Chen Dandizi: The Most Daring Venture
Guangdong Contemporary Art Centre, Guangzhou, China
2018.07.02-07.25
According to Kant, it is a kind of “adventure” that human regard value as the foundation of their existence. In the matter of the original meaning, the so-called value is a dam or bar that is used for human to resist something. The concept value is targeted at Nihilism. Human is a kind of being that cannot exist without ideal, and that is the reason why human could live between hideous reality and beautiful ideal: as he is discontented with the reality, he has ideal; or that as he has ideal, he becomes discontented with the reality. In this way, it is unavoidable for human to verify whether it is suitable to regard value as the foundation of existence by “adventure”.
In this project, I try to discuss the self adventure, which is based on life itself, of ordinary people in daily life through various art works. For “themselves”, the process of adventuring is exactly a kind of resistance against life. Martin Heidegger states in his work Wozu Dichter: “The existent are adventurers, as existent are in fact adventuring and letting adventure lead the way.” The adventurer as existent is someone desired, who is detained and existing in volition all along and self-adventuring. The diversion of human only happen when they reflect on their authenticity in depth, and we couldn’t get free of the vexation flooded in ourselves or trace the identities unless we insist on adventuring as someone with will and pursue genuineness, truth and integrity.
In the installation work All You Need is Love, there are two videos selected from the movie The Crucified Lovers directed by Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi, playing in two separate television sets. One of the videos shows that two leading characters ran away from social norms and arrived at a poetic and ideal world. The other is selected from the ending of the movie, in which the two leading characters was bound back to back on a mule. And the scene was freeze-framed on the faces of this couple, who were sentenced to death soon, with faint smile. The arrangement of this smile doesn’t aim to display the romantic theme of love and death, as love is the resistance to death. Their tacit smile implies a possibility of another kind of society.
The middle aged man in the video Spring Flamingo represents ordinary people in modern times. Sometime he gives in to life while sometimes he persists in illustrating a kind of myth about the world so that he could self-deceivingly deconstruct his past life. When bored, he would look back upon the so-called “persistent old joys”. Once he has a minute to rest, he would trace without hesitation the past memories which may be beautiful and romantic. However, he’ll never be a romanticist.
The dual-screen video 3’17” includes two videos, in which one is about boiling water and the other is of foreign matter dropping in the eyes accordingly. The reaction of the objects is getting more and more intense as time went by, and the relationship between these two objects implies a recessive power relation. The work Gender Analysis: Opinion Polls juxtaposes and re-edits three fractured scenes of a movie, and questions the hero and heroine on the both side by a public opinion poll in the center -- “questioning others in a Socratic way constantly”. Based on the classic computer game Microsoft Pinball, another work The Adventurer leads players to a certain direction by the instruction from a virtual machine. This work continues on illustrating the spirit of “adventure” -- the way we find our mission in the desolate interplanetary vagrancy and establish relationship with the vast world as a solitary subject.
Most of the works included are based on imagination -- a kind of storytelling fantasy. Life experiences are the chief source of imagination. I want to imagine the life of strangers, and try to position myself in it while setting myself dissociating outside the life. The abstract, ambiguous and unclear relationship is endless.
Text by Chen Dandizi
陳丹笛子 : 最大膽冒險者
廣東當代藝術中心實驗空間
2018.07.02-07.25
康德認為人以價值為其存在的根基，實在是一種“冒險”。就其本義而論，所謂價值就是人類抵禦某種東西的堤壩和護欄，價值針對的乃是虛無主義。人是一種需要理想才能存在下去的特殊存在，所以人生活在醜惡的現實與美好的理想之間：他因為對現實不滿，於是就有了理想；或者說他因為有了理想，因而對現實不滿，所以人就不可避免地要通過“冒險”而來確定這一種價值是否合適用來作為存在的根基。
在這個項目中，我嘗試透過不同的作品來談及普通人在現實生活中想要基於生命本身的自我冒險。對於“他們”自身來講，這種大膽冒險的過程就是對生命狀態的一種對抗。海德格爾在《詩人何為》中提到：“當下存在者都是所冒險者，存在者本身就是冒險著的，它一任自己聽冒險而行。”作為存在者的所冒險者是一個被意求者，它被扣留於意誌之中，本身始終在意誌的方式中，並且自我冒險。人的轉向是在他們深入本己的本真性之際才發生的，當我們更加固執作為有意願的人承冒險而行，對“真正”、“真實”、“完整”的追尋，我們才能從貫徹自身的煩憂中解放出來，尋找身份認同的痕跡。
裝置《你所需要的就是愛（All You Need is Love）》中的屏幕播放的兩個畫面出自於日本導演溝口健二的《近松物語》，一個畫面是逃避封建社會規則的他們逃到了一個充滿詩意的自然世界，而另外一個是影片結尾的鏡頭，他們兩人騎在一個騾子上，背靠背地被綁在一起。鏡頭定格在這一對即將承受嚴酷死刑的情侶的臉上，他們的臉上露出淡淡的笑容。這個微笑的特別之處不是要表達愛與死交融的浪漫主題，愛是對死亡的反抗，在他們一致的微笑中，也宣示了另外一個社會的可能性。
在錄像《春日火烈鳥（Spring Flamingo）》裏出現的中年男人作為現代普通人的普遍象征者，時而妥協於生活，時而又固執地描述著某種關於世界的迷思，以便完成對自己已逝人生的自欺欺人的拆解。百無聊賴之時，回溯著那所謂的“執著的舊夢”，片刻喘息的機會，他義無反顧地追索著過去一段或許是美麗的浪漫回憶。可他從來不會是一個浪漫主義者。
雙屏幕錄像《3’17”》分別播放一段沸騰中的水與一段被異物滴入的眼球的片段，對象的反應隨著時間而越發強烈，通過兩者之間產生的關系來暗示一段隱性的權力關系。《性別分析：民意測驗》將同一部電影中三段斷裂的鏡頭並列重剪，以中間畫面的一份社會民調——“對他者持續發出蘇格拉底式的追問”——來向兩側的男女主角進行追問。《The Adventurer》以“三維彈球之太空軍校生”這款經典電腦遊戲為背景，借由一個虛擬機器的口來指引著玩家抵達某個方向，延續了“冒險”這個主題的精神——我們如何在荒蕪孤寂的星際流浪中尋找使命，以一個孤獨的主體的身份與這個廣大的世界之間建立關系。
這裏面的作品大部分都基於想象——一種故事性的幻想。生活經驗是提供幻想的藍本。我想要去幻想陌生人的生活，試圖將“我自己”所轉移入內，而同時又把自己制造得遊離在外，這種非常抽象、非常曖昧和身份不明的關系，沒完沒了。
陳丹笛子 撰文