艺术品是否诞生于毁灭？

诞生自毁灭的艺术

The art born of destruction

译者：Jenny_Peng

FOR artists, acts of war and iconoclasm often serve as a call to arms, triggering creative expressions of rebellion and dissent. Over the past half century, contemporary artists have created powerful works whose genesis lies in destruction. These artworks question the meaning and weight of losses, whether of cultural heritage or human life. 

对于艺术家，战争和反社会习俗行为通常是战斗的号令，引发创造性的叛逆和异议表达。上世纪五十年代以来，当代艺术家创造出了诞生于毁灭的强有力作品。这些艺术品提问到失去的意义和重要性，不管是文化遗产或人类生命。

Some have reacted to destruction with destruction. Born in 1957, Ai Weiwei came of age during China’s Cultural Revolution. A dark period in China’s history, during which the country’s historical sites and artefacts were subject to devastating damage, the Cultural Revolution has found ironic echo in the artist’s own iconoclastic gestures. Mr Aihas covered Neolithic vases with synthetic paint and photographed himself dropping a 2000-year-old Han-dynasty urn. He has created sculptures using materials from demolished houses and temples. His work consistently draws attention to the destruction of China’s heritage, at once questioning and underscoring the value of history. 

有些艺术家选择了以毁灭应对毁灭。艾未未生于1957年，在中国的文化革命时期成长。文化革命是中国历史上的黑暗时期，期间这个国家的历史遗迹和人工制品都遭受毁灭性的破坏，这位艺术家的反社会习俗姿态讽刺地反映了该时期。艾未未曾将合成油漆刷在了新石器时代花瓶之上，并录制了自己摔碎一个两千年的汉代瓮的视频。他用拆迁的房子和寺庙来做雕塑。他的作品始终吸引着大众去关注中国遗产的毁坏，同时质问和凸显历史的价值。

Other artists choose to pay tribute to vanished heritage through symbolic resurrection. Carved into the side of a mountain in Afghanistan in the sixth century, the Buddhas of Bamiyan stood 35 and 53 metres tall until the Taliban blew them up with dynamite in 2001. In 2015, Jason Yu and Liyan Hu projected life-size, three-dimensional holograms of the Buddhas into the empty caverns that once housed them (see below). They gave the projector to the Afghani government, providing a means to periodically salve the physical, emotional and symbolic wounds left by the Taliban’s destruction. 

其他艺术家选择通过象征性的重生向消失的遗产致敬。巴米扬大佛（the Buddhas of Bamiyan）从六世纪阿富汗一座山的一侧雕刻而来，高35×53米，直到塔利班在2001年用火药将其炸毁。2015年，Jason Yu和Liyan Hu将与实物大小一样的3D全息图投射进曾经容纳他们的空洞穴里。他们将投射器交付阿富汗政府，提供间歇性抚慰塔利班毁坏留下的物理上、情感上和象征性的伤疤的方式。

Artistic responses to destruction are not always positively received, particularly when they dwell on loss of life. A sculpture by Eric Fischl, an American artist, which responded to the attacks of September 11th 2001, prompted such a violent Public outcry when it went on display in 2002 that it was removed within a week. Entitled “Tumbling Woman”, the sculpture depicted a figure that had jumped from one of the Twin Towers, crumpling at the moment of impact with the earth. Some members of the Public complained that the sculpture was exploitative. Others felt it celebrated the bravery of a woman choosing the manner of her own death, and saw in it an allegory for human dignity.

艺术家对毁坏的回应不总是被人正面接受，尤其是当他们在聚焦生命逝去的时候。美国艺术家埃里克·费谢尔（Eric Fischl）的一个雕塑作品针对2001年的911袭击事件，雕塑在2002年进行展示的时候，引发了公众强烈抗议，导致一周之内就被撤掉了。该雕塑名叫“坍塌的女人”，刻画了一位从双子塔跳下的身形，在着地受力时候开始变形。有的公众抱怨，该雕塑太具有剥削性了。有的认为它颂扬了一位女性选择她独有死亡方式的勇敢，并从中看到了关于人类尊严的寓言。

Morehshin Allahyari, an Iranian artist, created a series of sculptures exploring “the poetic relationships between 3D printing, plastic, oil, technocapitalism and jihad”. She printed 12 small plastic replicas of artefacts destroyed by IS; inside each, sheplaced a USB containing photographs, files and archival documents with information about the original piece. Last February, she released all her research to the Public online. 

伊朗艺术家Morehshin Allahyari创作了一些列雕塑，探索3D打印、塑料、石油、和圣战之间诗性的关系。她打印了12部IS毁坏的手工艺品的塑料复刻版；在每个作品内部，她放置了一个USB，存有关于原作的照片以及文件和档案文献。去年二月，她在网上公开了自己所有的研究。

The project was meant not only to counter the destruction of IS but to critique 3D printing projects by firms in America and Britain that aim to “rebuild” vanished monuments such as the Arch of Triumph in Palmyra, which was replicated by British archaeologists in 2016 and displayed in London, New York and Dubai. “It’s problematic because the UK and the US have been part of this crisis and this mess and now they’re the civilised people, the white heroes who are saving these things [from] the Middle Easterners, the Muslims, the savages who are destroying them,” she says. “This project is not just an architecture reconstruction project. It’s not just a political gesture. It comes with all these layers of symbols and metaphors and emotional and poetic relationships.”

这个项目不仅是为了还击IS的毁坏行为，还为了抨击英美的3D打印计划，该计划旨在“重建”消失的纪念碑，例如巴尔米拉的凯旋门，2016年英国开古学家曾将其复刻并在伦敦、纽约和迪拜进行了展示。“这是有问题的，因为美国和英国自身也是这场危机和困境的施暴者，现在他们是文明人，是从中东人、穆斯林人和毁坏的野蛮人手中拯救文物的白人英雄。”她说到。“这个项目不单是建筑重建项目，不单是一种政治姿态。它的产生伴随着符号、隐喻和情感以及诗意关系的所有层面。”

Those fraught relationships are given further attention thanks to Michael Rakowitz’s work: his response to IS’s destruction will top the empty fourth pillar in Trafalgar Square in 2018 and 2019. The artist’s winning work is a 14-foot sculpture of the lamassu—a winged bull that guarded the ancient Nergal Gate in Nineveh from 700BC until 2015.  

那些令人忧虑的关系进一步受到关注，这要得益于麦克·拉克威茨（Michael Rakowitz）的作品：他对IS毁坏行为的回应将于2018和2019年填补特拉法加广场第四根柱子的空缺。这位艺术家的获奖作品是一个14英尺的拉玛苏雕塑（the lamassu），它是一头长翅膀的公牛，从公元前700年到2015年守护着尼尼微的古尼格尔门。

Part of an ongoing series entitled “the invisible enemy should not exist”, Mr Rakowitz began creating such art in 2007 as a response to the looting of the National Museum of Iraq. To date, he has reconstructed 700 objects from a list of 7000 destroyed and stolen Iraqi artefacts. The artist focuses on the destruction of cultural heritage as a way to obliquely reference human losses, deliberately differentiating his sculptures from the originals by using packaging from Middle Eastern food and Arabic newspapers. His lamassu is made from empty cans of Iraqi date syrup. “Nobody’s going to be able to put together the families that have been torn apart by death and by forced immigration,” he says. “I want to be able to speak to that and to point to the impossibility of reproducing anything except a ghost. And a ghost can comfort, but a ghost can also haunt.” Countering the iconoclasm of groups like the Taliban and IS through art is an ingenious way to express defiance. These new works serve both as memorials and as symbolic rejections of ideologies that fetishize death and destruction while failing to understand the power and necessity of creativity.

拉克威茨是还在进行中的名为“无形的敌人不应该存在”系列的一份子，他从2007年开始创作这种艺术，作为伊拉克国家博物馆被洗劫的回应。共有7000个毁坏和被盗的手工艺品，他目前已经重建了其中700个物件。这位艺术家专注文化遗产的毁坏，作为一种委婉暗示人类损失的方式，他故意使用中东食物的包装和阿拉伯报纸，以此区分开他所创作的和本来的雕塑。他的拉玛苏由伊拉克空枣蜜易拉罐制成。“没人可以让死亡和被迫因移民分开的家庭破镜重圆，”他说，“我希望可以证明这一点，就像不可能重建任何东西，除了幽灵。而幽灵可以慰藉人，也可以缠扰人。”通过艺术还击反社会习俗组织，如塔利班和伊斯兰国家，是一种表示藐视的独创性的方式。这些新作品既是一种纪念物，也是对一种思想象征性的反对，这种思想盲目迷恋死亡和毁灭而意识不到创造力的必要性。