杨勇：“世界属于你—以及其中的万事万物……”
作者：杨天娜
相关展览：《国际通道——世界属于你》，北京当代唐人艺术中心，北京，中国，2008
“就这样么？这就是生活的全部，…？吃饭，喝酒，做爱，吸吮，打喷嚏？之后呢？告诉我，之后呢？…这就是生活的全部么？”
托尼·蒙塔那（阿尔·帕西诺饰）在《疤面人（Scarface）》（1983）中的台词
在1980年7月，“疤面人” 托尼·蒙塔那在卡斯特罗将他所在监狱的所有犯人清理之后，挤在马里埃尔偷渡船里来到美国，寻求庇护。古巴人托尼做着“美国梦”，在经过了血腥暴力的生涯后，终于坐上了迈阿密大毒枭的头把交椅。他内心中对于权力、奢靡和暴力的渴望推动着他。在一幕镜头中，托尼看见他的“美国梦”变成一艘飞艇划过黑暗的夜空，而就在这一幕中经典台词“世界属于你”出现了。
“国际通道——世界属于你（International Passage – The World is Yours）”是一系列架上和实物绘画作品的标题；杨勇为他在北京的第一次大型个展将这些绘画安排得好似一个时尚的生活方式的陈列。艺术家将每天播送于大众媒体中的图像组合起来，并将它们描绘到一些物体上；这些物体是当代中国普通居民每天使用，具有物质诱惑力的东西：沙发、台球桌、设计师浴缸、行李箱等等。就像展览的名称所暗指的布莱恩·德·帕尔玛的电影《疤面人》（1983）那样，杨勇所创造的氛围就如同那个掌握世界与自己手中的终极梦想最终重现于眼前一样。
实际上构成这个世界的图画（描绘）与图像（内心形象）——以及杨勇所创造的塑造了社会环境和身份的氛围都在占有与占领/创造空间的过程中扮演了至关重要的角色。在这点上，杨勇所设计的氛围唤起了对于“图像转向”的回忆；W.J.T.米歇尔在1992年第一次使用这个概念描述“在大众文化领域中”的变化。他将这种变化表现为被图像概念所主宰的那个时代。[7] 米歇尔强调图画与影像在社会环境的构成之中所占据的的重要性，反之亦然。考虑到在社会主义国家中表现与再现的作用，以及通过大众传媒所传播的图像的巨大冲击力，这种在视觉和媒体理论领域以及西方社会文化语境中所产生的主张似乎对于审视今日中国的情形特别合适，并且似乎对于一个基本为了市场规则而放弃了对于图像制造的,全面控制的社会主义文化环境格外贴切。
当我们将组成社会主义中国的象征性秩序的图像与在中国当今传媒中流行的图像做以对比，不得不承认，如果按照拉康的理论这些图像和表象就是一种文化的象征性意义的作用的话，则最初的象征性秩序则一定是被打破了。
在《完全身体愉悦》（The Total Body of Pleasure）中，伯扬·曼切夫通过研究具象征意义的经济形态以及前苏维埃阵营国家新近建立的政治团体的自我表现形式对后共产主义时期的政治、社会和文化进行了多元化的反思。[8] 他表述到：“很明显，在这些社会中新的官方统治的意识形态表述是一种西方民主……它们将对于世界通行的人权、对于民主社会、对于自由市场的表述与实践进行了调整。然而，更加吸引我进行探究的是尚有疑问的自我表现的无意识程度，它的过剩，它的过度，它的‘阴暗’面。我的目的就是要接近这种‘下意识’表现的两个主要领域，更确切的说是与色情和暴力有关的对于表现的破坏。” [9]
托尼·蒙塔那的齐柏林飞艇一遍遍地划过夜空，“他曾有一个朴素的欲望，整个世界，万事万物均在其中……”[10] 曼切夫将对于象征性秩序的破坏与从一个严格计划管制经济到一般性经济间的转变联系在了一起；对于他来说这种转变是后共产主义时期的典型情形。[11] 这种一般性的经济代表了“主宰者的逻辑”，一种肉欲、消费、奢靡、浪费、冒险和潜在暴力的逻辑。按照他的话说，后共产主义时代的一般性经济并非建立在基于物质积累基础上，而是建立于对于明显存在社会剩余的无节制的消费，自恋的色情主义和暴力的强烈渴望基础之上。他接着说道，“财产大体上是一种获得愉悦的途径。（……）” [12]
杨勇为“世界属于你”所创造的架上和实物绘画属于他称作“国际通道”的系列油画中的作品；这个系列的作品有别于他记录艺术家身边现实环境的摄影作品，反映了与国际大事和历史发展相关的总体印象和思潮。“国际通道——世界属于你”是组成中国当代文化中全新象征秩序的所有作品的一部分。托尼·蒙塔那从共产主义古巴来到他终级梦想之地美国的旅程在这里成了对于象征性秩序破坏的比喻；而从一个历史的角度来说，这是对从共产主义通向后共产主义社会的一种写照。
[7] W.J.T. 米歇尔, “图像理论: 对于口头和视觉再现的论述” , 芝加哥 1994: P.11. 早期版本为 “图式的转换”, 《艺术论坛》, 三月. 1992:pp. 89-94.
[8] 曼切夫, 伯扬, “完全身体愉悦. 政治再现, 暴力和过剩”, 摘自：Zurück aus der Zukunft. Osteuropäische Kulturen im Zeitaler des Postcommunismus (Suhrkamp Verlag, 2005): pp.88-130.
[9]曼切夫, 伯扬, op. cit.: p.88.
[10] 疤面人，对白 (1983).
[11]在这里曼切夫引用了巴塔耶的观点. 详见 : 曼切夫, 伯扬, op. cit.: p.111.
[12]曼切夫, 伯扬, op. cit.: p.111.
Yang Yong: “The World is Yours – and everything that is in it …”
Author: Martina Koeppel-Yang
Related Exhibition: “International Passage–The World is Yours”, Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing, China, 2008
“Is this it? Is this what it’s all about, …? Eating, drinking, fucking, sucking, snorting? Then what? Tell me, then what? … Is this what it’s all about?”
Tony Montana (Al Pacino) in: Scarface, 1983.
In July 1980, Scarface Tony Montana arrives in the United States, claiming asylum, after departing from Cuba in the Mariel boatlift in which Castro emptied his jails. Dreaming the American Dream, Cuban Tony climbs to the top of Miami’s drug mafia after a violent career. He is driven by desire, extravagance, and violence. In one scene Tony sees his American Dream drifting across a dark sky in the form of a zeppelin, on which the words “The world is yours” appear.
“International Passage – The World is Yours”, is the title of a series of paintings and painted objects that Yang Yong arranges like a trendy life-style ambience for his first solo exhibition in Beijing. The artist assembled images daily broadcast in the mass media and painted them onto objects of daily use and of material desire of the ordinary contemporary Chinese citizen: a sofa, a billiard table, a designer bathtub, a suitcase, and so on. Alluding to a scene in Brian De Palma’s film Scarface (1983), as the exhibition title does, the ambience created by Yang appears as a recreation of that ultimate dream to make the world one’s own.
Pictures (depictions) and images (mental images) that actually construct the world – and Yang Yong’s ambience – that shape social environment and identity play a crucial role in the process of appropriation and occupation/generation of space. In this regard the ambience designed by Yang recalls the concept of the “pictorial turn”, a notion first used by W.J.T. Mitchell in 1992 to describe the transformation” in the sphere of public culture”, which he characterized as dominated by the notion of the picture by then.[i] Mitchell emphasized the crucial role of pictures and images for the constitution of the social environment and vice versa. Thinking of the function of representation in socialist countries, as well as of the enormous impact of images diffused through the mass media, this kind of assertion originally made within the field of visual and media theory and within a Western context seems specifically appropriate to look at the Chinese situation today, seems pertinent within the context of a socialist culture that basically abandoned the overall control of the production of images in favour of one ruled by the market.
Comparing the canon of images that constitute the symbolic order of the socialist China with the images circulating in the media in China today, one has to admit that if with Lacan the images and appearances are the effect of the symbolic order of a culture, the original symbolic order has definitely been transgressed.
In his “The Total Body of Pleasure”, Boyan Manchev, reflects on the political, social and cultural dimensions of post-communism through investigating the symbolic economy and forms of self-representation of the newly established political communities in the former Eastern-bloc countries.[ii] He states: “It is clear, that the new official dominant ideological discourse in these societies is the one of Western democracy (…). They appropriated the discourse and the practices of universal human rights, of democratic civil society, of free market. However, what was of much bigger interest for my inquiry, was the unconscious levels of the self-representation in question, its surplus, its excess, its ‘dark’ side. My purpose was to approach the two main registers of this ‘subliminal’ representation, or rather transgression of representation, related to experience of eroticism and violence.”[iii]
Tony Montana’s zeppelin drifts across the dark sky, again and again: “he had a simple desire, the world and everything what is in it. (…)”[iv] Manchev associates the transgression of the symbolic order with the shift from a restricted to a general economy, which for him is typical of the post-communist condition.[v] This kind of general economy represents “the logic of the master”, which is a logic of lust, consumption, extravagance, waste, of risk and potential violence. According to him, the general economy in post-communist countries is not based on material accumulation but on the lust of unrestricted consumption, evident in social excess, narcissistic eroticism, and violence. And he continues, “Property mainly is a way to achieve pleasure. (…).”[vi]
The paintings and objects Yang Yong created for “The World is Yours”, belong to his series of oil paintings entitled “International Passage”, which – different from his photography that records the artist’s direct personal environment – reflect general impressions and thoughts related to international events and historical developments. “International Passage – The World is Yours” is part of the canon of images constituting the new symbolic order of contemporary Chinese culture. Tony Montana’s journey from communist Cuba to the land of his ultimate dream, the United States, here becomes a metaphor for the transgression of the symbolic order, and from a historical perspective, an image for the passage from a communist to a post-communist condition.
[i] W.J.T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation, Chicago 1994: p.11. An earlier version appeared as “The Pictorial Turn”, Artforum, Mar 1992:pp. 89-94.
[ii] Manchev, Boyan, “The Total Body of Pleasure. Political Representation, Violence and Excess”, in: Zurück aus der Zukunft. Osteuropäische Kulturen im Zeitaler des Postcommunismus (Suhrkamp Verlag, 2005): p.88-130.
[iii] Manchev, Boyan, op. cit.: p.88.
[iv] Scarface trailer (1983).
[v] Here Manchev cites Bataille. See also : Manchev, Boyan, op. cit.: p.111.
[vi] Manchev, Boyan, op. cit.: p.111.
