第四屆 城市行動藝術節─相遇：尋訪遊樂場

前言

過去三年，「城市行動藝術節」企圖用藝術實踐，勾勒城市文化藍圖。《台北有機層》(The Organic Layer_Taipei)、《台北城市行動》(Taipei on the Move)、《城市風景》(City Landscape)是城市行動藝術節的三部曲。第一部曲從非法聚落探討社群與領地的認同和價值；第二部曲表達對某個公共議題或特定社群的關注，尋找群眾、生活環境及城市空間之間的連結；第三部曲選擇在台北啤酒工場進行的在地創作計畫，隱喻城市工廠與居民和都市發展的共構性。

「當代藝術的挑戰是什麼？」這個大栽問主宰了上個世紀的藝壇，至今論戰未休。《台北有機層》(The Organic Layer_Taipei)、《台北城市行動》(Taipei on the Move)、《城市風景》(City Landscape)以「城市」為軸線，彰顯藝術與社會、歷史、文化之間的脈動。

當今的藝術創作不再只是呈現烏扥邦式的現實，它具備某種社會性格，及概括整個現存於我們文化中的各種活動與現象。同時，它可以指涉生活的方式與社會思潮的演譯。而選擇以『城市』作為藝術操練的介殼，是回應個體或群體經驗，對所涉及的場所、社區、環境、歷史與文化賦予關照，探索城市的心靈地圖。

因而，我們住在城市裡，在其中生活、工作、觀看、行動，「台北城市行動藝術節」用藝術談論自己的城市。但也是透過人的實踐，不斷地書寫城市。‘人性思維’是這一系列藝術計畫的核心價值，它包容了驚奇和差異，而「城市」正是實現的場景，是我們和他人相遇的地方，是社會活動的交流之所。

城市與記憶

上個世紀後半葉，經過二次大戰的洗劫，城鎮的擴張，形成獨特的新興‘都會文化’(urban culture)現象。交通的便利性加上電子通訊時代的降臨，人們開始進行無國界的‘社會交流’。而現代化、科技化共構的便利城市，都指向這樣的都會文化現象：進步、變動、機動、短暫；同時，消費與流行文化也高調唱和著。

我們擁抱的是現在即是未來甜美果實的美好烏扥邦哲學，對於未來的憧憬逃避了面對過去和現在的記憶。於是，片斷、病態、無知的狀態，散發充滿失序的社會記憶的回顧。當懷舊成為一種都會的時尚美學，舊的事物只是生活裡的‘裝飾品’？或者活在城市之下的我們，可以透過它的轉變，懷舊地回望它的過去？

義大利小說家卡爾維諾(Italo Calvino)在以「城市」為主題的作品《看不見的城市》中，說起組構一個城市的並不是它的物理特質；比如，有幾座高樓、鐵塔或街道、拱廊是什麼模樣？而是空間的量度與過去的事件之間的關係。城市不會訴說它的過去，只是包容著過去，在每個小地方留下了刻痕。

《相遇：尋訪遊樂場》

《相遇：尋訪遊樂場》選擇「遊樂場」，這個在不同的城市有著同一個地點的地方，它是許多人成長的經驗與記憶所在。就社會而言，它具有‘紀念性’，在城市演進的過程中，仍然是那個存在我們心中的場所。傑夫•凱利認為「一個場所是由一個地點中，一些個人和大眾共同的價值觀，經過長時間的維護而形成記憶所緊密結合而成。一個場所要透過人們的記憶而得以保存；相對而言，一個被遺忘的場所，就成了備受蹂躪的地點。一個場所的保存，在根本上，是屬於心裡層面的；就社會而言，則具有紀念性。」

我們亦試圖從藝術和科技的觀點，探討問題。的確，當代藝術藉助科技或媒體新發明的器材來創作，與城市人文產生對應關係，其美學觀早已脫離了現代主義之前以藝術家為主的單純自我，取而代之的是融合社會意識與觀眾感知的相互能動經驗。城市中的景觀、觀眾與藝術作品間的關係與以往的最大不同處便在於：「藝術作品須透過觀眾的參與經驗，才得以延續或累積作品意義」，而其交互主體性（Inter Subjectivity）精神，才是城市與新媒體藝術相互輝映的最大特質。

藉此，數位科技中所存有的時間及空間，分解了真實世界的想像，和遊樂場透過「遊戲」來尋找冒險、刺激、遊樂的動機連結，就像在無重力的太空之中進行一場身體經驗的幻覺，無關乎年齡與性別的異同，巧妙地表現出遊戲目的中不確定性的狀態特徵。

再從「相遇」的主題切入，形塑藝術品的過程與民眾的介入，發展所謂「互動模式」的創作觀，觀眾成為參與其中的創作行為和元素。我們更要提問，在參與和轉化之中，依據個體不同的基礎心理需求，觀眾的經驗感知為何？藝術轉化了什麼？只是一場情境塑造？而短暫的交感經驗是否能夠持續？

本展覽策劃試圖以數位媒體創作與裝置藝術為主軸，以仍在運作中的台北市立兒童育樂中心為場所，藉由藝術家的在地創作及民眾參與，深入探測城市的另一種魅力，透過時空的轉變，尋訪「遊樂場」。而藝術家在「遊樂場」的場所進行創作，就必須準備好面對公眾共同擁有的文化層次，面對公眾共同的價值觀；相對而言，這樣的藝術創作涵構一種‘互為主體性’(inter-subjectivity)的關係美學，事件、物品、形式、造型、空間、場所、人共構一個主題，彼此建立對話與連結。

The 4th City on the Move Art Festival
From Encounter to Encounter: Expounding the Playground

Introduction

Over the past three years, the City on the Move Art Festival Series has attempted to sketch out a cultural blueprint of Taipei by engaging in art in the real world. Thus far, “The Organic Layer_Taipei”, “Taipei on the Move” and “City Landscape” have formed a trilogy of City on the Move festivals. In its first year, “The Organic Layer_Taipei” took a settlement of illegally constructed houses as its starting point, from which it explored how identity and values are connected to community and territory. In its second year, “Taipei on the Move” expressed a concern for several specific public issues or segments of society, seeking out connections between groups, living environments and city spaces. The third part of the trilogy chose an old brewery known as the Taipei Plant for a site-specific art project metaphorically comparing an urban factory to the collective structural relationship of people and the city’s development.

“What are the real challenges of contemporary art?” This huge question cast a long shadow over the art world of the previous century. To this day, debate over the issue has not ceased. The central theme of “The Organic Layer_Taipei,” “Taipei on the Move” and “City Landscape” was to reveal the pulse that drives art, society, history and culture.

Contemporary artistic creation is no longer limited to the expression of a utopian version of reality. It possesses a certain social character, and encompasses all varieties of activities and phenomena that exist throughout our culture. At the same time, it can serve to deduce a way of life or a mode of thinking in society. And choosing “the city” as the exoskeleton for artistic endeavor is a response to individual or collective experience. It shines a spotlight on the venues, neighborhoods, environments, history and culture that an art project involves, and explores the spiritual map of the city.

We live, work, observe and move in the city. City on the Move undertakes a discussion about our city through art. But when people put art into action, they also engage in an unending act of depicting the city. “The thinking of humanity” is the core value of this series of art projects. It encompasses surprise and disparity, and “the city” is the place where these are manifested. The city is the place where we encounter others. It is the place where the actions of society occur.

The City and Its Memory

Following the widespread destruction of World War II, the latter half of the previous century witnessed the rebuilding and expansion of cities and towns. This gave way to a unique and unprecedented phenomenon, “urban culture.” With convenient modes of transportation and the arrival of the age of electronic communications, people began to engage in social exchanges unrestricted by national borders. Modernization and technological advances afforded an urban lifestyle of convenience, which in turn yielded an urban culture typified by progress, change, mechanization and impermanence. Meanwhile, consumer and pop culture also rose to prominence.

What we have embraced are the sweet fruits of a beautiful utopian philosophy of the future. Yet with our longing for the future, we have avoided addressing our past and present memories. Thus, a state of fragmentation, morbidity and ignorance radiates a form of recollection filled with disordered social memories. When nostalgia becomes an aesthetic fashion, are old things merely decorative items in life? Or can we who live in the city use its transformations to fondly recall its past? In his work Invisible Cities, the Italian novelist Italo Calvino suggested that a city is formed not by its material features – for example, how many high-rises, skyscrapers or thoroughfares it has, or the appearance of its arcades – but by the relationship between the measurement of its spaces and its past events. A city does not narrate its own history, but merely preserves its past, in marks left behind in every nook and cranny.

From Encounter to Encounter: Expounding the Playground

The venue for this site-specific art project will be the Taipei Children's Recreation Center, an extensive grounds for children with adjacent amusement park. In different cities around the world, the playground resides in exactly the same place – the childhood experiences and the memories of many people. For society, it serves as a memorial: throughout a city’s evolution, it remains as it exists in our hearts. The art critic Jeff Kelley suggests that a place takes shape in a certain geographical locale through the close merging of the values of several people with the collective values of the general public, forming memories when maintained over a long period of time. A place is preserved through people’s memories. Correspondingly, a forgotten place becomes a ruin. The preservation of a place, fundamentally, occurs at a psychological level. In society, it is commemorative in nature.

This on-site project will also attempt to explore questions from the perspectives of art and technology. Undeniably, contemporary art, aided by technology or the newly invented mechanisms of media, has produced a corresponding relationship with urban society. Early on, its aesthetic perspective moved away from the simplistic concept of self based around the artist that existed prior to modernism. What has taken its place is a mutual, active experience incorporating social consciousness and the sensations of the participating public. In terms of the relationship that exists among the cityscape, the visitor and art, the greatest difference between the present and the past is that an artwork’s meaning is extended or accumulated only through the visitor’s participatory experience, and a spirit of inter-subjectivity is the most significant feature of the mutual illumination and reflection that takes place between the city and new media art.

Thus, the time and space that exist within digital technology have dissolved the real world as we perceive it to be. And through “games,” the playground seeks out the combined impulse of adventure, stimulation and amusement, as if a hallucination of an outer-space suspension of gravity, regardless of differences in age or gender, inventively serving as a symbolic expression of the state of uncertainty that exists regarding the goal of game-playing.

Moreover, using the theme of “encounters” as an entry point for exploration, the process of artistic creation and the inclusion of the public develop a creative perspective based on an interactive model, in which the visitors themselves become a form of participatory creative behavior and an element in the artwork. Furthermore, we must ask, in the midst of participation, based on different basic individual psychological needs, what are the visitors’ experiential sensations? Given the transitive nature of the artwork, what relations outside the field of art are created? Is it merely an artificial construct of circumstances? Or can the temporary experiences of exchanged sensations be sustained?

The curatorial plan for this exhibition is to attempt an in-depth survey of a different aspect of the city’s attractiveness, and to explore the meaning of “the playground” through alterations in time, using digital media art and installation art as central motifs, with site-specific creations by artists and with public participation.

The Taipei Children's Recreation Center will serve as the venue. As artists undertake creations in a playground, they must prepare to address the cultural layer of the general public, and the public’s commonly held values. Correspondingly, the formation of creating art will be achieved in the context of inter-subjectivity. Events, objects, forms, shapes, spaces, places and people will collectively form a central theme, and will establish a dialogue and a set of mutual connections.