TANK 展评｜罗斯·萨兰与八个誓言

     每当罗斯·萨兰抵达市政厅，幸福的人们已经散去，不管新人曾经或往后相信人生多么嬗变，在这一天他们都相信誓言，带着许诺和希冀开始建构与以往不同的生活，而萨兰只是拾起这些撒在新人身上后落地的彩色纸屑，她搜集它们，展示它们，以捕获一种想象，是关于他者的和自我的。  

     罗斯·萨兰的系列作品背后是她行动中的情感仪式，这个仪式使我们会联想到城市的“游荡者”，在一个最具现代化最资本化的超级城市，她通过游荡和拾取重新找到我们时代日渐失落的关于传统、记忆，价值和语言的整体，她先于作品而提前收藏了人与生活的关系，同时也提出了一个隐性的悖论式的问题：那就是秩序建构和人们的私人情感究竟有什么关联；市政机构的婚礼仪式为婚姻提供了合法性，我们的深情需要一份权威证书；由内心秘密开始的爱成为公开的誓言被见证了 ，直到今天，我们仍然乐于采取一种古老的结盟方式—誓言，它帮助我们去想象和建构一个全然未知的生活。

     收藏家与游荡者的古老身份正是本雅明重新赋予它们现代性的意义，在信物的宝藏中闲游信步，之于罗斯·萨兰，市政厅婚礼后遗留的纸屑就是证物， 是能量，是新人们开启个人新时代的确切的瞬间，而萨兰在这私密中的汲取发现了更广泛的命运的舞台，“研究它们，爱它们”，是本雅明教会我们对寻常物件的醉心，于是罗斯·萨兰和从未见过的人的命运至此有了关联，她搜集的是他们关于“时间、记忆和未来的票根”。

     罗斯·萨兰生长在纽约皇后区的一个大家庭中，小时候和姐妹们一起翻看父母结婚时的录影带，其中记录下的婚礼的时刻提醒她，这是她们生命的序言和前奏，允诺的生活由这一天展开，而她们是阶段性的结果和绵延的未来。当萨兰成为一名职业艺术家，在她的工作日常里就是由动态的物体来处理对时间的看法，从“物”中演化出的内心叙事使她在职业生涯和私人生活之间没有界限，这一切行动可能只是为了去体验和抵抗时间的威力，寻常的碎纸屑，因为仪式被赋予的价值，由她的作品转换成一个有关记忆和希望的载体。

     油罐艺术中心展出的《八个誓言》是始于罗斯·萨兰自2023年5月开始的收集项目的成果展示，这个项目驱使她每天都要去市政厅所属的各个机构，和她童年时一样，日复一日穿梭在纽约。八张照片里的每一张都有明确的日期记录，这个记录当然是之于她个人的重要性，因为每一天都可能成为决定性的，特殊的经验。比如7月6号这一天的白色心形纸屑，它不仅仅意味着拍摄对象的主人的生活，而是同时勾连起她当天的感受和记忆，一个炎热的夏天午后，这些纸屑布满了整个台阶，青少年们在机构门口玩滑板，他们帮她一起收集，她总是要和身边的人交谈，告诉他们自己为什么要这么做，她会记得当天还发生了什么，比如她的车抛锚了，这个世界上每一样发生的事情都不是孤立的。所以这些记录除了关于陌生人的仪式，它们也是艺术家的生命生活里的日常，因为我们如此擅于遗忘，需要倚靠这些事物才能编织日后的回忆，这就是属于艺术家自己的普鲁斯特的玛德琳蛋糕。

     像普鲁斯特在文学中做到的那样，萨兰给我们呈现的不是一个无边的时间，而是繁复交错的时间，由物品获得的通感，不仅仅是通过色彩和形状各异的纸屑，她的目光也会追随关于仪式和承诺的其他物件，比如在2019年她就曾经通过纽约地铁遗失中心的拍卖活动上得到了94枚戒指，这个展示她直接取名为：“persons 94”；2020年她通过纽约大都会运输署拍卖到大量硬币，这些硬币在疫情前的两年间曾是人们为了逃避交通和售卖机费用而特意使用的“假币”，而萨兰将它们分类成五个部分并且分别命名，以呈现城市秩序下的不同信仰不同价值观下的复杂社群；作为真正的纽约人，以及她的建筑学院的背景，物可以缩小如纸屑钱币和戒指，物也可以是城市建筑，当21世纪百货公司倒闭时，她以童年对它的深厚情感去进入商场搜集其中的物品。

     一旦进入人与物互证的循环，就没有毫无意义的物品和凭白消逝的时间，这些遗失的，抛却的物作为活过的证据，使城中穿流不息的纽约市民们在庞大与微小的物证中，不断地交集着他们的故事，尽管他们自身对此种交集还一无所知，却汇合成了一个流动的、充满机能和活力的城市的历史。  就是这样，八幅照片，八个誓言，拖着我们坠入了时空互相辩证的漩涡，我们看不到事物背后具体的人物肖像，却可以感知和勾勒出一个远比肖像更为深刻的情境，在这个情境中，物不再拥有被社会商业界定的价值，而是它如何与人建立的关联，这种被艺术家赋予了仪式感的关联，激发了我们对生活的珍视，对他人与我们的连接变得心照不宣。

     Whenever Rose Salane arrives at Civic Center, the happy people have already dispersed. No matter how much the newlyweds may have experienced or will experience life's changes, on this day they believe in their vows. With promises and hopes, they begin to construct a different life from before. Salane only picks up the colorful paper scraps that have fallen to the ground after being tossed on the newlyweds. She collects them, displays them, to capture an imagination, one that is about others and herself.

     Behind Rose Salane's series of works is the emotional ritual in her actions, which evokes the "wanderers" of the city. In one of the most modern and capitalistic metropolises, she rediscovers the aspects of tradition, memory, values, and language that are gradually lost in our era through wandering and picking up. She, ahead of her works, collects relationships between people and life, while also posing an implicit paradoxical question: what is the connection between the construction of order and people's personal emotions? The marriage ceremony of municipal institutions provides legitimacy for marriage; our deep affection requires an authoritative certificate. Love that begins as a secret from the heart becomes an open oath witnessed by others. Even today, we are still willing to adopt an ancient form of alliance—vows—which helps us imagine and construct a completely unknown life.

     The ancient identities of the collector and the wanderer are precisely the meanings that Benjamin reinterprets with modernity, wandering leisurely in the treasures of relics. To Rose Salane, the paper scraps left behind after the Civic Center weddings are evidence, energy, and the exact moment when the newlyweds embark on their personal new era. In this intimacy, Salane's exploration has discovered a broader stage of destiny. "Studying them, loving them," as Benjamin teaches us to be infatuated with ordinary objects, so Rose Salane's fate becomes connected to those she has never met. What she collects are their "tickets" about "time, memory, and the future."

     Rose Salane grew up in a large family in Queens, New York. As a child, she watched videotapes of her parents' wedding with her sisters. The moments captured in the wedding recordings reminded her that this was the prologue and prelude to their lives, where the promised life unfolded on that day, and they were the episodic results and the enduring future. As Salane became a professional artist, her daily work involved dealing with perceptions of time through dynamic objects. The inner narratives evolved from these "objects" blur the boundaries between her professional career and personal life. All these actions might just be to experience and resist the power of time. Ordinary scraps of paper, endowed with value by the ceremony, transformed into carriers of memory and hope through her works.

     The exhibition "Eight Vows" at the Tank Art Center Shanghai is the culmination of Rose Salane's collecting project, which began in May 2023. This project drives her to visit various institutions affiliated with Civic Center every day, much like her childhood days, shuttling through New York day after day. Each of the eight photographs in the exhibition is accompanied by a specific date record, which holds personal significance for her, as each day could potentially bring decisive and unique experiences. For example, the white heart-shaped confetti on July 6th not only signifies the lives of the subjects being photographed but also connects to her own feelings and memories of that day. On a hot summer afternoon, the steps were covered with these confetti, while teenagers played skateboards at the entrance of the institution. They helped her collect them, and she always talked to the people around her, explaining why she was doing this. She would remember what else happened that day, such as her car breaking down. Everything that happens in the world is interconnected. So these records are not just about the rituals of strangers; they are also the daily life of the artist herself because we are so good at forgetting, we need these things to weave memories for the future. This is the artist's own Proustian madeleine cake.

     Like Proust achieved in literature, Salane presents to us not an infinite time, but a complex intertwining of time, obtained through synesthesia from objects. It's not just the various confetti in colors and shapes; her gaze also follows other objects related to rituals and commitments. For example, in 2019, she obtained 94 rings through an auction at the New York City Lost & Found Center, a display she directly named "Persons 94". In 2020, she acquired a large number of coins through auctions held by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York City. These coins were used as "tokens" by people to evade transportation and vending machine fees in the two years before the pandemic. Salane categorized them into five parts and named them separately, to present the complex communities under different beliefs and values in the urban order. As a true New Yorker, and with her background in architecture, objects can be as small as paper scraps, coins, and rings, or they can be city buildings. When department stores closed in the 21st century, she entered them to collect items with a deep emotional connection from her childhood.

     Once entering the cycle of mutual verification between people and objects, there are no meaningless items or time lost in vain. These lost and discarded objects, as evidence of having been lived, allow the ever-flowing citizens of New York City to continuously intersect their stories within the vast and minute evidence. Despite their unawareness of such intersections themselves, they converge into a fluid, functional, and vibrant history of the city. This is how, with eight photos and eight vows, we are dragged into the vortex of dialectical interaction between time and space. We may not see specific portraits behind the objects, but we can perceive and outline a scenario far more profound than portraits. In this scenario, objects no longer possess the value defined by society and commerce; instead, it's about how they establish connections with people. This sense of ritual endowed by the artist inspires us to cherish life, and the connection between others and ourselves becomes tacit.