作品介绍
《墙：时代日记》揭示了对大众媒体的深刻反思及其对人类认知的影响，源自我在疫情期间的疑虑与挣扎。在某些时刻，公共媒体的信息被刻意操控。虽然美国的公共媒体常被认为独立、自由且不受政治干预，但事实往往与之相反。
这个作品在长达一年的疫情隔离期间构思并完成，这种完全基于时间的创作是我对于掌控自己对世界认知的徒劳尝试。
《墙：时代日记》取材于2020年3月至12月《纽约时报》中的部分标题，正如沃克·埃文斯所言，“摄影就是剪辑，拍摄之后再剪辑”。通过拼贴现有的摄影作品与标题，而非传统摄影方式，解构了线性和具有等级制度性的报纸，重塑为多维立体的摄影装置。精心挑选的内容包罗万象，如同技术乌托邦。
该装置通过全景摄像机记录展示在线上展览室中，并配有细节图像。这个过程从一开始便有明确的规划——将纸质媒介转化为3D装置，再转换为照片。我曾认为只有传统摄影——只有用相机拍摄，才是真正的摄影；然而，自从我来到加州艺术学院，这一看法发生了根本性转变。
大卫·康帕尼认为:“我们可能会说照片是摄影而不是摄影。日光浴是摄影而不是摄影。用手电筒发出莫尔斯电码信号是摄影但不是摄影。我认为‘摄影’这个词已经用来指代一系列重要的局部实践。”
装置同样是摄影——它是静止的、直接的，并且需要一定解释。它也不仅仅是摄影，更是承载了人类集体记忆的物质媒介。
查尔斯·波德莱尔在《1846年沙龙》中写道：“记忆是艺术的伟大标准……艺术是美的记忆技术。” 集体记忆作为美学哲学的核心理念贯穿于我的创作之中。已故社会学家莫里斯·哈尔布瓦克斯提出，个体记忆只有在更大的群体背景中，如家庭、血统、种族、国家，才得以统一并投射。
我一直渴望创作出能够超越个体、关乎整个人类种族的作品。对我而言，个体过于渺小与无足轻重。这不仅仅源于我来自一个人口众多的国家，或者我们如何看待集体主义，也源于人类在宏观历史中的无能为力。此次疫情作为一场全球性悲剧，几乎触及了每一个人，不论是死亡还是苦难。这种集体经历将永远铭刻在人类的记忆之中。
在几个月的沉默之后，我的创作开始了。希望未来的历史学家在回顾这一世纪时，能够将《墙》视为解读全球局势转变的一个来源。《墙》面向的是更广泛的观众，而不仅局限于与我拥有相似文化背景的华人群体。这场从2020年起持续的全球性危机，通过紧张密集的艺术创作得以具体呈现，成为集体创伤的见证。作品不仅挑战了技术进步作为民主解放的理念，更试图与被囚禁在福柯式圆形监狱中的受到约束、脆弱且不堪重负的精神状态沟通。
福柯对杰里米·边沁的理想监狱模型——圆形监狱十分着迷，该模型由一圈牢房环绕中央守卫塔，囚犯始终处于守卫者的监视之下。然而，由于他们看不到塔内的情况，他们永远不确定自己是否正在被监视。而在现代虚拟网络的“圆形监狱”中，既无守卫，也无囚犯。
我们既是看守又是囚犯，注视着又正在被注视着。
Statement
The Wall: Journal of Times reflects on mass media and its effects on one's cognition. It derives from the doubts and struggle I experienced as a student from China, where information on mass media is openly censored and controlled. Living in the US, where mass media are seemingly or believed to be free and independent from political interference, I strive to expose the contrary. This work was conceived and executed during the COVID-19 lockdown, comprising a wall installation and a book object. The time-based process is seen as a futile attempt to be in control of my perception on a yearlong quarantine.
Made with New York Times newspaper from March to December in 2020, The Wall: Journal of Times replaces the traditional photographic techniques with the act of carefully selecting, cutting, and collaging the collections of ready-made photography and titles. By deconstructing the linear and hierarchical printed newspapers into an installation with collage-like multidimensional form, with curated contents seemingly diverse and all-embracing as the technological utopianism. Walker Evans points out: “Photography is editing, editing after the taking.”
The installation is presented on the online viewing room by means of panoramic camera, as well as detailed pictures. I have planned the process since the beginning, on transforming the paper format into a 3D installation and back into a photo. I used to believe in old-school photography - only taking photos with cameras are real photography, but ever since I came to Calarts, my opinion has changed profoundly. David Campany argues: “We might say photograms are photographic without being photography. Suntans are photographic without being photography. Signaling a Morse code message with a flashlight is photographic without being photography. I think the term ‘photographic’ has come about to designate a whole range of important partial practices.”
Installation is photography - it’s still, direct, and it requires certain explanations. It is also not only photography, but also a series of material carriers of collective memory that we humans experience together.
“Memory is the great criterion of art……art is the mnemotechny of the beautiful.”, wrote by Charles Baudelaire in the ‘Salon of 1846’. “Collective Memory” is placed at the very heart of aesthetic philosophy. The evidence of this concept pervade throughout all of my creation. The term, according to the late sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, the memory of every individual is only unified and projected in a larger context of a group, such as a family, a lineage, a clan, or a nation, over time and space.
I always aspire to make something about the entire humanity. In my opinion, one individual is too tiny to matter, not only because of the huge number of the population of my country, or how we consider the aesthetic of collectivism, but also the powerless nature of humanity. The pandemic is a global tragedy that has impacted almost everyone. People died or suffered. We humankind have experienced this impact together, and it will be forever remembered. After months of silence, my creative process started. Hopefully in the future, when the historians look back at our century, trying to figure out what happened here that could change the global pattern, this work can be one of sources of their research.
“The Wall: Journal of Times” is targeting to a wider audience, instead of a relatively smaller Chinese community sharing a common cultural background. Those frustrations happened since 2020 are collectively mirrored, recorded and materialized through this labor-intensive work. It not only aims to challenge the idea of technological progress as democratic liberation but also to communicate with the constrained, fragile, and overwhelmed state of mind as an isolated individual imprisoned in a Foucauldian panopticon.
Foucault was fascinated by Jeremy Bentham’s model of the ideal prison - the Panopticon, which is comprised of a ring of cells surrounding a central guard tower. The prisoners in the cells are perpetually exposed to the gaze of the guards in the tower. Yet since they cannot see into the tower, they are never certain whether they are being watched. There are no guards and no prisoners in this virtual Panopticon. We are both guards and prisoners, watching and being watched, as we live on.