杨勇

作者：凯伦‧史密斯

文章首次刊载于《艺术》2004年11月刊

相关展览：《中国人——中国当代摄影与录像》，沃尔夫斯堡艺术美术馆，德国，2004  

杨勇的作品聚焦于青年，这正是适合深圳，毗邻广州的南中国繁华都市，的呈现方式。杨勇传达的体验强调，青年与其所处的深圳背景相互依存，难以分离。深圳和她的居住者们以其独特的风情凸显于中国大陆的巨大场景中。

1984年之前，深圳仅是个农业生产为主的乡村地区，随着邓小平1982年的南巡，在探索资本主义的热望中，深圳被设为经济特区，追随近邻英国直辖殖民地香港，被彻底改造为投资和商贸热点地区。短短几年，深圳崛起成为一股强大的经济势力。经济特区犹如经济发动机一般，创造着就业岗位和利润，为中国GDP做出重大贡献。而他们没有实现的，就是他们认为的非必需品——文化。

在深圳发展进程中，成千上万的工人和劳动力涌入，大批移民到来，而当地的原住农民则迁离故土，服从于特区建设。因此，深圳并没有中国大多数地区以地方菜、方言、文化传统为象征的地域色彩。对于追求财富的人们，深圳拥有一切可能。21世纪初，他成为亚洲最具爆发力的城市之一。同时，第一批移民的下一代进入了他们的青春期。此时，深圳正值辉煌，这些高中毕业生无法抗拒的是这个城市许诺的致富梦想，然而，黯淡的教育前景，使他们沦为被城市抛弃的无业者。

整个九十年代后期，每个周末，都有北京、上海、广州、昆明和成都等大城市的青年专程飞往深圳，参加这里的社交舞会，因为这个城市对色情业的治安管制相对宽松。少数几个博物馆在当地成立，包括影响力较大的何香凝美术馆，但对年轻人，这里的文化土壤依然是未开垦的荒原。被财富包围着的年轻人渴求边界对面香港的生活方式和文化活动，在这片土地上，虽然金钱容易赚取，但事业无望的年轻人很快陷入厌倦。这些年轻人，大部分是女孩，就是杨勇的拍摄对象。

杨勇先前在他的故乡四川学习绘画，之后来到深圳。在这里他与他发现的女孩们成为朋友。着迷于她们的生活方式，她们的厌倦情绪感染到他，激发出他的创作灵感。在他这些随笔性的系列作品中，她们在长夜里四处游荡，无所事事。在城市里或四处寻欢，或闲滞在家，粉墨登场之后是落寞卸妆，在杨勇如电影连续镜头般的影像中，她们模仿着自己向往的模特。追随着她们，杨勇营造出绚烂夺目、活力四射的城市影像，整个世界就象在太阳神的烈酒中迷醉。

如果影像不时流露空虚的意味，那是因为杨勇拍摄的对象的那些女孩的生活正是如此。起初，由于新鲜有趣，她们在相机前变换姿势，但最终，人间蒸发般影踪全无。和杨勇做的一样。这个城市用冷漠窒息了他们的创造力。镜头下的深圳，空气中，弥漫着多少种形态的厌倦和冷漠；长夜里，燃尽了多少根香烟；潮湿的低气压下，又脱换了多少次衣衫。讽刺的是在如此具有建筑冲击力和未来主义特点的深圳，中国真正的乌托邦，会产生这种情境。但对许多人来说，这就是深圳的真实故事，一个“遍地黄金”，充满诱惑的城市。这里的人们，有着和其他地方人们一样的情感生活渴望。对于杨勇影像中的年轻人，理想似乎触手可及，但是总也无法实现，他们的厌倦就这样逐渐滋生，面对徒劳的现在，他们展露出听天由命的神情。

Yang Yong

Author:  Karen Smith

Source: Art, November 2004

Related Exhibition: “The Chinese”, Kunstmuseum Art Museum Wolfsburg, Germany, 2004

The focus of Yang Yong's work is youth, but it is equally that of Shenzhen,a prosperous city in the south of China close to Guangzhou. In the approach Yang Yong takes, it would be hard to have one without the other, youth without the backdrop of Shenzhen, and vice versa. Within the context of Mainland China, Shenzhen and its inhabitants have a flavor all their own.

Prior to 1984, Shenzhen was a rural area dominated by agriculture. Following Deng Xiaoping's tour of Southern China in 1982, and with his desire to experiment with capitalism, it was designated a Special Economic Zone (SEZ), and reinvented as a pocket of investment and commercial enterprise modeled after the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. Within a few years Shenzhen had become an economic tour de force. Special Economic Zones function as economic motors, producing jobs, profits, and making a significant contribution to China's GDP. What they did not have—what was not deemed necessary—was culture.

As Shenzhen was developed, hundreds of thousands of workers and laborers were imported and thousands more immigrants flowed in. There was no indigenous population beyond the original tiny farming communities that were moved off the land to make way for the SEZ. Thus, Shenzhen had no distinctive local character, largely symbolized across China by regional cuisine, dialects, and cultural traditions. For people seeking fortunes, Shenzhen had everything. By the early 2000s, it had become one of the most dynamic cities in Asia. By this time too, the children of the first settlers were entering their late teens or early twenties. In addition, Shenzhen's now glittering facades and the dream of getting rich that the city promised, had become an irresistible lure for high school graduates, whose educational prospects were limited, leaving them jobless.

Throughout the late 1990s, twenty and thirty-some-year-olds from other big cities—Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Kunming, and Chengdu—would travel to Shenzhen for weekend-long dance parties as the city's vices were being policed less stringently here than elsewhere. A handful of local museums had been established, including the influential He Xiangning, but the cultural scene remained a wasteland for young people. Surrounded by prosperity, aspiring to the lifestyles and cultural activities across the border in Hong Kong, in an area where easy money can be made but where real career prospects are limited, kids quickly succumb to boredom. These young people, the majority of them girls, are the subject of Yang Yong's photographs.

Yang Yong studied painting in Sichuan, his native home, before moving to Shenzhen. There he soon discovered the girls, with whom he became friends. Their lifestyle fascinated him, and the boredom he shared with them prompted the idea of taking photographs, in series, as a kind of essay on the long nights when they hung out with little to do. Yang Yong photographs them as they wander the city in search of fun, hang out at home, dress up and dress down, in what is an almost cinematic sequence as they pretend to be the models they dream of becoming. In following them around, Yang Yong creates a vibrant portrait of the city; for all the world like Baal's Mahagonny.

If the images appear vacuous at times, it is because the lives of the girls Yang Yong photographs are just that. In the beginning they played for the camera because posing was fun, but eventually they ran out of steam. As did Yang Yong. The city stifled their creative energy with its apathy. There are only so many expressions of boredom and cool one can conjure, only so many cigarettes one can smoke in the course of one evening, only so many times one can change clothes in the oppressive humidity of the local climate. How ironic that such an architecturally dynamic and futuristic place as Shenzhen, a true Chinese utopia, could result in this kind of situation. But for many, that is the story of Shenzhen, a city that beguiles with its surface appearance—like streets paved with gold. The emotional lives of the people living here are subject to the same needs as any other. For the young people in Yang Yong's photographs, the ideal is felt to be within reach, but proves as yet unattainable—hence their boredom, and the resigned face they bring to the futility of their present.