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二十世紀初期,由西歐藝術家所掀起的前衛文藝思潮與實踐,透過文明技術化的傳播路徑影響東亞地域,台灣在日本的殖民境遇下,一躍而入現代性的深邃巨浪。 風車詩社作為現代主義文學的前行者,首度引入西歐及日本相異詮釋下的超現實主義創作觀,同時面臨了戰前日文創作世代無法擁有自我發聲語言的「失語」境況,又亟需透過以日文「再語」的定位,為其創作自由及生存意志,開掘出另類的抗衡途徑。 「發聲」本為人類原生的欲求,無法暢言,不僅反映出殖民經驗下受到文化監控的恐懼,更透露出語言本身的創造性,對於文藝創作者尋求自由的重要性。更因而,風車詩社選擇以他者(殖民者)的語言發聲,期以文學自身價值來切斷政治教條的束縛,並緊守藝術內部的自由;遺憾的是,無法獲得當時島內文壇的共鳴,早夭結束。 隨著帝國之手不斷向四方伸延,1940年代二戰期間,文學做為軍國主義宣揚工具,詩人們除了收斂筆桿力求生存,也無能真正拒絕大東亞戰爭的幻夢。戰爭結束之後,歷經二二八事件、白色恐怖的迫害,在政治氣氛壓抑的時局下,隨著日語被新的政權所壓制,詩人面臨了創作上的永恆失聲。
紀錄電影《日曜日式散步者》探問了台灣戰前文藝與殖民身分的複雜向度,《立黑吞浪者》則嘗試在1920-30年代全球各先進國家投入先鋒藝術的整體脈絡中,審視台灣在日本帝國殖民下,雖受到現代性思潮的影響,但在前衛聲音的藝術風潮中作為缺席的視角,從風車詩社的經驗中反思到什麼樣的問題。 在本作的身體詮釋中,鬼丘鬼鏟選擇悖離西方行為藝術自達達、超現實主義,乃至於二次大戰後興起的維也納行動派、偶發藝術、激浪派等強調身體解放與具衝撞動能之脈絡,迴返至更為強調亞洲自制與精練的身體運用,詮釋成長於日殖時期的風車詩社之可能的身體行為想像。即便風車詩社深受西方與日本前衛思潮影響,但國家體制與殖民系統的箝制,將身體規訓收編;個人與國家的關係,可為身體活動的現象。 更進一步,鬼丘鬼鏟借重達達主義圖像、繪畫、電影以及詩人的文字,將表演者視為從繪畫中分裂出來的斷裂線條與魂魄迴返,並以去中心的結構展現詩人從殖民系統逸離的暗影存在。表演者與體操選手模擬密室巨人,以暗號般的方式載存風車詩人的意念,同時展現詩人的精神強度與現實中的權力暗角。視覺的表達概念上,則嘗試透過達達主義夢境之轉化與重建,以模擬畫作的二維空間手法,組構非邏輯性的內容,賦予角色荒謬、怪誕的意象,建立隱喻。表演者延伸了達達主義中頻繁出現的肉體般的雕塑物、飛躍的人體等,原本達達畫作鮮明歡快的氛圍與元素,轉換為風車詩人遭受現實橫亙的阻礙,此中的陰鬱、壓抑特質,暗示風車詩社與當時主流文學界之間的隔閡,及殖民處境的壓抑。舞台與線性敘事,並不存在,唯有「乍現」的視覺畫面,決然交錯於觀者眼前。
聲音演譯的部分,著重在藝術家對於聲音文化脈絡的省思:一方面是,文化聆聽的印象與價值觀受到個人經驗過的各種社會現象所影響;另一方面全球聲音文化已經在過去百年間發展成熟,這些對於基礎聆聽層次造成效應的聲響現象,也已烙上了文化強勢國過去百年間培養的文化聆聽印象,成為各式各樣既成的音樂藝術風格。 那麼亞洲實驗音樂者的自主性有可能存在嗎?又能夠以何種方式提出新的路徑? 或許後進國家的聲音藝術創作者常只能採取某些策略,例如:一是使用自身國家傳統中的文化符號於聲音創構中,但卻因為這些文化符號與當代聲音文化/器具缺乏足夠的銜接點,加上創作者對於自身傳統文化缺乏夠深刻的理解,往往只能得到最表層的效果;二是將這些外來的藝術風格打磨至最優秀,但卻可能在聲響現象上缺乏自身的國家特色來形成區隔,人們常無法辨識作者來自於何方;三是用後設的態度在作品內混亂錯置文化脈絡。然而,將脈絡錯置作為特色,其實更顯示出文化強勢國所建構的脈絡有多麼不可動搖。
有鑒於上述類似情況,本演出將嘗試以身體/聲音作為「語言」藝術性之探問,進而從當代省思1920-30年代西方現代性跟亞洲創作者之間的關係,以及各種語言乃至反語言交會的衝突、問題意識,進一步回應日殖時期風車詩社在各文化、語言、國族、乃至於藝術先鋒性與在地文化、創作意識、作者自覺/權力等問題之間的複雜性。 藝術家跳脫和諧的聲響配置,藉由電聲、人聲、樂音聲(鋼琴、口風琴等樂器),在多次的即興排演中,藝術家之間彼此聆聽、思索、討論、辯證,交互發聲或沉默,逐步建立聲響與身體的主體思考性。聲響與視覺表演處於同一重新感知歷史團塊的精神脈絡,即便當代藝術者與過往歷史間存在著必然無法感知的文化與感官藩籬,但創作者群仍試著以這些段落所揭示的問題意識,回映於風車詩社所觸發的歷史經驗。無論是重新透視語言本質及其與社會/國族的關係,或經由勘誤、錯置的實驗,肢解分化文字的意義,甚至往返中文、法文、台語及原住民語言之間的發聲斷層,致使聲音的即興不再可能停留於純粹美感,而是衍生為更複雜的詮釋及判斷。藝術家們經由一次次的對話與調整,直至最終樣貌的成形鞏固。 嫻熟於「自由即興」的聲音藝術家,也在演出的建構與即興排練的過程裡,因各自的創作方式或觀念差異,產生了衝突或辯證。包含對於具意識性的編排方式感到拘束與受限,甚至開始質疑「即興」的自由度和「合創」的根本意義,而電影作者則提出了「自由即興」從何而來,是否又再次是西方演繹模式的重複,或是藝術個體不受限於國界最自由的解放? 鬼丘鬼鏟則因場地規模的考量,一改過去以行動草稿為本並發展具即興強度的大型事件等創作方式,轉而發展演出者精準的細部表現,藉視覺概念進行與風車詩社對話的可能性,並保留非穩定性的視角,使觀眾的視域被切割碎裂,形成缺乏再現感的斷裂性觀看。
因此,參與本演出的藝術家們可說嘗試了一次,在即興的開闊向度中,又賦予了精確的編排設定,並自過去的創作經驗,延伸出各種提問的可能。而在藝術家彼此碰撞磨合的過程中,彼此亦可覺察及感受到所謂「跨領域」或「界分領域」的背後,有諸多更根本的,每一位創作者身後的文化認知、學習經驗、創作養成脈絡、創構取向與抉擇等總體經驗;這些屬於「一位創作者」的養成基礎與條件,大多仍是自西方文化的觀點與影響中所沿襲下來,而這樣的「文化教養過程」,對應於1930年代的風車詩社所經歷的現代性受容經驗裡,當代藝術者是否面臨了相似的處境與問題,也都在此一演出的實驗與互語中,不斷地跳出來探問著每一位參與者。 過去實驗音樂/影像/現場藝術等領域,在西方的諸多創作者身上,已可看到多樣而繁複的實驗歷程。屬於亞洲的實驗途徑為何?這或許不是能夠僅經由一場演出所能夠回答的,但從這樣的實驗行動中,透過風車詩社的創作及生命經驗,每一位藝術家似乎又一次詰問了自身。
In the early twenty-first century, the avant-garde artistic and cultural waves and practice led by Western European artists influenced Eastern Asian regions through the civilization's technological communication. Under the circumstance of Japanese colonization, Taiwan became engulfed in the massive and profound waves of modernity.
As a pioneering figure of modernist literature, Le Moulin Poetry Society was the first to introduce the creative concepts of Western European and Japanese surrealism, which presented rather different interpretations. They were faced with the situation of "losing their own voice" because the pre-war generation wrote in Japanese and was denied the right to their own language, and at the same time, they also needed to use Japanese to "find their own voice" and find an alternative approach to fight against the reality for their creative freedom and will of survival.
"To speak" has always been an innate desire of humanity. Therefore, not being able to speak freely not only reflected the fear stemmed from the cultural surveillance of the colonial experience, it also revealed how the creativeness manifested by language itself was important to the writers and artists who sought freedom. Furthermore, Le Moulin Poetry Society chose to speak in the language of the other (the colonizer) in the attempt to free themselves from the constraints of political doctrines with the inherent value of literature while holding onto the internal freedom of art. Unfortunately, their endeavor was not recognized and did not resonate with the Taiwanese literary circle of the time; hence, the premature end of the Society.
The claws of imperialism kept reaching towards all directions in the 1940s, and during the WWII, literature had become an instrument of militarist propaganda. The poets could only stay conservative for the sake of survival and were not able to ward off the delusion of the so-called "Greater East Asia War." After the end of the war, the February 28 Incident and the oppression of White Terror ensued. In the suppressive political atmosphere, as the Japanese language was silenced by the new political regime, the poets were forced to face losing their creative voice forever.
The documentary film, Le Moulin, explored the complicated dimensions of Taiwan's cultural, artistic, and colonial identity in the pre-war era. The Black Waves, on the other hand, attempted to examine the problems reflected by the experience of Le Moulin Poetry Society, given the fact that although the Japanese-ruled Taiwan was influenced by modernist thinking, it was absent from the avant-garde waves while the more advanced countries around the world at the time had joined the trend of avant-garde art through 1920s to 1930s.
For the physical performance of The Black Waves, Ghost Mountain Ghost Shovel Art Collective chose to digress from the context of Western performance art fashioned by Dada, Surrealism, Viennese Actionism that arose after the WWII, Happening, and Fluxus, which focused on the liberation of the body and the momentum of impact. Instead, the art collective returned to an Asian context that emphasized on self-restraint and the precise and refined use of the body to interpret their imagination of Le Moulin Poetry Society's physical manifestations in the Japanese colonial period. Although the Society was deeply influenced by Western and Japanese avant-garde thinking, the confinement of the national and colonial systems had disciplined and contained the body; in other words, the relation between the individuals and the nation was epitomized by bodily actions.
Moreover, the art collective borrowed Dada's images, paintings, movies, and the poet's writing, and treated the performers as fragmented lines and spirits from the paintings to foreground the poets' shadowy existence separated from the colonial system through a decentralized structure. The performers and the gymnasts imitated the giants in the enclosed room, using signals to deliver the will of the poets from Le Moulin Poetry Society while demonstrating their spiritual strength and the power struggle in reality. In terms of visual expression, the art collective aimed to convert and reconstruct Dadaist dreams to imitate painting's two-dimensional space and to fabricate the non-logical content, giving the characters absurd and peculiar imageries that served as hints and metaphors. The performers embodied the body-like sculptural objects and flying human torsos frequently seen in Dadaism. However, the previously bright and joyful atmosphere and elements in Dadaist paintings were transformed into the obstructions and hindrances in reality faced by the poets. Such gloomy and repressive characteristics beckoned at the barriers between Le Moulin Poetry Society and the mainstream literary circle at that time as well as the suppression of the colonial context. The stage and linear narrative disappeared; only intermittent visual images were shown in front of the audience in a sporadic and sudden way.
The sound performance of this work addressed the artists' reflections on the cultural context of sounds. On the one hand, the impression and sense of value of cultural listening is influenced by all kinds of social phenomena that an individual's experiences. On the other hand, the sound culture worldwide has reached a mature stage in the past century. Moreover, these phenomena of sounds that affect the listening on a fundamental level are also imprinted with the impressions of culturally dominant countries throughout the last century and have surfaced as a wide range of artistic style in music today.
Thus, is there still room for the practitioners of Asian experimental music to have any autonomy? In what way can they offer a new path?
Perhaps, sound artists from the relatively less advanced countries can only adopt certain strategies. For example, to begin with, they can use cultural symbols from their own tradition in their sound creations. However, because these cultural symbols are not connected to contemporary sound culture and instruments, and the artists usually do not possess sufficient and in-depth understanding of their tradition and culture, such a strategy often only achieves an effect on the most superficial level. Or, the artists can train themselves to excel in the foreign artistic styles but only to face a lack of their own cultural features in their sound expression. Therefore, the listeners are not able to distinguish the artists' background and origin. Finally, they can adopt an outsider's point of view and dispose the cultural context of their work in a disordered and disarranged manner. However, to feature such disarrangement only seem to underline the indestructible context constructed by the culturally dominant countries.
In light of the aforementioned situation, this performance aimed to explore "linguistic artistry" through body and sound, and examined the relationship between Western modernity and Asian artists in the 1920s and 1930s. It also investigated various conflicts and problematics rooted in the linguistic as well as anti-linguistic encounters, and further addressed the complicated issues about culture, language, nation, avant-garde art and local culture, creative consciousness, writer's self-awareness and power, all of which were raised by Le Moulin Poetry Society in the Japanese colonial period.
The artists of the performance renounced harmonious orchestration of sounds, and used electronic sounds, human voices, musical sounds (by musical instruments, such as piano and harmonica). In many spontaneous rehearsals, they listened to each other, exploring, discussing, and debating. Through exchanging ideas or moments of silence, they gradually built up the subjective thinking of sounds and body. Sounds and visual performance were combined in the same context to re-perceive the history. Even though there existed unperceivable cultural and perceptual barriers between contemporary artists and the past history, the artists still tried to expose the problematics through their work and to reflect the historical experience prompted by Le Moulin Poetry Society.
The artists involved in The Black Waves included movie directors, live art performers, electronic sound artists, vocal artists, musicians as well as many theatre performers. To integrate these specialties, it was important to maintain all artists' subjectivity while achieving the synergistic effect.
Whether it was to re-examine the essence of language and its relations to the society and nation, or to conduct experiments of error-correction and disarrangement to sever and differentiate the meaning of words, or even to complicate the pure beauty of spontaneous sounds for the purpose of deriving more elaborate interpretations and assessments by interweaving Mandarin, French, Taiwanese, and languages of indigenous peoples, the performance has undergone multiple dialogues and adjustments to finally arrive at its present state.
The sound artists skilled in "being free and spontaneous" also experienced conflicts and conducted dialectic debates due to their different approaches to creation or conceptual discrepancies during the development of the performance and the process of spontaneous rehearsals. The conflicting or dialectic experience resulted in the fact that they felt confined and restrained by the ideological approach to construct and rehearse the performance, which even led them to question the freedom allowed by the so-called "spontaneous" process and the fundamental purpose of "co-creation." The film makers also questioned the origin of the "free and spontaneous" approach, wondering whether it was a repetition of the Western performance mode or the ultimate form of liberation for individual artists free from the constraints of national boundaries.
Considering the scale of the performance venue, Ghost Mountain Ghost Shovel Art Collective changed their previous creative mode of developing a performance idea into a large-scale event that manifested the strength of spontaneity, and instead, focused their attention on creating a precise, detailed performance. Through the visual concept, they explored the possibility of having a dialogue with Le Moulin Poetry Society while retaining a non-stable perspective that dissected and broke the audience's field of vision, forming a fragmented, non-representational viewing experience.
As a result, it would be fair to say that the artists participated in this performance have experienced the possibility of creating a precise performance through a spontaneous approach while proposing different questions extended from their past creative experiences. Between the collision and collaboration of the artists, they were able to detect and perceive each creator's fundamental, collective experiences of cultural identification, learning experience, artistic development, creative inclination and choice, which had previously remained unnoticed behind the so-called terms of "inter-disciplinary" or "division of disciplines." This basic training, along with its conditions, to educate and cultivate a "creator" was mostly derived from and formulated by the Western cultural viewpoint and influences. Juxtaposing such "a cultural upbringing" with Le Moulin Poetry Society's experience and acceptance of modernity in the 1930s, the performance's experimentation and dialogue continuously posed the question of whether the participating contemporary artists have been facing a similar circumstance and question.
In the fields of experimental music, image, and live art, many Western artists have already conducted diversified and elaborate experimentation. However, what is Asia's approach for such experimentation? Perhaps, the answer could not be found in only one performance. Nevertheless, from such an experimental performance and through the work and life experience of Le Moulin Poetry Society, every artist involved in the project seemed to have undergone a self-exploration again.