into the background and happenings of these news affairs. Each of the photographs presents a moment of a well-disposed incident, such as a legendary story, a beautiful tale, a bloody evening or a pile of dust after a bombing, driving the artists to insist upon the possibility of multiple interpretations and catalyzing their hallucinations to another level.????

When we read the whole of these pictures and texts, we are introduced to the artists’ world of interpretation, with a sense that these works depict the alienated illusions behind ordinary surfaces. This is not a conventionally true space, at least not the beautiful world of expectation, but an unusual spectacle that exists out of our eyesight, in our psychological reflections. It is always out of range of our psychological adaptability and expectation and runs counter to a normal superficial reading experience. Consequently, we are confronted with the authenticity of a normal reading, and we begin to question. With this beginning of doubt, we approach a certain secularism little by little.????

It is here in a space of their imaginations that the artists try to test out the truths of world. For the works’ backgrounds, this space is all the time that exists between the truth of the news and a social modernity. The artists utilize the flowing and unconfirmed reality of society to depict a different true existence in their imaginations. In one story, a girl took drugs and followed a strange man home, stripping her clothes in his bed. She lived in a world of MDMA, where a peculiar chemical experience allowed her to reject the spectacle of reality and totally change her vision of the world in her eyes. A stranger’s home would be so undifferentiated and familiar to her even though it did not belong to her. It is not so dissimilar to a mythic fairytale, and these alienated spectacles reflect the kaleidoscope of the world of man.??

At the same time, artists’ works are opened as a ritual to its worship character in which we worship a violent or an absurd scene, a life taken away by bullets, a brutal human nature, a pretended surface or a fantastic incident, and so on, which as already existent truths, are no longer important in the works’ conceptions. The spectacles that played by models have changed the past bleeding and deceiving incidents to a real existence, that is, the truth of the world. Like the flowers and music in the sacrifice rituals, the evil natures of human being such as falsehood and cheat also look beautiful. A boundless world of all flesh, and the information in changeable incidents are delivered reciprocally by the works which exist as a form of assembly concepts in the artists’ imagination and into which we are introduced by a fresh thinking way and the infinite narratives, as if they are the ideation methods delivered among our hands.?????

The pressures of reality and its absurd essences are mass producing these fantastic news stories of our peculiar society, and conversely, Liu Bo and Li Yu are marching forward to a happy heaven paved with the their idealism and imagination. The way to the beautiful life is possible and the possibility exists for these artists in their creations. The presentation of the rituals show us a reverse visual experience of panic, horror and loss, bringing a psychology of wishing for beauty to a pallid world. The nameless female body, a secured pig, the self-made bomb and the preternatural night-blooming cereus are the make-up. Just as the artists claim: “History is just a girl whom everybody can dress up. Now, let’s beautify the girl whose skirt has been tattered with a new suit of fineries.”?

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