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.
在過去幾年裡, 我製作了一個短片影集; 稱為「商場廢墟實錄」。 紀錄下來的廢棄商場影片, 算起來有 32 支。 對於不太了解甚麼是 商場廢墟的各位, 其實我指的 是那種逐漸沒落的購物商場。 它們不是裡面沒幾家商店, 就是門口羅雀; 要不然就是被棄置, 慢慢變成廢墟的商場。 潘尼沒生意了。 (美國平價連鎖百貨)。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
我從 2015 年早期, 開始錄製這些影集, 那時候我的人生有點黯淡, 不想再碰攝影機。 我把攝影機收起來, 然後就不再拍了。 直到 2015 年,我想替 歐溫斯商場錄一支紀錄片, 歐溫斯購物商場 在 1986 開始營業。 我應該沒記錯, 因為開幕那天我在現場。 我跟家人一起去, 還有巴爾的摩市的所有親人, 抵達時,車子繞了大約 45 分鐘; 光是為了找一個停車位置。 所以你們可想而知今天 盛況已難重現。
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.
我十幾歲時的第一個商場工作, 是在一家「赫爾門運動世界」 運動器材店打工。 也許你們還記得。
(Singing) Herman's World of Sports.
赫爾門運動世界… (唱廣告歌)
You guys remember that?
還記得嗎?
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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 --
後來我又在一家女士鞋店工作; 一家皮革商品店工作; 也在一家錄影帶店工作, 但我不是做「零售藝術」的材料,
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
I got fired from every single job.
我幾乎做到哪裡就被炒到哪裡。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
在那段低薪打工的空檔裡, 我跟其他年輕小伙一樣, 在 1990 年代, 我順手牽羊。 我只是開個玩笑啦。 其實我只是跟朋友在商場沒事閒晃。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Everyone's like, "Oh my God, what kind of talk is this?"
你們就像這樣, 「我的天!這是甚麼鬼演講啊?」
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
在商場閒晃很有趣, 但有的時候也很憋, 像是晚上跟一個 40 歲失業、 成天泡商場的傢伙合抽一支菸, 而且他晚上還擦了黑色唇膏; 在那領最低工資工作的休息時間裡。 (笑聲)
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.
就在我站在這裡的同時, 歐溫斯購物商場已經被清空了, 只等著大鐵球來拆他。 我上次去的時間是傍晚, 剛好是他們決定歇業的三天前。 感覺有點像… 他們從未對外宣布歇業的事情, 當時心中已經有種不祥的預兆, 似乎有甚麼重大事情要發生的感覺, 好像已經走到窮途末路的感覺。 走過商場令人感到很毛骨悚然。 讓我放給你們看。
(Music)
(音樂)
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.
所以當我開始錄製 「商場廢墟實錄」時, 我把它上傳到 YouTube, 當時想或許人們有興趣看, 坦白說,我並不知道 其他人會有熱情, 將這種死氣沉沉、 郁悶的東西分享出去, 但是很顯然我錯了, 因為一大堆人開始留言。 開剛始的留言有點像是 「天啊!那是我小時候常去的商場, 怎麼搞的?」 然後也有人這樣說: 「我家附近有家購物商場要關了, 你們應該來拍點影片。」 所以我開始遊歷中大西洋地區, 拍攝這些死亡的大賣場。 有些是還開業的。 有些是被放棄的。 那些被拋棄的商場很難進去, 但是我總是有辦法混進去。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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 --
那些仍然開業的商場, 他們總是做些詭異的事; 好像快要死掉似的。 他們留下三家商店, 裝潢得很漂亮, 看起來營業很正常的樣子。 舉個例, 你看到的是一家裡面沒東西的商店, 他們把門拉下來。 像歐溫斯購物商場, 把門用防水布蓋起來。 沒錯吧? 他們還有一張廣告圖片, 上面的女士看起來很開心, 手上拿著女襯衫 看起來像這樣…
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
And then there's a guy standing next to her, with, like, an espresso cup, and he's like --
身邊站著一個人,手上有… 一杯濃縮咖啡,看起是這樣…
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
And it says, "What brings you today?"
上面還寫: 「甚麼風把你吹過來的呢?」
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
I wanted to be scared and depressed. Thank you.
我一點都不想被嚇到和沮喪。 謝謝喔!
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?
然後影片的留言開始流進來, 來自國內各地,還有世界各地。 我開始考慮把這件事做得具有意義, 但我必須更有創意,因為我在想, 觀眾願意花多久, 看我拍一間空無一物的商場呢?
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
So the original episodes I filmed with an iPhone. So I'd walk through the mall with an iPhone, and, you know. Like that.
起初的想法是利用 iPhone 來拍攝, 所以我手拿 iPhone , 像這樣子拍。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
後來保全… 因為賣場不希望有人拍攝… 所以保全過來對我說: 「把它收起來」。 於是我就說:「好的」。 所以我必須有點創意和偷偷摸摸的, 於是開始利用 隱藏式攝影機和其他技巧, 來拍到我要的東西。 基本上要做的是 把它製作成影片, 讓它看起來像是親身經歷的影片, 像是你坐著 戴上耳機看著螢幕; 就像是親臨現場一樣, 跟玩電腦遊戲一樣。
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.
我也加入音樂效果, 和建立「蒸氣波」 網路音樂的藝術家合作, 蒸氣波是一種音樂類型, 在 2010 年代網路社群中冒出來, 像這樣。
(Music)
(音樂)
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.
創作者的名字是 「輕意識」(Disconscious) 從他的專輯《全像廣場》挑出的。 (Hologram Plaza) 搜尋一下你就可聽到 更多他們的音樂, 蒸氣波不只是一種藝術形式, 更像是一種運動, 它是種虛無主義的、很焦慮的意思, 但是聽起來很舒服。 以審美的眼光看, 它描述的是那種無能為力的感觸, 有點像失業住在你父母的地下室, 吃拉麵的那種失落感。 蒸氣波曲風代表這個世代的慾望, 想要表達他們的絕望, 與網路誕生前的世代相似, 坐在商場內飲食區座位上那樣。
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.
我最喜歡去的購物商場, 我去過的, 是位於德州聖體市的日出購物商場。 小時候我最喜歡去看電影, 我一遍又一遍的看。 其中我最喜歡的電影是 《比利金傳奇》。 在座看過那支影片的人, 都知道那是一部很棒的電影。 我愛它。 主角海倫.史萊特 和克利斯汀.史萊特── 你們可能不知道,他們不是親戚。 很多人以為他們是兄妹,其實不是。 總之日出購物商場 被當成影片中的場景。 現在那個購物商場 跟 1984 年完全一樣。 我講的是 32 年前的事, 讓我秀給你們看。
(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.
(影片) 丹.貝爾: 這是比利金跨過噴水池的情形, 哈畢.派亞特的朋友正追著她, 她跳過這裡。 你們可以看到這裡的畫面, 就是現在的樣貌, 真的很難以相信。 我的意思是,它們幾乎完全沒變。 他們掉到水池中, 然後她跑上樓去, 這個畫面很棒,整個場面都看得到。
Dan Bell: I love that so much.
丹:我愛死那些了。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
我總是在想, 假如我有一間廢棄商場的話… 為甚麼們不接納他們原有的外貌呢? 保留吧檯的原樣, 或在美食區放些素食, 再邀請一些富翁和文青, 來這邊吃吃喝喝, 我保證三周內, H&M 和 Levi's 潮牌 一定會競相入駐, 我不曉得為何他們不那樣做, 但是顯然的, 它只是一個念頭,整天在腦中轉。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Anyway, in closing --
總之,我要結尾了,
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
When they first asked me to do this talk, I said, "Do you have the right person?"
他們一開始請我來演講時, 我說: 「你沒找錯人吧?」
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
These talks are supposed to be kind of inspiring and --
因為這些演講應該要激勵人心…
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
我還記得, 三、四年前我把攝影機收起來了, 然後它又把我帶去那些購物商場, 讓我能夠再度受到啟發。 而且見到我的觀眾, 和來自世界各處的信息對我說: 「天!我超愛你的那些影片!」 真的難以置信。 我甚至無以言喻, 作為一個藝術家, 這是多麼令人滿足的一件事。 如果你們一年前告訴我說, 我有一天會站在這個講台上, 向你們這麼棒的人演講, 我絕對不會相信。 我滿懷卑微, 並充滿感恩。
Thank you very much.
謝謝你們。
(Applause)
(掌聲)