《實驗一：漂浮的構成》王佩瑄個展 / Formation No. 1: On Levitation

週二- 週五 11:00-19:00
週六 13:30-21:00
週日、週一 特別預約開放！

Tue-Fri 11:00-19:00
Sat 13:30-21:00
Mon-Sun by appointment

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「一」：起始。暗示着接下來的二、三、四、五…。

「漂浮」：一種離地的狀態。雖在半空中，卻相對反映着「地」的實質存在—顯示出脫離／依靠、主體／客體之間「相輔」的矛盾關係。

「構成」：型塑、組成。主體可以是抽象，也可以是具象的。

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台灣：我屬於你。我現在全心全意地對你說，你是我的歸屬，一個好比子宮的地方。

但是。我真的瞭解你嗎？

剛回台灣的時候，我參與了一場場將身體和國家現狀快速激烈結合的事件。實踐。集會。抗議。講座。碰撞的同時，我的心智卻總是在身體的上方靜靜飄浮着，從距離外觀察千萬種紛亂的色彩。

台北的生活，在紅線上來回穿梭，看着城市的面貌一幕幕呼嘯而過，這些景物靜靜地存在着，卻醖釀着千萬則人們和地方的故事。漆成白藍紅綠粉紫黃的生鏽鐵窗，一棟棟斑駁的水泥樓房和在副熱帶盆地氣候下只會發霉變調的骯髒不明顏色瓷磚。綿綿的山丘柔化、點綴着一部巨大的文明機器，不時竄起不祥的高壓電塔和噁爛的仿現代主義建築。我看見一個個獨一無二的地方片段被漸漸抹平成一大灘輪廓模糊得不再重要的東西：這就是一個城市的面貌啊，一個看似親切包容卻抗拒自己多重特質的城市，一個夢想著光明前程卻讓自己的過去和現在匆匆流過的城市。

我有種想跟「疏離感」對質的衝動：一種想跟我對所愛之人、事、物所產生的「慣性疏離感」對質的衝動。我所說的「疏離感」，在體內形成後總是立即引發必須快速「建立關係」的反射意念。史丹利.艾倫那維茲 (Stanley Aronowitz) 在其Working Class Culture in an Electronic Age 一文中提到一種「對從未存在的東西所產生的思愁」(nostalgia for an absent subject)，對我來說，這樣的思愁是一個「替代品」(stand-in)，強大又脆弱，如同泡沫般堆積一個人的慾望、期待，既神聖、又低俗；它如果存在於一個國家，是可以承載全國人民的共同夢想的，如此推斷，能夠同時偽裝卻又揭穿「疏離感」的夢境場域就這樣被建構出來：成為一個家、一個地方、一個○○○的形狀。

我在這裡。但我也在別的地方。

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在美國有七、八年了，一段把「我」的樣子塑造得更清晰、完整的日子。2013年四月，我回到台灣，2013年八月，搬到台北。一連串的遷移安置遷移安置，一種沈沈的、矛盾的疏離感漸漸在「我」裡面形成。那是一種對於現在居住地的抽離感，一種賦予「我」固執又浪漫的孤獨想像的隱退狀態。

我想要進行一場裝置實驗，將這樣思考疏離感的「心境」(mindscape)、「環境」(landscape) 形象化、實體化。心中有股強烈的急迫感，非要動手「建造」出一個能梳理、統整我私密思緒的「實體」場域不可，這會是一個可以不斷堆積、衍生出新故事的場域。

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Formation: a genuine, formal emergence. The creation or configuration of something concrete or abstract.

No. 1: the beginning. A series of “something more” forthcoming. A hint for additional experimentations.

Levitation: the state of hovering, of not touching the ground but undoubtedly implying the true existence of the ground—an inextricable and paradoxical relationship of detachment and reliance, of objectivity and subjectivity.

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Taiwan, I claim you to be my own. Wholeheartedly, I tell it to my face that you are my home, a womb of some sort. But what do I really know about you?

I found myself, upon my reentrance, participating in a series of events that purposefully engages my physical body with the realities of the country. A continuing whirlwind of social movements and civil activism. Protests rallies lectures. My mind, despite everything, hovers a little above my body, observing all colors from a hushed distance.

Living in Taipei, I watch the city pass before me on the train in long intervals. I see the façade of it. The clouded surface that hints at some ten thousand million stories of peoples and places within. Iron grids painted white blue red green pink purple and yellow. Buildings tiled in muted colors of puke that become even more offensive in its chromaticity as the subtropical humidity grinds itself in throughout the basin. Rolling hills and blotches of green dot the incessant flashcards of a giant machine, disrupted by the omnipotent presence of power towers and faux modernist architecture. I see the unique nooks and crannies that slowly blur into one foggy pool of inconsequentiality. It is the face of a city; a city that seems so accommodating yet somehow denies its own idiosyncrasies. A city that dreams of bright, brilliant futures but lets its pasts and presences flow soundlessly by day and night.

There is an urge to confront my own habitual detachment to things dear, accompanied often by the immediate reflex of desiring to relate. Stanley Aronowitz, in Working Class Culture in an Electronic Age, talks about a “nostalgia for an absent subject,” something I interpret as a stand-in for things that hardly was and never will be: a powerful puff that possesses a touch of profanity but is sacred at the same time. If in a nation, it could carry the collective aspiration of the masses. An ideal dreamscape for both disguising and illuminating our own sense of detachment thus emerges.

I am here. But am somewhere else at the same time.

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I have been thinking about my relationship with Taiwan. I always have. Following my return to the country after seven or eight formative years in the United States, and particularly since my relocation to the city of Taipei, however, I have noticed a deep, contradicting well of detachment brooding inside of me. A detachment towards this place I now live in. It is a withdrawal that gives rise to a stubborn yet romantic sense of solitude in my personhood.

I want to shape and materialize this somewhat abstract mindscape/landscape. There exists in me a strong need to construct a site that rationalizes and organizes my thoughts, a site both physical and cerebral that emerges from a private, personal place: a site for perpetual storytelling.

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特別感謝：竹圍工作室、陳正勳、Joan Chang、蕭麗虹、謝垂蓮、Haynes Riley

Special thanks to: Bamboo Curtain Studio, Chen Cheng-Hsun, Joan Chang, Margaret Shiu, Cindy Hsieh, and Haynes Rile