Economic Art
首版「經濟藝術學」
Text／WU Chieh-hsiang 文╱吳介祥
Young artist Wu Chang-Jung used to create ink art but in 2008 at around the time of the financial crisis, her family, which runs an animal feed company, experienced unprecedented difficulties. This forced her father to focus on pig breeding-which had originally been only a subsidiary branch of the family business-as a way of dealing with the crisis. In order to help her parents get through this difficult time, Wu Chang-Jung returned home to help look after the pigs. Her life suddenly changed from that of a student producing works in ink and a member of the literati to a life filled with the daily manual labor of farm work. This dramatic change in circumstances not only led to a major change in Wu’s outlook, but also caused him to start producing work using different media. With everybody writing long articles on and debating the seemingly unreal academic subject of “artistic economics” only to find that this was just one of the chips used in financial game playing, she suddenly began to refer to her art as ”Economic Art.”
Transformed from an art department student into a farm laborer, Wu Chang-Jung’s story could be described as Cinderella in reverse. In the classic fairy tale, the female lead comes from nobility, living in the lap of luxury and dressed in expensive finery. Then one day, she finds herself dressed in rags, her day filled with onerous chores, the victim of some despicable plot and black magic. The question this poses is, ”Which world is real?” This series of the artists’ work encourages all who view it to consider the reality or the logic that underpins the world economy. Behind these worlds, Cinderella appears no longer simply the story about the transformation of a young girl, it also alludes to the fact that so-called economic growth is just a magic trick.
The character and role of the artist is to be found in her arms’ length relationship to reality. On the one hand she was a burden to her parents, on the other she was forced to return home and help them out. It is this that ensures that her art remains reflective in nature rather than overcome by a sense of weakness as a result of difficulties faced. Wu Chang-Jung’s “Pig Flowers” series is both a way of mocking the difficulties faced by the artist himself while touching on the huge and complex global economic meltdown that has occurred beyond the world of art as well as the way in which all living things are connected. She was forced by circumstances to leave her cloistered world and self-justifying environment of art, but even as she took her first tentative steps in the real world, she still found herself bumping into art. As a result, she decided to adopt an aesthetic strategy to deal with an unimaginably cruel world. In this sense, Wu is no longer the tear- and sweat-stained Cinderella, having changed into the fairy godmother, who, with a whisk of her wand, turns difficulties into possibilities and ordinary objects into something magical.
The artist processed her recordings of working on the farm with kaleidoscopic software, using various methods to produce different patterns. Some of these resemble the intricate pattern of a rug; others resemble the automated processes of a factory. Still others resemble light refracted from a cut diamond’s many facets. The artist’s silhouette can occasionally be seen in the work. Sometimes part of a pig’s body can be seen; other times a piece of farm equipment appears. The artist provides information through fleeting images and the sounds of the pigs. Most of these images are colorful, kaleidoscopic flickers and refractions.
The installation is configured in a way that allows the spectator to approach the work the way Google Earth allows the viewer to zoom out and adopt a distant perspective. The spectator can look at the world from the closest possible distance, and then swiftly zoom away from it, holding the distance, aestheticizing the landscape, and leaving behind visible reality.
Chang-jung Wu’s works have two simultaneous functions. One is to distance the spectator from the reality she has recorded, treating it as a form of aesthetic perception that has nothing to do with worldly things. At the same time she wants to focus on these images and materials, superimpose them and refract them, a kind of recycling of the materials of economic activity. She blends animals, meat products, foodstuffs and fodder, with gorgeous and complex imagery, into one audio-visual artifact. But she does not reduce the contradictoriness of the two. Chang-jung Wu uses visual aesthetics to create a microcosm, and has invented her own “kaleidoscopic economics”. At the same time this is the artist’s unique brand of escapist aesthetics.
青年藝術家吳長蓉原來的創作媒材是水墨，但在2008年金融危機之際，家中經營飼料的產業受到嚴重衝擊，父親只好將原為副業的豬隻養殖代替主業，以勉強應付危機，吳長蓉為了幫父母度過危機而回到家中幫忙養豬，體驗了從水墨創作的學生文人生活轉變到農場村婦的勞力生活。這樣的鉅變讓藝術家轉換了心境，也轉換了媒材。當大家都對著“藝術經濟學”這門似是而非的學問長篇大論，卻發現它不過是金融遊戲的籌碼之一時，吳長蓉的作品堪稱在藝術文獻裡，插進了一章「經濟藝術學」。
新版仙履奇緣
從藝術科系的學生成為農村勞工，吳長蓉的歷程像是仙履奇緣的倒敘，女主角原來身分尊貴、寵遇優渥、穿戴無虞，但卻在魔術的錯亂和心術不正者的計算下，一夕之間變成了衣履粗糙、任務繁重的灰姑娘。兩者之間哪一個才是真實世界，既是我們面對藝術家這一系列作品時的問題，其實也是全球經濟的真相與邏輯何在的問題。在這件作品下，仙履奇緣不再只是少女蛻變的故事，而且也比喻了所謂的經濟成長不過是個魔法下的幻象而已。
藝術的特質和角色在於與現實的若即若離的關係，一方面成為一種身外的寄託、另一方面卻也是反身觀照的空間，讓藝術保有反省的力道，卻不因實際的困境而讓人產生無力感、虛脫感。吳長蓉的豬花系列既是對於藝術家自身的困境的揶揄，卻也觸及了藝術之外的龐大和複雜的全球經濟脈動、世界生物鏈的問題。創作者迫於局勢和家計，不得不離開藝術世界這個封閉且自圓其說的環境，卻在現實世界中走出一條路徑，敲叩了藝術界，同時也以美學的策略來對應難堪難忍的現實世界。在這時，吳長蓉自己不再是那淚汗斑斑的灰姑娘，而是那個握有魔術棒的仙子，化艱難為慧黠、化瑣碎為神奇。
萬花筒經濟學的微觀巨視
藝術家將自己在農舍上工作的紀錄做成不同模式的萬花筒軟體處理產生不同的圖案，有些像是圖紋細密的地毯，有些像自動化工廠的流程，有些像切割過的鑽石多角折射反光。作品中偶爾可以看到創作者自己的身影，有時能看到局部的豬隻身體，有時出現了豬舍的設備……藝術家以幾個片段一閃即逝的畫面以及豬隻的叫聲提供資訊，而大部分都是萬花筒色彩斑斕的閃爍和折射。
這系列影像裝置讓人猶如觀看迅速升高拉遠的Google Earth視角，觀眾可以以最近距離觀察這個世界，也可以迅速拉遠，與實境保持距離、將地景美學化，逃離視野可及的現實。
吳長蓉的作品同時具有兩種作用，一方面將觀眾和她所紀錄的現實拉遠，處理為無關世俗的視覺美學；同時，又一再聚焦、重疊、折射這些影像和素材，有如一種資源回收的經濟活動。她將動物、肉品、糧食、飼料和光輝燦爛、繁複華麗的視聽效果結合，但也並未將兩者的矛盾性簡約化。吳長蓉用視覺美學的手法創造出一種微世界的方式，發明了她的「萬花筒經濟學」，這同時也是藝術家獨特的遁世美學。