来源:中国视觉艺术中心
伦敦街头
CCVA 隔离日记
我们正经历着一场席卷的病毒灾难,史无前例。本周一晚上(3月23日),英国首相鲍里斯约翰逊借BBC向全国发表电视讲话,宣布一系列新的抗疫措施,要求关闭所有公共场所,号召英国国民尽量居家隔离,以尽可能降低新冠病毒传播风险,延缓疫情蔓延速度。这是英国有史以来在和平时期所遭遇的最大的安全危机,国家进入紧急戒备。在过去的几个月里,从中国的武汉开始,到现在的欧洲、美洲乃至全世界范围,我们目睹了生命的脆弱,和人类的无助。在这样的一种威胁下,我们感叹艺术的无能和我们创造力的有限。我们读到了各种信息,真真假假地从英特网上纷纷落了一地,读到了关于民主、言论自由的思考,关于公开透明的诉求,关于在中国和西方世界之间不断升级的争论,政治的,文化的或是信仰的。我们一方面感谢数码技术似乎依然可以将我们维系在一起,另一方面,又能感受到一个没有握手,没有拥抱,没有亲吻的,一个远离真实的社会关系。
伦敦地铁站
伯明翰空无一人的公交车
伯明翰街头
伯明翰城市大学中国视觉艺术中心(The Centre of Chinese Visual Arts,CCVA)是英国唯一的一个着眼于中国当代艺术与视觉文化研究所,引领着该领域的学科实践和研究。而更重要的,她搭建了一个智性的平台,让我们在这样一个跨文化的语境中可以分享,鼓励和尊重不同的意见和观点。我们谨此发起这个“CCVA 隔离日记”,以中英文的形式来记录我们的思考。我们欢迎在英国的学人学者以日记的形式投稿,或长或短,或多或少,或文或图,我们遴选编辑后会通过微信、微博和脸书发表。我们将以这些日记来纪念我们在这般困境中的经历和感受,困扰和安慰,意象和信念。我们会一起走过这场灾难,或会经历苦难,而与此同时,我们必将通过我们的反思和见证,拥有它。
有意者请联系我们CCVA的劳伦博士(Dr Lauren Walden),lauren.walden@bcu.ac.uk。
来源:中国视觉艺术中心
英国留学生眼中的疫情
最近英国的天气出奇的好,好的让我感觉窗户上的玻璃都是多余的。外面的世界也格外安静,安静的只能听到鸟鸣和心跳。
今天英国累计确诊人数已超过了一万,实际则会更多。一条接着一条的信息在轰炸着这个看似静止的世界。英国首相鲍里斯·约翰逊新冠肺炎检测呈阳性,他的卫生部大臣Matt Hancock 也确诊了,伯明翰机场开始建造临时停尸房,37岁的英国驻布达佩斯大使馆外交官史蒂文·迪克因新冠肺炎死亡,查尔斯王子被确诊,英国一线护士在医院内自杀……
图片来自BBC
中西方在疫情面前不同的看法
面对疫情东西方有的明显的文化差异,通过疫情可以用不同的角度去看待,优缺点在不同的情况下可以相互转化。相对来说,中国群众调动性很强,在疫情面前群众很容易去执行命令亦或是被安排。西方是民主国家,在批判性思维的教育下每个人都有一套自己的想法,这在日常生活中是件好事,但在命令前却很难做到统一管理。这所有的一切最终会被求生欲所征服,生命受到威胁时,他们也会戴上口罩,尽量呆在家中。
超市门口,摄于英国伯明翰
伯明翰街头
中国疫情在慢慢好转,欧洲疫情开始蔓延。人性的丑陋与伟大也在疫情中暴露。很多人开始指责和嘲笑西方处理疫情的方式有问题,真正关心人间疾苦的又有几个?甚至有人在论坛直接说希望英国多死一些人,这难道不是反人类吗?内心有多阴暗才会说出这言论。
各种自媒体也不忘乘火打劫,各种不属实的文章煽动人心,放大愚蠢。大家齐心协力支援武汉是事实,中国有很多 “特色“之处也是事实,视频中一家人其乐融融说着武汉加油,真的能鼓舞前线工作人员吗?感染者在与死神较量的过程中真的会点开那些视频吗?与其说关心鼓舞不如说秀存在。英国人们也开始重视,大街上几乎没人,商场快餐酒吧都关闭,聚会被罚款,很难想象以欧洲人的性格接受了这些,成功的调动了人的自主积极性,激发了人们的自主求生欲,以至于到今天要求自主隔离才没有受到大众的抵触。也有各种媒体找了一些人多的照片,带英国的节奏,评论中也是各种讽刺。很多评论都说政府的举措存在很多问题,但试问大英帝国人民的首相无论如何也比网络上的键盘侠逻辑清楚。英国疫情现在很严重,但我相信情况会向好的方向发展。在这种情况下,进行自我隔离是代价最小的举措,闷在屋里总比呆在急救室强,房间里的空气再不新鲜也比呼吸机里的空气让你安心。疫情能放大很多东西,从国家层面来看,疫情放大了国家体制的优点和缺点。从个体看,放大了人性。国内,小人得志,西方,为自己的狂妄自大买单。正所谓制度是人影子的延长线。
路边的花开了
超市里的花也还在
春天在英国如约而至,路边的花静静开放,超市里的鲜花让我感觉一切如同往常。可悲的是没有人记住死去的人,没有人记住当初的悲愤和教训。把所有的情绪转化成对西方社会的蔑视和嘲笑之中,取代了之前所有尘封的教训……
徐丹丹,伯明翰艺术学院硕士研究生。
我们正经历着一场席卷的病毒灾难,史无前例。在过去的几个月里,从中国的武汉开始,到现在的欧洲、美洲乃至全世界范围,我们目睹了生命的脆弱,和人类的无助。在这样的一种威胁下,我们感叹艺术的无能和我们创造力的有限。我们读到了各种信息,读到了关于民主、言论自由的思考,关于公开透明的诉求,关于在中国和西方世界之间不断升级的争论。CCVA是英国唯一的一个着眼于中国当代艺术与视觉文化研究所,引领着该领域的学科实践和研究。而更重要的,她搭建了一个智性的平台,让我们在这样一个跨文化的语境中可以分享,鼓励和尊重不同的意见和观点;并以“CCVA 隔离日记”来纪念我们在这般困境中的经历和感受,困扰和安慰,意象和信念。我们会一起走过这场灾难,或会经历苦难,而与此同时,我们必将通过我们的反思和见证,拥有它。
来源:CCVA
特别项目| CCVA 隔离日记 2
2020年3月28日,周六
希望一切只是梦一场
几天前,算是等来了关闭酒吧,剧院等娱乐场所的消息。看似轻敌的英国政府也开始采取了进一步的强硬措施,留守的朋友松了口气:这些洋刺头总算能安分了,再也不用害怕被夜夜笙歌的室友强行投毒。远方的亲人也算有所安慰:不用总是担心我变成那百分之六十的肉盾。不过许多同学早已买好了近期回国的机票,准备回到祖国的温暖怀抱,只是现在边打包收拾的同时,还得求各路神仙保佑自己的航班不要被取消。
不知是真的心太大,还是对自己的免疫力有足够的信心,虽然首相都已经报告中招,但至今我还没有感到太多的紧张与慌乱,并且决定留在伦敦,与大不列颠“共存亡”。并不是说否认疫情的严重程度,只是相信这个老牌帝国,能够在参考我们国内已经得出的一系列抗疫经验与策略的情况下,制定出因地制宜的有效方针。并且目前来看,除了初期的“集团免疫”存在心理战与过度解读的可能性外,其他措施还是为人们打下了一剂强心针。不过这留学生活从最近开始,发生了一些转变,开始每天有种梦里梦外不断穿梭的错觉。
萧条的温布利街景
学校停止线下授课也有一周了,不出家门,似乎一切如常。到点打开电脑上课,下课了看看电影翻翻书,跟朋友们唠会屁嗑;每周健身三天,健身房关门了就用公寓楼下的,公寓关闭了公共活动区就在家做俯卧撑;先前预备的食物也都足够,该吃吃该喝喝。
但是窗外的景象,却是与以往有所不同了。曾经到11点都灯火通明的足球场,落上了飘来的碎纸片;平常没事喜欢去淘便宜打折货的奥莱,也贴上了封门启示;周边的超市们虽然还在坚挺着开着门,但面包大米基本每天一早就被一扫而空,肉类货柜也上只剩下几片孤零零的西冷等待被打包带走,不过值得庆幸的是每天新鲜蔬菜的供应还是比较充足的,可能腐国人民确实对蔬菜无感。
被扫空的肉类货架
被扫空的主食货架
关闭的咖啡店
奥莱商铺的闭店通告
来源:CCVA
特别项目| CCVA 隔离日记 3
2020年3月29日,周日
我要回家
关于留学生回国的问题,我的双重身份可以来聊一下。英国lockdown之前,在aiva家长群里,有人问我的意见,究竟要不要回国,那时候很多英国大学还没有停课,回国意味着重修或者延期毕业,回国途中也有感染的风险,大家举棋不定。我很想和家长们分享我的个人观点,一瞬间又觉得很无力,担心自己的判断会误导。物理隔离使得个体获得一手信息的通道有限,好像只有辟了谣的信息才是可信的。大数据时代的信息推送使得每个人看到的面都不尽相同。那个阶段,回来还是留守更像是场心理战,未知、恐慌、焦虑伴随左右。这样的时刻,身处他乡,也只有来自“家”的力量,才能暂抚人心。
学生在隔离点热饭
另一大群,是和我女儿同龄的留英中学生的家长们。群里每天都更新着雪片般的信息:航班取消了;包机无望了;重点国家增加了;回国人员要隔离了。比起复工复产的消息,好像是另一个世界。虽然此刻女儿不在海外,每一条消息都感同身受。透过屏幕,看着一飞机的小留学生们身着防护服,戴着防护镜,一路不吃不喝,经历了十几个甚至三十几个小时的旅程。飞机落地到排队测温、出关、核酸检测、彻夜等待结果再到隔离地。十几岁的孩子哪里经历过这些。即便如此,我没看到抱怨。特别是孩子们表现出来的的友爱、独立、乐观、懂事,令人动容。这样的经历何尝不是他们成长经历中的一份馈赠。只是,每每看到质疑留学生回国的评论时,会想起女儿曾和我说,“无论如何,将来我一定要回中国的。”对价值观的字面背诵会在他们这个年纪加上自己的诠释和理解,形成他们的独立思考和价值取向。在多年后,但愿她的初心还在。
他们长途艰辛的旅行,不是为了度假,不是为了避难,而是为了回家。
来源:CCVA
特别项目| CCVA 隔离日记 4
2020年3月30日,周一
归家与流离:酷儿何以漂泊
摄于诺丁汉,2020
q+cn, 2019
以下是英文原文
Home and Away: Queer Diasporic Musings
Hongwei Bao
During the coron**irus COVID-19 pandemic, one of the popular buzzwords is ‘home’. The UK government has advised people to ‘stay home’ and only go out when absolutely necessary. Brexiteers shouted at foreigner-looking people: ‘Go back to your home!’ Chinese students studying abroad often h**e to struggle with the decision, and even action, of whether they should go back ‘home’; and for many, this ‘home’ is located in China, the taken-for-granted ‘homeland’ for ‘Chineseness’. Home, in these contexts, become an anchoringpoint, a safe h**en, and a place of origin one can return to. It has occupied aprimary position in the contemporary cultural imaginary, both in China and in the West. It seems that wherever one tr**els to and whenever there is a crisis, one can always hope to go back to the ‘home, sweet home’.
As a queer person of Chinese origin currently living in the UK, I find the often taken-for-granted notion of the home problematic. What if one has no home to return to? (Think about homeless people or people inexile.) What if home is a repressive and suffocating place, and is harmful forone’s physical and intellectual development? Can people make home by themselves, wherever, whenever and with whoever they like or love? What is a home for sexual minorities whose families refuse to accept their sexuality, and for the diasporic communities who h**e been away from China for too long and China seems as alien as a foreign country? Moreover, in popular discourses, home is often associated with conservative and heteronormative — if not homonormative — ideologies: one should get married and h**e offspring early; being a gay personor being a ‘left-over’ woman (shengnü) brings shame to the family. Similarly, the notion ofthe ‘homeland’ is often associated with patriotic and nationalistic sentiments: being gay is Western and is thus incompatible with Chinese values. And worsestill, ‘home’ seems to h**e a highly anxious subjectivity: it constantlyrequires demonstration of loyalty at the expense of hybridity and ambivalence: h**e you forgotten your cultural roots? You are Chinese, after all, wherever you go, and however long you live in another country. Home, therefore, can be anoppressive regime for queer people and people living in the diaspora. This explainswhy many lesbians and gay people dread going back to their hometowns to spend time with their parents and relatives during the Chinese New Year; and this is also why many people living in the diaspora often keep a critical distance fromnational identities, Chinese or otherwise.
Home often conjures up a fixed sense of identity: where people come from often describes and even dictates who they are. There are stereotypes associated with people from certain cities, countries, family backgrounds and upbringings. But we are much more than the place where we were born or the family in which we grow up. We go to schools and universities; we read booksand watch films; we tr**el to different places and meet interesting people... all these encounters and experiences shape who we are and will continue to h**e an impact on what we will become. After all, who we are is not static and maybe constantly changing. There is no single identity, in the same way that thereis not a fixed home. Home is where we are, whom we are with and what we make it to be.
Perhaps we should strip home of its mythical origin and bourgeois pretentiousness by seeing it as an ordinary place in society or one of the many stops in life. We can even give it radical meanings by making it procedural, collective, collaborative and political. Indeed, home is as much an imaginationof a better world as that of a safer place for oneself; it is both a collective struggle for equality and social justice and an individual pursuit of happiness. In this sense, perhaps home does not h**e to entail a heightened sense of identity and individualism characteristic of a capitalist society; it can also be collective, socialist, participatory and activist. Similarly, intimacy should not be seen as merely private and domestic; it can be public, with help and support for each other, and trust and good will shared among strangers. One ofthe problems with the ‘stay home’ discourse, I would contend, is that it confines intimacy and responsibility within the bourgeois domestic home, often in the form of a heterosexual coupledom with children. It also imagines strangers as enemies and potential sources of contagion. Such an imagination of home undermines communities and society, especially for those who live at the margins of society: the homeless, the elderly, the immigrants, and many more. Fortunately, perhaps the picture is not so grim after all: while we do see selfish beh**iours such as stockpiling with no consideration for other people, we also see mutual help and support within the communities and between strangers. Indeed, a politics and ethics of care is very much needed at a such historic time: not simply care for the self, but care for others, the community, the society, and the non-human world as well.
Let there be no misunderstanding: I am not asking people to le**e home and risk their and other people’s lives during the pandemic. We can still stay indoors or go back to China if needed. After all, taking care of the self is the first step towards taking care of others and the society. However, a reinvigorated imagination of home is certainly needed to depart from the conservative, nationalistic, heteronormative and even homonormative values with which home is often associated. After all, home is only a small part of the big social worldwe live in, and the complex human-nature entanglements we are a part of. Home should be seen as a beginning rather than an end for sociality; it is a becoming rather than a being for our politics and ethics.
Hongwei Bao is an associate professor of media andcultural studies at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is also a research associate at the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts at the Birmingham School of Art. He is author of Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism inPostsocialist China (Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press, 2018) and Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Visual Culture under Postsocialism (Routledge, forthcoming in 2020).