After ravaging the world for the past three years, the COVID-19 virus has induced the birth of the LIVES exhibition. Nipping at the heels of this artistic debut, the cunning and insidious Omicron variant has further exacerbated the severity of the pandemic. Those of us engrossed in seeking methods for human rebirth in the post-Covid imagination have redirected our sights into museums to fix our eyes upon art, an approach that is both luxurious and potentially perilous (the contradictions in these two phrases are so vivid); but to what end? What spectrums of human existence are refracted through the prism of contemporary art? What revelations and assurances are implied by art that warrant our distraction and concern?
The horrors of the bubonic plague injected an impetus for Europe to bid farewell to the Middle Ages and make strides toward Modernity. Smallpox and cholera accompanied the decline of Empires in the Americas that launched the development of European colonies. The outbreak of yellow fever staved off French forces and gave the United States an opportunity to strengthen its forces. Time and again, plagues that catalyzed drastic declines in human populations and triggered a collective panic for survival have brought immediate rapid impact on the normal operation of human societies. These disruptions have triggered rapid ruptures and unexpected turns throughout human history. The pandemic contagion preceding COVID-19 was the Spanish flu outbreak that began in January 1918, which took an estimated 50 million lives before it finally subsided in April 1920. Bookended by two traumatic world wars, that virus devastated the globe, compelling human beings to question the value of civilizations that had once been a source of pride. Under attack by an insidious virus, the fragility of life stood in even starker contrast against the absurdities of utilizing high tech for human mutual destruction through war and violent organizations. In actually, contemporary art, marked by the publication of André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, was born precisely of the luxury and peril, afforded by the confusion of derailed senses that called into question the rationality of human self-consciousness under the severe impact of the Great Plague.
我相信這一切跟藏在背後的許多工程的逐漸到位,經年的許多人文梳理脱不了關係,我只是一個笨拙的旅客受惠於許多參與了城市復興的眾人心血。回家的路上,一直不由自主想起了kevin Lynch 60年代的這本老經典,自己都覺得意外,本來只是想寫幾句話說說這本書曾經給我的感動,結果為了把讓我想起了《The Image of the City》(城市的意象)的可能理由說清楚些,竟然胡謅了這麼一長串的喃喃囈語,關於基隆的兒時舊印象、一度混亂的無印象,與重新復甦的統合感受。
Andrew Cole是杜克大學文學博士,目前在普林斯頓大學的英語系任教,主要專攻前現代從希臘到尤其中世紀哲學的這一段,他的課程與言説範圍很廣不限於此,我今天的民藝閱讀都環繞著他這個「攻擊手」,所以來分享一些我對學者們藝術鬥嘴的有趣紀錄與民藝感想。
Andrew Cole在2015年(Summer issue) 在《Artforum》上寫了篇對Speculative Realism尤其是我熟悉些的OOO大將Harman的嚴厲(甚至可以說不屑鄙視)的批判,文章的標題是:「Those Obscure Objects of Desire: The Uses and Abuses of Object-Oriented Ontology and Speculative Realism」。出版後隨即在2015年9月秋季號收到Harman的回應,同期也包括了Cole對批判的批判的再回應。
比較有趣的是,Andrew Cole更早些2013年在《the Minnesota Review》上就刊出的一篇更全面攻擊「新哲學」的文章 「The Call of Things: A Critique of Object-Oriented Ontologies」。Latour在那篇被罵得更為集中,但speculative realism的所有人也都難逃彈火。