近300位艺术家，1000多件作品，13000平方米的主展场，3000平方米的两处分展馆……不难预料的是，这个展览倍受瞩目及易遭非议之处，就是它的“集装箱”性质。
国家会议中心本身就像一座集装箱，它是我们的主展场所在地，一幢灰色的长方体建筑，就座落于“鸟巢”的西北侧。置身在那里，无疑会让人想起2008年的北京奥运会，以及那个由张艺谋执导、并且有“烟火专家”蔡国强参与其中的开幕式，那是中国向全世界显示其力量与优势的时刻。当时的场面无疑具有已故的苏珊·桑塔格（Susan Sontag）探讨过的“迷人的”美学特征，并且揭示出真正的知识分子的声音有可能被融入在如此宏伟的“民族景观”之中。其实，早在1927年，朱利安·班达（Julien Benda）就发明了一个词语，“集体激情的组织”（the organization of collective passions），其内容包括了宗派观念、群众情绪、民族主义、阶级利益等等……而将其精妙地嵌合于“集体激情的组织”的肌体内，则是当前的中国所采用的一种策略。
透过国家会议中心的落地玻璃凝望着“鸟巢”，有一种令我惶惑的感觉源自这样的疑问，我们的展览与体制之间存在着怎样的关联？我们是那样的美学元素的不自觉的携带者吗，甚而还是同谋？—如此巨大的规模，那么多的艺术家和作品，某种程度上它就像一次“全国总动员”，一届运动会，一场“国庆献礼”。无论如何，它追求了盛大庆典的仪式感，和自身的纪念碑性质，在它的团体操方阵式的空间里，在块状分割的前提下，尽管我们设法寻求不规则感、变化的路径和迷宫效果，但可以想像的是，展览所钝化的是每一位艺术家的美学个性，凸显的是一种集体主义，而这种集体主义似乎恰恰是我们的艺术实践长期以来致力于批判与摆脱的现实。
然而，我也可以从一个相反的角度找回信心和安慰，那就是—这里即将要展示的“集体主义”，乃是一种有别于主流意识形态的特定群体贡献出的精神成果。在上世纪70、80年代之交直至新世纪初的那段时间里，它们基本处于漂泊状态和社会的边缘，如今它们这个群体正以其日渐强大的力量引起公众的注目，甚至走到了年代的聚光灯下。他们的作品得以在国家会议中心这样的场所被集中展示，尽管有赖于管理的宽松，有赖于私人影响力和民间资本的运作，但更主要的是象征了一段历史性的进步。
赋予这次展览以凝聚力和诱惑力的所在，也许是它的艺术史的承诺性质。从很大程度上，这正是它获得众多艺术家青睐和支持的原因。入选，作品出现在我们的现场与文本之中，似乎意味着个人进入了历史，成为了这个10年艺术史不可或缺的一部分，反之，似乎就意味着个人的创作失去价值，并且被摒挡在了历史之外，尤其对于一些并无远大目标的艺术家而言，他们会从格外功利的角度来算计，在这个展览榜上有名，至少是为自己的资历添上了着彩的一笔……这也是我作为策展人之一、在整个筹备过程中发现自己陡然多出了不少话语权的原因，因而我不得不这样来提醒自己和那样一些艺术家们：这是一种错觉。
所有的历史书写都是一次性的书写而已，而不是定论。没有任何一位批评家与书写者能够彻底还原历史的真相，能够扮演终极的仲裁者。每个作者个人的因素、趣味与意识形态决定了这一点。经由了新历史主义的反思，我们多少都确认了历史书写的虚构性质，甚至会同意沃勒斯坦（Immanuel Wallerstein）所说的：“历史学家发明了历史，正如艺术家发明他的绘画一样。”这种态度有助于我们释解于过头的自信与权威的勉力充当，而将自身的书写视为穿越迷宫的一次旅行，一场心智的历险。并且，我们应该意识到，关于历史的每一次书写也都等待着在未来被修正，被替代。
同样，对于艺术家而言，他在艺术史方面的雄心应该建立在更高级的自我追求中，那就是要像沙滩一样去经受不同年代的潮水的侵蚀和阐释，很大程度上这就意味着他必须保持真正的独立性以及自我放逐的勇气，而不是对于既存秩序的渴望、填缺和追随。在中国，这方面最糟糕的症状莫过于，借助于文化的批判，尤其是借助于简单化的二元对立思维模式，很多所谓的艺术家们其实是在掩盖自身的贫乏，泛滥于他们创作之中的各种政治化符号和图像，貌似历史的见证与批判，其实是一种艺术思维的惰性与奴性表现，一种先锋身份与商业回报之间的润滑油。
当然，这样的一个展览与一次历史的书写，并非仅仅归于错觉。如同G.艾尔顿在《历史的实践》中所说的，“尽管知识和作者都有缺陷，但是，历史学家还是可以坚信，他能够履行了解和述说过去的抱负。……他能够在真理的疆域中，建立起新的据点。”（G.Elton，The Practice of History）还可以说得更谦逊一些，我们的工作是在记忆的疆域中，建立起新的据点。
事实上，真正的总结为时过早。这个展览最重要的意义也许在于促进了一种历史感的形成。10年的划分尽管机械，可是，这个10年的具体时段是以新旧世纪的交替为开始，并且结束于金融危机的到来。我们的一些重要艺术家当选为中国艺术研究院的院士，以及北京郊区艺术家工作室的大规模拆迁，在此期间则是伴随着中国成为全球的热点，我们的当代艺术所臻至的狂欢节般的高潮，整个过程似乎具有好莱坞故事的经典模式：准备、复杂化行动、发展以及高潮，并且，留下了一个带有悬念的结尾。在观赏与亲历之后，通过即时的束拢和界说，我们—无论是艺术家，还是策展人与批评家，以及艺术行业的各种人士……都可以强化自身的记忆与反思。
更进一步说来，对于这个最近的10年的回顾应该会深化我们的个人时间的危机感与历史的危机感。这样的展览是在催人老去，10年飞逝得如此之快，而且转眼之间我们离1989年已经20年了，离1979年首次“星星美展”已经30年了。那消失的一切都在构成我们的历史，而在各种有关“历史”的说法中，我尤其赞成雷蒙·威廉斯（Raymond Williams）在《关键词》一书里的考辨：“历史”之义不仅仅局限在“关于过去的有系统的知识”，它还有另一种重要的意涵是作为“人类自我发展”（Human self—development）的解释，这就意味着历史不只是过去，并且，不只与现在相关，它也与未来紧密联系。“它通过不同层面，将知识—大部分的可知的过去以及几乎每种可以想象的未来—传授或显示给我们。”在这一点上，意大利作家卡尔维诺（Italo Calvino）说得更妙：回忆过去就是“寻找一个失去的未来”。
因此我们说：改造历史—就是像雄蜂一样从记忆之中采集花粉，就是从时间的云烟里再次提炼出信念、火焰与激情，就是不让历史重新成为冷漠、无知的地平线，而是让它作为熔炉不断地重新冶炼我们的意识和身心，以此形塑未来。
如今的中国像一座放大了无数倍的集装箱，一座充满变化与新事物的围城，它以其活力、变化与丰富性吸引着世界和外来者。而置身于其中的我们如同穿上红舞鞋一般跳动不止，难以将息，难以获得平静与回忆的机会。在这座围城特定的政治与历史经验表达方面，我们已经贡献出了一些非常出色的艺术家。然而，那堪称伟大的突围还有待发生，正如萨义德（Edward W.Said）在《知识分子论》中所表述的：“……知识分子经常被同一民族的成员指望挺身代表、陈说、见证那个民族的苦难。……除了这些极为重要的任务—代表自己民族的集体苦难，见证其艰辛，重新肯定其持久的存在，强化其记忆—之外，还得加上其他的，……我相信，知识分子的重大责任在于明确地把危机普遍化，从更宽广的人类范围来理解特定的种族或民族所蒙受的苦难，把那个经验连接上其他人的苦难。”也许，只有当这样的责任感与理解力构成了我们的历史意识在现阶段及未来的方向与基调，我们才能创造出真正具有不朽意味的作品来。在另一方面，我们也迫切需要从传统的源泉中转化出真正的活力，以便持续性地构建起我们的美学主体，而非沉溺于西方层出不穷的浪潮，以及一种多米诺骨牌式的自我解构。
透过表面的喧哗与骚动，当我们全景式地审视当代艺术及其人文环境，会发现一切仍然有待在历史的积累上重建，而在这样的处境里可以秉持的信念，可以用波兰诗人齐别根纽·赫伯特（Zbigniew Herbert）在《来自围城的报告》中的诗句来表述：
我们只有这地方以及对此地的依恋……
如果失去废墟，我们就一无所有。
2010 年 4月
Container and Red Shoes: Report from the Besieged City
Zhu Zhu
With nearly 300 artists, more than one thousand artworks, the main venue of 13,000 square meters and two sub-venues of 3,000 square meters, it is not hard to predict that the exhibition would be paid great attention to and criticized for its nature like a ‘container’.
The China National Convention Center itself looks like a container, which is our main venue. It is a grey cuboid building locates at the north-western side of ‘Bird’s Nest’ National Stadium and its location would easily remind people of the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and the opening ceremony directed by Zhang Yimou with the participation of ‘Fire Work Expert’ Cai Guoqiang, which was the time when China displayed to the world its power and advantages of centralized system; that occasion has undoubtedly possessed the ‘Charming’ authoritarian aesthetic features discussed by the late Susan Sontage and revealed that the voice of real intellectuals might quite possible blend in by such a grandeur ‘National Scenery’. Actually, early in 1927, Julien Benda has coined a new phrase, ‘the organization of collective passions’, which includes the martial character and class interests of sectarianism, mood of masses as well as nationalism…however, to subtly imbed centralized system into the body of ‘organ of collective passion’ is a kind of strategy adopted by China today.
Gazing at ‘Bird’s Nest’ through the glass wall of the China National Convention Center, such a question made me feel confused: what association exists between our exhibition and system? Are we the carrier or even the accomplice of that kind of aesthetic element? Such grand a scale and so many artists and artworks make it looks like a ‘Nationwide General Mobilization’ to some extent, or a sports meet, a ‘National Day Festival’. At any rate, it pursued the ritual sense of a great ceremony as well as its monumental nature of itself. In its space like the phalanx of group calisthenics, under the premise of cutting them into pieces, although we tired our best to pursue the labyrinth effect with irregular sense and changeable paths, yet we could easily imagine that what has been deactivated by exhibition is the aesthetic personality of every artist, and what has been highlighted is a kind of collectivism, which is just the reality we have been tried to criticize and get rid of in our artistic practices during a long period.
However, we could also fnd back the confdence and consolation from an opposite perspective, namely the ‘collectivism’ which would be displayed here and not only be different from mainstream consciousness, but also is the spiritual achievement donated by the special group which has been fghting with mainstream consciousness form many years. During the period from the turn of 1970s and 1980s to the beginning of the new century, they were mainly foating and wandering at the edge of society namelessly. Now, they are attracting public attention and even coming to the light point of this epoch with its gradually mighty power and artworks of this group is being exhibited collectively in such a venue like the China National Convention Center. Although this owes much to the loosening of managment and private infuence as well as the operation of folk capital, but the most important thing is that it symbolized a historical progress.
Maybe it’s the nature of it to promise the history of art that bestowed this exhibition the power of agglomeration and the temptation. From a great extent, it is just the reason why it attracted many artists to pay attention to and support it. To be selected, and have works appear in our exhibition and text seems to signify that an individual entered history and became an indispensable part of this decade history of art, and on the contrary, it seems to signify that personal creation has lost value and keep out of the door of history, especially for many artists without great ambition, they would count from an especially utilitarian perspective that the name on the list of this exhibition would at least add a colorful record to their own biography… this is also why I, as one of the curators of this exhibition, found myself gained more discourse right suddenly during the preparation process. So I should not but to remind me and some artists with that kind of idea that: it’s an illusion.
All historical writings are no more than one-off writings; they are not the fnal conclusions. No critique or writer could restore the historical truth absolutely; they could only play the role of an ultimate arbiter. Differences in personal factor, taste and ideology of writers determined the above point. Through refection on New-Historism, we have more or less confrmed the fctional nature of historical writing, or we would even agree to what Immanuel Wallenstein has said:'Historians invented their histories, just like artists invented their paintings.' This attitude would be helpful to relieve too much confdence in us and prevent us from overdoing ourselves as authorities, and make us to treat the writings of ourselves as a travel and a mental adventure passing the labyrinth; moreover, we should notice that all our writings about history are waiting for revision and being replaced in the future.
Similarly, for an artist, his ambition in history of art should be established on higher pursuit of himself, namely to endure through the erosion and interpretation of the tide from different ages like the sand beach. To a great extent, this means he must keep real independency and encouragement to self-exile, rather than desiring, complementing and pursuing the existing order. In China, the worst symptom in this aspect is that many so-called artists are trying to cover up their smallness with the aid of criticizing culture and especially with the aid of simplifed dualistic right-or-wrong thinking mode. Various politicalized symbols and images over-fooding in their creations are in fact a kind of inertia in thought and servility expression in art and the lubricant between avant-garde identity and commercial return under the surface of proofng and criticizing history.
Of course, such an exhibition and a historical writing could not only be ascribed to illusion. Like G. Elton has said in his 'The Practice of History', 'Although knowledge and author both have defect, but historians could frmly believe without any doubt that he could carry out his ambition to understand and narrate the past. … He could establish new foothold in the feld of truth.'Or we could say with more modesty that our work is to establish new foothold in the feld of memory.
In fact, it’s too early to make a real conclusion. Maybe the most important signifcance of this exhibition is that it promoted the forming of a sense of history. Although it’s somewhat mechanical to make the demarcation at ten years, yet the specifc period of this ten years was started at the turn of century and ended at the arriving of economic crisis when news like some of our important artists were selected to be the academicians of China Art Institute and large-scale demolishing happened to art studios located in the suburb area of Beijing became the Hotpoint globally together with China herself. Our contemporary art came to such an upsurge like a carnival, so the whole process seemed to have got the classical mode of Hollywood story: preparation, complicated movement, development and upsurge, in addition, an ending-up with suspense was left. After appreciated and experienced, with real-time interpretation, we, no matter artists, curators or critiques and all other peoples in art circles, could strengthen memory and retrospection of ourselves.
Further more, the review of this latest decade should be helpful to reinforce our sense of crisis on individual time and history; such an exhibition is promoting people to be old. Ten years passed by so fast, the 20 years since 1989 and the 30 years since ‘Stars Art exhibition’ in 1979 seems to be only an instant for us. Everything disappeared are constructing our history, while in various views about ‘history’, I especially agree with the interpretation of Raymond Williams in his book titled ‘Keywords’, the signifcance of ‘history’ should not only be limited in ‘systematic knowledge about the past’, but it has another important meaning as the interpretation of ‘Human self-development’, namely that history not only belongs to the past, but also now and future are closely related with it. ‘It would impart or display knowledge, including most knowable past or almost all imaginable future, to us through different ways.’ On this point, Italian writer Italo Calvino said in an even more amazing way: Recalling the past is to ‘look for a lost future’.
So we could say: reshaping history is just like the pollen collection of drone from memory, namely to re-extract faith, fre and passion from the cloud and misty of time and to avoid making history a cold-blooded and ignorant horizon again, but to treat it as a furnace, which would constantly smelt our consciousness and body and mind again and again, in order to shape the future.
China today looks like an unlimitedly enlarged container and a besieged city full of changes and new matters. It is attracting the world and out-comers with its vigor, variation and richness, while we, inside of this container, are ceaselessly dancing as if wearing a pair of red dancing shoes, we feel diffcult to stop and as gain calmness as well as the chance to recall. In the aspect of the special expression on political and historical experiences in this besieged city, we have already donated many outstanding artists. However, we are still waiting for the occurrence of the breakout which could be called the great one. Just as Edward W. Said has said in his ‘Representations of Intellectual’ that ‘In the dark ages, intellectuals were always hoped by members of the same nationality to represent, state and proof the suffering of this nationality…. Except for these very important tasks like representing the collective sufferings of their nationality, proof its arduous experiences and re-confrm its constant existence and strengthen memory, others would also be added, …I believe that the important responsibility of intellectuals is to clearly generalize the crisis, and understand sufferings of specifc races or nationalities from a wider scope of the whole human beings and connect this appearance to the sufferings of other peoples.’ Maybe only when such a sense of responsibility and perception constructed the direction and basic tone of our historical sense in the nowadays stage and the future could we create really eternal artworks. On the other hand, we also urgently need to transform real vigor from the source of tradition in order to construct our aesthetic object constantly rather than being addicted to endlessly emerging various waves of the west and a kind of self-
deconstruction in the way of domino.
Through the roar and tumult of the surface, when we gaze at contemporary art and its humanistic environment panoramically, we could fnd out that everything are waiting to be re-built on the accumulation of the history. What faith we could adhere to in such an environment could be described by the lines in ‘Report from the Besieged City’ by the poet from Poland named Zbigniew Herbert:
We only have this place and our attachment to it…
If the relic is lost, we would have nothing left.
【编辑：海英】
