In the last couple of years, I have produced what I call "The Dead Mall Series," 32 short films and counting about dead malls. Now, for those of you who are not familiar with what a dead mall is, it's basically a shopping mall that has fallen into hard times. So it either has few shops and fewer shoppers, or it's abandoned and crumbling into ruin. No sale at Penny's.
在过去的几年里, 我制作了所谓的“废弃的商场系列”。 32部关于废弃商场的短片, 数量还在增加。 如果你们不熟悉什么是废弃的商场, 它就是一座商场, 陷入了艰难的境地。 所以要么它里面的商店和顾客越来越少, 要么它被弃置,坍塌成一片废墟。 Penny's不打折了。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
I started producing this series in early 2015 after going through kind of a dark period in my life where I just didn't want to create films anymore. I put my camera away and I just stopped. So in 2015, I decided to make a short film about the Owings Mills Mall. Owings Mills Mall opened in 1986. I should know because I was there on opening day. I was there with my family, along with every other family in Baltimore, and you had to drive around for 45 minutes just to find a parking spot. So if you can imagine, that's not happening at the malls today.
我开始制作这个系列的时候 是2015年初, 在我经历了人生中的低谷之后, 我那时候不想再做电影了, 我收起了相机, 直接甩手不干了。 在2015年,我决定做一个 介绍Owings Mills商场的短片。 Owings Mills商场开业于1986年。 我应该知道这个, 因为开业那天我就在现场。 我和我的家人一起, 和巴尔的摩的每家每户一起, 你得开车绕来绕去 45分钟, 就为了找到一个停车位。 所以你能想象, 今天的任何一个商场开业 都不会再有这样的盛况了。
My first mall job that I had as a teenager was at a sporting goods store called Herman's World of Sports. Maybe you remember.
我少年时期的第一份商场的工作 是在一家叫“Herman的体育世界”的 运动用品店里。 可能你记得。
(Singing) Herman's World of Sports.
(唱)Herman的体育世界。
You guys remember that?
你们记得这个吗?
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Yeah, so I worked in a lady's shoe store. I worked in a leather goods store, and I also worked in a video store, and not being one who was very fond of the retail arts --
是的,我在女鞋店里工作过。 也在皮革制品店里工作过, 还在影像店里工作过, 作为一个并不是很喜欢 销售艺术的人——
(Laughter)
(笑声)
I got fired from every single job.
每一份工作我都被炒鱿鱼了。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
In between these low-paying retail jobs, I did what any normal teenager did in the 1990s. I shoplifted. I'm just kidding. I hung out with my friends at the mall.
在这些薪水低廉的销售工作中, 我做了90年代每一个正常的青少年 都会做的事。 我偷东西了。 我开玩笑的。 我和我的朋友在商场里逛。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Everyone's like, "Oh my God, what kind of talk is this?"
你们可能觉得,“我的天呐, 这是什么演讲啊?”
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Hanging out at the mall could be fun, but it could be really lame, too, like sharing a cigarette with a 40-year-old unemployed mall rat who has put on black lipstick for the night while you're on your break from your crappy minimum wage job.
逛商场可能会很愉快, 但是也可能很没品, 比如和40岁的无业游民 分享一根香烟, 而他昨天晚上还涂了黑色口红, 而那时候你刚从最低 工资的工作中歇口气。
As I stand here today, Owings Mills has been gutted and it's ready for the wrecking ball. The last time I was there, it was in the evening, and it was about three days before they closed the mall for good. And you kind of felt -- they never announced the mall was closing, but you had this sort of feeling, this ominous feeling, that something big was going to happen, like it was the end of the road. It was a very creepy walk through the mall. Let me show you.
今天我站在这里的时候, Owings Mills已经被彻底清空, 拆迁的大锤已经准备好了。 我最后一次去那里的时候是个傍晚, 大概是他们关闭商场的三天前。 你感觉好像—— 商场倒闭的消息从未公开, 但你就是有这种感觉, 这种不祥的预感, 有什么事要发生了, 就像一条路走到了尽头。 我在商场里走过了一段非常可怕的路。 我给你们看一下。
(Music)
(音乐)
So when I started producing "The Dead Mall Series," I put the videos up onto YouTube, and while I thought they were interesting, frankly I didn't think others would share the enthusiasm for such a drab and depressing topic. But apparently I was wrong, because a lot of people started to comment. And at first the comments were like -- basically like, "Oh my God, that's the mall from my childhood. What happened?" And then I would get comments from people who were like, "There's a dead mall in my town. You should come and film it." So I started to travel around the mid-Atlantic region filming these dead malls. Some were open. Some were abandoned. It was kind of always hard to get into the ones that were abandoned, but I somehow always found a way in.
当我开始制作“废弃的商场系列”时, 我把这些视频放在了YouTube上, 当时我觉得它们很有趣, 可是说实话我不觉得 别人对于一个如此 单调而压抑的话题也会感兴趣。 但是很显然我错了, 很多人开始评论留言。 一开始留言是—— 基本上都是“哦我的上帝, 这是我小时候就在的商场。 发生了什么?” 然后我开始收到人们的留言, “我们这儿也有个倒闭的商场, 你应该来拍一拍。” 于是我开始在中大西洋地区往来, 拍摄这些倒闭的商场。 有些还开着门。 有些已经被遗弃了。 想进入那些被遗弃的商场有点困难, 但是我总能找到办法进去。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
The malls that are still open, they always do this weird thing -- like the dead malls. They'll have three stores left, but they try to spruce it up to make it appear like things are on the up-and-up. For example, you'll have an empty store and they bring the gate down. So at Owings Mills, for example, they put this tarp over the gate. Right? And it's got a stock photo of a woman who is so happy and she's holding a blouse, and she's like --
那些还开着门的商场, 他们总会做一样的奇怪事情—— 像倒闭的商场一样, 他们会留下三家商店, 但是他们会尽量好好装扮, 让这几家店看起来 蒸蒸日上的样子。 比如, 你会看到一家空空荡荡的商店, 大门被拉下来了。 在Owings Mills,比如说, 他们给大门罩上防水布, 对吧? 然后上面有一张宣传照片, 一个看起来非常开心的女人, 她拿着一件衬衫, 就像这样——
(Laughter)
(笑声)
And then there's a guy standing next to her, with, like, an espresso cup, and he's like --
然后她旁边站着一个男人,拿着 一个咖啡杯,他就这样——
(Laughter)
(笑声)
And it says, "What brings you today?"
然后照片还写着,“哪阵风把你吹来了?”
(Laughter)
(笑声)
I wanted to be scared and depressed. Thank you.
我是想要觉得害怕压抑的好吗, 拜托。
So the comments just kept pouring in on the videos, from all over the country, and then all over the world. And I started to think, this could really be something, but I had to get creative, because I'm like, how long are people going to sit and watch me waddling through an empty mall?
所以评论一直大量地涌来, 堆积在我的这些视频下面。 评论来自全国各地, 后来甚至覆盖到全世界。 这让我开始思考,这可能是个好事, 但是我必须有创意,因为, 人们坐在那里看我在空荡荡的 商场里晃悠,能看多久?
(Laughter)
(笑声)
So the original episodes I filmed with an iPhone. So I'd walk through the mall with an iPhone, and, you know. Like that.
一开始的几集, 我是用苹果手机录下来的, 我拿着手机在商场里走来走去, 就像这样。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
And security -- because malls, they don't like photography -- so the security would come up and be like, "Put that away," and I'm like, "OK." So I had to get creative and sneaky, so I started using a hidden camera and different techniques to get the footage that I needed, and basically what I wanted to do was make the video like it was a first-person experience, like you are sitting -- put your headphones on watching the screen -- it's like, you're there in the video, like a video game, basically.
保安们——因为这些商场, 他们不欢迎摄影—— 所以保安们就走过来说,“把那个收起来。” 然后我就说,“好好好。” 所以后来我必须更有想象力,更狡猾, 我开始用隐藏摄像头和不同的技术 来获取我需要的素材。 基本上我想做的, 就是制作这个视频, 会像第一人称角度的经历, 就像你坐着—— 戴着耳机,看着屏幕—— 你就感觉自己在视频里面, 基本上就在玩视频游戏。
I also started to use music, collaborating with artists who create music called vaporwave. And vaporwave is a music genre that emerged in the early 2010s among internet communities. Here's an example.
我也开始用音乐, 和一些制作蒸汽波音乐的艺术家合作。 蒸汽波是一种音乐类型, 从2010年初开始在网络上流行。 这里有一段。
(Music)
(音乐)
That's by an artist named Disconscious from an album he did called "Hologram Plaza." So if you look that up, you can hear more of those tunes. Vaporwave is more than an art form. It's like a movement. It's nihilistic, it's angsty, but it's somehow comforting. The whole aesthetic is a way of dealing with things you can't do anything about, like no jobs, or sitting in your parents' basement eating ramen noodles. Vaporwave came out of this generation's desire to express their hopelessness, the same way that the pre-internet generation did sitting around in the food court.
这是一位名叫Disconscious的 艺术家制作的, 在他的专辑《全息广场》中收录。 如果你搜索一下, 会听到更多的这种曲调。 蒸汽波不仅是一种艺术形式, 它更像是一场运动。 它是无政府主义的,它是焦虑的, 但是它也是舒缓的。 整个的艺术都是一种 面对你无能为力之事的方式, 比如失业,比如坐在你父母的 地下室里吃方便面。 蒸汽波被这一代人用来表达他们的绝望, 就像互联网出现前的人们 在美食广场里呆坐着一样。
One of my favorite malls I've been to is in Corpus Christi, and it's called the Sunrise Mall. When I was a kid, my favorite thing to do was watch movies, and I used to watch movies over and over and over again. And one of my favorite films was "The Legend of Billie Jean." Now, for those of you who have seen "The Legend of Billie Jean," you'll know that it's a great film. I love it. And Helen Slater and Christian Slater -- and if you didn't know, they are not related. Many people thought that they were brother and sister. They're not. But anyway, Sunrise Mall was used in the film as a filming location. The mall is exactly the same as it was in 1984. We're talking 32 years later. Let me show you.
我最喜欢的商场之一, 在我去过的商场里面, 是在Corpus Christi一家 名叫日出商场的地方。 在我小的时候, 我最喜欢做的事就是看电影, 我会把电影来来回回反复地看。 而我最喜欢的电影之一 是《比利金传奇》。 你们当中看过《比利金传奇》的人, 都知道这是部伟大的电影, 我很喜欢。 海伦·斯雷特和克里斯蒂安·斯雷特—— 如果你不知道, 他们其实没有血缘关系。 很多人以为他们是兄妹,但其实不是。 总之,日出商场作为拍摄地之一 出现在这部电影里。 日出商场和1984年的样子一模一样。 已经32年以后了,让我给你们看看。
(Video) Dan Bell: And here's Billie Jean running across the fountain, being chased by Hubie Pyatt's friends. And she jumps over here. And you can see the shot right here is what it looks like today. It's pretty incredible. I mean, honestly, it's exactly the same. And there they are falling in the fountain, and she runs up the stairs. This is a nice shot of the whole thing here.
(视频)丹·贝尔:比利金跑过喷泉, 被胡比·派特的朋友们追着。 她从这里跳过去。 你能看到这里的镜头, 就和今天看起来一样。 这很神奇。 我是说,真的,完全一样。 还有这里他们落进喷泉里, 她顺着楼梯跑上去。 这里的镜头把一切都拍得很好。
Dan Bell: I love that so much.
丹·贝尔:我太爱这个了。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
I always think in my head, if I owned a dead mall -- why don't they embrace their vintage look? Put in a bar, like, put vegan food in the food court and invite millennials and hipsters to come and drink and eat, and I guarantee you within three weeks H&M and Levi's will be banging on the door trying to get space. I don't know why they don't do this, but apparently, it's only in my mind, it goes all day.
我一直在脑海里想, 如果我有一座倒闭的商场—— 为什么不让他们 保留那些原始的样子呢? 开家酒吧, 在美食广场开一家素食店, 邀请千禧一代和嬉皮士们 来吃吃喝喝, 我跟你保证三周以内, H&M和李维斯都会砸着门想进来开店。 我不知道他们为什么不这么做, 但是很显然, 这只是我的想象,整天都这样。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Anyway, in closing --
总而言之——
(Laughter)
(笑声)
When they first asked me to do this talk, I said, "Do you have the right person?"
当他们请我来做这个演讲的时候, 我说, “你们确定没找错人?”
(Laughter)
(笑声)
These talks are supposed to be kind of inspiring and --
这些演讲应该是发人深省的,而且——
(Laughter)
(笑声)
I remembered something, though. I put my camera down three or four years ago, and it took going to these malls for me to be inspired again. And to see my audience and people from all over the world writing me and saying, "God, I love your videos," is incredible. I don't know how to even explain it, as an artist, how fulfilling that is. If you would have told me a year ago that I would be standing on this stage talking to all of you wonderful people, I would have never believed it. I am humbled and so appreciative.
有的事情我还是记得的。 我三四年前放下了摄像机, 走过了这些商场 才再一次振奋起来。 看到我的观众们, 还有全球各地给我留言的人们说, “天啊,我爱你的视频,” 这感觉棒极了。 我甚至不知道怎么解释, 作为一名艺术家, 这是多么有成就感的事。 如果你一年前告诉我, 我会站在这个舞台上, 给你们这些超棒的人演讲, 我根本不会相信。 我很惭愧, 并且非常感激。
Thank you very much.
谢谢大家。
(Applause)
(掌声)