王嘉驥
Chia Chi Jason Wang
簡歷年表 Biography
策展經歷 Exhibitions Curated
相關專文 Essays


THE SPECTRE of FREEDOM
中文
 
text by Chia Chi Jason Wang

The Exhibition of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum of Taiwan
51st International Art Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia

The Spectre of Freedom sets out from the perspective of Taiwan's current state of affairs, but while reflecting the observations of a group of Taiwanese artists regarding the contemporary environment of their homeland, it also addresses the state of the world today, especially the prospect of globalization and the common condition of humanity, presenting universal reflections with a distinctly Taiwanese perspective.

Through the viewpoints regarding the environment and the world evinced by the works of Taiwanese contemporary artists, the Taiwan Pavilion serves as an artistic forum, submitting subjects meaningful and urgent to international contemporary culture and art, and in so doing actively creating a starting point for the regeneration and expression of Taiwanese contemporary art, so that it may stand up and sink its roots deep into the international art world.

The inspiration for the curatorial theme of The Spectre of Freedom derives partly from the 1974 film of the same name by Luis Buñuel (1900-83), the Spanish founder of surrealist cinema.[1]

The word spectre means a phantom, and by extension it may mean a mirage, an illusion, a hallucination, a phantasm, a shadow, a ghost.

In his film Buñuel explores this concept of freedom as ethereal shade. Freedom seems to be near at hand, yet its existence is wraithlike, seemingly present yet insubstantial. It is even like air – palpable yet ungraspable. As one film critic has averred, “Buñuel showcases the severe limitations of human freedom in a world full of seemingly arbitrary social codes and norms.”[2]

As human history has now entered the third millennium of the Common Era, freedom has become an increasingly scarce concept or value in civilization. It faces a severe test of global proportions. Indeed, it may even be endangered, fated to soon become a spectre. In a very recent essay, Jean Baudrillard, the renowned cultural theorist, even brought up a somewhat appalling argument that human world today has come to an “end to freedom.”[3]

At the beginning of the third millennium, humanity is overwhelmed with crises running rampant across the earth. Firstly, following the attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States, terrorism has enshrouded the world like a giant shadow. The terrorist attacks that followed in Europe, the Americas and Asia dealt a series of great blows to humanity's will to pursue liberty and to the institutions of democracy. At the same time, one of the horizontal consequences of terrorism has been the incitement of war, one act of violence begetting another. The invasion of Iraq by American and British forces has further endangered the infrastructure of world peace under the aegis of the system of international institutions. War is not only the most direct provocation against peace, but also the greatest act of malice that may cause freedom to recede into the mists.

In addition to human calamities on a global scale, natural disasters augur ill for the people entering the 21st century, and imperil the freedom of every last human being. Since the end of the previous century, the phenomenon of global warming has brought an overarching environmental crisis to the “global village.” In 2003, the SARS virus appeared in mainland China, spread throughout all Southeast Asia and impacted Taiwan. Cases of infection spread to the United States and Canada, and panic ensued elsewhere in the world. The issue of environmental protection is becoming increasingly urgent. Recently, a series of major earthquakes has shaken Asia – in Taiwan and Japan (in East Asia), and in Thailand, Indonesia and India (in Southeast Asia) – also threatening human survival. Recently, a large-scale earthquake off Indonesia caused a massive tsunami, which not only caused hundreds of thousands of injuries and deaths, but also set off a huge chain reaction throughout the world economy.

The arrival of the age of global capitalism has brought the establishment of a system of worldwide networks. Yet the world has not as a consequence become a broader place. On the contrary, it has sped up and intensified the global economy and its division of labor – the global village has become an enormous machine. Under this model, each part of the global system increasingly affects the whole. The relationship between the center and the periphery seems to be correspondingly fluid, yet deep-seated global power relationships have become more convoluted and complicated. Taiwan appears to be positioned as a leader of manufacturing within the global system, but also at the far edge of the global politico-military strategic infrastructure.

The conventional relationship between the First World and Third World is also shifting. As the structure of the global system is set in place, many peripheral countries that once ranked in the Third World, such as Taiwan, have long since formed inseparable economic ties and common strategic relationships with the First World. In other words, we have already been incorporated into the First World, but are only able to perpetually inhabit its margins. We are subordinate and mute, unable to represent ourselves. In the rhetoric of the global age, we do not possess the world, but can only orbit around it. We do not hold the world in our hands.

In the latter stages of capitalism or postindustrial consumer society, the movement toward globalization has advanced, quickening the pace at which traditional capitalism is expanding. An age of broadcast media and new media images has taken shape, formally declaring the arrival of the “society of the spectacle.” People in this society of the spectacle seem to have unlimited potential and freedom to choose, but the broadcast media and images of postmodern consumer society have permeated every nook and cranny of human thought, perpetually influencing our every decision and judgment. As soon as “The Truman Show” becomes real, it naturally portends that freedom has become an illusion. The vast majority of people have lost the freedom to choose. They have not only been stripped of the ability to make judgments; independent, free thought has already become a myth.

Within the system of globalization, has Taiwan ultimately gained greater room and more guarantees for universal human freedom, or has it correspondingly received greater intimidation? In the writings of his last years, the late, prominent French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2001) constantly cast doubt on the myth of “globalization.” Bourdieu gruffly denigrated the term “neo-liberalism,” which has arisen within the terminology of globalization, as “the Utopia (Becoming a Reality) of Unlimited Exploitation.”[4] In one work, written in the manner of a manifesto, he even proposed the concept of resisting “the tyranny of the market.”[5]

For Bourdieu, the principal goal of globalization is to force human beings to accept a kind of restoration, a return to a savage and shameless, if rational, form of capitalism.[6] And the “neo-liberalism” that appears in this context is merely a “fashionable, modern packaging” that fundamentally conceals the oldest idea of capitalism – the principle of pursuing maximum profits.[7] According to Bourdieu, this is a “naked, wholly unrestrained capitalism” that uses modern management models (such as business administration theory) and techniques of manipulation (such as market surveys, business plans and commercial advertisements) to rationalize and maximize economic efficacy.[8] Thus, through the policies of neo-liberalism, a sense of insecurity and impoverishment has ultimately become commonplace among workers – the vast majority of the people. Furthermore, job instability has become incorporated into a new model of domination. The purpose of this widespread and perpetual sense of insecurity is to make workers submissive and willing to accept exploitation.[9] Today, this phenomena is pervasive not only in Europe and North America, but throughout the world. Freedom has finally become a spectre.

In Taiwan, the current dangerous, constant state of cross-strait tension confirms that Taiwanese society, though enjoying the guarantees of a free democratic system, nevertheless faces a massive threat and military intimidation from the Chinese authorities. In particular, the Anti-secession Law recently passed by the National People's Congress inevitably causes one to strongly suspect that the freedom Taiwan now enjoys may well become nothing but a spectre as well. Taiwanese facing the dangers of coercion from China find it hard not to feel the gloomy realization that Taiwan is “so far from God, and so close to China.”[10] The Spectre of Freedom is a deeply penetrating metaphor of Taiwan’s past, present and future fate.

The Spectre of Freedom portrays the perspectives of a Taiwanese contemporary curator and artists, intentionally articulating their doubts regarding these issues, and presenting a warning that the “freedom” of contemporary humanity may become no more than a phantom. Four Taiwanese contemporary artists have been invited to take part in this exhibition –Chung-li KAO (b. 1958), Kuang-yu TSUI (b. 1974), Hsin-i Eva LIN (b. 1974) and I-chen KUO (b. 1979). In terms of their backgrounds, all these artists received their artistic training on Taiwanese soil. Moreover, Kuang-yu Tsui, Hsin-i Eva Lin and I-chen Kuo even belong to the new generation of artists that came of age after Taiwan’s long period of martial law. Not only does the humanist concern revealed in these artists’ works begin with Taiwanese society’s history and current state of affairs, but also each one presents a unique social perspective and aesthetic examination of today’s Taiwanese city within the system of globalization, and even the prospects for a future virtual world.

In the epilogue of the illustrated catalogue for his 2001 solo Exhibition “Story in Image & Sound,” Chung-li KAO (b. 1958) writes, “Even more cruel is that, despite each wave of liberation, audiovisual technology still has magical powers, and is able to constantly replicate scenes of awakening and resistance. In television programs, the print media, films, the Internet, etc., one still often sees the commodification of women’s issues. As always, it attests to the reality of mass audiovisual reproduction.” At the same time, with clear and distinct awareness, he points out: “Any idea or metaphor can be standardized and structured through a film, a classic, an image, a building, a song... a biennial – innumerable forms of exchange, audiovisually generating the manifestations of mass consciousness. Nonetheless, what is important is whether the process and the goal of the exchange is benevolent dialogue, and whether it possesses the freedom of multipolarity. Is it for the purpose of subtle restriction and domination, or for liberation?”[11]

Within the context of The Spectre of Freedom, Chung-li Kao's works are a response and a dialectical perspective arising from his own distinctive style of creation. For Chung-li Kao, “Western audiovisual technology is always mindful that it has been developed in the service of different levels of the Western imagination and requirements of the West at various stages and with different focal points, from mercantilism and colonialism, to so-called globalization. Within this material production, spiritual production and practical application in society, no other, no party that differs, can contend with this unified system that can be commodified and reproduced.”[12]

Chung-li Kao's vision incorporates or projects a pessimistic tone, yet his video works also consistently present an insistence and an exploratory commitment full of a romantic sense of “inspired light.” In his creations in mechanical-optical imaging media, he continuously attempts to transcend the aesthetic of the image of the individual, through the use of traditional imaging technology. This sense of repackaging, reproduction, regeneration or remanifestation has become one of the most enthralling features of his works.

The physical optical mechanisms in Chung-li Kao's 8mm film theater, like relics from the past, emit an extraordinarily magnetic atmosphere and sense of beauty. These machines inevitably awaken a host of nostalgic feelings, yet the contents of the artist’s films are filled with reflection on images, history, politics, culture, memory and power relationships.

Furthermore, after being altered in appearance by the artist, the 8mm projector is much like a moving sculpture, and constantly emits an industrial noise unique to this machinery when projecting the images, synchronously disrupting the viewer’s audiovisual memory input process. In this way, it forms an extremely special image-reading experience.

Cyclical struggle, opposition and contesting of strength are Chung-li Kao's frequent themes. Through this metaphor, he attempts to clearly indicate the many paradoxical, divisive relationships of human beings fluctuating between life and death, ignorance and enlightenment, desire and reason, hegemony and war. In this way, images are not merely images; they implicate complex symbols and signifiers. In their backgrounds a variety of actions related to the forming, resistance or disintegration of power is apprehended.

Kuang-yu TSUI (b. 1974) is what the Taiwanese art community commonly terms a “new generation artist.” He is one of the few members of the younger generation of Taiwanese artists to combine video with performance art, and an outstanding example of a successful conceptual artist.

In October of 2002, he presented the solo exhibition “The Shortcut to the Systematic Life: Superficial Life,” his most significant solo exhibition to date. In his artist's statement, he noted, “By integrating the content of the images through the theme of ‘shortcuts to the systematic life,’ this series of works considers the many adaptive strategies adopted toward corresponding environments of life and consciousness.” Tsui writes: “Conceptually, ‘The Shortcut to the Systematic Life: Superficial Life’ principally takes the biological concept of mimicry as its conceptual framework and starting point, using this biological strategy (ability) of adaptation corresponding to habitats and milieus of life within societal systems, and with the concrete action of ‘penetration’ (permeation), links the environment to these adaptive capabilities or strategies, among which I have used the method of ‘(reflection) capability testing’ and the ‘chameleon state’ of adaptation to the background environment in order to highlight and concentrate the incongruity and ridiculousness that arises from leaping among corresponding environments (of consciousness, social group systems...), thus forming within this theme a display of the ironic structure of lifestyle ecosystems and the ‘serial’ character of adaptive life states.”

In recent years Kuang-yu Tsui's works have nearly without exception taken the subject of “people and urban life” as their central theme, occasionally touching on the subject of consumer society and how to simplify human existence in consumer society as, in his words, “superficial life.” As Jean Baudrillard expressed in his theory of “hyperreality,” as the broadcast mechanisms of consumer society operate through the media and the spectacle of images, the “simulacra” produced by signification eliminate not only the process of history, but also the environmental context, ultimately even replacing reality, and becoming “hyperreality.” This kind of “hyperreality” serves as a new reality in which the borders between the real and the unreal are blurred. Thus, human beings become what the German philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) termed “one-dimensional man.”

If a human dominated by “superficial life” can be understood to be a “one-dimensional man” who has internalized “hyperreality” and lost nearly all his freedom, then for this kind of human being, freedom has become a spectre. The “superficial life” explored in Tsui's works can even be seen as an alternative, farcical acting out of “The Truman Show” – one that seems nonsensical, but in fact is full of helplessness or even irrepressible ridicule.

Like Kuang-yu Tsui, Hsin-i Eva LIN (b. 1974) is one of Taiwan's “new generation artists.” She excels at the use of new media, creates with a computer, transmits her works across the Internet, and is well versed in network technology. To date, her better known works in the Taiwanese art world have been predominantly digital image works, and most have featured her own image as their central figure.

Lin's works frequently treat the theme of mass cloning in a future world. She has created a series of imagined possibilities for future human society, without exception dismal, frightening worlds filled with mechanically replicating wires. Her individualized, provocative, condemnatory expression and posture run through her works. The overall atmosphere reflects an inarticulate sense of disdain for the world, or even anger. Rather than being simulations of future worlds, her works might in fact be better described as tenuous imaginings of the future that highlight a variety of uncooperative acts and armed resistances against the current world or the current reality. In the cosmos of Lin’s images, future worlds are clearly inescapable purgatories formed of painful repercussions of the world today. The future is an infinite extension of the heartless human relations of the present, full of discontent and doubt. Consequently, her personal image in the works is filled with an attitude of “non-cooperation.” Even though she sometimes seems plainly aware that resistance is futile, she still bears a passively uncooperative expression.

Lin's most recent work begins with powerful and provocative digitally input images, transferred into a creation more similar in nature to conceptual art. In particular, she uses the Internet as her space of expression. The works she has attempted in the past, including network viruses and Internet-based musings on the subject of labor strikes, underscore the arrival of the age of globalization, in which the Internet serves as a virtual highway of unlimited freedom that also contains a spectrum of dangers. In other words, when using the Internet, people are not as free as they imagine: contagious viruses and junk mail have come to define the cyberspace norm, and may at any time invade and threaten people's right to privacy.

A short time ago, during her 2004 residency at New York's International Studio and Curatorial Program, she undertook a work combining concrete actions, text and video documentary titled “Strike Program I: Methods of Societal Non-cooperation.” Embarking from the concept of “an artist striking against art,” Lin explored the subject of labor relations in capitalist society, and the nature, psychology, meaning and modes of going on strike. Her work “De-strike,” exhibited in The Spectre of Freedom, is her latest creative endeavor.

Through simulation of a strike, the attempt to mobilize others to join her project, and the exploration of the very idea of an “artist on strike,” Hsin-i Eva Lin critically examines the role of the artist vis-à-vis the international contemporary art system in the age of globalization. For example, she considers such questions as: Have the institutions of the exhibition and the market evolved into a stereotypical labor-management relationship? When art has become a system, is it possible to guarantee the artist's rights to exist and to strike? Ultimately, in her art, can the artist attain the freedom to escape the panic of existence and life?

“De-strike” submits a conceptual proposition. Through the combination of computers, networks and a conceptual installation of the exhibition space, the work actively advances the idea of an “artist’s strike,” transforming the exhibition space into a venue that strives to convince the visitor to join the ranks of strikers. In this discussion platform, visitors can choose whether to respond favorably, to take part or to interact. If they do participate, they automatically become part of the work, and a member of a team helping to complete the work. Visitors may interact through this “strike platform” arranged by the artist. Based on intellectual agreement or emotional sympathy, they may not only ruminate on the essence of the strike as behavior or action, but also give moral support to the idea of an “artist on strike,” through actual interactions such as picking up a brochure, wearing an emblem, sitting quietly, standing or operating a computer, and assist the artist in completing this work that spreads the message of a strike.

Lin has observed, “A strike is a kind of campaign that demands discipline. To succeed, it depends on strict discipline, but its ultimate goal is freedom.” In this regard, a strike is an act of imagining freedom, a form of longing and a concrete form of praxis. Nevertheless, a strike is also a disciplined exercise, in which one must lose freedom in the pursuit of freedom. Although the longing for freedom is expressed in the action of a strike, which highlights the conflict of interest between workers and management, for laborers, a disadvantaged group, freedom may always be an illusion, because within the power structure of labor-management relations, freedom is a perpetually unattainable aspiration. Ultimately, for the eternal “worker,” the act of a strike is merely a temporary spectre of freedom.

Labor is a form of identity. Is its fate like that of Sisyphus, who day after day must roll a rock up the mountainside, but must always watch the rock roll back down to the foot of the mountain? The artist’s struggle for the right to strike against art (or the art system) is merely the opening technique or pretext of “De-strike”; the deeper framework it seeks to expose is in fact the hidden side of the freedom for which the laborer strives through the method of a strike, and its possible illusions.

Since the beginning of the new century, the shadowy counterattack of the anti-globalization movement has become common throughout the world. European society has reacted against globalization with particular vehemence. Have these continuous worker/capitalist conflicts, protests, and even bloody clashes ultimately realized humanity’s eternal hunger for freedom, or merely served to underscore that for disadvantaged workers freedom is ultimately no more than an empty illusion?

I-chen KUO (b. 1979) is the youngest artist featured in this exhibition. Not long ago, his image installation “Invade the TFAM” appeared in the 2004 Taipei Biennial, “Do You Believe in Reality?” This work has now been transplanted to Venice, where it has the function and effect of visually intensifying the theme of The Spectre of Freedom.

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, the airplane has become a highly politicized symbol. The 9/11 incident not only raised to its ultimate pinnacle the image of the airplane as a metaphor of disaster, but also inextricably linked it to the image of terrorism. Furthermore, within the visual spectacle created by global media, it deepened the memories of the skyjackings that have been seen and reported ever since the Cold War era.

Since the 9/11 incident, the airplane has become a nightmarish image, threatening the concept of freedom. It has been transformed into an obscure, shadowy, spectral, ghostly, illusory concept.

Moreover, this immense shadow has become a visual rumination on people's beliefs that the future is infinite, that the imagination has no bounds – that the sky is the limit. Today, the sky has not only become a place of fear; it also threatens humanity’s will to seek freedom, and its upholding of freedom as an ideal.

During the 2004 Taipei Biennial, “Invade the TFAM” made use of electronic sensors to simulate the image of a large airplane passing through the domed ceiling of the museum's main foyer, accompanied by the mighty rumble of a passing jet, creating an experience unique to the venue. When exhibited at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, it echoed the surrounding environment of the museum, in particular the fact that airplanes pass close to the museum when landing at the city's domestic airport. This gave the work a very site-specific character.

Today, “Invade the Prigioni” has entered the Taiwan Pavilion in Venice, where it inevitably forms an intertextual relationship with the curatorial theme of The Spectre of Freedom, transforming into a purely conceptual artwork.

The motivation for The Spectre of Freedom to incorporate “Invade the Prigioni” was principally the effect of an airplane’s shadow created by this image installation and the roar of take-off and landing that accompanies it. This enormous sound occurring in synch with a shadow alludes to calamity, as if an apparition. Thus, it strengthens the thematic concept of The Spectre of Freedom. Like a spectre or a spirit, the airplane envelops part of the exhibition space. For the visitors in Venice, this city on water, it promises to be a special experience, even eliciting impressions of danger in their memories.

While the “spectre” in this exhibition's title consciously serves to project a mental picture, implying that in the present-day world humanity's “freedom” may have become no more than a chimera, the suggestion of this concept of an apparition-like illusion, though inevitably carrying a funereal or burial overtone, also holds an ineradicable, lingering magnetism “as inseparable as a shadow.” It intimates that the human quest for freedom is more than a conscious expression of the will, but is also comprised of realms of the unconscious that often rise to the surface, turning into the eternal hopes that flow through humankind’s subconscious and the current of our conscious thoughts…

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[1] Filmed in French and originally titled “Le Fantôme de la Liberté,” it is also commonly translated in English as “The Phantom of Liberty.”
[2] Lanzagorta, Marco, “The Phantom of Liberty,” Senses of Cinema, 2002. Refer to the web site: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/02/20/phantom.html
[3] Jean Baudrillard, “An End to Freedom,” in Impossible Exchange, trans. Chris Turner, (London & New York: Verso, 2001), pp. 51-57.
[4] Pierre Bourdieu, “Neo-liberalism, the Utopia (Becoming Reality) of Unlimited Exploitation” Contre-feux: Propos pour Servir à la Resistance Contre l’Invasion Neo-Libérale, (Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market), quoted from the Chinese translation by Sun Chih-chi (Taipei: Rye Field Publishing Co., 2002), pp. 157-179.
[5] Pierre Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market, trans. Richard Nice (New York: New Press, 1999), 108 pages.
[6] Bourdieu, “The Myth of 'Globalization' and the European Welfare State,” Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market, Chinese ed., pp. 62-63.
[7] Ibid., p. 61.
[8] Ibid., pp. 61-62.
[9] Bourdieu, “Job Insecurity is Everywhere Now,” Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market, Chinese ed., pp. 144-145.
[10] At the end of the 19th century, the late president of Mexico Porfirio Diaz (1830-1915) once remarked about his country’s circumstances, “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.”
[11] Chung-li Kao, Story in Image & Sound, (Taipei: Lin & Keng Gallery, 2001), p. 25 (p. 28 English edition)
[12] Ibid.
 
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