Chen Di: Ever Since I Lost My Add-On, I Saw Her Everywhere
Writer: 詹姆斯·拉斐尔·塔布什 James Raphael Tabbush
Date: 12/03/2024
Keywords: Speculative documentary, Worldbuilding, alternative centres, decentralised community, image behaviour
“自从我丢了附件，到处都能看见她”这一标题似乎颇为神祕 — 就在几个词的转折间改变了叙事的视角。看似简单的电脑程序的「附件」被拟人化，不仅被赋予了女性特质，更仿佛散布在世界各地，在‘我’与不同生物的偶遇中。为书写方便，下文笔者就简称这部作品为ESILMAISHE:作为一部影像作品，其具体形式同样在各种边界间转换 — 每一次的呈现方式都有所不同。由互动构件组合而成，作品设定在虚构的科学实验室、艺术画廊、电影院和伦敦街头间切换，每次的装置与所生成的情境都不尽相同。我认为这种不确定性和多重性正是当代移动影像作品中某种特定脉络的核心，而陈迪的创作正是这一脉络中一个极具魅力的范例。
The title of this project, Ever Since I Lost My Add-On, I Saw Her Everywhere, is a mysterious one - it shifts perspective in the course of just a few words. My ‘add-on’, which sounds like a simple computer programme, becomes personified as female, and not only personified but also spread around the world, throughout the crowds of different beings ‘I’ encounter. ESILMAISHE, as I will call it for short, operates along similar blurry lines - it is a film which changes every time it is shown, a collage of different interacting elements, and it is shown in the setting of a fictional science laboratory, an art gallery, a cinema and on the streets of London, each time transforming its valences and affects. I consider this slipperiness and multiplicity to be central to a particular strand of contemporary moving image work, of which Chen Di’s practice is a fascinating example.
Ever Since I Lost My Add-On, I Saw Her Everywhere, Chen Di 陈迪, Installation View at St James Church, London,2022
陈迪是生于中国福建的艺术家，毕业于伦敦大学金史密斯学院后定居伦敦。ta的作品常常探索「图像行为」，思考当代数字影像在世界中的运作和「行动」方式，近期的思考更将此连结到全球化文化边缘地带的世界构建。ESILMAISHE是一个庞大三部曲的第一部，其创造出的平行世界，源自但不仅限于艺术家的家乡 — 中国东南沿海城市宁德。
Chen Di is an artist from Fujian, based in London since their MFA at Goldsmiths University of London. Their work has often explored what they call ‘image behaviour’, thinking through the way that contemporary digital images act and move in the world, and more recently tying this into a concern with worldmaking in the peripheral zones of globalised culture. ESILMAISHE is the first part of a large trilogy of works creating parallel worlds growing out of, but not limited to, the artist’s hometown of Ningde, on the South-East coast of China.
Ever Since I Lost My Add-On, I Saw Her Everywhere, Chen Di 陈迪, Still Image, 2022
「能量」是贯穿影片不同版本的关键词。角色「小琳」注册了一项承诺提升能量水平并编辑身体的服务。另一个角色在同一神祕公司「新能源」工作 — 他谈论着漫长的工作时间和企业令人惊叹的潜力，自身却显然已筋疲力尽，同时我们看到取自某种网络推广影片的人造生物材料影像。我们感受到能量仿佛是可以被捕捉和储存的事物，其流动可以被管理和控制。当一位年长女性向我们展示并引导我们体验她的气功及其独特理念时，这似乎又回应了这种控制的概念，即生命本身的能量或许可以被塑造，只要有足够的技巧。
Energy is a word that repeats throughout the film’s different versions. The character ‘Xiao Lin’ signs up for a service that promises to boost her energy levels, as well as to modify her physical form. Another character is working for the same mysterious company called ‘Energ-E’ - he speaks about the long working hours and the amazing potential of the business, clearly exhausted himself, while we see images of artificial biological material taken from pro- motional online videos. We get a sense of energy as something that can be captured and stored, something the flows of which can be managed and controlled. When an older lady guides us through her own idiosyncratic ideas about qi gong, it seems to relate back to this idea of control, the idea that the energy of life itself might be shaped, if only one has enough skill.
Ever Since I Lost My Add-On, I Saw Her Everywhere, Chen Di 陈迪, Still Image, 2022
「食物」作为同样反复出现的意象缠绕在「能量」这一主题周围。当看到影片中疑似纯素或实验室培育的肉类影像时，我试图将此与提升能量或改变身体形态的想法连结。一个孩子被(强迫)喂食的画面，令我们反观我们常常被喂食的,对其生产过程知之甚少的高度加工食品。另外还有两个呈现「食物复合体」不同面向的章节 — 一个缀满成熟橘子的灌木果子掉落，堆了一地，以及一个刚刚被工厂开除的流动劳工拍摄社交媒体帖子的片段 — 发帖者惊喜地发现了在工厂大门外被抛弃的西瓜。这些章节为食物主题增添了复杂性 — 我们身处一个食物往往被理性化、人工生产、并为美学标准而创造的世界，同时又是一个充满自然丰足、过剩、腐烂的世界。
Weaving around the theme of energy is that of food. We often see images of what looks like vegetarian or lab grown meat, and we try internally to connect this with the ideas of boosting one’s energy or changing one’s physical form. Images of a young child being (unwillingly) fed make us think of the ways in which we are so often fed highly processed food that we know little about the making of. There are two other sections which present different aspects of a ‘food-complex’ - an orange bush overflowing with ripe and fallen oranges, and a segment in which a harassed migrant worker films a social media post about finding abandoned watermelons outside the gate of the factory from which she has been summarily fired. These sections add complexity to the theme of food - we are in a world in which food is often rationalised, artificial, created to suit aesthetic criteria, and yet it is also a world of natural abundance, waste, rot and spoilage.
Ever Since I Lost My Add-On, I Saw Her Everywhere, Chen Di 陈迪, Installation View at St James Church, London, 2022
在作品伦敦最早版本的呈现方式中，影像被嵌入了一个场景，电子屏幕连接著排水管道和破损的通风橡胶管，管道末端粉红色的液体泼洒在白色瓷砖上，并与一个长满肉质物体的工业水槽相连，这个水槽偶尔会喷出相同的液体。装置把观者的思绪引向科学实验室、科幻和克朗伯格式的肉体恐怖(body horror)，而影片内容本身似乎却朝着截然不同的方向拉扯。实际上，肉体恐怖中不祥的活性、可憎的肉感和失败实验的氛围并不特别存在于陈迪的影像作品中， 相反，它更具有一种COVID时代的虚拟和侷促感。
Within the film’s original installation setting in London, the film was embedded in a partial environment, connected to pipes and ripped ducting that seemed to have spilled pink-red liquid over white tiles, linked to an industrial sink grown over with a flesh-like substance that every so often spat out this same liquid. The installation directed viewers’ minds towards the science laboratory, science fiction and Cronenbergian body horror, while the film often seems to be pulling in very different directions. In fact, these feelings of creeping animacy, abject fleshiness and failed experiment are not particularly present in the video work, which instead has a kind of jittery, Covid-era sense of the virtual and the confined.
Ever Since I Lost My Add-On, I Saw Her Everywhere, Chen Di 陈迪, Still Image, 2022
陈迪的项目似乎最初源于生命政治的概念或曾经被称为后人类的学科丛集的研究。然而，令我欣赏的是它如何摆脱这些理论类型及其相关情感的局限。作品意识到当我们谈论生命政治时必然也要谈论劳工 — 中国新兴产业中「996」 (或「007」)的‘「卷」’，以及横跨全国、在海康威视自动安全系统把守的大门处申请临时工作的劳动者的脆弱处境。它还将关于培育新生命和维护身体的思考与个体性和群集性的概念连结，向我们展示模拟的人群和连锁反应，包括梦魇般恐怖的人工智能融合生成的人群狂欢图像。正如影片开头的孩子所说: 「这个系统连结到那个。
Chen’s project seems to have started in research around biopolitics, or the disciplinary cluster that used to be called the posthuman. However, what makes it work for me are the ways in which it escapes those genres of research and their associated affects. The work realises that when we talk about biopolitics we also have to talk about labour - the 996 (or 007) grind of China’s new industries - the precarious work of the workers moving around the country and applying for temporary jobs at gates guarded by HikVision automated security systems. It also connects thoughts about growing new life and maintaining bodies with ideas about the singular and the plural, showing us simulated crowds and chain reactions, including nightmarish merged AI forms. As the child at the beginning of the film says, ‘This system connects to that.’
艺术家介绍 Artist’s Bio
陈迪是一个常驻伦敦的艺术创作者。陈的艺术实践跨越多元媒介，融合半虚构纪录片、有机动态雕塑、数字游戏与声音艺术。其最新项目从泛灵论、金融领域、魔法的技术(技术性魔法)、农业及生物科技产业，乃至源自并扩撒于网络的集群性的身体症状，以及家族聚会中窃取并转化概念、方法与叙事。陈迪的作品曾在ICA(伦敦)、Mark Leckey的NTS电台、汉堡Frappant画廊、上海油罐艺术中心，以及釜山超人空间等艺术平台与机构展出。
Chen Di 陈迪 is an artist based in London. Chen’s practice combines speculative fictional documentaries, organic moving sculptures, digital games, and sound. Chen’s latest projects steal and transform ideas, methodologies, and stories from animism, finance, techniques of magic, agriculture and biotechnology industries, internet-oriented mass sociogenic bodily symptoms as well as Chen’s family gatherings. Chen’s work has been part of exhibitions and events in ICA London, Mark Leckey’s monthly NTS show, London/NTS Radio, The Bomb Factory Art Foundation, London, Frappant Galerie, Hamburg, TANK Shanghai, and Space Ubermensch, Busan.
文章作者介绍 Writer’s Bio
詹姆斯·拉斐尔·塔布什是一位常驻伦敦的艺术家、写作者和教育工作者。他曾为《大象杂志》撰文，并入围国际艺术批评奖(IAAC 7)。作为金史密斯大学艺术硕士毕业生，他的移动影像创作倾向于关注数码世界中自我表演的当代文化形式中的情感和情绪。他的策展项目包括位于伦敦的展览空间「管道 (Pipeline)」和艺术小组「暖气(Radiator)」。
James Raphael Tabbush is an artist, writer and educator based in London, UK. He has written for Elephant Magazine and has been nominated for writing prizes including the International Award for Art Criticism (IAAC 7). A graduate of the MFA Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, his moving-image practice tends to focus on affect and emotion within contemporary genres of self-performance in the digital world. His curatorial projects have included the exhibition programme Pipeline and the critique series Radiator.