中文版Statement
《墙》展现了对大众媒体的反思以及它对人们认知的影响。它来自于我在中国做学生时所拥有的疑虑和挣扎。在中国，大众媒体上的信息会受到引导。在美国，大众媒体似乎被认为是不受政治干预的、自由且独立的，而真相实际上是和它完全相反的。
这个作品是我在疫情隔离期间构思并完成的，完整作品包括一个墙壁装置和一本书。这种完全基于时间的过程被认为是在长达一年的隔离中试图掌控自我认知的徒劳的尝试。
本作品摘取了2020年3月至12月的《纽约时报》中一些令我感兴趣的标题。它取代了传统的摄影技术，通过精心挑选、剪切和拼贴现有的摄影作品和标题。将线形的、有等级制度的印刷报纸解构成一个多维拼贴式的装置。精心策划的内容看似多样、包罗万象，如同技术乌托邦。沃克·埃文斯曾说过:“摄影就是剪辑，拍摄之后再剪辑。”
该装置通过全景摄像头记录展示在在线展览室中，并配有细节的图片。我从一开始就计划好了这个过程——把纸的格式转换成一个3D装置，再转换成一张照片。我曾经相信只有老式摄影——只有用相机拍照才是真正的摄影，但自从我来到加州艺术学院，看法发生了深刻的变化。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。”
装置也是摄影——它是静止的，直接的，而且需要一定的解释。它也不仅仅是摄影，更是一系列人类共同经历的集体记忆的物质载体。
“记忆是艺术的伟大标准......艺术是美的记忆技术。”这是查尔斯·波德莱尔在《1846年沙龙》上写的。“集体记忆”是美学哲学的核心。这个概念遍及我所有的创作。根据已故社会学家莫里斯•哈尔布瓦克斯的说法，每个个体的记忆只有随着时间和空间，在一个更大的群体背景下，如家庭、血统、种族、国家，才能被统一及投射。我一直渴望做一些关于整个人类种族的事情。在我看来，一个人太渺小而无关紧要，这不仅是因为我的国家人口众多，或者我们如何看待集体主义，也因为人性的无能为力。这场疫情是全球性的悲剧，几乎影响到每个人。人们要么死去要么遭受痛苦。我们人类共同经历了这种影响，它将被永远铭记。
在几个月的沉默之后，我的创作开始了。希望在未来，当历史学家回顾我们这个世纪，试图弄清楚此时发生了什么改变了全球格局的时候，这个作品可以成为他们研究的来源之一。
《墙》的目标受众是更广泛的群体，而不仅是拥有与我类似文化背景的华人群体。这些自2020年以来发生的挫折通过这种紧张密集的工作被集体反映、记录和具体化。它不仅旨在挑战技术进步作为民主解放的理念，而且还旨在与被囚禁在福柯式圆形监狱中的受约束、脆弱和不堪重负的精神状态进行沟通。
福柯对杰里米·边沁的理想监狱模型——圆形监狱十分着迷，圆形监狱由一圈牢房围绕着一个中央守卫塔组成。牢房里的囚犯永远暴露在塔里看守的注视下。然而由于他们无法看到塔内的情况，他们永远不确定自己是否正在被监视。
而在我们这个虚拟网络中的圆形监狱里没有看守，也没有囚犯。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.