格羅伊斯《時代的同志》
Comrades of Time.时代的同志
Boris Groys 鲍里斯•格罗伊斯
2011-06-30 01:46:42
1.
Contemporary art deserves its name if it manifests its own contemporaneity – and not simply if it is currently made or displayed. Thus, the question: What is contemporary art? – implicates the question: What is the Contemporary? How the Contemporary as such could be shown?
当代艺术只有反映出自身的当代性才名副其实。仅凭其在现时制作与展示的特征则不能。所以有这样的问题：什么是当代艺术？这个问题又暗含了下列问题：什么是当代？当代如何可以被展示？
Being contemporary can be understood as being immediately present, as being here and now. In this sense, art seems to be truly contemporary if it is authentic, e.g. if it captures and expresses the presence of the present in a way which is radically uncorrupted by past traditions or strategies aiming at the success in the future. However, meanwhile we are well familiar with the critique of the presence formulated especially by Jacques Derrida. He has shown namely – convincingly enough – that the present is originally corrupted by past and future, that there is always absence at the heart of presence and that history, including the art history, cannot be interpreted, to use Derrida’s expression, as “a procession of presences”.
“在当代”可以被理解为在当下的在场。从这个意义上说，艺术只有真实，亦即以一种彻底不被过往的传统或旨在未来成功的策略所腐蚀的方式，捕捉并表达现时的在场，这样的艺术才看来是真正当代的。但与此同时，我们也很熟悉对在场的批判，尤其是雅克•德里达所表述的。他比较令人信服地阐明了在场原来是被过去与未来所腐蚀的，存在的核心总有不在场，包括艺术史在内的历史不能够被理解为（用德里达的话来说）在场的接续。
Here is not the place to analyze further the way in which Derrida’s deconstruction works – this is well enough known. Rather, I would like to make a step back, and to ask: Why do we get interested in the present – in here and now? Already Wittgenstein was highly ironical about his philosophical colleagues that from time to time suddenly turned to contemplation of the present, instead of minding their own busyness and going further with their own everyday life. For Wittgenstein, the passive contemplation of the present, of the immediately given is an unnatural occupation, dictated by the metaphysical tradition that ignores the flow of everyday life – the flow that always overflows the present without privileging it in any way. According to Wittgenstein, the interest for the present is simply a philosophical – and maybe also artistic – déformation professionelle, a metaphysical sickness that should be cured by philosophical critique.
此处并不宜更进一步分析德里达的解构是如何工作的 – 这已经是尽人皆知的。但我更想退一步问：为什么我们对当下， 对此时此地有兴趣？维特根斯坦已对他的哲学工作者同行们表现出高度的讥讽：他们总是时不时地突然转向对于当下的沉思，而不是管好自己的事，过好自己的日子。对于维特根斯坦来说，对于当下和当前给定的被动沉思是一种不正常的职业，由一个忽视日常生活之川流 （一种总是要从当下溢出而不给予其特殊地位的川流）的形而上学传统所支配。 照维特根斯坦的话说，对当下的兴趣不过是一种哲学的，或者也有可能是艺术的，职业癖性、一种需要哲学批判的疗救的形而上学病症。
That is why I find the following question especially relevant for our present discussion: How does the present manifest itself in our everyday experience – before it begins to be a matter of metaphysical speculation or philosophical critique?
这就是为何我发现下面的问题对我们刻下的讨论特别有意义：当下在成为形而上学的沉思或哲学批判的课题之前，如何在我们的日常经历中体现出来 ？
Now, it seems to me that the present is initially something that hinders us to realize our everyday or non—everyday projects – something that prevents our smooth transition from the past to the future, something that puts obstacles on our way forward, something that makes our hopes and plans to become not opportune, not up—to—date or, simply, impossible to realize. Time and again, we are obliged to say: Yes, it is a good project but at the moment we have no money (no time, no energy etc.) to realize it. Or: This tradition is a wonderful one but at the moment there is nobody who is interested in it and wants to continue it. Or: this Utopia is beautiful but, unfortunately, today no one believes in Utopias etc. The present is a moment in time when we decide to low our expectations of the future or to abandon some of the dear traditions from the past to be able to go through the narrow gate of here and now.
在我看来，当下起先是妨碍我们实现我们的日常或非日常计划的东西 – 一种防止我们从过去平滑过渡到未来的东西，一种在我们的前路上设置障碍，使得我们的希望和计划时运不济、落伍过时或者索性无法实现的东西。我们一而再地不得不说：对，这是一个好的计划，但现在我们没钱（没时间、没精力）来实现它。或者可以这样说：这是一个很好的传统，但现在每人会对它感兴趣，想把它继续下去。或者是说：这个乌托邦的设想很美丽，但不行的事，今天没人相信乌托邦了。当下是这样一个时刻：我们决定降低对未来的期望，抑或放弃过往宝贵的传统，为的是能穿过此时此地这一窄门。
Ernst Jünger has famously said that the Modernity – the time of projects and plans, par excellence – taught us to travel with the lightweight luggage (mit leichtem Gepäck). To be able to move further on the narrow path of the present the modernity reduced everything that seemed to be too heavy, too loaded by meaning, by mimesis, by traditional criteria of mastery, by inherited ethical and aesthetic conventions. The Modern reductionism is a strategy of survival on the way through a difficult present. Art, literature, music, philosophy have survived the 20th Century because they threw out all unnecessary luggage. At the same time, these reductions reveal also a kind of hidden truth that transcends their immediate effectiveness. They show that one can give up a lot of things – a lot of traditions, hopes, skills and thoughts — and still continue one’s project in this reduced form. This truth made the Modernist reductions also transculturally efficient – to cross a cultural border is in many ways like to cross a time line of the present.
恩斯特•荣格曾经有一段著名的话：现代性 – 绝好的计划或工程时间 – 教我们轻装上阵（德文原文：mit leichtem Gepäck）。为了能够在当下这条狭窄小径上前行，现代性化约了一切好像过于沉重、过于为意味 、模仿、传统的大师标准以及传承的伦理或美学常例所累的东西。现代化约主义是一种经由一个困难的现时前行的生存策略。艺术、文学、音乐和哲学在20世纪得以幸存，因为他们把不必要的包袱都丢掉了。与此同时，这些化约揭示出一种超越了他们刻下的有效性的被隐匿的真相。他们展示了一个人可以放弃很多东西 – 传统、希冀、技能和思想 – 且仍然以此种化约过的方式继续他的计划。这一真相使得现代主义的化约具备了跨文化的效能 – 穿越一个文化的边界在很多方面类似于穿越当下的时轴。
Thus, during the period of modernity the power of the present could be detected only indirectly, through the traces of reduction that this power left on the body of art and, more generally, on the body of culture. The present as such was mostly seen in the Modernity as something negative, as something that should be overcome in the name of the future, something that slows down the realization of our projects, something that delays the coming of the future. One of slogans of Soviet time was: Time, forward! Ilf and Petrov (two Soviet novelists of the 20s) aptly parodied this Modern feeling by the slogan: Comrades, sleep faster! Indeed, in those times one, actually, would prefer to sleep through the present – to fall asleep in the past and to wake up at the endpoint of the progress, after the coming of the radiant future.
这样，在现代性的期间，现时的力量仅能被间接地感知，要么是通过此种力量在艺术整体上，或者扩开来说，在文化整体上留下的化约痕迹。这样的现时通常在现代性中被视作是负面的、需要在未来加以克服的东西，延缓我们的计划实现，延宕未来降临的东西。在苏联时代有一句口号：“前进吧，时代！”伊里夫和彼得罗夫（20世纪20年代的两位苏联作家）对口号的现代感给出了适切的戏仿：“同志们，睡得快点！”真的，在那个时代，一个人会希望在现时长睡不醒 – 在过去入睡，在光芒四射的未来到来之后，于进程的终点醒来。
2.
But at the moment at which we begin to question our projects, begin to doubt or to reformulate them – the present, the contemporary begins to be important, begins to be central for us. Because the contemporary is actually constituted by doubt, by hesitation, by uncertainty, by indecision, by the need of prolonged reflection – by the need of a delay. We want to postpone our decisions and acts, to have some additional time for analysis, for reflection and consideration. And that is precisely the contemporary – a prolonged, even potentially infinite time of delay. Sören Kiekegaard asked famously: What does it mean to be a contemporary of Christ? His answer was: That means to hesitate to accept Christ as a Savior. The acceptance of Christianity leaves Christ in the past. In fact, already Descartes defines the present as a time of a doubt– of a doubt that is supposed to open the future that will be full of clear and distinct, evident thoughts.
但在我们开始质疑我们的计划，开始怀疑或者重新制定它们的时刻 – 也就是当下，“当代的”开始变得重要，开始对我们有着极为重要的意义。因为“当代的”其实是由疑惑、犹豫、不确定、优柔寡断和一种对于长时间反思的需要构成的。我们想拖延我们的决策和行动，以便拥有更多的时间来作分析、反思和考量。这正是当代的 — 一种延长的，乃至无穷的延误。克尔凯郭尔提出了一个著名的问题：作为基督的同时代人是什么意思？他的答案如下：这意味着对承认基督是救世主感到犹豫。对基督教的接受把基督留在了过往。其实，笛卡尔业已将现时定义为一个怀疑的时刻 —一种应当开启充满了清楚、独特和显豁的思想的未来的怀疑。
Now, one can argue that we are precisely in such a situation at this historical moment because our time is a time in which we reconsider – not abandon, not reject – but analyze and reconsider the modern projects. The immediate reason for this reconsideration is, of course, the abandonment of the Communist project in Russia and in the Eastern Europe. Politically and culturally the Communist project dominated the 20th Century. There was the Cold War, there were Communist parties in the West, dissident movements in the East, progressive revolutions, conservative revolutions, discussions about pure and engaged art – all these projects, programs and movements were interconnected because they opposed each other. But now they can and should be reconsidered in their entirety. Thus, contemporary art can be seen as art that is involved in the reconsideration of the modern projects. One can say that we live now through a time of indecision, of delay – through a boring time. But already Martin Heidegger has analyzed the boredom precisely as a precondition for our ability to experience the presence of the present– to experience the world as a whole by being bored equally by all its aspects and not being captivated by this or that specific goal as it was the case in the context of the Modern projects.
现在，人们可以说我们在这一个历史时刻恰好就处在这样的境况，因为我们的时代是这样一个时代：我们于其中重新考量 – 不是抛弃 – 而是分析和重新思考现代的规划。此种考量的直接动因当然是苏联和东欧放弃了共产主义计划。这一计划从政治上和文化上主导了二十世纪。冷战、西方各国的共产党、苏东各国的持不同政见者，改良式革命、保守主义革命、纯粹与介入艺术之争 – 所有这些工程、计划与运动都互相关联，因为他们互为对立面。但现在我们可以，而且必须将它们从各自的整体上进行重估。因而，当代艺术可被看作是和对现代规划的重估相关的艺术。我们可以说我们正在经历一个优柔寡断的、延误的时代 —一个无聊的时代。但海德格尔已经将无聊分析为一种经历现时的存在的先决条件 —通过被其所有方面弄得一样无聊而经历作为整体的世界，同时又不被确定目标迷惑（若能够在现代计划的语境中那样）。
The hesitation in relationship to the Modern projects has mainly to do with the growing disbelief in the Modern promises. The classical modernity still kept faith in the infinite future – even after the death of God, even after the loss of faith in the immortality of the soul. Already the notion of permanent art collection says it all. Archive, library, museum gave a promise of secular permanency, of secular infinity that substituted the religious promise of resurrection and eternal life. During the period of modernity “the body of work” substituted the soul as a potentially immortal part of the Self. Foucault famously called heterotopias the Modern sites in which time was accumulated, instead of simply being lost. Politically, we can speak about the Modern Utopias as post—historical spaces of accumulated time. The finiteness of the present time was perceived as being potentially compensated by the infinite time of the realized project: of an artwork, or of a political Utopia. Of course, the time that was invested in production of a certain product is obliterated, erased by this product. The product remains, but the time that was used for its production disappears. However, the loss of time in and through the product was compensated in the Modernity by a historical narrative that somehow restored the lost time. This narrative glorified the life of the artists, scientists or revolutionaries that worked for the future.
这种对同现代规划的关系的迟疑主要是同对于现代的应许日益不相信有关。经典的现代性仍然对无尽的未来有着信仰 –哪怕上帝已死，哪怕人们已经失去了对灵魂不灭的信仰。永久的艺术藏品的概念也已说明了一切。档案馆、图书馆和博物馆许诺有一种世俗的永恒，一种可替代宗教有关复活和永生的承诺的世俗的永恒。福柯对这些时间被积聚起来而不是被失去的现代场域起了一个著名的名字：异托邦。政治上我们可以把现代乌托邦说成是积聚起来的时间的后历史空间。现时的有限被认为是被已实现的工程的无穷时间潜在地代偿的：艺术品或者政治乌托邦。当然，投入到生产出一个产品的时间被这个产品本身给抹杀了。产品存留下来，但用于生产它的时间消失了。然而，这种通过生产失去的时间在现代性中被一种修复性的历史叙事所补偿。这种叙事颂扬为着将来工作的艺术家、科学家和革命者的一生。
But, today, this promise of infinite future for the results of our work lost any plausibility. The museums became the sites of temporary exhibitions instead of being spaces of permanent collections. The future is ever newly planned – the permanent change of cultural trends and fashions makes any promise of a stable future for an artwork or a political project improbable. But also the past is permanently rewritten – names and events appear, disappear, reappear and disappear again. The present ceased to be a point of transition from the past to the future. Instead, it became a site of permanent rewriting of past and future, of permanent rewriting of history – of constant proliferations of historical narratives beyond any individual grasp and control. The only thing that we know about our present is that these historical narratives will proliferate tomorrow as they are proliferating now – and that we will react to them with the same feeling of disbelief. Today, we remain stuck in the present – it does reproduce itself without leading to any future. We simply loose our time – without having a possibility to securely invest it, to accumulate it, be it utopically or heterotopically. The loss of the infinite historical perspective generates the phenomenon of unproductive, wasted time. However, one can perceive this wasted time also positively as excessive time –as a time that demonstrates our life as pure being in time beyond its utilization in the framework of Modern economy and politics.
但今天这种对我们工作的结果承诺一个无限的未来已经失去了可信度。博物馆已经变成了短期展览的场所，而不是永久藏品的空间。未来的计划更新了 – 文化趋势与风尚的永久变化使得任何对艺术作品或政治工程的未来的许诺变得不可能。但过去也被永久地重写了 – 人物与事件出现，消失，重现，再次消失。当下已经不再是一个过去通往未来的转折点。它反倒成了对于过去和未来的永久性重写，对于历史的永久重写的场域 – 成为超越个人所能把握或控制的历史叙事的惯常性扩散的场域。我们对我们的现实惟一的知识就是这些历史叙事在未来会如同现在一样扩散开来 — 我们会对它们反映出同样程度的不可置信。今天，我们仍然被困在现时 – 它自我复制，但并不引向一个未来。我们仅仅是失去了我们的时间 – 还没来得及在其中稳妥地投入、积累，不论是以乌托邦或者异托邦的方式。这一无限历史视角的丧失产生了一种徒劳无功的，被浪费的时间现象。然而，人们可以将这种被浪费的时间正面地看作是多余的时间 – 看作是一种显示我们生命作为超越了在现代政治和经济框架下的用处的纯粹存在。
3.
Now, it seems to me that – if we look at the current art scene — it is a certain kind of the so—called time based art that does reflect at the best this contemporary condition. It does so because it thematizes the non—productive wasted, non—historical, excessive time — a suspended time, “stehende Zeit”, to use a Heideggerian notion again.
现在看来，如果我们看看现在的艺术界，是一种以时间为基础的艺术能够最好地反映这一当代境遇。它之所以能如此，是因为它主题化了徒然浪费的，非历史的，过剩的时间 – 一种悬置的时间（德文：stehende Zeit），在此借用一个海德格尔式的观念。
Now, the contemporary time—based art thematizes this suspended time because it captures and demonstrates activities that take place in time but do not lead to creation of any definite product. And, even if these activities do lead to such a product they are shown as being separated from their result, as being not completely invested in the product and absorbed by the product. We have here to do with the exemplifications of excessive time that is not completely absorbed by the historical process.
当代的以时间为基础的艺术主题化了这一悬置的时间，因为它捕捉并展示了时间中发生的活动，但并不导致任何特定物品的创造。即使这些活动能导致这样一个物品，活动也会被当作是同这样的一个结果分开的，而不是完全投入到物品中去被其吸收。这里我们有一些未被历史完全吸收的剩余时间的例子。
Let us consider as an example the animation by Francis Alys “Song for Lupita” (1998).
让我们看看这个例子：弗兰西斯•阿莱斯1998年的动画作品《露比塔之歌》。
Here we can watch an activity that have no beginning and no end – and do not lead to any definite result, to any definite product. We are confronted here with a ritual of pure and repetitive waste of time – with a secular ritual beyond any claim of magical power, beyond any religious tradition, beyond any cultural convention.
这里我们能看到一个无始无终的活动 — 不导致任何特定的结果，或特定的产物。此处我们被迫面对一种纯粹的重复浪费时间的仪式 —以一种世俗的典仪超越了任何魔力断言，超越了所有宗教传统和文化惯例。
One is reminded here of Camus’ Sysiphus as a proto—contemporary artist – and his aimless, senseless activity as a prototype of the contemporary time—based art. This non—productive practice, this excess of time that is caught in the non—historical pattern of eternal repetition constitutes for Camus the true image of what we call “lifetime” – lifetime being irreducible to any “meaning of life”, any “life achievement”, any historical relevance. The notion of repetition is here the central one. The inherent repetitiveness of contemporary time—based art distinguishes it sharply from happenings and performances of the 60s. The documented activity is here not a unique, isolated performance, an individual, authentic, original event taking place here and now. This activity is repetitive per se – even before it was documented by, let say, a video that is running in loop. The repetitive gesture that is designed by Alys functions as a programmatically impersonal gesture – this animation can be repeated by anyone, then be videographed, then repeated again. Here the living human being looses its difference from its media image. The opposition between living organism and dead mechanism is here of no point any more because of the originally mechanical, repetitive and non—purposeful character of the documented gesture. Francis Alys speaks also about the time of rehearsal as such a wasted, non—teleological time that does not lead to any result, to any endpoint, to any climax. His example – in his video “Politics of Rehearsal (2007) is a rehearsal of a striptease – a rehearsal of a rehearsal, in some sense, because the sexual desire that is provoked by the striptease remains in any case unfulfilled. In the video the rehearsal of striptease is accompanied by the commentary of the artist who interprets this rehearsal as the model of Modernity that always remains an unfulfilled promise. The time of Modernity is, for the artist, the time of permanent modernization that never really achieves its goals and never satisfies the desire of becoming truly modern that it has provoked. In this sense the process of modernization begins to be seen as wasted, excessive time that can and should be documented precisely because it never lead to any real result. In another work Alys demonstrates the activities of a shoe cleaner as an example of the work process that does not produce any value in the Marxist sense of this term because the time of shoe cleaning cannot be accumulated in a product as it is required by Marx’ theory of value.
这使我们想到了加缪笔下作为一个原初当代艺术家的西绪福斯，以及他作为一种当代的、以时间为基础的艺术的原型的无目的无意义的活动。这种无结果的行为，这种困在永恒反复的非历史规律中的过剩的时间构成了加缪所说的“一生”的真实图景 — 一生不可化约为任何“生命的意义”，终生成就或任何历史相关性。反复的概念在这里至关重要。当代以时间为基础的艺术所固有的重复性将它从1960年代的时间截然区分开。在此记录下来的活动并不是独特孤立的表演，一种个人的真实或原创的，在此时此地发生的事件。这一活动自身重复 – 甚至在它被回环播放的录像记录之前就是如此。阿莱斯设计的重复手法，噢能够来做一种程式化、无人格化的姿态 – 动画 ， 人人都可重复，并被录像记录下来，一遍又一遍地重复。在这里，活人丧失了对同媒体影像的差别。活的有机体与死者的机制之间的对立已不再有意义— 因为被记录下来的原本的机械重复无目的的特点。阿莱斯也谈到，排练的时间作为一种浪费的，非目的论的时间，并不导致任何结果、终点或高潮。他的例子，在他2007年的录像《排练的政治》（记录一场脱衣舞排练）中— 从某种意义上说是一种排练的排练， 因为又脱衣舞挑起的性欲无论如何都是未被满足的。录像中，脱衣舞伴随着艺术家的评论，他将这一排练诠释为一个现代性的模式：一个永不兑现的诺言。对于艺术家来说，现代性的时间是一种永远的现代化进程，永远无法达到目的，永远不满足它引发的变得真正“现代”的渴望。从这个意义上说，现代化进程开始被看作是应被记录的浪费的过剩时间，正因为它从不导出任何结果。在另一件作品中，阿莱斯展示了一个擦鞋工的活动，作为马克思主义所谈到的不产生任何价值的劳动过程的例子。因为擦鞋的时间并不能被积累在一个产品当中，如马克思的价值观论断所要求的那样。
But precisely because such a wasted, suspended, non—historical time cannot be accumulated and absorbed by its product it can be repeated – impersonally and, potentially, infinitely. Already Nietzsche stated that the only possibility to think the infinity after the Death of God, after the end of transcendence is: The eternal return of the same. And Georges Bataille thematized the repetitive excess of time, the unproductive waste of time – as the only possibility to escape the Modern ideology of progress. Certainly, both Nietzsche and Bataille perceived repetition as something naturally given. But in his book Difference and Repetition (1968) Gilles Deleuze speaks of literal repetition as being radically artificial and, in this sense, as being in conflict with everything natural, living, changing, developing, including natural law and moral law. Hence, practicing literal repetition can be seen as initiating a rupture in the continuity of life and creating a non—historical excess of time by means of art. And here is the point at which art can become truly contemporary, indeed.
但正因为有这样一种浪费的、悬置的、非历史的时间不能被产品积累和吸收。它可以被重复 —客观的，潜在是无限的重复。尼采说：在上帝已死，超越已终结之后，思考“无限”的唯一可能就是：永恒反复。乔治•巴塔耶主题化了过剩时间的重复。徒然的对时间的浪费，是唯一能摆脱现代的进步观的可能性。当然，尼采和巴塔耶即将重复看作是自然给定的。但在其1968年的著作《差异与重复》中，吉尔•德勒兹谈到，如实地重复是彻底的人工，在此意义上，与一切天然有生命的、变化发展的东西矛盾，包括自然法与道德律。因此，实践如实重复被看作是：在生命的延续中开始造成一个断裂，通过艺术来创造出一种非历史的剩余时间。这就是艺术能真正成为具有当代性的那个当口。
Namely, I would like to mobilize here a different meaning of the word contemporary. To be con—temporary not necessarily means to be present, to be here and now– it, rather, means to be “with time” than to be “in time”. “Con—temporary” is in German “zeitgenössisch”. Genosse is comrade. So to be con—temporary – zeitgenössisch – can be understood as to be a comrade of time – to collaborate with time, to help time when it has problems, when it has difficulties. And under the conditions of our contemporary product—oriented civilization time has problems when it is perceived as unproductive, wasted, meaningless time. Such unproductive time becomes excluded from the historical narratives – and is endangered by complete erasure. That is precisely the moment when the time—based art begins to help time, to collaborate with time, to become a comrade of time. Because time—based art is, in fact, art—based time. Traditional artworks (paintings, statues etc.) are time—based, indeed, because they are made in expectation that they will have time – even a lot of time in a case that they will be included in the museums or important private collections. But time—based art is not based on time as a solid foundation, as a guaranteed perspective. It rather documents time that is in danger to be lost because of its unproductive character – a character of pure life, or as Giorgio Agamben would put it, “bare life”. But this change of the relationship between art and time also changes the temporality of art itself. Art ceases to be present – to create the effect of the presence and also to be “in the present” understood as uniqueness of here and now. Rather, art begins to document a repetitive, indefinite, maybe even infinite present – a present that was always already there and can be prolonged into the indefinite future.
我想在此动用“当代”这个词的另一个不同的意思。成为“当代的”不仅仅意味着在场，在此时此地 – 它的意思是，“同时间一道”而非“在时间之内”。“当代”在德语中是zeitgenössisch. Genosse是德语同志的意思。所以当代的意思可以理解为“时间的同志”— 同时间合作。在时间有问题和困难的时候帮她一把，在当代的产品为导向的文明条件下，一旦时间被认为是徒然浪费的、无意义的时间，那么它就有了问题。这些多余的时间被从历史叙事中剔除 – 有被全然抹杀之虞。那就是以时间为基础的电脑古代艺术能够帮助当代时间的时刻、同时间合作的时刻，成为时间的同志的时刻。因为以时间为基础的艺术其实就是以艺术为基础的时间。传统的艺术作品（绘画、雕像能）的确是以时间为基础的，因为制作时即预料它们会有时间 — 甚至是很多时间，如果它们能够被收入美术馆或重要的私人藏品中去的话。但时间为基础的艺术并不以时间为坚实的基础或是一个提供担保的视角。但它记录那些因非其无利可图而濒临失去的时间 —一种纯粹生活的特质，抑或如焦尔焦•阿甘本所说的，“赤裸的生命”。但这种艺术与时间关系的变化也使艺术的时间性和艺术本身也发生变化。艺术不再在场 —以创造出一种“存在”的效果，同时也处在被理解为此时此地的一种特质的“当下”。艺术开始记录一种重复的、不定的，或许甚至是无限的“当下”—一种已然存在且可能被延长到无尽的未来的“现在”。
A work of art is traditionally understood as something that wholly embodies art, lending it immediately visible presence. When we go to an art exhibition we generally assume that whatever is there on display – paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, videos, ready—mades or installations – must be art. The individual artworks can of course in one way or another make references to things that they are not, maybe to real—world objects or to certain political issues, but they do not refer to art itself, because they themselves are art. However, this traditional assumption defining visits to exhibitions and museums has proved progressively more misleading. Besides works of art, in present—day art spaces we are also confronted with the documentation of art. Similarly, here too we see pictures, drawings, photographs, videos, texts and installations – in other words, the same forms and media in which art is commonly presented. But when it comes to art documentation, art is no longer presented through these media but simply documented. For art documentation is per definitionem not art. Precisely by merely referring to art, art documentation makes it quite clear that art itself is no longer at hand and instantly visible but, instead, absent and hidden. Thus, it is interesting to compare the traditional film and the contemporary time—based art — that has its roots in film — to better understand what has happened to our life.
传统上把艺术作品理解为全然体现艺术的东西，从而赋予它一种直接可见的存在。当我们前往艺术展览时，我们通常在假定在那儿展出的无论什么东西—绘画、雕塑、素描、摄影、录像、县城物品或装置—都是艺术。单个的艺术作品当然可以用种种方式指涉别的东西，可能是现实世界的物品或政治议题。但它们并不指涉艺术本身，因为它们就是艺术。然而，这种限定我们的展览与美术馆之旅的传统假设已日益被证明是具有误导性的。除了艺术品，在当今的艺术空间里，我们还要面对艺术的文献记录。同样，我们在这里看到绘画、素描、摄影、录像、文本与装置—换言之，艺术通常被呈现的那些同样的形式与媒介。但说到艺术文献记录，艺术不再通过这些媒介得到呈现，但仅仅是被记录下来。因为，艺术文献记录依照定义就不是艺术。仅仅通过指涉艺术，艺术文献记录很清楚地阐明：艺术本身已不在手边立时可见，而已经被隐匿不再场了。因此，比较传统电影与当代实践基础上的艺术（其根源在电影）以更好地理解我们生活中发生的事情不失为一件有趣的事情。
From its beginnings the film pretended to be able to document and represent life in a way that was inaccessible to the traditional arts. Indeed, as a medium of motion, film has frequently displayed its superiority over other media, whose greatest accomplishments are preserved in the form of immobile cultural treasures and monuments, by staging and celebrating the destruction of these monuments. This tendency also demonstrates film’s adherence to the typically modern faith in the superiority of vita activa over vita contemplativa. In this respect, film manifests its complicity with the philosophies of praxis, of Lebensdrang, of the élan vital and of desire; it demonstrates its collusion with ideas that, in the footsteps of Marx and Nietzsche, mesmerized the imagination of European humanity at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries – in other words, during the very period that gave birth to film as a medium. This was the era when the hitherto prevailing attitude of passive contemplation was discredited and displaced by celebration of the potent movements of material forces. Vita contemplativa was perceived for a very long time as an ideal form of human existence. Through the period of modernity it began to be despised and rejected as a manifestation of weakness of life, of lack of energy. In this new worship of vita activa film plays a central role. From its very inception film has celebrated everything that moves at high speed – trains, cars, airplanes – but also everything that goes beneath the surface – blades, bombs, bullets.
从一开始，电影就装作能够以一种不对传统艺术开放的方式记录并再现生活。的确，作为一种动态的媒介，电影相对于其他媒介来说，其他媒介的最伟大成就都以一种静态的宝藏和纪念物的形式保存，而电影通过导演和庆祝这些纪念物的毁坏，经常展现出其优越的地方。这一趋势也显现了电影坚持典型的现代对于行动的人生优于沉思的人生的笃信。从这方面来说，电影显示出其与实践、生命冲动、生命活力与欲望诸哲学的共谋；它显示出同那些在十九世纪末二十世纪初的，换言之，在那个产生电影这种媒介的时代的那些顺着马克思和尼采的足迹继续蛊惑欧洲人想象力的思想共谋。这是一个盛行到此时的被动沉思态度被质疑，并被对于物体力量运动的褒扬所取代。沉思的生活长久以来被视为人类生存的一种理想方式。经过现代性时期，它开始被鄙视，并被当作生命弱点或能量匮乏的表现而被摒弃。在这种对行动的生活的新型崇拜中，电影扮演了一个关键角色。从一开始，电影表扬一切告诉运转的东西：火车、汽车、飞机以及所有穿越表面的东西：刀片、炸弹与子弹。
However, while film as such is a celebration of movement, it paradoxically drives the audience to new extremes of immobility compared to traditional art forms. So while it is possible to move around with relative freedom while one is reading or viewing an exhibition, in the movie theater the viewer is put in darkness and glued to a seat. The situation of the movie—goer in fact resembles a grandiose parody of the very vita contemplativa that film itself denounces, because the cinema system embodies precisely that vita contemplativa as it surely appears from the perspective of its most radical critic – an uncompromising Nietzschean, let us say ¬– namely as the product of a frustrated desire, lack of personal initiative, as a token of compensatory consolation and a sign of individual’s inadequacy in real life. This is the starting point of many Modern critiques of film. Sergei Eisenstein, for instance, was exemplary in the way he combined aesthetic shock with political propaganda trying to mobilize the viewer and to liberate him from his passive, contemplative condition.
然而，正当电影是对运动的褒扬，和传统艺术形式相比，它也矛盾地把观众推向了静态的新极端。因此，尽管他们在阅读或者观看一个展览时极有可能相对自由地到处活动，在影院里，观者却被粘在黑暗中的一张椅子上。影院观众的情况其实很像电影本身所斥责的沉思的生活的大型戏仿，因为影院系统恰恰从其最彻底的批评者（一个毫不妥协的尼采式的批评者）的视角体现了此种沉思的生活，将其看作一种被压抑的欲望、缺乏个人能动性的产物，看作是代偿安慰的记号，个人在现实生活中的缺陷的表征。这是许多现代派对电影的批判的出发点。比如谢尔盖•爱森斯坦是把艺术撞击同政治宣传相结合，以期发动观者把自己从被动和沉思的境地里解放出来的典范。
The ideology of Modernity – in all of its forms — was directed against contemplation, against the spectatorship, against the passivity of the masses paralyzed by the spectacle of the Modern life. Throughout the whole modernity we can identify this opposition between passive consumption of the mass culture and an activist opposition to it – political, aesthetic or mixed one. Progressive, modern art has constituted itself during the period of modernity in opposition to the passive consumption –be it political propaganda or commercial Kitch. We know these activist reactions – from the different avant—gardes of early 20th Century to Clement Greenberg (Avant—garde and Kitch), Adorno (cultural industry) or Guy Debord (society of spectacle), a book whose themes and rhetorical figures continue to resound throughout the current debate on our culture. For Debord, the entire world has become a movie theater in which people are completely isolated from one another and from real life, and consequently condemned to an existence of utter passivity.
现代性的意识形态（其所有形式）都指向沉思，反对旁观和被现代生活的景观麻痹的大众的被动。贯穿整个现代性我们可以辨认这一被动消费大众文化和一种活跃反对之间的对立 – 政治、美学或者是二者的混合。进步的现代艺术在现代性期间已经以对被动消费（不论是政治宣传还是矫揉造作的商业品）的对立完成了自己的建构。我们知道这些活跃分子的反应 – 从20世纪早期不同的先锋派别到克莱门特•格林伯格（《先锋与矫揉造作》）， 阿多诺（《文化产业》）或居伊•德博（《景观社会》）。德博的这本书，主题与修辞格继续在当下对我们文化的辩论中回响。对德博来说，整个世界已经变成了一个影院，人们在其中被同他人乃至真是生活隔绝，继而被打入一种完全被动的存在中。
However, at the end of 20th – beginning of the 21st Centuries art entered a new era – namely, an era of mass artistic production and not only of mass art consumption. To make a video and to put it on display through the Internet became an easy operation that is accessible to almost everyone. The practice of self—documentation became today mass practice and even mass obsession. Contemporary means of communications and networks like Facebook, My Face, You Tube, Second Life and Twitter give to the global populations the possibility to place their photos, videos and texts in a way that cannot be distinguished from any other post—Conceptualist artwork, including time –based artworks. And that means: Contemporary art became today a mass cultural practice. So the question arises: How can a contemporary artist survive this popular success of contemporary art? Or, how can the artist survive in a world in which everybody became an artist, after all?
然而，在20世纪末21世纪初，艺术进入了一个新的时代，即一个不仅仅是大批量消费艺术，而且大批量的艺术生产的时代。做一个录像在互联网上展示成为了一种很容易操作且可为所有人都可得到的做法。自我纪录的成为大众的做法，甚至是一种大众的迷恋。当代通讯与网络联系方式，如Facebook，My Face, You Tube，第二人生和Twitter等等给了全球人民把他们的照片、录像和文本以一种不可从其他后观念主义作品（包括时间为基础的作品）区分开来的方式放置提供了可能。这意味着：当代艺术在今天成为了一种大众文化实践。所以问题来了：一个当代艺术家怎样能够从当代艺术在大众中的成功中幸存？或者说，艺术家怎样在一个人人都成了艺术家的世界中幸存？
One may further speak about our contemporary society as a society of spectacle. However, now we are living not among the masses of passive spectators, as it was described by Guy Debord, but among the masses of artists. To be able to ascertain himself or herself in this contemporary context of mass production the artist needs a spectator who could overlook all this immeasurable mass of artistic production – and formulate an aesthetic judgment that would single out this particular artist in the mass of other artists. But it is obvious that such a spectator does not exist – it could be God but we were already informed about the fact that God is dead. If the contemporary society is still a society of spectacle – it seems to be a spectacle without spectators.
人们可以继续将当代社会看成是一个景观社会。但现在我们不是生活在一群被动的旁观者之中（如居伊•德博所描述的那样），而是生活在艺术家的人群之中。为了在当代大规模生产的语境中弄清自己，艺术家需要一个能够忽视这不可衡量的大量艺术生产的旁观者 – 然后阐述一个能使该艺术家从其他的艺术家群体中脱颖而出的美学判断。但很显然这样的旁观者是不存在的 – 得是上帝才能做到这个，而我们已经被告知，上帝已死。如果当代社会仍然是一个景观社会 – 那看来这是一个没有旁观者的景观社会。
On the other hand, today, spectatorship — vita contemplativa — has also become quite different from what it was before. Here again the subject of contemplation cannot any more rely on expectation of infinite time resources, on infinite time perspectives – the expectation that was constitutive for Platonic, Christian or Buddhist traditions of contemplation. Contemporary spectators are spectators on the move – primarily, they are traveler. Contemporary vita contemplativa coincides with permanent active circulation. The act of contemplation itself functions today as a repetitive gesture that cannot and does not lead to any result – e.g. to any conclusive and well founded aesthetic judgment.
但另一方面，今天，旁观者 – 沉思的生活 – 业已变得和从前不同。这里，沉思的主体无法再依赖于对无穷的时间资源和无限的时间视角的期待 – 一种是构成柏拉图、基督教或佛教沉思传统一部分的期待。当代旁观者是一直在移动的旁观者— 他们首先是旅行者。当代的沉思生活和永久的积极流通恰好同时发生。沉思的行为自身在今天是一种不导致任何结果的重复姿态 – 例如，它无法导致任何结论性的、有依据的美学判断。
Traditionally, we had in our culture two fundamentally different modes of contemplation at our disposal that gave us control over the time we spent looking at images: the immobilization of the image in the exhibition space or the immobilization of the viewer in the movie theater. Yet both modes collapse when moving images are transferred into museum or art exhibition space. The images will continue to move – but so does the viewer too. As a rule it is impossible to follow a video or film from the beginning to the end under the conditions of a regular exhibition visit if this film or videos is long enough – especially, if there are many such time—based artworks in the same exhibition space. And, in fact, such an endeavor would be misplaced. To see a film or a video in its entirety one has to go to a film theater or to remain in front of his or her personal computer. The whole point of visiting an exhibition of time—based art is to take a look on it and then another look and another look – but not to see it in its entirety. One can say that the act of contemplation itself is put here in a loop.
传统上，我们的文化中有两种截然不同的沉思模式可用，给予我们花在观看图像的时间上的控制：静态化展览空间中的图像，或者静态化电影院里的观者。但在移动的图像被转移到美术馆或者艺术展览空间中去的时候，这两种模式就崩解了。图像会一直移动，但观者也会这样。照例，在通常看展览的情况下，把一段录像或电影从头看到尾是不可能的。而且，其实这样的一种努力也有点不大对路。把一部电影或录像从头到尾看一遍，一个人必须去影院或者在电脑前坐下。而去参观一个时间为基础的艺术作品展的意义就是看一眼，然后再看一眼，再多看一眼 – 而不是把它整个地看了。人们可以说在这里沉思的动作本身被放到了一个循环中。
Time—based art, as it is shown in the exhibition spaces is a cool medium, to use the notion introduced by Marshall McLuhan. According to McLuhan, hot media lead to social fragmentation: when reading a book, you are alone and in a focused state of mind. And equally focused, you wander alone from one object to the next in a conventional exhibition – separated from the outside reality, in inner isolation. McLuhan thought that only electronic media such as TV are able to overcome the isolation of the individual spectator. But this analysis of McLuhan’s cannot be applied on the most important electronic medium of today – the Internet. At first sight, the Internet seems to be as cool, if not cooler, than TV because it activates users, seducing, or even forcing, them into active participation in the medium. However, sitting in front of the computer and using the Internet, you are alone – and extremely focused. If the Internet is participative, it is so in the same sense that the literary space is. Here and there, anything that enters these spaces is noticed by other participants – provoking reactions from them, which in turn provoke further reactions etc. However, these active participations take place solely in the user’s imagination, leaving his or her body unmoved.
以时间为基础的艺术如其在展会空间里被展示的那样，是一个冷媒介（借用马歇尔•麦克卢汉引入的观点）。根据麦克卢汉，热媒介导致社会分崩离析：当你读一本书的时候，你是一个人处在一种聚精会神的状态下。在注意力同样集中的情况下，你在一个传统展览上从一个物体走到下一个 – 同外在现实隔离，在一种内在的孤立中。但麦克卢汉的这个分析不能被应用于今天最重要的电子媒介 – 互联网。第一眼看来互联网起码和电视一样是冷媒介，因为它激发用户，诱使甚至强迫他们来积极地参与到媒介中来。然而，在电脑前坐着使用互联网，你是一个人 – 而且注意力极端集中。时不时地会有东西进入到这些空间，别的用户会注意到这个 – 从他们那里引出反应，然后有引发更多反应。然而，这种积极的参与仅仅是在用户的现象中进行的，他们的身体并未移动。
By contrast, the exhibition space that includes time—based art is cool because it makes focusing on individual exhibits unnecessary or even impossible. This is why such a space is capable of including also all sorts of hot media – text, music, individual images – so as to make them cool off. Cool contemplation is the one that has no goal to produce an aesthetic judgment or choice. Cool contemplation is just permanent repetition of the gesture of looking at – in awareness of the lack of time that would be necessary to achieve comprehensive contemplation and informed judgment. Time—based art demonstrates here the bad infinity of the wasted, excessive time that cannot be absorbed by the spectator. However, at the same time it removes from vita contemplative the modern stigma of passivity. In this sense one can say that the documentation of time—based art erases the difference between vita activa and vita contemplative. Here again time—based art turns scarcity of time into excess of time – and demonstrates itself as collaborator, as comrade of time, as its true con—temporary.
相反，包括时间为基础的艺术的展览空间是冷媒介，因为它使得对个体展品的关注成为不必要。 这就是为什么这样的空间能够容纳各种热媒介 – 文本、音乐、单个图像 – 并使他们冷却。冷静的沉思不以产出美学判断或选择为目的。冷静的沉思就是观看姿态的永恒反复 – 并意识到取得全面的沉思和明智的判断所需的时间是匮乏的。以时间为基础的艺术在此显示了被浪费的多余时间糟糕的无穷尽，此种多余时间是无法被观者吸收的。然而，与此同时它又把现代被动的耻辱标记从沉思的生活中去除。从这个意义上人们可以说对时间为基础的艺术的文献记录抹杀了行动的生活与沉思的生活的差别。在这里，时间为基础的艺术再次把时间的稀缺变成了剩余 – 并显示出自己是一个合作者，是时间的同志，是真正具有当代性的。
http://www.douban.com/note/158913735/
Comrades of Time.时代的同志
Boris Groys 鲍里斯•格罗伊斯
2011-06-30 01:46:42
1.
Contemporary art deserves its name if it manifests its own contemporaneity – and not simply if it is currently made or displayed. Thus, the question: What is contemporary art? – implicates the question: What is the Contemporary? How the Contemporary as such could be shown?
当代艺术只有反映出自身的当代性才名副其实。仅凭其在现时制作与展示的特征则不能。所以有这样的问题：什么是当代艺术？这个问题又暗含了下列问题：什么是当代？当代如何可以被展示？
Being contemporary can be understood as being immediately present, as being here and now. In this sense, art seems to be truly contemporary if it is authentic, e.g. if it captures and expresses the presence of the present in a way which is radically uncorrupted by past traditions or strategies aiming at the success in the future. However, meanwhile we are well familiar with the critique of the presence formulated especially by Jacques Derrida. He has shown namely – convincingly enough – that the present is originally corrupted by past and future, that there is always absence at the heart of presence and that history, including the art history, cannot be interpreted, to use Derrida’s expression, as “a procession of presences”.
“在当代”可以被理解为在当下的在场。从这个意义上说，艺术只有真实，亦即以一种彻底不被过往的传统或旨在未来成功的策略所腐蚀的方式，捕捉并表达现时的在场，这样的艺术才看来是真正当代的。但与此同时，我们也很熟悉对在场的批判，尤其是雅克•德里达所表述的。他比较令人信服地阐明了在场原来是被过去与未来所腐蚀的，存在的核心总有不在场，包括艺术史在内的历史不能够被理解为（用德里达的话来说）在场的接续。
Here is not the place to analyze further the way in which Derrida’s deconstruction works – this is well enough known. Rather, I would like to make a step back, and to ask: Why do we get interested in the present – in here and now? Already Wittgenstein was highly ironical about his philosophical colleagues that from time to time suddenly turned to contemplation of the present, instead of minding their own busyness and going further with their own everyday life. For Wittgenstein, the passive contemplation of the present, of the immediately given is an unnatural occupation, dictated by the metaphysical tradition that ignores the flow of everyday life – the flow that always overflows the present without privileging it in any way. According to Wittgenstein, the interest for the present is simply a philosophical – and maybe also artistic – déformation professionelle, a metaphysical sickness that should be cured by philosophical critique.
此处并不宜更进一步分析德里达的解构是如何工作的 – 这已经是尽人皆知的。但我更想退一步问：为什么我们对当下， 对此时此地有兴趣？维特根斯坦已对他的哲学工作者同行们表现出高度的讥讽：他们总是时不时地突然转向对于当下的沉思，而不是管好自己的事，过好自己的日子。对于维特根斯坦来说，对于当下和当前给定的被动沉思是一种不正常的职业，由一个忽视日常生活之川流 （一种总是要从当下溢出而不给予其特殊地位的川流）的形而上学传统所支配。 照维特根斯坦的话说，对当下的兴趣不过是一种哲学的，或者也有可能是艺术的，职业癖性、一种需要哲学批判的疗救的形而上学病症。
That is why I find the following question especially relevant for our present discussion: How does the present manifest itself in our everyday experience – before it begins to be a matter of metaphysical speculation or philosophical critique?
这就是为何我发现下面的问题对我们刻下的讨论特别有意义：当下在成为形而上学的沉思或哲学批判的课题之前，如何在我们的日常经历中体现出来 ？
Now, it seems to me that the present is initially something that hinders us to realize our everyday or non—everyday projects – something that prevents our smooth transition from the past to the future, something that puts obstacles on our way forward, something that makes our hopes and plans to become not opportune, not up—to—date or, simply, impossible to realize. Time and again, we are obliged to say: Yes, it is a good project but at the moment we have no money (no time, no energy etc.) to realize it. Or: This tradition is a wonderful one but at the moment there is nobody who is interested in it and wants to continue it. Or: this Utopia is beautiful but, unfortunately, today no one believes in Utopias etc. The present is a moment in time when we decide to low our expectations of the future or to abandon some of the dear traditions from the past to be able to go through the narrow gate of here and now.
在我看来，当下起先是妨碍我们实现我们的日常或非日常计划的东西 – 一种防止我们从过去平滑过渡到未来的东西，一种在我们的前路上设置障碍，使得我们的希望和计划时运不济、落伍过时或者索性无法实现的东西。我们一而再地不得不说：对，这是一个好的计划，但现在我们没钱（没时间、没精力）来实现它。或者可以这样说：这是一个很好的传统，但现在每人会对它感兴趣，想把它继续下去。或者是说：这个乌托邦的设想很美丽，但不行的事，今天没人相信乌托邦了。当下是这样一个时刻：我们决定降低对未来的期望，抑或放弃过往宝贵的传统，为的是能穿过此时此地这一窄门。
Ernst Jünger has famously said that the Modernity – the time of projects and plans, par excellence – taught us to travel with the lightweight luggage (mit leichtem Gepäck). To be able to move further on the narrow path of the present the modernity reduced everything that seemed to be too heavy, too loaded by meaning, by mimesis, by traditional criteria of mastery, by inherited ethical and aesthetic conventions. The Modern reductionism is a strategy of survival on the way through a difficult present. Art, literature, music, philosophy have survived the 20th Century because they threw out all unnecessary luggage. At the same time, these reductions reveal also a kind of hidden truth that transcends their immediate effectiveness. They show that one can give up a lot of things – a lot of traditions, hopes, skills and thoughts — and still continue one’s project in this reduced form. This truth made the Modernist reductions also transculturally efficient – to cross a cultural border is in many ways like to cross a time line of the present.
恩斯特•荣格曾经有一段著名的话：现代性 – 绝好的计划或工程时间 – 教我们轻装上阵（德文原文：mit leichtem Gepäck）。为了能够在当下这条狭窄小径上前行，现代性化约了一切好像过于沉重、过于为意味 、模仿、传统的大师标准以及传承的伦理或美学常例所累的东西。现代化约主义是一种经由一个困难的现时前行的生存策略。艺术、文学、音乐和哲学在20世纪得以幸存，因为他们把不必要的包袱都丢掉了。与此同时，这些化约揭示出一种超越了他们刻下的有效性的被隐匿的真相。他们展示了一个人可以放弃很多东西 – 传统、希冀、技能和思想 – 且仍然以此种化约过的方式继续他的计划。这一真相使得现代主义的化约具备了跨文化的效能 – 穿越一个文化的边界在很多方面类似于穿越当下的时轴。
Thus, during the period of modernity the power of the present could be detected only indirectly, through the traces of reduction that this power left on the body of art and, more generally, on the body of culture. The present as such was mostly seen in the Modernity as something negative, as something that should be overcome in the name of the future, something that slows down the realization of our projects, something that delays the coming of the future. One of slogans of Soviet time was: Time, forward! Ilf and Petrov (two Soviet novelists of the 20s) aptly parodied this Modern feeling by the slogan: Comrades, sleep faster! Indeed, in those times one, actually, would prefer to sleep through the present – to fall asleep in the past and to wake up at the endpoint of the progress, after the coming of the radiant future.
这样，在现代性的期间，现时的力量仅能被间接地感知，要么是通过此种力量在艺术整体上，或者扩开来说，在文化整体上留下的化约痕迹。这样的现时通常在现代性中被视作是负面的、需要在未来加以克服的东西，延缓我们的计划实现，延宕未来降临的东西。在苏联时代有一句口号：“前进吧，时代！”伊里夫和彼得罗夫（20世纪20年代的两位苏联作家）对口号的现代感给出了适切的戏仿：“同志们，睡得快点！”真的，在那个时代，一个人会希望在现时长睡不醒 – 在过去入睡，在光芒四射的未来到来之后，于进程的终点醒来。
2.
But at the moment at which we begin to question our projects, begin to doubt or to reformulate them – the present, the contemporary begins to be important, begins to be central for us. Because the contemporary is actually constituted by doubt, by hesitation, by uncertainty, by indecision, by the need of prolonged reflection – by the need of a delay. We want to postpone our decisions and acts, to have some additional time for analysis, for reflection and consideration. And that is precisely the contemporary – a prolonged, even potentially infinite time of delay. Sören Kiekegaard asked famously: What does it mean to be a contemporary of Christ? His answer was: That means to hesitate to accept Christ as a Savior. The acceptance of Christianity leaves Christ in the past. In fact, already Descartes defines the present as a time of a doubt– of a doubt that is supposed to open the future that will be full of clear and distinct, evident thoughts.
但在我们开始质疑我们的计划，开始怀疑或者重新制定它们的时刻 – 也就是当下，“当代的”开始变得重要，开始对我们有着极为重要的意义。因为“当代的”其实是由疑惑、犹豫、不确定、优柔寡断和一种对于长时间反思的需要构成的。我们想拖延我们的决策和行动，以便拥有更多的时间来作分析、反思和考量。这正是当代的 — 一种延长的，乃至无穷的延误。克尔凯郭尔提出了一个著名的问题：作为基督的同时代人是什么意思？他的答案如下：这意味着对承认基督是救世主感到犹豫。对基督教的接受把基督留在了过往。其实，笛卡尔业已将现时定义为一个怀疑的时刻 —一种应当开启充满了清楚、独特和显豁的思想的未来的怀疑。
Now, one can argue that we are precisely in such a situation at this historical moment because our time is a time in which we reconsider – not abandon, not reject – but analyze and reconsider the modern projects. The immediate reason for this reconsideration is, of course, the abandonment of the Communist project in Russia and in the Eastern Europe. Politically and culturally the Communist project dominated the 20th Century. There was the Cold War, there were Communist parties in the West, dissident movements in the East, progressive revolutions, conservative revolutions, discussions about pure and engaged art – all these projects, programs and movements were interconnected because they opposed each other. But now they can and should be reconsidered in their entirety. Thus, contemporary art can be seen as art that is involved in the reconsideration of the modern projects. One can say that we live now through a time of indecision, of delay – through a boring time. But already Martin Heidegger has analyzed the boredom precisely as a precondition for our ability to experience the presence of the present– to experience the world as a whole by being bored equally by all its aspects and not being captivated by this or that specific goal as it was the case in the context of the Modern projects.
现在，人们可以说我们在这一个历史时刻恰好就处在这样的境况，因为我们的时代是这样一个时代：我们于其中重新考量 – 不是抛弃 – 而是分析和重新思考现代的规划。此种考量的直接动因当然是苏联和东欧放弃了共产主义计划。这一计划从政治上和文化上主导了二十世纪。冷战、西方各国的共产党、苏东各国的持不同政见者，改良式革命、保守主义革命、纯粹与介入艺术之争 – 所有这些工程、计划与运动都互相关联，因为他们互为对立面。但现在我们可以，而且必须将它们从各自的整体上进行重估。因而，当代艺术可被看作是和对现代规划的重估相关的艺术。我们可以说我们正在经历一个优柔寡断的、延误的时代 —一个无聊的时代。但海德格尔已经将无聊分析为一种经历现时的存在的先决条件 —通过被其所有方面弄得一样无聊而经历作为整体的世界，同时又不被确定目标迷惑（若能够在现代计划的语境中那样）。
The hesitation in relationship to the Modern projects has mainly to do with the growing disbelief in the Modern promises. The classical modernity still kept faith in the infinite future – even after the death of God, even after the loss of faith in the immortality of the soul. Already the notion of permanent art collection says it all. Archive, library, museum gave a promise of secular permanency, of secular infinity that substituted the religious promise of resurrection and eternal life. During the period of modernity “the body of work” substituted the soul as a potentially immortal part of the Self. Foucault famously called heterotopias the Modern sites in which time was accumulated, instead of simply being lost. Politically, we can speak about the Modern Utopias as post—historical spaces of accumulated time. The finiteness of the present time was perceived as being potentially compensated by the infinite time of the realized project: of an artwork, or of a political Utopia. Of course, the time that was invested in production of a certain product is obliterated, erased by this product. The product remains, but the time that was used for its production disappears. However, the loss of time in and through the product was compensated in the Modernity by a historical narrative that somehow restored the lost time. This narrative glorified the life of the artists, scientists or revolutionaries that worked for the future.
这种对同现代规划的关系的迟疑主要是同对于现代的应许日益不相信有关。经典的现代性仍然对无尽的未来有着信仰 –哪怕上帝已死，哪怕人们已经失去了对灵魂不灭的信仰。永久的艺术藏品的概念也已说明了一切。档案馆、图书馆和博物馆许诺有一种世俗的永恒，一种可替代宗教有关复活和永生的承诺的世俗的永恒。福柯对这些时间被积聚起来而不是被失去的现代场域起了一个著名的名字：异托邦。政治上我们可以把现代乌托邦说成是积聚起来的时间的后历史空间。现时的有限被认为是被已实现的工程的无穷时间潜在地代偿的：艺术品或者政治乌托邦。当然，投入到生产出一个产品的时间被这个产品本身给抹杀了。产品存留下来，但用于生产它的时间消失了。然而，这种通过生产失去的时间在现代性中被一种修复性的历史叙事所补偿。这种叙事颂扬为着将来工作的艺术家、科学家和革命者的一生。
But, today, this promise of infinite future for the results of our work lost any plausibility. The museums became the sites of temporary exhibitions instead of being spaces of permanent collections. The future is ever newly planned – the permanent change of cultural trends and fashions makes any promise of a stable future for an artwork or a political project improbable. But also the past is permanently rewritten – names and events appear, disappear, reappear and disappear again. The present ceased to be a point of transition from the past to the future. Instead, it became a site of permanent rewriting of past and future, of permanent rewriting of history – of constant proliferations of historical narratives beyond any individual grasp and control. The only thing that we know about our present is that these historical narratives will proliferate tomorrow as they are proliferating now – and that we will react to them with the same feeling of disbelief. Today, we remain stuck in the present – it does reproduce itself without leading to any future. We simply loose our time – without having a possibility to securely invest it, to accumulate it, be it utopically or heterotopically. The loss of the infinite historical perspective generates the phenomenon of unproductive, wasted time. However, one can perceive this wasted time also positively as excessive time –as a time that demonstrates our life as pure being in time beyond its utilization in the framework of Modern economy and politics.
但今天这种对我们工作的结果承诺一个无限的未来已经失去了可信度。博物馆已经变成了短期展览的场所，而不是永久藏品的空间。未来的计划更新了 – 文化趋势与风尚的永久变化使得任何对艺术作品或政治工程的未来的许诺变得不可能。但过去也被永久地重写了 – 人物与事件出现，消失，重现，再次消失。当下已经不再是一个过去通往未来的转折点。它反倒成了对于过去和未来的永久性重写，对于历史的永久重写的场域 – 成为超越个人所能把握或控制的历史叙事的惯常性扩散的场域。我们对我们的现实惟一的知识就是这些历史叙事在未来会如同现在一样扩散开来 — 我们会对它们反映出同样程度的不可置信。今天，我们仍然被困在现时 – 它自我复制，但并不引向一个未来。我们仅仅是失去了我们的时间 – 还没来得及在其中稳妥地投入、积累，不论是以乌托邦或者异托邦的方式。这一无限历史视角的丧失产生了一种徒劳无功的，被浪费的时间现象。然而，人们可以将这种被浪费的时间正面地看作是多余的时间 – 看作是一种显示我们生命作为超越了在现代政治和经济框架下的用处的纯粹存在。
3.
Now, it seems to me that – if we look at the current art scene — it is a certain kind of the so—called time based art that does reflect at the best this contemporary condition. It does so because it thematizes the non—productive wasted, non—historical, excessive time — a suspended time, “stehende Zeit”, to use a Heideggerian notion again.
现在看来，如果我们看看现在的艺术界，是一种以时间为基础的艺术能够最好地反映这一当代境遇。它之所以能如此，是因为它主题化了徒然浪费的，非历史的，过剩的时间 – 一种悬置的时间（德文：stehende Zeit），在此借用一个海德格尔式的观念。
Now, the contemporary time—based art thematizes this suspended time because it captures and demonstrates activities that take place in time but do not lead to creation of any definite product. And, even if these activities do lead to such a product they are shown as being separated from their result, as being not completely invested in the product and absorbed by the product. We have here to do with the exemplifications of excessive time that is not completely absorbed by the historical process.
当代的以时间为基础的艺术主题化了这一悬置的时间，因为它捕捉并展示了时间中发生的活动，但并不导致任何特定物品的创造。即使这些活动能导致这样一个物品，活动也会被当作是同这样的一个结果分开的，而不是完全投入到物品中去被其吸收。这里我们有一些未被历史完全吸收的剩余时间的例子。
Let us consider as an example the animation by Francis Alys “Song for Lupita” (1998).
让我们看看这个例子：弗兰西斯•阿莱斯1998年的动画作品《露比塔之歌》。
Here we can watch an activity that have no beginning and no end – and do not lead to any definite result, to any definite product. We are confronted here with a ritual of pure and repetitive waste of time – with a secular ritual beyond any claim of magical power, beyond any religious tradition, beyond any cultural convention.
这里我们能看到一个无始无终的活动 — 不导致任何特定的结果，或特定的产物。此处我们被迫面对一种纯粹的重复浪费时间的仪式 —以一种世俗的典仪超越了任何魔力断言，超越了所有宗教传统和文化惯例。
One is reminded here of Camus’ Sysiphus as a proto—contemporary artist – and his aimless, senseless activity as a prototype of the contemporary time—based art. This non—productive practice, this excess of time that is caught in the non—historical pattern of eternal repetition constitutes for Camus the true image of what we call “lifetime” – lifetime being irreducible to any “meaning of life”, any “life achievement”, any historical relevance. The notion of repetition is here the central one. The inherent repetitiveness of contemporary time—based art distinguishes it sharply from happenings and performances of the 60s. The documented activity is here not a unique, isolated performance, an individual, authentic, original event taking place here and now. This activity is repetitive per se – even before it was documented by, let say, a video that is running in loop. The repetitive gesture that is designed by Alys functions as a programmatically impersonal gesture – this animation can be repeated by anyone, then be videographed, then repeated again. Here the living human being looses its difference from its media image. The opposition between living organism and dead mechanism is here of no point any more because of the originally mechanical, repetitive and non—purposeful character of the documented gesture. Francis Alys speaks also about the time of rehearsal as such a wasted, non—teleological time that does not lead to any result, to any endpoint, to any climax. His example – in his video “Politics of Rehearsal (2007) is a rehearsal of a striptease – a rehearsal of a rehearsal, in some sense, because the sexual desire that is provoked by the striptease remains in any case unfulfilled. In the video the rehearsal of striptease is accompanied by the commentary of the artist who interprets this rehearsal as the model of Modernity that always remains an unfulfilled promise. The time of Modernity is, for the artist, the time of permanent modernization that never really achieves its goals and never satisfies the desire of becoming truly modern that it has provoked. In this sense the process of modernization begins to be seen as wasted, excessive time that can and should be documented precisely because it never lead to any real result. In another work Alys demonstrates the activities of a shoe cleaner as an example of the work process that does not produce any value in the Marxist sense of this term because the time of shoe cleaning cannot be accumulated in a product as it is required by Marx’ theory of value.
这使我们想到了加缪笔下作为一个原初当代艺术家的西绪福斯，以及他作为一种当代的、以时间为基础的艺术的原型的无目的无意义的活动。这种无结果的行为，这种困在永恒反复的非历史规律中的过剩的时间构成了加缪所说的“一生”的真实图景 — 一生不可化约为任何“生命的意义”，终生成就或任何历史相关性。反复的概念在这里至关重要。当代以时间为基础的艺术所固有的重复性将它从1960年代的时间截然区分开。在此记录下来的活动并不是独特孤立的表演，一种个人的真实或原创的，在此时此地发生的事件。这一活动自身重复 – 甚至在它被回环播放的录像记录之前就是如此。阿莱斯设计的重复手法，噢能够来做一种程式化、无人格化的姿态 – 动画 ， 人人都可重复，并被录像记录下来，一遍又一遍地重复。在这里，活人丧失了对同媒体影像的差别。活的有机体与死者的机制之间的对立已不再有意义— 因为被记录下来的原本的机械重复无目的的特点。阿莱斯也谈到，排练的时间作为一种浪费的，非目的论的时间，并不导致任何结果、终点或高潮。他的例子，在他2007年的录像《排练的政治》（记录一场脱衣舞排练）中— 从某种意义上说是一种排练的排练， 因为又脱衣舞挑起的性欲无论如何都是未被满足的。录像中，脱衣舞伴随着艺术家的评论，他将这一排练诠释为一个现代性的模式：一个永不兑现的诺言。对于艺术家来说，现代性的时间是一种永远的现代化进程，永远无法达到目的，永远不满足它引发的变得真正“现代”的渴望。从这个意义上说，现代化进程开始被看作是应被记录的浪费的过剩时间，正因为它从不导出任何结果。在另一件作品中，阿莱斯展示了一个擦鞋工的活动，作为马克思主义所谈到的不产生任何价值的劳动过程的例子。因为擦鞋的时间并不能被积累在一个产品当中，如马克思的价值观论断所要求的那样。
But precisely because such a wasted, suspended, non—historical time cannot be accumulated and absorbed by its product it can be repeated – impersonally and, potentially, infinitely. Already Nietzsche stated that the only possibility to think the infinity after the Death of God, after the end of transcendence is: The eternal return of the same. And Georges Bataille thematized the repetitive excess of time, the unproductive waste of time – as the only possibility to escape the Modern ideology of progress. Certainly, both Nietzsche and Bataille perceived repetition as something naturally given. But in his book Difference and Repetition (1968) Gilles Deleuze speaks of literal repetition as being radically artificial and, in this sense, as being in conflict with everything natural, living, changing, developing, including natural law and moral law. Hence, practicing literal repetition can be seen as initiating a rupture in the continuity of life and creating a non—historical excess of time by means of art. And here is the point at which art can become truly contemporary, indeed.
但正因为有这样一种浪费的、悬置的、非历史的时间不能被产品积累和吸收。它可以被重复 —客观的，潜在是无限的重复。尼采说：在上帝已死，超越已终结之后，思考“无限”的唯一可能就是：永恒反复。乔治•巴塔耶主题化了过剩时间的重复。徒然的对时间的浪费，是唯一能摆脱现代的进步观的可能性。当然，尼采和巴塔耶即将重复看作是自然给定的。但在其1968年的著作《差异与重复》中，吉尔•德勒兹谈到，如实地重复是彻底的人工，在此意义上，与一切天然有生命的、变化发展的东西矛盾，包括自然法与道德律。因此，实践如实重复被看作是：在生命的延续中开始造成一个断裂，通过艺术来创造出一种非历史的剩余时间。这就是艺术能真正成为具有当代性的那个当口。
Namely, I would like to mobilize here a different meaning of the word contemporary. To be con—temporary not necessarily means to be present, to be here and now– it, rather, means to be “with time” than to be “in time”. “Con—temporary” is in German “zeitgenössisch”. Genosse is comrade. So to be con—temporary – zeitgenössisch – can be understood as to be a comrade of time – to collaborate with time, to help time when it has problems, when it has difficulties. And under the conditions of our contemporary product—oriented civilization time has problems when it is perceived as unproductive, wasted, meaningless time. Such unproductive time becomes excluded from the historical narratives – and is endangered by complete erasure. That is precisely the moment when the time—based art begins to help time, to collaborate with time, to become a comrade of time. Because time—based art is, in fact, art—based time. Traditional artworks (paintings, statues etc.) are time—based, indeed, because they are made in expectation that they will have time – even a lot of time in a case that they will be included in the museums or important private collections. But time—based art is not based on time as a solid foundation, as a guaranteed perspective. It rather documents time that is in danger to be lost because of its unproductive character – a character of pure life, or as Giorgio Agamben would put it, “bare life”. But this change of the relationship between art and time also changes the temporality of art itself. Art ceases to be present – to create the effect of the presence and also to be “in the present” understood as uniqueness of here and now. Rather, art begins to document a repetitive, indefinite, maybe even infinite present – a present that was always already there and can be prolonged into the indefinite future.
我想在此动用“当代”这个词的另一个不同的意思。成为“当代的”不仅仅意味着在场，在此时此地 – 它的意思是，“同时间一道”而非“在时间之内”。“当代”在德语中是zeitgenössisch. Genosse是德语同志的意思。所以当代的意思可以理解为“时间的同志”— 同时间合作。在时间有问题和困难的时候帮她一把，在当代的产品为导向的文明条件下，一旦时间被认为是徒然浪费的、无意义的时间，那么它就有了问题。这些多余的时间被从历史叙事中剔除 – 有被全然抹杀之虞。那就是以时间为基础的电脑古代艺术能够帮助当代时间的时刻、同时间合作的时刻，成为时间的同志的时刻。因为以时间为基础的艺术其实就是以艺术为基础的时间。传统的艺术作品（绘画、雕像能）的确是以时间为基础的，因为制作时即预料它们会有时间 — 甚至是很多时间，如果它们能够被收入美术馆或重要的私人藏品中去的话。但时间为基础的艺术并不以时间为坚实的基础或是一个提供担保的视角。但它记录那些因非其无利可图而濒临失去的时间 —一种纯粹生活的特质，抑或如焦尔焦•阿甘本所说的，“赤裸的生命”。但这种艺术与时间关系的变化也使艺术的时间性和艺术本身也发生变化。艺术不再在场 —以创造出一种“存在”的效果，同时也处在被理解为此时此地的一种特质的“当下”。艺术开始记录一种重复的、不定的，或许甚至是无限的“当下”—一种已然存在且可能被延长到无尽的未来的“现在”。
A work of art is traditionally understood as something that wholly embodies art, lending it immediately visible presence. When we go to an art exhibition we generally assume that whatever is there on display – paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, videos, ready—mades or installations – must be art. The individual artworks can of course in one way or another make references to things that they are not, maybe to real—world objects or to certain political issues, but they do not refer to art itself, because they themselves are art. However, this traditional assumption defining visits to exhibitions and museums has proved progressively more misleading. Besides works of art, in present—day art spaces we are also confronted with the documentation of art. Similarly, here too we see pictures, drawings, photographs, videos, texts and installations – in other words, the same forms and media in which art is commonly presented. But when it comes to art documentation, art is no longer presented through these media but simply documented. For art documentation is per definitionem not art. Precisely by merely referring to art, art documentation makes it quite clear that art itself is no longer at hand and instantly visible but, instead, absent and hidden. Thus, it is interesting to compare the traditional film and the contemporary time—based art — that has its roots in film — to better understand what has happened to our life.
传统上把艺术作品理解为全然体现艺术的东西，从而赋予它一种直接可见的存在。当我们前往艺术展览时，我们通常在假定在那儿展出的无论什么东西—绘画、雕塑、素描、摄影、录像、县城物品或装置—都是艺术。单个的艺术作品当然可以用种种方式指涉别的东西，可能是现实世界的物品或政治议题。但它们并不指涉艺术本身，因为它们就是艺术。然而，这种限定我们的展览与美术馆之旅的传统假设已日益被证明是具有误导性的。除了艺术品，在当今的艺术空间里，我们还要面对艺术的文献记录。同样，我们在这里看到绘画、素描、摄影、录像、文本与装置—换言之，艺术通常被呈现的那些同样的形式与媒介。但说到艺术文献记录，艺术不再通过这些媒介得到呈现，但仅仅是被记录下来。因为，艺术文献记录依照定义就不是艺术。仅仅通过指涉艺术，艺术文献记录很清楚地阐明：艺术本身已不在手边立时可见，而已经被隐匿不再场了。因此，比较传统电影与当代实践基础上的艺术（其根源在电影）以更好地理解我们生活中发生的事情不失为一件有趣的事情。
From its beginnings the film pretended to be able to document and represent life in a way that was inaccessible to the traditional arts. Indeed, as a medium of motion, film has frequently displayed its superiority over other media, whose greatest accomplishments are preserved in the form of immobile cultural treasures and monuments, by staging and celebrating the destruction of these monuments. This tendency also demonstrates film’s adherence to the typically modern faith in the superiority of vita activa over vita contemplativa. In this respect, film manifests its complicity with the philosophies of praxis, of Lebensdrang, of the élan vital and of desire; it demonstrates its collusion with ideas that, in the footsteps of Marx and Nietzsche, mesmerized the imagination of European humanity at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries – in other words, during the very period that gave birth to film as a medium. This was the era when the hitherto prevailing attitude of passive contemplation was discredited and displaced by celebration of the potent movements of material forces. Vita contemplativa was perceived for a very long time as an ideal form of human existence. Through the period of modernity it began to be despised and rejected as a manifestation of weakness of life, of lack of energy. In this new worship of vita activa film plays a central role. From its very inception film has celebrated everything that moves at high speed – trains, cars, airplanes – but also everything that goes beneath the surface – blades, bombs, bullets.
从一开始，电影就装作能够以一种不对传统艺术开放的方式记录并再现生活。的确，作为一种动态的媒介，电影相对于其他媒介来说，其他媒介的最伟大成就都以一种静态的宝藏和纪念物的形式保存，而电影通过导演和庆祝这些纪念物的毁坏，经常展现出其优越的地方。这一趋势也显现了电影坚持典型的现代对于行动的人生优于沉思的人生的笃信。从这方面来说，电影显示出其与实践、生命冲动、生命活力与欲望诸哲学的共谋；它显示出同那些在十九世纪末二十世纪初的，换言之，在那个产生电影这种媒介的时代的那些顺着马克思和尼采的足迹继续蛊惑欧洲人想象力的思想共谋。这是一个盛行到此时的被动沉思态度被质疑，并被对于物体力量运动的褒扬所取代。沉思的生活长久以来被视为人类生存的一种理想方式。经过现代性时期，它开始被鄙视，并被当作生命弱点或能量匮乏的表现而被摒弃。在这种对行动的生活的新型崇拜中，电影扮演了一个关键角色。从一开始，电影表扬一切告诉运转的东西：火车、汽车、飞机以及所有穿越表面的东西：刀片、炸弹与子弹。
However, while film as such is a celebration of movement, it paradoxically drives the audience to new extremes of immobility compared to traditional art forms. So while it is possible to move around with relative freedom while one is reading or viewing an exhibition, in the movie theater the viewer is put in darkness and glued to a seat. The situation of the movie—goer in fact resembles a grandiose parody of the very vita contemplativa that film itself denounces, because the cinema system embodies precisely that vita contemplativa as it surely appears from the perspective of its most radical critic – an uncompromising Nietzschean, let us say ¬– namely as the product of a frustrated desire, lack of personal initiative, as a token of compensatory consolation and a sign of individual’s inadequacy in real life. This is the starting point of many Modern critiques of film. Sergei Eisenstein, for instance, was exemplary in the way he combined aesthetic shock with political propaganda trying to mobilize the viewer and to liberate him from his passive, contemplative condition.
然而，正当电影是对运动的褒扬，和传统艺术形式相比，它也矛盾地把观众推向了静态的新极端。因此，尽管他们在阅读或者观看一个展览时极有可能相对自由地到处活动，在影院里，观者却被粘在黑暗中的一张椅子上。影院观众的情况其实很像电影本身所斥责的沉思的生活的大型戏仿，因为影院系统恰恰从其最彻底的批评者（一个毫不妥协的尼采式的批评者）的视角体现了此种沉思的生活，将其看作一种被压抑的欲望、缺乏个人能动性的产物，看作是代偿安慰的记号，个人在现实生活中的缺陷的表征。这是许多现代派对电影的批判的出发点。比如谢尔盖•爱森斯坦是把艺术撞击同政治宣传相结合，以期发动观者把自己从被动和沉思的境地里解放出来的典范。
The ideology of Modernity – in all of its forms — was directed against contemplation, against the spectatorship, against the passivity of the masses paralyzed by the spectacle of the Modern life. Throughout the whole modernity we can identify this opposition between passive consumption of the mass culture and an activist opposition to it – political, aesthetic or mixed one. Progressive, modern art has constituted itself during the period of modernity in opposition to the passive consumption –be it political propaganda or commercial Kitch. We know these activist reactions – from the different avant—gardes of early 20th Century to Clement Greenberg (Avant—garde and Kitch), Adorno (cultural industry) or Guy Debord (society of spectacle), a book whose themes and rhetorical figures continue to resound throughout the current debate on our culture. For Debord, the entire world has become a movie theater in which people are completely isolated from one another and from real life, and consequently condemned to an existence of utter passivity.
现代性的意识形态（其所有形式）都指向沉思，反对旁观和被现代生活的景观麻痹的大众的被动。贯穿整个现代性我们可以辨认这一被动消费大众文化和一种活跃反对之间的对立 – 政治、美学或者是二者的混合。进步的现代艺术在现代性期间已经以对被动消费（不论是政治宣传还是矫揉造作的商业品）的对立完成了自己的建构。我们知道这些活跃分子的反应 – 从20世纪早期不同的先锋派别到克莱门特•格林伯格（《先锋与矫揉造作》）， 阿多诺（《文化产业》）或居伊•德博（《景观社会》）。德博的这本书，主题与修辞格继续在当下对我们文化的辩论中回响。对德博来说，整个世界已经变成了一个影院，人们在其中被同他人乃至真是生活隔绝，继而被打入一种完全被动的存在中。
However, at the end of 20th – beginning of the 21st Centuries art entered a new era – namely, an era of mass artistic production and not only of mass art consumption. To make a video and to put it on display through the Internet became an easy operation that is accessible to almost everyone. The practice of self—documentation became today mass practice and even mass obsession. Contemporary means of communications and networks like Facebook, My Face, You Tube, Second Life and Twitter give to the global populations the possibility to place their photos, videos and texts in a way that cannot be distinguished from any other post—Conceptualist artwork, including time –based artworks. And that means: Contemporary art became today a mass cultural practice. So the question arises: How can a contemporary artist survive this popular success of contemporary art? Or, how can the artist survive in a world in which everybody became an artist, after all?
然而，在20世纪末21世纪初，艺术进入了一个新的时代，即一个不仅仅是大批量消费艺术，而且大批量的艺术生产的时代。做一个录像在互联网上展示成为了一种很容易操作且可为所有人都可得到的做法。自我纪录的成为大众的做法，甚至是一种大众的迷恋。当代通讯与网络联系方式，如Facebook，My Face, You Tube，第二人生和Twitter等等给了全球人民把他们的照片、录像和文本以一种不可从其他后观念主义作品（包括时间为基础的作品）区分开来的方式放置提供了可能。这意味着：当代艺术在今天成为了一种大众文化实践。所以问题来了：一个当代艺术家怎样能够从当代艺术在大众中的成功中幸存？或者说，艺术家怎样在一个人人都成了艺术家的世界中幸存？
One may further speak about our contemporary society as a society of spectacle. However, now we are living not among the masses of passive spectators, as it was described by Guy Debord, but among the masses of artists. To be able to ascertain himself or herself in this contemporary context of mass production the artist needs a spectator who could overlook all this immeasurable mass of artistic production – and formulate an aesthetic judgment that would single out this particular artist in the mass of other artists. But it is obvious that such a spectator does not exist – it could be God but we were already informed about the fact that God is dead. If the contemporary society is still a society of spectacle – it seems to be a spectacle without spectators.
人们可以继续将当代社会看成是一个景观社会。但现在我们不是生活在一群被动的旁观者之中（如居伊•德博所描述的那样），而是生活在艺术家的人群之中。为了在当代大规模生产的语境中弄清自己，艺术家需要一个能够忽视这不可衡量的大量艺术生产的旁观者 – 然后阐述一个能使该艺术家从其他的艺术家群体中脱颖而出的美学判断。但很显然这样的旁观者是不存在的 – 得是上帝才能做到这个，而我们已经被告知，上帝已死。如果当代社会仍然是一个景观社会 – 那看来这是一个没有旁观者的景观社会。
On the other hand, today, spectatorship — vita contemplativa — has also become quite different from what it was before. Here again the subject of contemplation cannot any more rely on expectation of infinite time resources, on infinite time perspectives – the expectation that was constitutive for Platonic, Christian or Buddhist traditions of contemplation. Contemporary spectators are spectators on the move – primarily, they are traveler. Contemporary vita contemplativa coincides with permanent active circulation. The act of contemplation itself functions today as a repetitive gesture that cannot and does not lead to any result – e.g. to any conclusive and well founded aesthetic judgment.
但另一方面，今天，旁观者 – 沉思的生活 – 业已变得和从前不同。这里，沉思的主体无法再依赖于对无穷的时间资源和无限的时间视角的期待 – 一种是构成柏拉图、基督教或佛教沉思传统一部分的期待。当代旁观者是一直在移动的旁观者— 他们首先是旅行者。当代的沉思生活和永久的积极流通恰好同时发生。沉思的行为自身在今天是一种不导致任何结果的重复姿态 – 例如，它无法导致任何结论性的、有依据的美学判断。
Traditionally, we had in our culture two fundamentally different modes of contemplation at our disposal that gave us control over the time we spent looking at images: the immobilization of the image in the exhibition space or the immobilization of the viewer in the movie theater. Yet both modes collapse when moving images are transferred into museum or art exhibition space. The images will continue to move – but so does the viewer too. As a rule it is impossible to follow a video or film from the beginning to the end under the conditions of a regular exhibition visit if this film or videos is long enough – especially, if there are many such time—based artworks in the same exhibition space. And, in fact, such an endeavor would be misplaced. To see a film or a video in its entirety one has to go to a film theater or to remain in front of his or her personal computer. The whole point of visiting an exhibition of time—based art is to take a look on it and then another look and another look – but not to see it in its entirety. One can say that the act of contemplation itself is put here in a loop.
传统上，我们的文化中有两种截然不同的沉思模式可用，给予我们花在观看图像的时间上的控制：静态化展览空间中的图像，或者静态化电影院里的观者。但在移动的图像被转移到美术馆或者艺术展览空间中去的时候，这两种模式就崩解了。图像会一直移动，但观者也会这样。照例，在通常看展览的情况下，把一段录像或电影从头看到尾是不可能的。而且，其实这样的一种努力也有点不大对路。把一部电影或录像从头到尾看一遍，一个人必须去影院或者在电脑前坐下。而去参观一个时间为基础的艺术作品展的意义就是看一眼，然后再看一眼，再多看一眼 – 而不是把它整个地看了。人们可以说在这里沉思的动作本身被放到了一个循环中。
Time—based art, as it is shown in the exhibition spaces is a cool medium, to use the notion introduced by Marshall McLuhan. According to McLuhan, hot media lead to social fragmentation: when reading a book, you are alone and in a focused state of mind. And equally focused, you wander alone from one object to the next in a conventional exhibition – separated from the outside reality, in inner isolation. McLuhan thought that only electronic media such as TV are able to overcome the isolation of the individual spectator. But this analysis of McLuhan’s cannot be applied on the most important electronic medium of today – the Internet. At first sight, the Internet seems to be as cool, if not cooler, than TV because it activates users, seducing, or even forcing, them into active participation in the medium. However, sitting in front of the computer and using the Internet, you are alone – and extremely focused. If the Internet is participative, it is so in the same sense that the literary space is. Here and there, anything that enters these spaces is noticed by other participants – provoking reactions from them, which in turn provoke further reactions etc. However, these active participations take place solely in the user’s imagination, leaving his or her body unmoved.
以时间为基础的艺术如其在展会空间里被展示的那样，是一个冷媒介（借用马歇尔•麦克卢汉引入的观点）。根据麦克卢汉，热媒介导致社会分崩离析：当你读一本书的时候，你是一个人处在一种聚精会神的状态下。在注意力同样集中的情况下，你在一个传统展览上从一个物体走到下一个 – 同外在现实隔离，在一种内在的孤立中。但麦克卢汉的这个分析不能被应用于今天最重要的电子媒介 – 互联网。第一眼看来互联网起码和电视一样是冷媒介，因为它激发用户，诱使甚至强迫他们来积极地参与到媒介中来。然而，在电脑前坐着使用互联网，你是一个人 – 而且注意力极端集中。时不时地会有东西进入到这些空间，别的用户会注意到这个 – 从他们那里引出反应，然后有引发更多反应。然而，这种积极的参与仅仅是在用户的现象中进行的，他们的身体并未移动。
By contrast, the exhibition space that includes time—based art is cool because it makes focusing on individual exhibits unnecessary or even impossible. This is why such a space is capable of including also all sorts of hot media – text, music, individual images – so as to make them cool off. Cool contemplation is the one that has no goal to produce an aesthetic judgment or choice. Cool contemplation is just permanent repetition of the gesture of looking at – in awareness of the lack of time that would be necessary to achieve comprehensive contemplation and informed judgment. Time—based art demonstrates here the bad infinity of the wasted, excessive time that cannot be absorbed by the spectator. However, at the same time it removes from vita contemplative the modern stigma of passivity. In this sense one can say that the documentation of time—based art erases the difference between vita activa and vita contemplative. Here again time—based art turns scarcity of time into excess of time – and demonstrates itself as collaborator, as comrade of time, as its true con—temporary.
相反，包括时间为基础的艺术的展览空间是冷媒介，因为它使得对个体展品的关注成为不必要。 这就是为什么这样的空间能够容纳各种热媒介 – 文本、音乐、单个图像 – 并使他们冷却。冷静的沉思不以产出美学判断或选择为目的。冷静的沉思就是观看姿态的永恒反复 – 并意识到取得全面的沉思和明智的判断所需的时间是匮乏的。以时间为基础的艺术在此显示了被浪费的多余时间糟糕的无穷尽，此种多余时间是无法被观者吸收的。然而，与此同时它又把现代被动的耻辱标记从沉思的生活中去除。从这个意义上人们可以说对时间为基础的艺术的文献记录抹杀了行动的生活与沉思的生活的差别。在这里，时间为基础的艺术再次把时间的稀缺变成了剩余 – 并显示出自己是一个合作者，是时间的同志，是真正具有当代性的。
http://www.douban.com/note/158913735/
