沉思或行动？危难中的艺术：从AIDS到9·11到COVID-19
夏洛特·萨洛蒙，节选自《人生？如戏？》中“主要章节”，1940-1942 | Charlotte Salomon, excerpt from “Main Section,” Life? or Theater? 1940-1942. https://charlotte.jck.nl/section
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又一个种族主义悲剧。乔治·弗洛伊德之死向人们证明，陷入危机的不仅仅是新冠肺炎疫情背景下无数人的健康，还有许多地方本就岌岌可危的社会公平。在悲痛和愤怒中，公众在用不同方式哀悼、纪念、要求改变。一些人选择了艺术性的表达：街头的涂鸦、壁画、拼贴海报……
艺术是呼唤政治变革的最有创意也最有争议的途径之一。从上世纪美国的艾滋病疫情、2001年的9·11恐怖袭击，直到今天全球的新冠肺炎疫情，艺术能够在我们的心中激起涟漪：它唤醒轻易被世人遗忘的历史，它延伸至大洋的另外一端，它连结着另一个受难者的心灵。
这些危机中的艺术表达有什么异同？艺术如何感化人心？在全球经历苦难之际，谈论审美的我们有什么伦理上的责任？在四月初，我们与一位研究文学的大学生和一位艺术从业者共同探讨以上问题。
*文字整理有编辑和删减。完整对话内容请听下放音频，或在网易云音乐/喜马拉雅/苹果播客上搜索“unCoVer”，订阅我们的播客。
Yet another racist tragedy. The recent murder of George Floyd has proven that what is in crisis is not only millions of people’s health, but also the precarious status of social equity in many places. In grief and rage, people are mourning and demanding change in many forms, some resorting to artistic expressions: graffiti, murals, and collage posters....
Art-making as a political action can be healing and powerful, albeit its paradox and limitations. From AIDS to 9/11 to the current pandemic, art allows people to negotiate the past and present crises. It creates ripples in us that extend to places oceans away, and to another suffering human being.
What are the differences and similarities of art-making in these crises? How is art able to relate to people? What are the moral responsibilities in engaging with aesthetics against the backdrop of great human suffering? In early April, we invited a literature student and an artist to talk to us about these questions.
*Transcript has been edited and condensed. To listen to the full conversation, play the audio below; or search and subscribe to our podcast “unCoVer” on Apply Podcast or Acast.
对谈语言为英文
Conversation in English
世界各地的街头艺术家以壁画纪念乔治·弗洛伊德 ｜ Street artists across the world honor George Floyd with murals. https://indianexpress.com/article/trending/trending-globally/street-artists-across-the-world-honour-george-floyd-with-street-murals-6439116/
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嘉宾介绍 | Meet the Guests
马海天
马海天在上海纽约大学获得“综合人文”专业本科学位。主修翻译学的她对后殖民文学、性别研究以及文学批判也充满热情。她将在今年秋季进入牛津大学的比较文学与批判翻译硕士专业进行深造。
Haitian Ma
Haitian graduated from New York University Shanghai with a B.A. in Humanities. In addition to an academic focus on translation studies, Haitian is passionate about postcolonial literature, gender studies and literary criticisms. This fall, she will be starting her graduate study in Comparative Literature and Critical Translation at the University of Oxford.
Maya Kramer
Maya Kramer是一位艺术家、教育者、艺术顾问和作家，并在艺术领域具有近二十年的相关国际经验。来到中国以前，她在纽约的古根汉姆博物馆工作了九年。她的作品现在由胶囊上海画廊代理。
Maya Kramer
Maya is an artist, educator, art consultant and writer with nearly twenty years of international arts experience. She had worked for the Guggenheim Museum in New York for nine years before she came to China. Her works are now represented by Capsule Gallery in Shanghai.
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见证、哀悼、与展望改变：
从艾滋到9/11再到COVID-19
”Maggie: 在艾滋病爆发的八九十年代的美国，艺术在记录和探索艾滋疫情的复杂性中起到了积极作用。当时的艺术策略性地提高了人们对艾滋的意识，并反抗对同性恋群体的偏见与恐惧。9/11是美国乃至世界历史上的另一重要事件。在这两个过去的危机中，艺术创作有什么异同？
Maya: 艾滋病在80和90年代的美国爆发，以纽约和旧金山为疫情中心，且集中于男同性恋群体。正是因为艾滋冲击的是一个在80年代的美国本就被有意边缘化的群体，政府才忽视了艾滋疫情许多年。80年代的艺术作品经常是由那些为政治能见度抗争的病毒携带者创作而成，ta们希望能够被视作完整的人、被当作法律认可的公民、被承认ta们正在经历痛苦。这一抗争持续了很长时间。当时许多艺术家在这之前也在创作，但由于艾滋病对ta们影响之大，这便成了ta们艺术实践的主题。
Keith Haring. 无知=恐惧；沉默=死亡，1989，平版胶印作品，61.1x109.4厘米｜Keith Haring, Ignorance = Fear / Silence = Death, 1989, offset lithograph, 61.1 × 109.4 cm. https://whitney.org/collection/works/46387
对于9·11来说，我想当时艺术的目的是治愈、团结、感受与ta人的联系，它同时也是一个城市的哀悼。对于艾滋来说，许多问题跟9·11相通，但艾滋相关的艺术创作更多是关于见证，尤其因为当时的政府极力否认问题的存在。当时的艺术是一份记录，它承认了悲剧的发生；即便你否认，这个悲剧确是有严重后果的。那时的艺术也是一种政治行动，它强烈要求改变的发生。
60、70和80年代期间有很多积极的政治行动，而且感觉是街头抗议能够对政治机构产生影响。（但后来情况就有所不同了）我记得9/11之后，我和一位朋友参加了一场反对伊拉克战争的示威游行。那时正值二月，天气很冷，我们参加完抗议后回到家，我俩都觉得：“唉，这场示威什么用也不会有。”那是一个醍醐灌顶的时刻——也许上街抗议不再像过去一样奏效了，我们得考虑如何通过其它方法带来改变。
白宫外反对伊拉克战争的抗议游行｜Protest against the Iraq War outside the White House. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/historic-washington-dc-marches/story?id=44884785
纽约时报有评论说9·11时我们可以聚集起来安慰彼此，但新冠疫情由于社交隔离而否定了人与人之间的联系。社交隔离是你能对人类所做的最残忍的事之一。我们生来就是要彼此共处的，我们生来就需要肢体上、情感上，以及面对面地联结。所以，除了疫情本身，社交隔离也是现状中残酷的一方面。
任何像这样的危机都会带来改变。危机为我们提供了机思考的机会：什么是可能的？哪些方面能够改变？我们如何展望危机的另一面？比如，欧洲的黑死病正是在文艺复兴前发生的，瘟疫与文艺复兴的发生之间有许多关联。虽然（黑死病）是一场惨痛的挣扎，但因为人口减少，人更被珍视了（笑）。这是一个黑暗的因果关系，但不可否认的是黑死病带来了其它东西。
“Witnessing, Grieving, and Envisioning Change:
From AIDS to 9/11 to COVID-19
”Maggie: Art was a positive influence in documenting and exploring the complexity of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s in America. The art at the time strategically raised awareness to combat the biases and fears surrounding homosexual communities. 9/11 was also a historic event in American and world history. What are the differences and similarities in art-making in these two past crises?
Maya: AIDS emerged in the 80s and 90s in America with New York and San Francisco as its epicenters, primarily among gay men. [Because] it hit a group of people who were still very actively marginalized in the 80s in America, the government ignored it for years and years. The artworks that were being made in the 80s were often made by those who had the virus and who were also fighting for political visibility. They were fighting to be seen as people, to be treated as citizens, to be recognized as suffering. And it took such a long time. A lot of the artists had been producing artwork, and AIDS partially became their practice because it was impacting them so much.
Keith Haring, Ignorance = Fear / Silence = Death, 1989, offset lithograph, 61.1 × 109.4 cm. https://whitney.org/collection/works/46387
For 9/11, I think the purpose in art was healing, feeling solidarity, feeling connected to each other, a city grieving. For AIDS, many of the same issues were part of the equation, but I also think it was witnessing, because the government was so purposefully in denial of this. It was an actual documentation in that it acknowledges that a tragedy is happening; it is consequential, even though you say it’s not. Art in that time was also a political action, to demand that something happen.
In the 60s, 70s and 80s, there was so much activism. There was a sense that you could protest on the street which could impact political organizations. [Things became different later though.] I remember after September 11th, a friend and I went to protest the planned invasion of Iraq. It was February; it was freezing. We protested and went home, and we both thought, “Oh that’s not gonna do a thing.” It was a stark realization that maybe bodies on the street and protests in that way didn’t have the same effect, and we had to think about other ways to impact the change.
It was commented in the New York Times that for September 11th we can be together and comfort each other, but COVID-19 denies the connection between people because of social isolation. Social isolation is one of the worst things you could do to humans. We’re wired to be together; we’re wired to connect physically, emotionally, face-to-face. So this aspect of social isolation is the brutal part of the situation, on top of the pandemic.
Any kind of crisis like this precedes change. It’s also about trying to process what is possible, what could change, how do we want to envision what can happen on the other side of this. The black death happened in Europe right before the Renaissance, and there’s a lot of connection between the plague and how the Renaissance came about. It was a brutal struggle, but people were more valued after the black death because there were fewer of them (Laugh). It was a very dark equation but it led to other things.
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个人的即历史的：危机之中的艺术品
”Maggie: 有没有哪些后9·11时代的艺术作品给你留下过深刻的印象？
Maya：我想到了两个艺术作品。第一个叫做《纪念之光》，它是两个代表原世贸大厦双子塔的光柱。我还记得当时我在回到布鲁克林的家的路上看到这个双子塔光柱，它们就矗立在原本大楼所在的地方。当时的纽约茫然无措，不知道接下来会发生什么、意义为何。而这件艺术品却无比美丽、饱含希望。它的诞生给我极大的慰藉。那时我感受到：“噢！艺术的确是有意义的！”艺术能够鼓舞精神，帮我们渡过艰难的时刻。
《纪念之光》是世贸中心6个街区开外由88个探照灯组成的艺术装置。｜Tribute in Light, an art installation of 88 searchlights placed six blocks south of the World Trade Center in New York City. https://rove.me/to/new-york/tribute-in-light
另外一件非常打动人的艺术品是许多普通人自发在街头张贴的标语和神龛。最让人心碎的是那些写给心爱的人的标语，比如“有谁见到我的妻子丽莎了吗？她当时在世贸中心69楼”（因为好多人仍然在寻找着他们所爱所挂念的人）。这些真的太戳人心了。你也许觉得这些并不能算作艺术，但它们往往比其他关于9·11的艺术品更加能够打动人。这些神龛、标语、支持的示意、关于失去的表达、鲜花、照片……它们组成了一个十分有力的集合。在那个时刻，人们聚在一起试图安慰彼此、共同铭记，那种自发性很重要。
2001年9月17日在联合广场公园旁人们自发聚集的神龛、花束、照片｜Spontaneous shrines, flowers, photographs at Union Square Park, September 17th, 2001. http://zipporahyamamoto.com/after911/2010/11/old-journals/
Maggie：海天，之前你在一个讨论会上讲到了四件在灾难后创作的艺术品。它们分别是：安德鲁·科兹洛夫斯基的“未完成的雕塑”系列中的《曾经的无名帝王》；德国犹太裔女艺术家夏洛特·萨洛蒙的《人生？如戏？》；中国著名诗人木心在文革时期写下并藏在囚服棉絮里的作品；李·洛扎诺的《放弃篇》。你讲到，这几个作品共通的“未了之意”远远超出了表面上作品呈现的“未完成”状态。那么这种“未了之意”是如何向我们展现艺术家们在遭遇各自的危机时是如何面对和克服内心的创伤和痛苦的呢?
左上：安德鲁·科兹洛夫斯基，《曾经的无名帝王》，凹刻与数码平面，10.25” x 9″ x 0″
右上：夏洛特·萨洛蒙，节选自《人生？如戏？》中“后记”，1940-1942
左下：木心，节选自《木心的艺术：山水画与狱中笔记》中“狱中笔记”
右下：李·洛扎诺，节选自莎拉·雷若-格雷维尔的《放弃篇》中李·洛扎诺的笔记
Top left: Andrew Kozlowski, Early Unknown Emperor, intaglio and digital, 10.25” x 9″ x 0″. http://www.artistsimageresource.org/portfolio-category/artist/andrew-kozlowski/
Top right: Charlotte Salomon, excerpt from “Epilogue,” Life? or Theater? 1940-1942. https://charlotte.jck.nl/section
Bottom left: Mu Xin, “Prison Notes,” via The Art of Mu Xin: Landscape Paintings and Prison Notes
Bottom right: Lee Lozano, excerpt from Notebooks, via Dropout Piece (Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer)
海天：这些艺术品都反映了“个人的即历史的”。当我们谈到“危机中的艺术”特别是这个“中”这个概念的时候，我们总是将这些个人表达看作是属于一个特定历史时刻的，这能帮助我们理解那个历史时刻。个人的总是同其所处的历史时刻对话，给那个时刻增添更加复杂多样的元素，并让我们得以洞见那个时刻与当下我们所处状态的联系。我们能够与在另一时代艺术家的创作产生共鸣，恰恰展现了那些危机中的创伤与痛苦，可能正是我们此时此刻也在承受的。这种情感表达的时代延续性正是这些艺术品的“未了之意”向当今的欣赏者们所揭示的。
至于艺术家们是如何与其所处历史时刻的危机进行对话的，我认为像木心和萨洛蒙那样的是一种特别直觉性的写作方式。而李·洛萨诺和科兹洛夫斯基的话，我在想他们展示作品和与观众交流的方式是不是有一种——我不想说是说教式——一种指导式、教学式的实践方式 。这些作品虽然是非常私人的，但也有一种社会性和集体性。
这些艺术品里也有一种见证性。它们的自我呈现仿佛是一部古怪的档案。并且这之中有些作品是有意古怪和混乱，因为在最初艺术家们阐述自己想法时，其中就有试探性和不确定性。这种阐释的迫切，这种想要吐露在危机之时自己脑海中胡思乱想的急促，正是一种对危机的“见证”。艺术家们经历着他们所处时刻的危机，但是创作将他们从原本的主体位置、从所谓“创作者”的位置与身份剥离开，而真实地倾诉：“我正在见证这个危机，我不知道该做些什么。不过我需要把它记录下来，好让我在未来的某个时刻能够体会到现在的感受。”
木心，《早晨》，纸本彩墨，11.3X47.4cm, 2000｜Mu Xin, Morning, Multi-layered Inks on Paper, 11.3X47.4cm, 2000. https://momus.ca/from-exile-to-acclaim-the-unlikely-story-of-mu-xin-and-chinas-reformation/
The Personal is Historical:
Artworks in Times of Crisis
”Maggie: Are there any particular post-9/11 artworks that stood out to you?
Maya: I have two artworks in mind.Tribute in Light, the two light pillars. I remember coming home to Brooklyn and seeing these two towers of light where the towers used to be. The city was at such a loss for meaning and understanding of what was gonna happen… The work was incredibly hopeful and beautiful; it was such a comfort to see that work being made at that moment. And I felt, “Oh! Art does have a purpose!” It somehow feeds the spirit to keep going through difficult times.
Tribute in Light, an art installation of 88 searchlights placed six blocks south of the World Trade Center in New York City. https://rove.me/to/new-york/tribute-in-light
The other thing that was incredibly affecting was the signs and the shrines that were spontaneously created around the street by regular people. The most heartbreaking were the signs that people would put up for their loved ones, like, “Have you seen my wife Lisa? She’s on the 69th floor of the World Trade Center,” because people were still looking for their loved ones. That was unbelievably affecting. You might not consider that as art per se, but it was often more affecting than other artworks that were made. The shrines, the signs, the gestures of support, expressions of loss, flowers, photos... there is something about that collection which is just really, really powerful. That spontaneity of people trying to comfort, remember, and be together felt really important at that moment.
Spontaneous shrines, flowers, photographs at Union Square Park, September 17th, 2001. http://zipporahyamamoto.com/after911/2010/11/old-journals/
Maggie: Haitian, previously at a panel discussion you discussed four artworks that were each produced in the wake of crisis. They are: Andrew Kozlowski’s Early Unknown Emperor from his “Unfinished Sculptures” series; German-Jewish female artist Charlotte Salomon’s “Life? or Theater?”; the famous Chinese poet Mu Xin’s written work that he hid in the cotton padding of his prison clothes during the Cultural Revolution, and Lee Lozano’s Dropout Piece. You contend that their mutual sense of “unfinishedness” extends far beyond their seemingly incomplete appearance. How does this “unfinishedness” inform us of how these artists grappled with trauma and pain in their respective crises?
Top left: Andrew Kozlowski, Early Unknown Emperor, intaglio and digital, 10.25” x 9″ x 0″. http://www.artistsimageresource.org/portfolio-category/artist/andrew-kozlowski/
Top right: Charlotte Salomon, excerpt from “Epilogue,” Life? or Theater? 1940-1942. https://charlotte.jck.nl/section
Bottom left: Mu Xin, “Prison Notes,” via The Art of Mu Xin: Landscape Paintings and Prison Notes
Bottom right: Lee Lozano, excerpt from Notebooks, via Dropout Piece (Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer)
Haitian: What is shared among them is “the personal as historical.” When we talk about art in crisis and the idea of “in,” we always think of these personal renderings as belonging to a historical moment, which helps us understand the historical moment itself. The personal is always speaking to, complicating or diversifying that moment, seeing its relevance to the here and now, to the position that we are at. The way we can echo these artists’ artworks in their time shows that the trauma and the pain in that crisis is the trauma that we carry in our present moment as well. That continuity of negotiation is what that sense of “unfinishedness” unveils to the present audience.
As for how they engaged with the crisis in their moment, I think that is just a very intuitive way of writing, just as Mu Xin and Salomon did. For Lee Lozano and Kozlowski, I wonder if there is — I don’t want to say didactical — an instructional or pedagogical practice in the way they make these curations and speak to a particular audience. There is a sense of sociality and collectiveness even though these works are really personal.
There is an idea of witnessing in that as well. The way that the artworks reveal themselves is very much an eccentric archive. And some of them are deliberately eccentric and chaotic because of the tentativeness and uncertainty in the way the artists originally elaborate their thoughts. That urgency of elaboration, of providing these multiple wanderings that are going on in their minds in the crisis, is bearing witness. They were going through the crisis in their respective times, but the writing positions itself somewhat distant from the subject position, the authorial position, the authorship, saying that, “I am witnessing this and I don't know what to do and I should note it down so that at some point it will help me process through it in a future time.”
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剖释“危机”：这从来都是一个伦理上的
矛盾
”Maggie：我们的对话可能是做作的、伪善的，因为我们只是在“说”，而并不是在“做”。海天，你也提到了在危机时刻中去谈论审美和理论是有一种尴尬和残忍的。我们有机会进行这些形而上的讨论，表明了我们拥有极大的特权。
海天：这从来都是一个伦理上的矛盾。我自己就觉得挺怪的：需要在应对疫情和写论文的、学术的心态之间做调整。又赶上毕业季，我们分享去理想大学进修的兴奋的时候，也有一种羞愧感：对于我们的喜悦，对于我们即将享受的智识层面的对话——即便那些对话很重要。
从一月疫情爆发以来，我记得我好几次尝试去剖析这个事件，去思考在疫情中发挥作用的潜在机制：病毒如何传播、媒体如何运作从而产生了不同（而且常常是彼此矛盾的）故事与视角、“边界”与“关卡”这样的象征符号如何成为了应对危机的社会政治工具、我们如何必须固守“边界”来遏制流动、人们如何在自己身上主动实践并表征着“禁锢”， 而这种“禁锢”又如何是出于无比的关心和善意。
与此同时，我隐隐地觉得这样做是错误的：在许多生命已经消失、正在消失、将会消失的背景之下去诠释、剖析、从正在进行的悲剧中寻找缘由、假设一种对于生命个体之间何以联结的观察。无论批判性思维的训练如何教导我们批判特权、拥抱同理心，这样“剖析危难”的姿态已经体现出一种令人不安的残忍、冷酷与特权。一旦开始谈论这一危难，我已经不得不将它抽象化、精简它、将它当作一个整体，而忽略个体的经历、生命、死亡、挣扎与困惑。在我和朋友们的交谈中，有人问我们应如何从历史的角度看新冠疫情，我不知道。我不敢想象将它历史化成暂时性的标记 ，这不仅因为当前很难看清形势，更因为用历史的视角看当前的危机是令人痛苦的。
就算是我“见证”艾芬医生的陈述时（中国疫情爆发初期吹哨人之一，公众自发以33种方式翻译其事迹，见尾注1）虽然情绪波动很大，但我真的“见证”了什么？在一个逼仄却无菌的空间中通过手机屏幕去“见证”这样一个事件，到底意味着什么？不论我多么受触动，我没有资格声称我已了解并“经历”了这个仍在持续的情境。
艾芬医生事迹的文言文翻译｜Translation of Dr. Ai Fen’s story into Classical Chinese (wényánwén). https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ovPd-xhmLMBQfIfuJUSYkw
同时，当面对那些文章，我们几乎有一种使命感，我们会在心里说“我想要做点什么”。我觉得这本身是一件很美好的事情。我有时会想：怎样才能最好地帮到别人？如何对别人进行最好的支持？这又有另一种残酷：我们很可能将自认为的“责任”强加于我们认为需要帮助的人群。这跟“服务”这一概念也有关联：你是从自己心中的那份责任感出发，还是从别人的角度考虑？最理想的方式在我看来其实是从别人的需求出发，服务ta人，淡化自身。
著名街头艺术家班克西近作“博弈改变者”被捐赠到英国南安普敦市综合医院｜Anonymous artist Banksy’s Game Changer painting was donated to Southampton General Hospital in England. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/banksy-southampton-general-hospital-game-changer-1202686284/
“Making Sense of Crisis:
“It Has Always Been a Paradox”
”Maggie: This very conversation can be pretentious and hypocritical, because we might just be talking about things rather than doing things. Haitian, you mentioned too that there is a sense of embarrassment and cruelty in how we engage with aesthetics or theories in general during crisis moments. We are really privileged in being able to talk about them in the first place.
Haitian: It has always been a paradox. Personally I feel really alien in the way that I have to shift mode: from coping with the pandemic to thesis-writing or an intellectual, scholarly mindset. Even with the coming graduate season, when we are sharing the excitement of going to future universities with different programs, it feels almost shameful in the way we are enjoying all this other happiness and all these other intellectual conversations that we are excited about, which by all means are still important conversations.
Since the outbreak in January, I remembered myself trying at multiple times to unpack the event, to think about the latent mechanisms at work — how the virus is spread; how media operated in generating different (often conflicting) stories and viewpoints; how symbols of “borders” and “checkpoints” have become evident as socio-political instruments in response to the crisis; how we must hold restlessly onto these “borders” to stop ourselves from moving; how one voluntarily performs and re-signifies patterns of imprisonment in ourselves; but also how that imprisonment is done out of care and, indeed, out of extreme kindness.
At the same time, I feel there is something wrong in what I am doing — that gesture to interpret and unpack, to make “something” out of a process that is still ongoing, to hypothesize an observation about the way we relate to each other as lives when there are lives that are already lost, and still losing, and to be lost in the future. The attempt to make sense has an uncomfortable sense of cruelty, coldness and privilege however the training of critical thinking has taught us to debunk privilege and embrace empathy. To begin to talk about the situation, I already have to abstract it, compress it, treat it as a totality — and lose track of individual happenings, lives, deaths, struggles, confusions. In a conversation with friends, someone posed a question of how one might look at the event from a historical standpoint. I don’t know. I cannot imagine historicizing “COVID-19” as a marker in its temporality, not simply because it is difficult to see clearly at this point, but also because it is painful to see from that lens.
Even my emotional turbulence when “witnessing” Ai Fen’s testimony [a female whistleblower doctor whose warning was translated into 33 versions, see endnote 1] — did I ever truly witness? What does it mean to “witness” an event as such in a confined but sterile space, through the screen of a smartphone? By no means do I feel entitled to claim that I understand or “go through” the situation that is still ongoing, no matter how emotional I feel.
At the same time, there’s almost a calling in the way we respond to these blog posts, of saying, “I want to do something about it.” I think that is an inherently beautiful thing. Sometimes I think about what best help we can offer, what best support we can offer in this crisis. It felt cruel then in another sense to impose our own feeling of responsibility onto the people who might need help. I guess it’s related to the question of “service”: do you do service from that calling of your own position or from that other end? I believe the most ideal way is from that other end — almost absenting yourself out.
But then there's this initiative that, “I want to help,” which is really beautiful. We’re constantly thinking about what initiative we can participate in and contributions we can make that are the most helpful for that “otherly world.” It is almost treating myself as the other, what does that other self need for me to do? Thinking about that, again, puts many of us who are witnessing it in a very liminal position, in the way that might lead to non-action. And what does that non-action mean, what does that suspension mean, and what does that pure witnessing mean? These are all interwoven questions and I don't have an answer to them.
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艺术的：日常的？政治的？
”Maggie: 生活日常也可以是一种艺术表达。Maya, 你认为当代艺术是否存在这种关注平凡、呈现日常的趋势？
Maya：1945年后的当代艺术存在这样的趋势，当然有些也在（当代艺术前的）现代主义时期中有所体现。当时在艺术领域有一种极强的弥合艺术与生活的驱动力，“平凡”于是成为这一运动中重要的部分。
同时，许多政治元素也融入艺术作品中，女权主义就是其中之一。当时女权主义的标语是“个人的就是政治的”。这很直白，丈夫和妻子如何分配家务？谁在带孩子？谁总是在做清理的工作？这些都是政治！如果一个女性没有额外的时间投入工作，那么她的工作相对她丈夫的工作就成了次要的。所有这些差异、身份政治、微歧视，都突显出“个人的即政治的”这句话的含义。由此可以看出，许多的日常互动都被打上了社会权力和政治权力的烙印。这贯穿了现代与当代艺术，只不过在当代艺术中，平凡与日常的元素更为显著。
曼那亚·卡莎，“女权者横幅”街头贴纸，2012-2013｜Mannaya Kasha, ‘Feminist Banner’ street sticker, 2012-2013.
https://www.facebook.com/femrevolt/photos/artivist-mannaya-kasha-moscow-novosibirsk-for-me-feminist-art-is-a-fight-against/1499276897030598/
Maggie: 正是因为许多艺术作品在我们心中能够激起感官上的审美体验，我们可能会“神秘化”那些艺术品从而忽略了它们也有政治元素编织其中。你认为艺术实践是一种政治行为吗？
海天：所有艺术都有政治的一面。我们生活在一个政治的世界，我们的行为是政治性的。这在后殖民主义文学甚至流散文学中体现得尤为显著，因为学者们讨论它们时有很浓的政治意味。所以谈论后殖民主义写作的“审美”可能会有偏见，或被当下的政治情境所裹挟。
但应该有某种谈论审美的方式可以不被政治情境裹挟。那个时候，恰是艺术在思考、评论真理和美之类的理想中发挥关键作用的时候 。艺术通过“加密”、“隐匿”的技巧让某种表达充满力量。
翻译就是一种“加密”的技巧：它不让别人明白这其中到底有何涵义，因为人们不懂那种语言。但某时某刻，有人会发现它、有人能诠释它、有人会理解它，于是那一份叙述才能够传递下去。翻译是利用技巧、形式、修辞来谈论政治事件和政治危机的艺术实践。翻译是使得艺术得以介入政治而不被其裹挟一种策略。
我觉得人们对艾芬医生事迹的多种翻译在其语言与艺术品质上都十分有力。通过复杂的语言（文言文、拼音、英文、德文甚至摩斯密码）和“加密”的技巧，这些翻译实则凸显出一种“消音”的状态。
同时，我又在想，这些具有“加密”形态的翻译作品是否给予了我一个通道，让我可以透过一种陌生的口吻、一种生僻的语言时空来经历和穿越当下的危机。我也开始思考，翻译这一行为或许是让我们在不强加自身（享有特权的）情感态度的前提下参与危机的一种策略。作为他人或它物的代言者，译者放下自己的个性和个体性，将自己融入到另一颗心的陈述和声音中，并将其转换成另一种语言呈现给给未来（或过去）的读者，由此亲自参与到危机之中。这种转换包含着内在的艺术性和创造性，或许也并没有丢失与当下的具体联系和整体性。
翻译作为参与危机的一种模糊的策略，还有很多很多东西需要厘清。不过希望翻译能给我们一些勇气和坚定，让我们能够在一个脆弱的全球事件中，去当一个脆弱的发声者。
视觉艺术家William Pope. L在1978-2001年间的行为艺术，他在纽约及其它美国城市爬行，以探索阶级、种族及（不）平等的概念与现象｜William Pope.L, member: Pope.L, 1978-2001, performance. The artist crawled across the streets of New York and other American cities in order to examine concepts of class, race and inequality. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/crawling-through-new-york-city-with-the-artist-pope-l
“The Artistic: The Everyday?
The Political?
”Maggie: Daily life can be a form of artistic expression. Do you think in our contemporary period, art has a tendency to be more about the mundane, the everyday?
Maya: That has been a trend since the contemporary period after 1945, but there were parts of it that were happening in modernism too. There was this constant drive to bridge the gap between art and life, and much of it was just about the mundane.
There were a lot of political elements that were brought into the artworks as well, such as feminism. There was this slogan “The personal is political.” Just look at how much a husband and a wife share their daily chores: who’s taking care of the kid? Who’s cleaning? That is political! If a woman doesn’t have extra time to dedicate to her work, then her work becomes secondary to her husband’s. All of these discrepancies, identity politics, microaggressions… [exemplify this “personal as political”]. So there’s so much about how everyday interactions are encoded with social power and political power. That’s a thread for modern and contemporary art for a long time, but the “everyday” gets more foregrounded in contemporary art.
Mannaya Kasha, ‘Feminist Banner’ street sticker, 2012-2013.
https://www.facebook.com/femrevolt/photos/artivist-mannaya-kasha-moscow-novosibirsk-for-me-feminist-art-is-a-fight-against/1499276897030598/
Maggie: Because works of art can invoke a deeply sensuous aesthetic experience, one might mythify the artwork without acknowledging the political component in them. To what degree do you think art-making is a political act?
Haitian: All art has a political aspect to it. We live in a political world and our acts are political. This happens with postcolonial literature or diasporic literature in general, because there is so much political density in the way scholars talk about it. Thus to talk about the aesthetics of postcolonial writing can be biased or subsumed into the political context that is still ongoing.
However, there should be a way to talk about aesthetics that is not subsumed into a political language. And that is where I think art plays an inherent role in thinking about truth, beauty — all these ideals, and making a commentary on that. It has to do with the particular ways in which art uses techniques of encoding or concealing to make an expression more powerful.
When we think about translations, they are acts of encoding; they are acts of not letting people know what it means because people cannot read that language. But at some point, someone will know about it; someone can interpret it; someone will understand it, so that the story or narrative is passed on. They are artistic practices that use these techniques, forms and rhetorics to talk about the political event and political crisis in another language. I think it is a strategy where art can intervene and participate in politics without being subsumed into it.
I find the different translations of the blog post about Dr. Ai Fen powerful in their linguistic and aesthetic qualities. These translations in one way or another bear an appearance of muteness through the complexity of their forms and the gesture of encoding that they typify.
At the same time, I wonder if these pieces of encoding are offering me a channel to negotiate the present crisis through an alienated tongue, an unhomely time and space of language. I also begin to think about the act of translation in general as a strategy of engaging the crisis without imposing one’s own (often privileged) sentiments. By being a surrogate speaker for someone else and something else, one engages the crisis personally by abandoning her personhood and individuality, by moving into the testimonies and voices of another heart, and transforming it for a future (or past) audience. That transformation has something inherently artistic and creative about itself, perhaps without loss of integrity and concrete engagement with the present moment.
There is much, much more to be fleshed out about that vague strategy of translation as an engagement with the crisis, but hopefully it offers us some courage and assertiveness to be the vulnerable speaking subject in a vulnerable global happening.
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尾注：
艾芬，武汉中心医院医生。她于2019年12月30日收到一份不明肺炎病毒检测报告，并用勾画出“SARS冠状病毒”字样。她的事迹已被网友自发地翻译成33种版本，其中有英文，德文，甲骨文，甚至摩斯电码和表情包。
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ovPd-xhmLMBQfIfuJUSYkw
Endnote:
Ai Fen is a female whistleblower doctor who notified her colleagues of the “SARS coronavirus” upon receiving a report on December 30th, 2019. Descriptions of this incident were later translated into 33 versions using English, German, Chinese oracle bone script, even morse code and emojis.
编辑 | Maggie, Joyce
翻译 | Sandy, Xue, Maggie
校对 | Maggie, Joyce, Carly
音频 | Maggie
排版 | Jiara
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