姚大鈞談《中國聲音藝術: 兩千五百年的聆聽》 （第一部分）

講座日期：2009年10月16日
地點：灣仔告士打道一號 香港演藝學院4樓 EDT Lab

姚大鈞, 聲音藝術家，唱片製作人，策展人，電台主持人，藝術史研究員。長年來透過電台節目、網站、及教學推動前衛音樂發展。曾策劃北京聲納、台北聲納、上海電子藝 術節河流體開幕式等大型新媒體及聲音藝術演出。九七年起組創「中國聲音小組」對中國各地市聲音現象進行研究、紀錄及創作。近年創作包括中國城市聲音裝置作 品系列，以不同的空間譬喻及聆聽方式探討中國各城市之聲音現象。在兩岸開創聲音藝術的系統教學，目前任教於中國美術學院新媒體藝術系。

公開講座：姚大鈞談《中國聲音藝術: 兩千五百年的聆聽》
(普通話主講, 英語補充)

謝謝大家在禮拜五的晚上抽空來這邊，我首先要抱歉因為我本來是來演出的，明天晚上和後天晚上要演出，今天晚上需要綵排，他們那邊已經開始綵排了，我是偷偷溜出來的，在這邊跟大家談完以後我必須趕回去，在8 點半要離開這裏，所以時間非常短，我希望把演講的部分儘量縮短，可以讓我們有更多的時間交流。因為我覺得跟大家交流是我比較有興趣的，而不是個人的演說，我希望不要把這次談話變成一個演講，一個很規矩的演講模式，因為我真的沒有寫好一個稿子， 但是我有一些材料希望跟大家分享。如果大家在我講的過程中有任何的疑問或想法，或有不清楚的地方，可以隨時舉手發問，就是希望大家不要把這作為正式的演講，因為我沒有寫好一篇演講稿。我們現開始進入主題——“中國人的聽音”，這個課題是非常有意思的，也是我個人研究了很多年的，但是這個主題並沒有人花太多功夫去研究，尤其是沒有從宏觀的角度去研究，也就是說，很多人研究古代的樂論，文獻，聽覺（跟音樂有關的文獻有大量的史料，注釋及學術論文），但是沒有人從它真正的本體，把它作為一個聽聲音的文獻或者說從聽聲音這件事情本身去研究文獻。我們都知道很多古代文獻，比如說《禮記》，《樂記》以及歐陽修的《秋聲賦》，這些都是我們耳熟能詳的東西，但是我們都從非常傳統的角度去看它，對於歐陽修的《秋聲賦》，我們一直把它當成文學作品，甚至是我們在中學需要背誦的一篇古文，而沒有從它的內容去看它到底是怎麼回事，所以今天我希望從一種新的角度來看大家可能已經接觸過的一些材料，從新的角度把它背後的真正意思揭開來，這些材料與西方接觸衝擊後產生的新的意義，這是我們主要的研究對象。

我現在換到另外一張畫，這張畫可能大家也看過，這是很有名的南宋的一幅畫。這幅畫現在在臺北的故宮博物院，它是古代非常著名的山水畫家馬遠的兒子馬嶺畫的《靜聽松風》(Quietly Listening to the Sounds of Pine-trees)。這幅畫非常有名，但一般我們研究它多半是從畫風，或畫的主題及對象，比如這個人的身份是什麼，我們關注它的構圖，一些美術史的關注，但這張畫經過我們今天晚上的討論以後， 大家會對它有不同的看法，有一種新的角度去分析它。

我們要從古代說起，古代的很多東西是我們熟悉的，我們熟悉它們的方式是用音樂、哲學、文學古文去認識它們，或是一種古畫的方式去認識它們。但是貫穿所有這些不同領域、不同媒體、媒材的各種不管是藝術或是文獻資料背後是一個很重要的事情——聆聽。聆聽在我看來非常拗口，小時候我們不會自己講或者聽到聆聽這個詞，因為聽就是聽，現在要把這個問題提高到一個理論的學術層面，所以我們用聆聽這個詞，但實際上它是很拗口的。中文裡面關於聽或是關於聲音的字眼是非常有限的，而且相當含混，比如說我們談聲音，噪音，音樂，這裏面都有音或者聲這個字，互相摻雜，混在一起，混淆不清的，這個時候我們可以看古代的樂論，其實就比我們現在的現代漢語的說法更清楚，比如說古代的樂論我們看一段，“To illustrate my point about the confusion of the terms for sounds, music and noise, in contemporary spoken Chinese, if we can compare to classical Chinese, it was clearly delineated that there are three kinds of things we are talking about listening and objects of listening. The first is sound, which is similar to what we have today referring to all kinds of things that is audible. So the first one is ‘Sheng’, and the next is ‘Yin’ or equivalent to musical notes. And the highest level is the musical work ‘Yue’. ”所以「聲」、「音」、「樂」三個是分的很清楚的，很多古代的東西從現代的角度看，或現代的東西從古代的角度看，會有很多的衝撞，在衝撞後產生新的意義，新的認識，新的瞭解。比較古雅的方法是相互發明，這裏說的發明不是發明家的發明，而是說互相得到引證，互相刺激，互相有新的東西產生出來。我最有興趣的是把古代和現代的放在一起對比，然後有一種新的意思我們可以看得出來。這是我個人覺得最有意思的事情，也是我們現在討論聽覺為什麼把最老的和最新的放在一起的原因，所以聽覺這件事情是沒有人研究過的，應該說在近代沒有人研究過。所以我們看羅蘭巴特在1976年寫的一篇文章裏面有一句話 “Listening does not figure in the encyclopedias of the past, it belongs to no knowledge discipline”，就是說聽聲音這件事情不屬於過去的任何一個學門，它不是被承認的一個學科。雖然我們都在聽音樂、做音樂、寫音樂，都在享受音樂、散播音樂，但是我們沒有研究聽覺這件事情或是聽這個動作。所以很有意思的是在西方傳統裏是羅蘭巴特這些，或是更早幾十年的法國具象音樂學派(Music Concrete)才把聽覺這件事情提高到一個很高層次，因為過去西方古希臘的音樂文獻或是早期關於和聲或律法的文獻裏面，主要對象是音樂而不是聲音，到了20世紀中期(the birth of Music Concrete)具象音樂產生，70年代結構主義學者羅蘭巴特才開始用厚澀的方法看聽覺這件事情，這個研究是非常新穎的，尤其在中文世界裏是很少人討論的，但是中國有雄厚的古代聽音文獻，所以中西方兩個碰撞在一起是很有意思的。

提問： 「聆」和「聽」是不一樣的，「聆」是比較專心的，在你們研究中，兩者有甚麼分別？

答：其實中文字裏關於聽的有：「聆」、「聽」、「聞」是有區別的，比如說「聽而不聞」，「聽」應該是最廣義的，「聞」是比較專注在一個對象上的，而「聆」我覺得是更加專注的，我沒有研究過，但我認為是有差別的。但是現代中文常常需要兩個字來組成雙音節，比如「聲音」 ,我們知道「聲」和「音」其實是不一樣的，但是放在一起，成了漢語，就混淆了它們的區別。「聆聽」也是，「聆」跟「聽」是不一樣的，當它們成了一個複合詞的時候，便失去了一個區分。

我們從古代的一些裝置來看古代人怎麼對付「聽」這件事情，把「聽」具體化、形象化。請看這個照片是編鐘，距今二千五百年左右的一件東西。仔細看的話，這個東西其實是非常可怕的、非常嚇人的。我們平常接觸到它時直覺得認為它是一個考古的、出土的文物，不會把它當作一個聲音的儀器或是作品來看，但是你看它的複雜程度，不只是製作它本身相當複雜，是高度的科學技術和知識，在當時是高科技的。同時在看不到的那一部分，它背後藏著是非常可怕的、非常早熟的調律的知識。我們知道，這一套鐘，它是十二音的，在西方當時是沒有這麼完備的十二音的調律方式。所以中國古代人花了很大心血，在很多的心力放在聽覺這件事情，不只是音樂，它的重要性超過了音樂，在「聽」本身。

剛才我們提到了這個十二音的調律，調律是一個非常值得注意的現象，因為調律也就是tuning，它在西方是被當作樂理、聲響學的一部分，而在中國，調律絕對不只限於樂理或音樂上的意義，它是政治層面的一個重要區塊，翻開中國政史，古有廿五史，每個政史裏都有一個章節叫律治，在這個章節裏談的不是音樂。而實際上中國音樂經過這麼多時代，它的變化其實也不是那麼大，所以沒有那麼多可以談的。律治這個章節裏談的是調律的方式，調律是不是調得對，和諧不和諧會影響一個朝代或推翻前一個朝代的新政權的執政的合法性成功與否，影響到政治上的結果。所以調律被賦予了很高的政治含義，更廣來看，不只是政治，而且是中國人宇宙觀的一部分，tuning is a part of Chinese cosmological system, that is way beyond just political content，音樂、調律、天文、星相在古人看來是一體的。我們都知道五行這些算命，在古代是holistic，是一體的，它不是個別的。所以音樂這個調律跟其他的各種屬性要了解的話，我們就要現在看一個律法圖，每個音階上的音跟每個月份、方向都聯繫在一起。它是非常完整的，一個整體性的宇宙觀。剛才看的這個東西是祭祀用的禮器，同時也可以演奏的，也是一種樂器。但是如果把它放在今天看，把它放在一個展覽空間，它是一個很了不起的，是非常嚇人的裝置藝術。可以在雙年展、三年展馬上一炮而紅，因為它的造型非常可觀，背後技術很強，還可以發出聲音，它是一個聲音裝置藝術。但是我們要作一個區別，在古代，它先是主要作為樂器，之後再變成禮器，比如說在陪葬的時候，它就作為一種禮器。

聲音裝置藝術在藝術史、美學史上是一個很重要的轉捩點。我覺得聲音裝置的出現和流行普及及被炒作是人類幾千年音樂傳統的最終的終結。它比日本的噪音理論更早，這被視作是反音樂的發展，跟音樂本體的定義是完全相反的，它們做出來的不是音樂，是反音樂。但是如果退後一步更宏觀來看，不管是John Cage還是日本秋田倉美的極端暴力噪音理論，他們討論的題材還是聽覺。不管是聽得舒服還是不舒服、聽起來是暴力還是協和的，有節奏還是沒有節奏的，討論的還是聽，所言它們都是聽覺、音樂藝術廣義上延伸。為什麼說今天的聲音裝置藝術是人類音樂文化的終結，因為它開始讓人不再聽了，如放在美術館或是雙年展裏的一件裝置藝術，你多半的注意力會放在它視覺的構成，它的造型和它的實體，而可能對它的聲音並不那麼感興趣。這個影響是很了不起的，做得很好的一件裝置藝術。我們今天看大多數的市面上流行的裝置藝術作品，它們聲音的結果其實是我們不關注的。我覺得作為一件聲音的作品或是音樂作品，它唯一能夠作為判斷的標準就是我們願不願把我們生命裏的時間奉獻給這個作品，比如一個交響曲三十、四十分鐘，我們願不願意用四十分鐘的時間去聽一首現場的交響曲或家裏的唱片。如果真的是好的作品，我會不只一次甚至好多次反覆地花四十分鐘去聽。但是現在的聲音裝置藝術，我們可以做一個旁觀者來看聲音裝置藝術跟觀眾之間的互動情況怎樣，我們觀察到很多觀眾走到這個聲音裝置前面，看一看它的牌子，是誰做的、年份是多少、它背後的技術是什麼、是什麼樣的感應器、什麼樣的互動、用到什麼軟體硬體，瞭解以後，大概看一看，可能就走到下一個作品。所以我認為聲音裝置藝術已經變成一個反音樂(anti-music)，因為我們不再聽了，我們只是把它當成一個造型藝術來評價來衡量它的價值，而它的聲音那部分，只不過是把它成為一個能夠發聲的裝置藝術。(It’s an installation with sound instead of a sound installation.)

我們看古代人聽音的廣度，隨便舉一些例子，這個東西可能大家不太注意到，在墨子的時代，2500年的時候就有完整文字記錄的文獻可以證明的一件中國人的發明——「地聽」跟「甕聽」。這是宋代軍事百科全書裏《五金總要》的一個插圖，這個插圖非常簡陋，但是我們可以看到地聽的構造，它實際上就是一個大的甕、大的瓦罐。我把這把個放在一起，這是出自《中國聲學史》這一部很重要的教科書裡面的，放在一起就發現這個瓦罐實際上就是一個 tempo resonated。中國古代人當然沒有一個resonated的概念，但他們知道這個東西的特性。「地聽」（geophone）是在古代被當作戰爭防備的武器，它不是用來攻擊的武器，而是防備的時候需要用的一個設備。先在地上挖一個大洞，把大的瓦罐埋在裏面，再派一個人坐到裏面去聽。因為在古代攻城的時候會有挖地道，要想知道敵人挖地道的進度和方向，必須通過地聽的裝置來探測。所以它是防衛的時候一個重要的軍時設備。這個很有意思，我們從今天的角度來看，它是一個非常早的發明。現在我們多半用geophone來聽埋在地下的油管是不是漏油，越戰時美軍用來geophone監聽地下越共挖地道。中國人是很早就應用geophone。

剛才提到我喜歡新的跟舊的結合、衝擊，我也曾經為南京這個城市做的一個作品叫《地聽南京》。希望用地聽這個模式建構一個空間，在裡面可以聽到四方有不同的聲音傳過來，模擬從前地聽的概念。我們當然不可能在畫廊挖一個地洞，所以做了一個地地面上的空間。

Industrial Bloom By Christopher Dewolf

Earlier this year, in the last few days before the heat of summer, nearly 50,000 people visited the Hong Kong International Art Fair, a 65% jump in attendance over last year. It's another step up for the aspiring capital of Asia's art market, a city where auction houses sold $502 million in art last year alone. But while collectors flock to Hong Kong to scoop up works by popular mainland Chinese artists such as Yue Minjun and Zhang Xiaogang, Hong Kong's real artistic vanguard can be found 40 minutes by train from the city center, in the grimy industrial area of Fo Tan, where artists work next to sausagemakers and metalsmiths in hulking, derelict factories. For years, manufacturers have been fleeing to cheaper pastures in China, so Hong Kong, notorious for high rents, has had a surplus of vacant industrial space. The result has been an explosion of creativity.

Fo Tan's pioneering artists arrived in the early 2000s, when a sluggish economy and the SARS crisis sent rents tumbling. Now there are more than 200 in the area, many of them graduates of the nearby Chinese University of Hong Kong. While there's nothing new about artists setting up shop in obsolete industrial areas — it happened in New York City's SoHo in the 1960s and Beijing's Dashanzi in the 1990s — its impact in Hong Kong has been profound. There are now more full-time artists than ever before and they're catching the eye of both local and international publics. In January, more than 10,000 people flocked to Fo Tan's annual open-studios event. (See the 10 reasons to visit Hong Kong's NoHo.)

The district has given "a lot of people space and a community that wasn't there before," says Tobias Berger, a German curator who worked at Hong Kong's Para/Site Art Space during the years of Fo Tan's emergence. He and other curators helped draw attention to the district's artists, and since then a number of them have made a mark at international events like the Venice Biennale and in galleries as far afield as Sydney and Stockholm. "And it's not only Fo Tan," Berger says. "There's more happening now in other parts of the city too."

Kacey Wong, 38, has seen the transformation firsthand. Trained as an architect, he began working on conceptual-art installations in the 1990s. Last year, Wong dressed up as a skyscraper at the Subvision Festival in Hamburg, and in 2008, his installation Wandering Home, a miniature Hong Kong apartment set atop a tricycle, was shown at the Venice Architecture Biennale. (See pictures of Hong Kong.)

"Usually, the artist grows in scale to the studio," he says, recalling how he started off working in his mom's living room. "I was making this 20-ft.-long crocodile out of corrugated cardboard. It was a huge mess. Suddenly, I heard the keychain jangling by the door and it was my mom coming home. I froze with such a feeling of guilt. That's when I realized I needed my own space." Like other local artists, Wong had long carried with him the stigma of working in an inscrutable profession that was rarely lucrative or even feasible. "Before, people were just doing art at home and getting yelled at by their parents," says Wong. "These days, a fresh graduate from art school can share a studio for HK$1,000 [$130] a month. It's a system that allows people to grow as artists."

Casper Chan is hoping to do just that. After graduating from Chinese University's art school two years ago, the 25-year-old painter spent some time renting a studio with former classmates. "My work wouldn't have been so large if I hadn't had a studio," she says. (Her series of Hong Kong teenagers rendered on big wood panels stands in testament to that fact.) Being in Fo Tan also gave her a shot at greater exposure. "A lot of gallery owners came to the open-studio days and talked to me and invited me to have a show," she says. (See the top 10 Chinese knockoffs.)

Some artists have gone a step further, using their studios to market themselves and each other. Last year, photographer Quist Tsang joined up with two friends to open Hidden Culture in another run-down industrial district in east Kowloon. The venture serves as a work space and exhibition venue for emerging artists. "We are not popular, we are not famous, but we have passion for the things we do," says Tsang.

Since studio space became more readily available, Hong Kong artists have grown more sophisticated says Tang Ying-chi, herself a mixed-media artist and the editor of the coffee-table volume Oasis: Artists' Studios in Hong Kong. "Their work has become more complex than 10 or 20 years ago, when there were more watercolors and Chinese ink paintings. Now they use everyday materials in their work. It's more closely connected to the city they live in."

But they aren't the only ones to have noticed the potential of old industrial premises. Property developers are keen on putting them to use too, and they have successfully pressured the government to make it easier to convert former factories into apartments, offices and even hotels. Rents are already skyrocketing. Last month, Chan was evicted from her studio after her landlord sold it. At the same time, the bigger the arts community becomes, the louder its voice gets. Artists' complaints about rising rents have caught the ear of a government keen to address the charges of philistinism historically leveled at Hong Kong by fostering the development of local creativity. More subsidized space for artists is in the pipeline — so is a study to determine just how many artists are out there. If the phenomenon of Fo Tan is anything to go by, the answer could be higher than anyone supposes.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2008795,00.html#ixzz0w1x6qXEk

Reading Images: Multimodality, Representation and New Media © 2004 Gunther Kress

Image: Roman Duszek © 2003

Conference presentation Video

Keywords


Multimodality, literacy, representation, design, media affordances

Abstract


In this paper I wish to point to what I see as the central issues in the linked shifts in representation and dissemination: that is, from the constellation of mode of writing and medium of book / page, to the constellation of mode of image and medium of screen. In particular I will draw attention to consequent shifts in authority, in changes in forms of reading, shifts in shapes of knowledge and in forms of human engagement with the social and natural world.
Paper


Readers of this journal are experts in design. What I can offer is a particular take on certain issues in design from the perspective of (Social) Semiotics, and more specifically, from the perspective of multimodality, which deals with all the means we have for making meanings – the modes of representation - and considers their specific way of configuring the world. To make this concrete, here is a small example. Say I am designing a biology text-book. The subject matter is ‘plant-cells’. If I use words, I will have to say “Every cell has a nucleus”. If I use an image, I will need to place a large dot somewhere in the circle which indicates the cell to represent the nucleus (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Cell and nucleus





To reflect on this: in writing or speaking I have to use a sentence in which two entities – cell and nucleus – are related by a verb, have, indicating a possessive relation: the cell has something (much like: “I have a car, a house, two kids, etc”). I could use a different verb: “In every cell there is a nucleus”. The meaning is now quite different: about existence, there is and location, in. If I draw, I have to place a large dot representing the nucleus somewhere in a circle which represents the cell. Wherever I place it, someone looking at the image is entitled to assume that the nucleus actually is where I have placed it in the circle/cell – whether I intended to or not, or whether it actually belongs there or not. Each mode forces me into making certain kinds of commitments about meaning, intended or not. The choice of mode has profound effects on meaning, and textbook designers, for instance, need to be aware of such meaning effects of different modes.

Meanings are always disseminated through particular media: the medium of the book; or the medium of the CD-ROM, involving still and moving images, speech, writing, cartoon-like characters in comic strips, music, and so on. It might be the medium of the teacher’s body, involving speech, movement and gesture. All media offer specific possibilities to the designer, and to the reader/user in their reading and / or use.

The approach from Social Semiotics not only draws attention to the many kinds of meanings which are at issue in design, but the “social” in “Social Semiotics” draws attention to the fact that meanings always relate to specific societies and their cultures, and to the meanings of the members of those cultures. Semiotics takes the sign - a fusion of a form and a meaning – as its basic unit. In making signs we –embedded in our cultures - select forms in such a way that they expresses the meanings that we ‘have’ always ‘aptly’; hence signs always express, through their form, the meanings that the makers of signs have wished to make.

Take a simple example. I am in an American airport, looking for something to eat. I see a sign Bar and Grille, outlined in lurid red neon lights. Being hungry, I am attracted by “Grille”; I am aware that I am particularly drawn by the “e” on “Grille”. As a semiotician – even a hungry one – I wonder about this ”e”, in part because just the night before I have had a discussion with a colleague about how signs work. I order a brisket sandwich and think about this sign. What the “e” tells me is something about tradition and ‘Englishness’; it relates to many other signs I have seen where the “e” has had similar meanings, as in “Ye olde gifte shoppe”. And, even though I know it is a marketing gimmick, I want to be seduced by its meanings. Of course all the other parts of the sign also mean: the ‘Grill’ – with or without the “e” - speaks of barbeques, of the outdoors, of freshly cooked food. For the sauce I had the choice of mild, medium and make my day (- which I chose; and it did). “Bar” has its specific meanings for Americans reading the sign; and the lurid red neon sign of course ‘means’ to attract my attention, and maybe offer whatever promises ‘lurid red’, in the context of “Bar”, might hold.

All these are social meanings, specific to a particular culture. At the same time they are chosen, put together for their potential to mean, by the deliberate action of the designer. The sign - a complex message of words, of letters, of colour and font-types with all their cultural resonances - reflects the interests of its designer as much as the designer’s imagined sense of those who will see and read the sign. The sign is based on a specific rhetorical purpose, and intent to persuade with all means possible those who pass by and notice it.
Modes and their affordances: the materiality of modes
The kinds of meanings made by the letter “e”, by the word “Grille”, and by the colour “red” are different kinds of meanings. Not only do they mean different things, they mean differently. You can’t look up the meaning of “e”, nor the meaning of “lurid red”. What “e” does is not so much refer to some object, such as a Grill, or a Bar, but rather to evoke by cultural associations. It has a history of use in particular places (in ‘marketing speak’ for instance), and it is knowing its provenance that gives it its meaning. “e” puts me in the world of ‘Olde England’ with all its mythic associations. In one sense, colours work similarly: I have encountered the colour ‘red’ in many instances, as in “red light district”, as a colour of lipsticks: so in this context it is eroticized. Words have their histories, but they also refer; they name things (as nouns) or actions (as verbs) or attributes (as adjectives) or as relations of location (as prepositions), and so on.

One of the present tasks of a social semiotic approach to multimodality is to describe the potentials and limitations for meaning which inhere in different modes. For that, it is essential to consider the materiality of modes. Speech uses the material of (human) sound; writing uses the material of graphic substance. There are things you can do with sound that you cannot do with graphic substance, either easily or at all; not even imitate all that successfully graphically. The up and down of the voice, which produces the melody of (English) speech, makes many meanings, from straightforward questions to highly modulated ones: imagine saying, in a tone of incredulity, ”you did what?”; to many varying forms of emotion and affect. Even highly experienced writers find it impossible to reproduce these meanings in writing and need to take recourse to devices such as “… she said incredulously”. Maybe the major shift in the new landscape of communication in this respect lies in the increasing use of image, even in situations where previously writing would have been used. Consequently an urgent task is understanding the different affordances of writing and image.

In alphabetic cultures writing tends to start, in words, grammar and syntax, as the transcription of speech. It quickly develops its own structures and forms (syntax, punctuation, layout, for instance), so that written English is now very different to spoken English; yet writing does ‘lean on’ speech. Speech happens in time: one sound, one word, one sentence follows another. The ‘logic’ of temporal sequence is the major principle of ordering of languages such as English. Speech and writing are organized by the logic and the ordering principle of sequence in time. This underlies the syntax of English, which is enormously more complex than mere sequence, but is there nonetheless. If I have two simple sentences, such as:

The mists dissolved and the sun rose. It matters in what sequence I place them.
The sun rose and the mists dissolved is very different in meaning from
The mists dissolved and the sun rose.

The one tells us how weather works; the other puts us in the magical, mysterious world of Lord of the Rings maybe. Sequence implies causality: the sentence which comes first seems to be causally prior to that which comes after. But notice that that is so whether I want that meaning or not: I cannot but order them in some way. If I have two friends, Amanda and Josh, and they have jus got married, I might want to say either Amanda married Josh or Josh married Amanda; the two are different in causal terms – who was responsible for what. They are also different in terms of affective ‘proximity’: I may be closer to Amanda than to Josh, and so I place that person’s name first.

In speech as in writing we use words. Yet only that for which there is a word can be brought into communication: no word, no communication about it. In image, if there is something that we wish to depict, we can depict whatever we want. We don’t ask: ”Is there an appropriate image we can use?” Contrary to common sense assumptions about language, words are vague. You have no doubt fully understood the sentences about Josh and Amanda, yet you know very little about either of them: how tall Josh is, what age Amanda, what colour hair they have, and so on. If you saw a photo of them, or even a drawing, much of this would be clear. Words are (relatively) vague, often nearly empty of meanings; by contrast images are full, ‘plain’ with meaning. With image the placement of the depicted entities relative to one another in the image-space is the principle used for making meaning. Take the two images below, drawn by the then four year-old Georgia.

Figure 2a, 2b. Georgia at the side of her mother, and Georgia between her parents







The difference in meaning depends on the relation of the depicted entities to each other in the frame of the picture-space: the resultant difference in Georgia’s sense of herself and her family is an effect of these spatial relations. In drawing the materiality of sound is not available for making, to indicate just how ‘being’ Georgia’s parents seem to her, instead the affordance of space is used – making things taller or shorter, broader or thinner. In fact, Georgia was quite a bit taller than she drew herself here; and her father was quite a bit shorter than her mother. Size here shows the metaphoric use of vertical extension: Georgia sees her parents as affectively /psychically much taller than they actually were; and she makes her father seem as tall as her mother by ‘lifting him off the ground’ somewhat. That leaves aside the meanings of colour.

One further point needs to be mentioned here; it follows from the distinct ordering principles of the two modes. The written text – as indeed the spoken – forces the reader (and the listener) to stick to its order: the elements have to be read in the sequence in which they occur. That is not the case, or far less so, with the image text. Yes, the elements are there in certain spatial relations, but how the reader reconstitutes them is largely up to the reader. The order of the written text is fixed; the order of the image text is (relatively) open.

Media and their interrelation with modes
Modes and media exist in culturally and historically shaped ‘constellations’. The one that has dominated the alphabetic cultures of the ‘West’ over the last 300 years or so is that of mode of writing with medium of book and page. Writing as mode and book as medium have shaped western imagination, forms of knowledge, practices of reading; the technology of writing has shaped the book, and the technology of the book has shaped how writing has developed. The traditional book represented the work of the author, who had laboured to produce a text, which in its ordering represented a ‘body of knowledge’ or the shape of the world – whether fictional or actual. Chapters in the book were coherent and complete in themselves; paragraphs had their logic; and sentences derived their form and purpose from the organization of the paragraph and the larger text.

In that world the reader’s task was to attempt to follow the pre-given ordering of the written text, embodying the authority of the author, working assiduously to reproduce the meaning which the author had intended for the reader. In that world, authors could confidently speak and act on behalf of the reader, as did the author of the example in Figure 3, The Boy Electrician: “The prime instinct of almost any boy is to make and to create… At seven he will wire the whole house with his telephone system made from empty tins connected with varying lengths of string. His older brother will improve on that by purchasing a crystal, a telephone receiver, and a few pieces of insulated copper wire…” (p 5)
Figure 3. Spread from “The Boy Electrician”



Certain texts – novels for instance – encourage the reader to engage in the semiotic work of imagination, following the given order of words on the line but filling the relatively ‘empty’ words with the reader’s meaning. Contemporary texts - whether information books of all kinds, web-pages, the screens of CD ROMs, and so on - in their increasingly often image-like textual organization, ask the reader to perform different semiotic work, namely to design the order of the text for themselves. Consequently two phenomena are now becoming noticeable, as in Figure 4, which had been present but never noticed before: the entry point of the ‘page’ and its reading path.
Figure 4. Home page of the University of London Institute of Education (www.ioe.ac.uk)

The page of The Boy Electrician has one entry point, at the top left of the page; it had long become naturalized and therefore was no longer visible. Nor was the reading path: it asked the reader to follow the lines, in the order in which the culture had determined. The page/screen in Figure 4 has, by contrast, about 13 entry points. The reader interest determines where he or she wishes to enter the page. The same applies to the ‘reading path’ which the reader (now usually called a ‘visitor’) wishes to construct: it too is determined by the reader’s interest.

For design this is a crucial factor, and a profound change. The designer of such ‘pages’ / sites is no longer the ‘author’ of an authoritative text, but is a provider of material arranged in relation to the assumed characteristics of the imagined audience. The power of the designer is to assemble materials which can become ‘information’ for the visitor, in arrangements which might correspond to the interests of the visitor. For the visitor however “Information is material which is selected by individuals to be transformed by them into knowledge to solve a problem in their life world” (Boeck, 2002)

Making texts and reading texts
In the conception outlined here, the processes of making texts and reading texts are both are processes of design; and both are in important sense inversions of the social and semiotic arrangements of the era of the dominance of the constellation of writing and book. It has now been overtaken by the new constellation of image and screen. The (at least mythically) dominant media are now those of the screen - whether of the Gameboy, the mobile telephone, the PC, or still the TV and video. The book and its page had been the site of writing and the logic of writing had shaped the order of the page and the book; the screen is the site of the image and the logic of the image is shaping the order and the arrangements of the screen.

Writing can appear on the screen; but when it does it is subordinated to the logic of the image; just as image could appear on the page, though subordinated to the logic of writing. The logic image will more and more shape the appearance and the uses of writing, a process which is already apparent in many instances of public communication. In the former arrangement, the figure of the author and the mode of writing dominated; in the new arrangements the designer and the mode of image dominate; the story-board is an apt metaphor for this change - image led, and very often the product of a design-team.
Design as choice in context
In the multimodal landscape of communication, choice and therefore design become central issues. If I have a number of ways of expressing and shaping my message, then the questions that confront me are: which mode is best, most apt, for the content / meaning I wish to communicate? Which mode most appeals to the audience whom I intend to address? Which mode most corresponds to my own interest at this point in shaping the message for communication? Which medium is preferred by my audience? Or by me? How am I positioning myself if I choose this medium or this mode rather than those others? All of these call for choices to be made, resting on my assessment of the environment in which communication takes place, in all its complexity, in its widest sense, in which a commodity – the smell of my shampoo, the packaging of the bag of flour, the shape of the bottle of soft-drink – are all ‘messages’ to interpret. The question of choice is illustrated by the contrast of say, Figure 3 with Figure 4, or of Figure 3 with Figure 5.
Figure 5. Visual geography-tectonics

The page in Figure 3 is the realization of choices – of stylistic choices in relation to writing, choices of font (though for any one publishing house there might not have been choice), the framings of the text through syntax (marked by punctuation) and in text (marked by paragraphing, for instance), and by layout in spacings, as well as the frame around the ‘densely printed page’ (Reading Images, 1996). However, these choices had nearly faded into invisibility through the two aspects of habituation and convention. By contrast, the page in Figure 5 shows a plethora of choices made and realized through the modes of writing, layout, colour, and image.

Design is a prospective enterprise. The question it asks is: “what, in this environment, with this kind of audience, with these resources that are available for implementing my design, given these social, economic, ‘political’ constraints, and with my interests now at this moment, is the best way of shaping that which I wish to make, whether as ‘message’ or as any object (of design)?” Here, briefly, are two examples, showing choices made and interests expressed. Figure 6 is the result of the request of the teacher of a class of six year-olds to “make me a drawing and write me a story of our trip to the British museum.”
Figure 6. Notes from a trip to the British Museum

The different ‘take’ on the representation of the day in writing and drawing is startling (all the images and stories showed this contrast): salient object-entities in spatial relation in the visually represented world, contrasted with salient events/actions in temporal relations. We might dismiss this as childish representation. Or we might say that these six-year olds are using the two modes of writing and image in line with their inherent affordances – the (transformed) recollection of the visually encountered world through the spatially organized mode; and the (transformed) recollection of the actionally experienced world through the temporally organized mode. If we take that approach we see that the children have made apt use of the affordances of each mode. The facts of the representational world are certainly moving in the same direction.

In the next example two modes co-exist in one integrated textual object, the question is the same one: what are the principles for the use the modes (the question of “principled use” can and needs to be asked of all my examples). At the end of four lessons on ‘plant cells’, the teacher had asked the 14 year old students, working in groups of four, to prepare a slide of the epidermis of an onion, look at it through a microscope, and then “write what you did” and “draw what you saw”.
Figure 7a, 7b. Eye-piece of the microscope, and Cells as a “brick wall”

The teacher had given two additional instructions: ”put your writing at the top of the page, and the drawing at the bottom”, and “use only black pencils in your drawing”. Apart from the different responses to this instruction (7 b used colour pencils) there is the startling difference in what each “saw” and what each wrote. One written text is a recount, the other a procedure. The recount, generically speaking, says: “this is what happened”; the procedure, generically speaking, says: “this is what ought to happen”. The drawings differ equally profoundly. One declares “this is what theory tells us is the case” (on a worksheet there had been a comment “what you should see is something like a brick wall; each cell is a brick”); the other declares “this is what I actually observed and recorded”. The first is the "truth" of theory; the second is the "truth" of the empirical, reliably recorded.

The question of design is in the center here. The matter at issue is of course ‘plant cells’; but maybe even more than that it is: ”what is it to be scientific?” In each case the answer is broadly the same (though differently realized modally): “to be scientific is to adhere to the "truth" of theory”. In Figure 7 a, the student lodges the "truth" of the facts of the empirical world in the drawing, and the "truth" of theory through the replicability of scientific practice in the written text. In Figure 7 b, the student lodges the "truth" of scientific theory in the drawing, and the "truth" of actual practice in the written. In each case event-like representation uses the mode of writing; and the representation of object-entities is lodged in drawing.
Design as a part of rhetoric of communication
The contemporary social world is marked by increasing fragmentation and individuation (Beck, 1986); in stark contrast to the world of the 19th and early 20th century, the world of stable structures and of individual integration and definition in those structures. Strong frames, and integration into strong frames had their analogues in communication through stable genres, and through stable modal ‘choices’. In periods of stability the question of effective communication is answered by the idea of convention and of competent action in relation to those conventions. In periods of fragmentation and individuation communication is fraught: each environment of communication asks that social and ‘political’ relations, tastes, needs and desires be newly assessed. The question of rhetoric – how to make my communication most effective in relation to this audience, here and now - has moved newly, urgently into the center. Rhetoric has become a major issue for design.
Bibliography Kress, G.R. (2003). Literacy in the new media age. London: RoutledgeFalmer
Kress, G.R. and van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading Images: the grammar of graphic design. London: Routledge
Kress, G.R. and Van Leeuwen, T. (2002). Multimodal Discourse: the modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Edward Arnold
Jewitt, C. and G.R. Kress (eds) (2003). Multimodal Literacie. New York: Peter Lang
Burn, A. and Parker, D. (2003). Analysing media texts. London: Continuum
Gunther Kress

Gunther Kress is professor of Education/English at the Institute of Education, University of London. He has a specific interest in the interrelations in contemporary texts of different modes of communication - writing, image, speech, music - and their effects on forms of learning and knowing. He is interested in the changes - and their effects and consequences - brought by the shift in the major media of communication from the page to the screen. Some of his recent publications are: Reading Images: the grammar of graphic design; Before Writing: rethinking the paths to literacy; (both published by Routledge); Multimodal teaching and learning: the rhetorics of the Science Classroom (Continuum); Multimodal Discourse: the modes and media of contemporary communication (Edward Arnold); and Literacy in the New Media Age (Routledge).
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漂洋上海 陳期 藝術有什麼用

2010年5月13日

今年五十三歲的蔡國強，以他獨特的火藥草圖和裝置藝術，成為國際當代藝術圈認知度最高的中國藝術家之一，他的作品在各大拍賣行屢屢拍出天價，用最庸俗的說法，是名成利就了，所以我並沒有預期他是這樣平實的人。看起來比實際年輕，穿風褸、卡其褲，一臉陽光笑容。

他介紹自己的創作經歷，提及一個火藥爆破習作，他坐在一塊空地上，醫學儀器監測着他的心跳和腦電波，他保持着平靜，如腳下的大地一樣沉穩，然後，他預先裝置好的火藥爆炸，儀器顯示，他的心跳腦電波和大地同一頻率震動。他在這時候回歸大地，和自然成為一體。

有時他要收起自己，做很自我的創作，有時他又希望展示自己給很多人看，所以他策劃一些大型活動。他說自己就是這樣時內時外，忽左忽右，亦中亦西。

一方面他會為自己有所成就，並可以幫助他人而高興，一方面他又覺得成就這東西很虛。一般人早上起來知道自己那一天會做什麼，但他就漫無目的。在他演說時，他的助手兼傳譯把他作品的拍賣價七千萬元說成是七十萬，他笑說，少一兩個零會覺得比較安全。

說到批評政府，會場突然斷電，米高風嘎然靜默，全場人都在調笑會場裏是不是有監聽。器材修復，他不忘幽一默，說這不過是技術故障，有時候我們也要負起責任，不能一味責怪政府。

我並不認為他這樣的觀點模稜兩可，態度騎牆，我反而樂見一個藝術家這樣充滿人性，在庸俗世界中遊刃有餘，一點沒顯得曲高和寡。

這可能和他個人在不同文化中的生活經歷有關，蔡國強出生在福建，在上海學舞台設計，一九八六年去了日本，開始了他的爆破藝術習作，一九九五年移居紐約。

蔡國強說，藝術可以表達自己的感情，也可啟發他人，我還覺得，藝術之偉大在於可以令人思想更深刻，而胸懷更開闊。

「蔡國強：農民達芬奇」要表現在集體意願和集體行為以外的這些農民個體的創造力。集體和個人，看似矛盾，其實也並非相生相剋。

世博已經開幕了，你一定看到不少混亂場面，然後尖刻地批判，以中國的國民素質，這是意料中事。你可能覺得世博會只是另一個國際笑話，不值得看。

但是你也可以想想，像蔡國強這樣的個體，作品中宣洩着傳統藝術和社會制度的壓抑，搞個農民創作展覽看似和世博唱反調，卻又獲邀策劃亞太高峰會和奧運等官方活動。

你可以並且應該繼續批判，因為這樣的批判在推動着某種進步，很有必要。但置身在這個社會中，我又不由得感到一點安慰，上海有世博，同時也有「農民達芬奇」，包容性正在逐漸擴大，這就是改變，而且看似方向正確。就算你不來看世博，至少也值得來看看這種改變。

Why artists are turning to video as a medium

Jonathan Brooks-Jones explores a burgeoning art form

Artes Mundi is a biennial competition that showcases the work of emerging artists from around the world. It celebrates art that discusses the human condition and/or the human form. Within that broader area of interest each individual competition, or ‘cycle’, has a central theme that links the artworks. Two new selectors are enlisted each time, who determine each cycle’s theme. This year, its fourth, the selectors are curators Viktor Misiano from Russia and Levent Çalikoğlu from Turkey. Both have a keen interest in political art, and a belief in its capacity to encourage debate. This year, the theme is migration and social mobility, although many others permeate the works, such as globalisation, and the fall of communism.

From over 500 nominations, Misiano and Çalikoğlu short-listed eight artists. A new panel of independent judges from around the world is selected each year, made up of artists, art historians, critics, theorists and curators. The winner of the £40,000 prize will be announced on the 19 May. It is the largest arts prize in the UK and is dedicated to providing a platform for emerging artists.

While there are paintings, drawings and photographic works, it is video art that has the most gallery space. This has drawn a mixed reaction from the public, many of whom complain that there is ‘too much video’.

This might have been expected, but it does seem a little odd that people aren’t excited about the chance to experience what is to many a new art form. In fact it’s not even that new. Video art has existed in the contemporary form since the 1960s, and in other forms even longer. However, the Welsh audience is rarely exposed to it, as there is a lack of modern art galleries in Wales. Video art can be difficult to interpret for one who is not acquainted with it, so I will here try to explain some of the central ideas explored in video art, and why artists are turning to video as a medium.

A common objection is that the artist could have or should have made a movie instead. It is true that artists could make movies instead, but why should they? It is not the sole right of movie-makers in Hollywood and such places to use the medium of film, and it has always been a part of artistic creation to take advantage of new technologies and ways of working. In fact, one of the most interesting aspects of video art is its capacity to deconstruct our experience and understanding of moving images on a screen, making us think about how we view television and movies.

Most people are well acquainted with the protocol of visiting the cinema. You sit in your seat, watch the film and keep quiet until the end, when you are once again allowed to talk and move around. While you are entitled to leave whenever you like, there is a tendency to sit it out to the end and ‘get your moneys worth’. Video art, on the other hand, grants the viewer much more freedom.

Bulgarian Ergin Çavuşoğlu is one of the short-listed artists whose work deconstructs our understanding of video and film. He takes up the theme of migration and boundaries in two pieces, Voyage of No Return and Liminal Crossing. The former uses five screens, which are separated, placed at different heights with one placed on the floor, facing up and angled slightly towards the viewer. The central screen features the dialogue and beneath it is the fifth screen, with Welsh subtitles projected onto it.

This film is about migration and questions surrounding identification with a particular place, and seeing it as ‘home’. Voyage of No Return was filmed on location on Oban, an island historically used as a pit-stop when travelling on to the Hebrides, or back to mainland Scotland. Migration is therefore a key part of the island’s history and character. Here, the method of splitting the film onto different screens is used to establish locality, and to try and capture the atmosphere of Oban. This fragmentation of the screens encourages the viewer to interact with the work, perhaps walking up close to a screen and blocking the shaft of light, causing a silhouette, thus in some way becoming a part of the piece. In previous exhibitions he has projected the film directly onto the floor, so the audience can literally walk through it.

One of the interesting aspects in his other piece, Liminal Crossing, is the use of sound. In this film, a group pushes a piano across the Captain Andreevo border between Bulgaria and Turkey. The video is projected onto two screens, which face each other at a 45 – 90 degree angle, with a gap where the two edges meet. The only sound to be heard is that of the wheels turning as the piano is pushed along. This, coupled with the absence of human voices chatting, points to the sombre and somewhat lonely atmosphere. This use of diagetic sound adds realism, and in turn, tension to the piece. This contrasts with his use of a musical score in Voyage of No Return.

For me, the most interesting aspect of the soundtrack is his use of reflections. The purpose of the gap between the two screens is to encourage the viewer to walk behind the screens where only the soundtrack is perceptible. If we venture deep enough into the empty space, we hear the sound as it hits the back wall and reflect back to our ears. This amounts to a rather strange and unique sensation, one rarely experienced outside an acousmatic music event.

Here, Çavuşoğlu is at once deconstructing our understanding of video and film (which really is a post-modern pass-time), and also reforming an idea that has been in circulation since the impressionists, that of light and its reflective qualities.

In all art, light must first of all play a physical, and perhaps rather obvious role, in that it enables us to see the works in the first place. This is true in painting and other forms of art, but its role is extended in video art. Light must first hit the subject, reflect into the artist’s eye and the lens of the camera. Light is then shone through the film in order to project the image onto the screen. From there it is reflected into the eyes of the audience. As with the impressionists, the importance of light has taken on a role of conceptual importance, in which the art comes to discuss light.

For example, Per Speculum by Albanian artist Adrian Paci, draws our attention to the importance of light. In the final, wide-angle shot, a group of children sit in amongst the branches of a tree and use the broken pieces of a mirror to reflect the sunlight back to the camera. This draws our attention to the distance travelled by light, especially in video art. Paci also draws our attention to the projector, a unique feature of video art. He does this by using a particularly old-fashioned and noisy one (however, against the artist’s intentions, for health and safety reasons it had to be sealed in a metal box, thus trapping much of its sound).

The importance of light and the projector may also be seen in Çavuşoğlu’s choice of where to mount the plaque with his name and title of the work (Voyage…). It is placed on the wall onto which the projectors are mounted. This suggests that the projector, and the role it performs, is of equal importance to the installation as a whole.

For many, video and film seems too commercial, because we are so used to it being used for commercial purposes such as adverts, television, movies and music videos. While some of these may be termed ‘artistic’, video art’s focus is directed exclusively on the artistic capacity of video.

Part of video art’s power comes from the fact that we are so used to seeing video and film in other forms. This means that when we are asked to look at video as an artistic form, and it contains images we are not expecting, the effect is automatically, at first, surreal. Imagine tuning into the Chris Moyles show and hearing the music of Arnold Schoenberg! Hearing music without a tonal centre is likely to be a new and unsettling experience for the average Radio 1 listener in any case, but it is doubly surprising because that is the last place one would expect to hear atonal music. Similarly, we are so used to the kind of content normally contained on video, that when we see something more artistic and adventurous than, say, Coronation Street or Big Brother, it tends to shock. This gives video art added depth of impact.

As Çavuşoğlu demonstrates with his experimental approach, one thing video art does is reference other forms, styles and techniques. In a sense this makes them ‘antique’. The new, reformed use of an old style can bring us a new awareness of it. Previously we just took it for granted and didn’t normally think about where it had come from, it simply exists. When something is presented to us again, and we are asked to look at it afresh, we tend to understand it differently.

While some artists dispense with the use of a narrative plot, others make use of a reformed narrative style in order to get their point across. Israeli artist, Yael Bartana, makes use of narrative form in her piece Wall and Tower, which is, in my opinion, one of the strongest pieces at this year’s Artes Mundi. This piece, which is the second in a trilogy, raises questions about nationalism and Zionism by depicting the construction of a kibbutz (which has a striking resemblance to a concentration camp) in what used to be the Warsaw ghetto. The film opens with a speech written and delivered by (real-life left-wing activist and campaigner) Slawomir Sierakowski, calling all Jews to return to Poland.

This piece is one of the most thorough and comprehensive works in the exhibition, in which each part bears the weight of the whole. The enlistment of a real-life political activist, the use of propaganda film styles, through to the printing and supplication of the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland’s manifesto, as well as instructions on how to build a wall and tower like the one in the film. The artist’s instructions are to ‘take and distribute’, adding yet another layer to an already complex piece. It is also interesting because the movement did not exist before the first film had been made, and Bartana apparently did not even intend to start the movement by creating this artwork. She was merely trying to “ask questions, not tell people what to think”. A likely story! In any case, those questions are being raised, about nationalism, Zionism, the situation in Israel and Palestine, and also Poland (an interesting blog about the Polish reaction to this piece can be read here).

This film makes use of cinematic, documentary, and propaganda film techniques. It is a highly effecting piece, due to the polished acting and musical soundtrack, featuring the triumphant sounding Polish national anthem. The use of cinematic formulae probably makes it easier to digest for the uninitiated, while the content remains highly engaging and requires the viewer to keep watching in order to see where it is going. This is also an example, by the way, of a film that probably should be seen all the way through in order to fully appreciate the meaning, which is not immediately given to the viewer on a plate, but is slowly teased out as the events unfold.

Another idea at work in video art is the performative aspect. Considering a piece of video as a performance raises the question of which part, exactly, does the art consist in – is it the subject? The film of the subject? The (temporary) projection of the film? Which part is valuable? Is it the film itself, or the moment at which it is projected onto a screen? Is the screening to be considered a ‘performance’?

Video art differs from other forms of art because paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings etc. are physically there, mounted on the wall, or placed on a stand or otherwise. Of course, a projected video is in some way ‘physically’ there, but in a different way, it is, rather, the projection of something which has happened before that has been captured on film, and is not actually happening any more. Note the difference between this and a play or performance art piece, which are viewed as they happen.

Artists have always been interested in the elements that are unique to a particular form of art. For example, sculpture has the greatest capacity for three-dimensional work. However, it is also interesting that some painters have taken their work in a three-dimensional direction. Expressionist painter Frank Auerbach layers oil paints onto the canvas in thick measure (‘impasto’), thus creating works that have a three-dimensional quality. This links in with the earlier point about the practice of reforming other styles, which much modern art is concerned with.

So, for artists making video, the materials that are unique to them are movement and time. No other art form has the capacity to explore those materials in quite the same way. Performance art, of course, features movement, and is often referred to as ‘time-based art’. However, video has a greater control over these materials, as video can be sped up or slowed down to any degree. An interesting example in which this is done is the film See you later / Au Revoir, by Michael Snow, in which a 30 second interaction is slowed down to last twelve minutes. Video art has a somewhat stronger hold over the manipulation of time as a material than performance art. However, performance artists have a stronger hold on the performative aspect, which video art sometimes tries to incorporate, as touched on above.

Finally, something must be said about the political nature of much of the work at this year’s Artes Mundi. It was suggested during one of the lunchtime tours, that the serious political nature of many of the pieces makes it difficult for those who are new to video art to get the most out of them. The fact that it overwhelms some may be taken to show that video is worthy of political art, in that it has the capacity to convey the seriousness and magnitude of social and political problems, themselves often overwhelming.

The crucial point to make here is that for political art to be successful in raising awareness and encouraging debate, it must refuse to offer any resolution. If a work of art has a political impetus, and that political issue remains unresolved, the film must end without having supplied resolution. If a film supplies resolution, it makes it far easier for the viewer to walk away and forget all about it.

Many of the pieces at the Artes Mundi resist the supplication of resolution. In particular, Taiwanese artist Chen Chieh-jen’s work features the staunchest resistance to resolution, and is unlikely to leave the viewer’s conscience for some time once it has been absorbed. His films entitled Empire’s Borders 1 & 2, feature women from Taiwan telling the stories of how their husbands have been detained for no good reason whilst traveling to in and out of Taiwan. There is no resolution, because the men are still detained, and their wives have no idea when they will see them again. Bartana’s work also resists the supplication of resolution, partly due to the fact that the final part of the trilogy is yet to have been made. It will be interesting to see how the final installment turns out.

In conclusion, we have seen that there are a great number of ideas at work in this burgeoning art form. We can see that it is valid, not least because it has often been thoroughly worked and reworked at all stages from conception to production to screening. Avant-garde film is almost always designed to confront the viewer, who is often forced to concentrate and think about what it is they’re viewing.

It is also important to remember that as it is a new form, there is an element of experimentation to video art. This can cause problems, such as the overflow of sound between pieces in close proximity to one another. The worst case of this at the Artes Mundi is that the soundtrack from Wall and Tower can be heard when one is watching Chieh-jen’s other piece, Factory, which is meant to be a silent film. However, I would say that while this is unfortunate, it is perhaps to be expected, as the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff was never designed to exhibit video works, and was not purpose built to prevent such overspill. It is also indicative of something larger and more exciting happening in the world of art, the growth of something that feels like a new form.

The public’s unfavourable reaction may be put down to a general reluctance to appreciate something new and crucially, unfamiliar. In a world where we are bombarded with the eternal sameness of mainstream art, music, theatre and film it can be difficult for people to accept something more or less unprecedented in their cultural experience. It requires more ‘cultural capital’, to use Bourdieu’s phrase, than dominant mainstream culture provides us. However, the galleries were busy on many of the occasions that I visited. This is down to the good work of the Artes Mundi association, which no-doubt encourages interest in the avant-garde.

Indeed, as a burgeoning art form video is conceptually and aesthetically rich. It provides the artist with unique opportunities to experiment with a vast array of elements: screen, soundtrack, projector, content, style, and others. While it may require a little more effort to unravel the meaning of a piece, it can be a highly rewarding and unique experience, one that is likely to become easier the more often we’re exposed to it. It is helpful, therefore, that Artes Mundi employs a team of ‘live guides’ who have met the artists and discussed the pieces with them. They act as the link between the artist and the public that is all-too-often missing from modern art galleries. They provide a valuable insight into the meaning and history behind the works.
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Tags: Artes Mundi, cinema, Deconstruction, Ergin Cavusoglu, Impressionism, Migration and Social Mobility, performance art, Video art, Yael Bartana

Jonathan Brooks-Jones is an intern with the IWA