ARTFORUM展评 | 赵要：有神的信号，有神的信号。

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文－Yuan Fuca (富源)，英文原文刊载于《ARTFORUM》2019年2月刊

去年夏天，赵要首次展出了他正在进行的项目《精神高于一切》（2015－）。这件面积107500平方英尺（10000平方米）的作品由彩色布块拼接而成，于青海省囊谦县一处白雪皑皑的山坡上曝晒了六个月，而后运回北京，在北京工人体育场仪式般地安放了一天，从日出直到日落。这件作品展示了赵要对当代生活中精神性的追寻。同样的一种追索也可见于展览《有神的信号，有神的信号》，其间，九个小屋形状的雕塑散漫地排布于淡粉色的、常见于办公空间的地毯上。

展览场景 / installation view

在甘孜和囊谦，宁玛派僧侣和藏传佛教教徒用类似的木结构小屋作为他们在秋末时节进山苦行和自修时的私密生活空间。在经历了风霜雨雪之后，小屋上即兴搭建的、高度个人化的织物和塑料顶棚呈现出并不褪色的美，它们方正的形状明晰地宣示着个体存在。在这些关于冥想和个人修行的纪念碑内部，艺术家放置了显示器，循环播放一则视频。屏幕上展示着转录自TED演讲的文字，内容则包括了埃及革命、女性难民和激进圣战主义者等等，滚动的文字之下是单色背景，其颜色是红、黄、蓝、绿之一，也即谷歌标志的颜色组成，暗示着当代生活中的潜意识认知。这些演讲，伴随着说教性的励志语调和富有感情的措辞，成为了当代中产阶级的精神慰藉。小屋狭窄的空间—每个小屋只能容纳一个人—强化了演讲的效果，它们变得有气无力、残缺不全，失掉了原有的诱惑力。与此同时，一个原本极度私密、几乎不可叨扰的神圣空间被改造为了当代观看的空间，传播着某种情感体验，它通过演讲者对自身发现历程的现身说法，承诺了个体顿悟和升华。在小屋内部，几乎不可能再进行冥想活动，而这却是原初时建造小屋的目的。

有神的信号 － 在埃及革命里面 / Signals from Heaven - Inside the Egyptian revolution / 2018 / 屏幕，木头，钉子，布，塑料膜，地毯 / monitor, wood, nail, fabric, plastic, carpet / video: 9'58"

如果当今的集体式领悟可以被TED演讲和谷歌标志的颜色所代表，那么那些古老而遥远的精神修炼所使用的工具，及其所依赖的孑孑苦行和自我克制的精神，有多大把握能更新我们的认知经验？赵要将这两种截然不同的现实并置，一语道破了在当代社会追求个人价值时所面临的矛盾。在当今，文化生产和监管已经成为了某种隐形的屏障，限制思想及行动，我们不可避免地深陷于自我内部，令人尴尬地无法想象我们以为正在找寻的精神性的任何替代形式。

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展览场景 / installation view

This past summer, Zhao Yao first exhibited his ongoing project The Spirit Above All, 2015–. This piece, spanning 107,500 square feet and assembled from colored cloth, was placed for six months out in the sun on a snowy mountainside in Nangqian, Qinghai, before being shipped back to Beijing, where it was ceremonially installed on the field in Beijing’s Workers’ Stadium for a day from sunrise to sunset. The work demonstrated Zhao’s interest in the spirituality of contemporary life. The same fascination was also evident in “Signals from Heaven, Signals from Heaven,” an exhibition composed of nine hutlike sculptures scattered on a salmon-pink office carpet.

有神的信号 － 抑郁症，我们分享的秘密 / Signals from Heaven - Depression, the secret we share  / 2018 / 屏幕，木头，钉子，布，塑料膜，皮毛，地毯 / monitor, wood, nail, fabric, plastic, artificial fur, carpet / video: 14'07"

Nyingma monks and Tibetan Buddhists in Ganzi and Nangqian use similar wooden huts as private spaces when they go into the mountains in late autumn for spiritual contemplation and self-cultivation. After being exposed to wind and snow, the structures’ highly personal and improvised exterior coverings of cloth and plastic have an unaffected beauty, and their simple rectangular box shapes stand for unambiguous individual existences. Inside each of these monuments to contemplation and personal evolution, the artist installed a monitor playing a looped video. The screens show texts transcribed from TED Talks, with stories of the Egyptian revolution, female refugees, or radical jihadists scrolling against a monochrome background whose color is either the red, yellow, blue, or green used in the Google logo, suggesting the subliminal cognition of contemporary life. The talks, with their didactic motivational spirit and emotional wording, are a sort of balm for the contemporary middle-class ache for spirituality, and the huts’ narrow spaces - each fits only one person - intensify the talks’ effect, so that they somehow become incomplete and listless, losing their original seductive charm. At the same time, what was an extremely private, almost inviolable sacred space has been transformed into a place for contemporary viewership, relaying emotional campaigns promising personal revelations through a connection to the journeys of discovery made by the various speakers. Inside the huts, it was almost impossible to engage in the contemplative activity for which they were built.

展览场景 / installation view

If collective modes of understanding today can be represented by TED Talks and the trademark colors of Google’s logo, what are the chances that the tools of a spiritual practice originating in a very distant time and place and dependent on a spirit of austerity and selfabnegation can renew our cognitive experience? Zhao’s juxtaposition of these two distinct realities presents the contradictions involved in pursuing personal value in today’s society, where cultural production and regulation act as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action, and where we are unavoidably mired in self-absorption, awkwardly unable to imagine the alternative forms of spirituality we think we’re seeking.

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