I want to start with a question. Where does an artwork begin? Now sometimes that question is absurd. It can seem deceptively simple, as it was when I asked the question with this piece, "Portable Planetarium," that I made in 2010. I asked the question: "What would it look like to build a planetarium of one's own?" I know you all ask that every morning, but I asked myself that question. And as an artist, I was thinking about our effort, our desire, our continual longing that we've had over the years to make meaning of the world around us through materials. And for me, to try and find the kind of wonder, but also a kind of futility that lies in that very fragile pursuit, is part of my art work.
我想先从一个问题开始。 "一个艺术品从何而来?" 有时候这个问题听起来很可笑。 它可能看起来很简单, 就像当我对着自己创作于 2010年的“便携式天文馆” 问出问题的时候。 我问的是: “建立一个自己的天文馆 会是什么样子?” 我知道你们每天早上 都会问自己一个问题, 但我会问自己那个问题。 而且作为一个艺术家, 我考虑的是我们的付出, 我们的欲望, 我们这几年持续的向往: 通过素材让我们周围的世界 变得有意义。 对于我,去试图找到一种奇迹, 和一种脆弱追求下的徒劳, 是我的艺术工作的一部分。
So I bring together the materials I find around me, I gather them to try and create experiences, immersive experiences that occupy rooms, that occupy walls, landscapes, buildings. But ultimately, I want them to occupy memory. And after I've made a work, I find that there's usually one memory of that work that burns in my head. And this is the memory for me -- it was this sudden kind of surprising experience of being immersed inside that work of art. And it stayed with me and kind of reoccurred in my work about 10 years later.
我把周围能找到的素材 聚集在一起, 试着去创造体验, 能够充斥房间的, 能够蔓延四壁、景观 和建筑的沉浸式体验。 但是最终,我想它们占据回忆。 每当我完成一个作品后, 我发现通常有一段记忆 在我脑中挥之不去。 那个记忆对我—— 是一种突然的, 沉浸在艺术作品中 所获得的惊喜的经历。 它一直跟随着我, 并在之后的大概十年 反复出现在我的工作中。
But I want to go back to my graduate school studio. I think it's interesting, sometimes, when you start a body of work, you need to just completely wipe the plate clean, take everything away. And this may not look like wiping the plate clean, but for me, it was. Because I had studied painting for about 10 years, and when I went to graduate school, I realized that I had developed skill, but I didn't have a subject. It was like an athletic skill, because I could paint the figure quickly, but I didn't know why. I could paint it well, but it didn't have content. And so I decided to put all the paints aside for a while, and to ask this question, which was: "Why and how do objects acquire value for us?" How does a shirt that I know thousands of people wear, a shirt like this one, how does it somehow feel like it's mine?
但是我想回到我 研究生学院的工作室。 有意思的是, 有时当你开始工作, 你只需要彻底擦干净调色盘, 清走一切东西。 这个可能看起来 不像是在擦调色盘, 但对我来说是的。 因为我已经研究绘画十年, 而当我去研究生院, 我意识到我学到了技巧, 但是我没有主题。 它就像是一种运动技巧, 因为我可以很快画出图像, 但是我不知道为什么。 我可以画得很好, 但我的作品却没有内涵。 所以我决定把所有画 搁置一段时间, 然后问这个问题: “物体为什么以及如何 为我们带来价值?” 一件几千个人穿的衬衫, 就像这样的一件, 是怎么感觉出来它就是我的?
So I started with that experiment, I decided, by collecting materials that had a certain quality to them. They were mass-produced, easily accessible, completely designed for the purpose of their use, not for their aesthetic. So things like toothpicks, thumbtacks, pieces of toilet paper, to see if in the way that I put my energy, my hand, my time into them, that the behavior could actually create a kind of value in the work itself. One of the other ideas is, I wanted the work to become live. So I wanted to take it off of the pedestal, not have a frame around it, have the experience not be that you came to something and told you that it was important, but that you discover that it was in your own time.
所以我开始了一个实验, 我决定收集一些 有一定品质的材料。 它们是批量生产,容易获取, 完全出于使用目的而设计的, 而并非为美感。 所以,对于牙签,图钉, 卫生纸这样的东西, 我想看看如果我投入 我的精力、双手和时间进去, 这种行为是否会 让作品产生一种价值。 另一种想法是, 我希望这个作品能生动起来。 所以我想把它从底座取下来, 而不用框架围着, 能够有一种切身体验, 不再是当你靠近某个东西, 被告知它很重要, 而是用你自己的时间来发现的。
So this is like a very, very old idea in sculpture, which is: How do we breathe life into inanimate materials? And so, I would go to a space like this, where there was a wall, and use the paint itself, pull the paint out off the wall, the wall paint into space to create a sculpture. Because I was also interested in this idea that these terms, "sculpture," "painting," "installation" -- none of these mattered in the way we actually see the world. So I wanted to blur those boundaries, both between mediums that artists talk about, but also blur the experience of being in life and being in art, so that when you are in your everyday, or when you are in one of my works, and you saw, you recognized the everyday, you could then move that experience into your own life, and perhaps see the art in everyday life.
所以这个就像雕塑艺术中 一种非常非常古老的思考, 即:我们如何将生命 带入无生命的物质中? 因此,我会想要进入 一个像这样的空间, 里面有一面墙, 利用涂料本身, 把涂料从墙上“拉下来”, 于是涂料进入空间, 形成了一个雕塑。 因为我对这个想法也感兴趣, 这些术语, “雕塑”, “绘画”, “装置’—— 这些与我们实际 看待世界的方式无关。 所以我想要模糊那些边界, 模糊那些艺术家谈论到的 媒介之间的边界, 也模糊生活和艺术的边界, 这样当你在日常生活中, 或当你在我的一个作品中时, 你看见了,意识到了每一天, 你可以把那些体验变成自己的生活, 或许可以在日常生活中看见艺术。
I was in graduate school in the '90s, and my studio just became more and more filled with images, as did my life. And this confusion of images and objects was really part of the way I was trying to make sense of materials. And also, I was interested in how this might change the way that we actually experience time. If we're experiencing time through materials, what happens when images and objects become confused in space? So I started by doing some of these experiments with images. And if you look back to the 1880s, that's when the first photographs started turning into film. And they were done through studies of animals, the movement of animals. So horses in the United States, birds in France. They were these studies of movement that then slowly, like zoetropes, became film.
我在九十年代念的研究生, 我的工作室里摆放了 越来越多的图像, 和我的生活一样。 而图像和物体的这种混乱 确实是我尝试理解素材 的一种方式。 而且,我对于这可能如何改变 我们实际体验时间的方式 很感兴趣。 如果我们通过素材体验时间, 当图像和物体在空间中 变得混乱时会发生什么? 所以我开始用图片做一些实验。 如果你回顾19世纪80年代, 那是第一批照片变成电影的时候。 它们是通过对动物的研究完成的, 动物的运动, 比如美国的马,法国的鸟。 先是对运动的研究, 然后慢慢地,像西洋镜一样, 变成了电影。
So I decided, I will take an animal and I'm going to play with that idea of how the image is not static for us anymore, it's moving. It's moving in space. And so I chose as my character the cheetah, because she is the fastest land-dwelling creature on earth. And she holds that record, and I want to use her record to actually make it kind of a measuring stick for time. And so this is what she looked like in the sculpture as she moved through space. This kind of broken framing of the image in space, because I had put up notepad paper and had it actually project on it. Then I did this experiment where you have kind of a race, with these new tools and video that I could play with. So the falcon moves out in front, the cheetah, she comes in second, and the rhino is trying to catch up behind.
所以我决定要选个动物, 然后研究这个想法: 图像如何对于我们 不再静止,而是运动的, 在空间中运动。 然后我选择了豹子作为我的动物, 因为它是地球上 跑得最快的陆地动物, 它一直保持着这项记录, 我想要利用这一记录 作为一种衡量时间的量尺。 这是豹子在空间移动时 在雕塑中呈现的样子。 这是一幅破碎的空间图像, 因为我挂上了记事本纸, 然后把图像投影在上面。 然后通过一些新工具和视频, 我在实验中增加了赛跑元素。 鹰在最前面, 之后是豹子,排在第二, 犀牛正从后面尝试赶上。
Then another one of the experiments, I was thinking about how, if we try and remember one thing that happened to us when we were, let's say, 10 years old. It's very hard to remember even what happened in that year. And for me, I can think of maybe one, maybe two, and that one moment has expanded in my mind to fill that entire year. So we don't experience time in minutes and seconds. So this is a still of the video that I took, printed out on a piece of paper, the paper is torn and then the video is projected on top of it. And I wanted to play with this idea of how, in this kind of complete immersion of images that's enveloped us, how one image can actually grow and can haunt us.
在另一个实验中, 我在想如何—— 如果我们试图想起 一件发生在我们身上的事, 假如是 10 岁左右的事, 我们甚至都很难想起来 在那一年都发生了什么。 而对于我, 我可以想起来也许一两件事, 而那个时刻在我的脑海中扩展开, 填满了那一整年。 所以我们并不以分钟和秒 来体验时间。 这是我拍的一个视频中的一个画面, 我把它打印在了一张纸上, 纸是撕碎的, 然后视频投影在上面。 我想尝试这种想法: 完全沉浸在这些笼罩着我们 的图片中, 一张图片是如何变大 并在我们脑海中挥之不去的。
So I had all of these -- these are three out of, like, 100 experiments I was trying with images for over about a decade, and never showing them, and I thought, OK, how do I bring this out of the studio, into a public space, but retain this kind of energy of experimentation that you see when you go into a laboratory, you see when you go into a studio, and I had this show coming up and I just said, alright, I'm going to put my desk right in the middle of the room. So I brought my desk and I put it in the room, and it actually worked in this kind of very surprising way to me, in that it was this kind of flickering, because of the video screens, from afar. And it had all of the projectors on it, so the projectors were creating the space around it, but you were drawn towards the flickering like a flame. And then you were enveloped in the piece at the scale that we're all very familiar with, which is the scale of being in front of a desk or a sink or a table, and you are immersed, then, back into this scale, this one-to-one scale of the body in relation to the image. But on this surface, you had these projections on paper being blown in the wind, so there was this confusion of what was an image and what was an object.
所以我做了所有的这些—— 这些是我十多年来, 用图片做的100 个实验中的 三个实验, 我从未展示过它们。 我思考过,我要怎么把这个 从工作室带到公共空间, 但是依旧保留住那种 当你进入实验室或者工作室后 可以看见的那种实验的能量? 那时我马上要举办这个展览, 于是我想, 我要把我的桌子 放在房间的正中间。 所以我带了我的桌子, 放在房间里, 而它实际上以一种 非常令人惊讶的方式起了作用, 附加了远处的视频屏幕 带来的闪烁感。 所有投影仪都投在上面, 这些投影仪创作了它周围的空间, 但是你被像火焰一样 的闪烁吸引住了。 然后你被包裹在了碎片中, 以我们都熟悉的规模, 仿佛站在桌子或者水槽前, 然后你沉浸其中,回到这种 跟你的身体大小相当的规模。 但是在这表面上, 投影机投在被风吹拂的纸上, 人们产生分不清什么是图像, 什么是实体的困惑。
So this is what the work looked like when it went into a larger room, and it wasn't until I made this piece that I realized that I'd effectively made the interior of a planetarium, without even realizing that. And I remembered, as a child, loving going to the planetarium. And back then, the planetarium, there was always not only these amazing images on the ceiling, but you could see the projector itself whizzing and burring, and this amazing camera in the middle of the room. And it was that, along with seeing the audience around you looking up, because there was an audience in the round at that time, and seeing them, and experiencing, being part of an audience. So this is an image from the web that I downloaded of people who took images of themselves in the work. And I like this image because you see how the figures get mixed with the work. So you have the shadow of a visitor against the projection, and you also see the projections across a person's shirt. So there were these self-portraits made in the work itself, and then posted, and it felt like a kind of cyclical image-making process. And a kind of an end to that.
这是作品被置于一个 更大房间后的样子, 而直到我做了这个作品, 我才意识到,我无意中创造了 一个天文馆的内部。 我记得,在小的时候, 我很喜欢去天文馆。 而那时的天文馆 不只有天花板上精彩的图片, 还可以看见投影仪本身 在工作时嘶嘶作响, 以及房间中令人惊叹的摄像机。 同时还能看见周围的 一些观众抬头向上看, 在那时周围会有很多观众, 看着他们,体验着 成为观众的一部分。 这个是我从网上下载的 人们在作品中自拍的图片。 我喜欢这个图片, 因为你可以看见人物 是如何与作品融合在一起的, 于是有了游客背对着投影的背影, 也可以看见投影 穿过一个人的衬衫。 这些自拍照由作品本身完成, 然后被发布出来, 感觉起来像一种 周期性图片制作流程, 和一种结束。
But it reminded me and brought me back to the planetarium, and that interior, and I started to go back to painting. And thinking about how a painting is actually, for me, about the interior images that we all have. There's so many interior images, and we've become so focused on what's outside our eyes. And how do we store memory in our mind, how certain images emerge out of nowhere or can fall apart over time. And I started to call this series the "Afterimage" series, which was a reference to this idea that if we all close our eyes right now, you can see there's this flickering light that lingers, and when we open it again, it lingers again -- this is happening all the time. And an afterimage is something that a photograph can never replace, you never feel that in a photograph. So it really reminds you of the limits of the camera's lens. So it was this idea of taking the images that were outside of me -- this is my studio -- and then trying to figure out how they were being represented inside me.
但是它提醒了我, 把我带回了天文馆 和天文馆的内部, 然后我开始重新画画。 并且思考一幅画, 对于我来说, 如何与我们 所有人的内部图像有关。 有很多内部图像, 而我们变得如此专注于 我们眼睛之外的东西。 还有,我们如何在头脑中存储记忆, 某些图片如何突然出现, 或随着时间的流逝而瓦解。 我开始把这一系列作品 叫做“残像”系列, 它是这种想法的参考, 如果我们现在都闭上眼睛, 你可以看见忽隐忽现,徘徊的光, 而当我们再次睁开眼睛, 它继续萦绕—— 这一直在发生。 残像是照片永远无法取代的, 你无法在照片中感受到。 所以,这确实提醒了你 照相机镜头的局限性。 这个想法,在我自身外部 照这些图片—— 这是我的工作室—— 然后试图弄清楚 它们是如何表现我的内在的。
So really quickly, I'm just going to whiz through how a process might develop for the next piece. So it might start with a sketch, or an image that's burned in my memory from the 18th century -- it's Piranesi's "Colosseum." Or a model the size of a basketball -- I built this around a basketball, the scale's evidenced by the red cup behind it. And that model can be put into a larger piece as a seed, and that seed can grow into a bigger piece. And that piece can fill a very, very large space. But it can funnel down into a video that's just made from my iPhone, of a puddle outside my studio in a rainy night. So this is an afterimage of the painting made in my memory, and even that painting can fade as memory does.
那么很快, 我打算为下一个作品 研究这个过程 可能如何发展。 可能从草图开始, 或者从一个我记忆中的图片开始, 一幅画,来自18世纪—— 皮拉内西的《罗马竞技场》。 或者一个篮球大小的模型—— 我围绕着篮球建立了这个, 它的大小可以对比背后的红杯子。 这个模型可以作为种子, 放入更大的作品中, 然后这个种子可以长得更大, 甚至可以填充 一个非常,非常大的空间。 但是它也可以集中到 我刚用 iphone拍摄的一个视频中, 一个雨夜, 在我工作室外的小水坑。 这是我记忆中画作的残像, 而那个画作会随着记忆褪色。
So this is the scale of a very small image from my sketchbook. You can see how it can explode to a subway station that spans three blocks. And you could see how going into the subway station is like a journey through the pages of a sketchbook, and you can see sort of a diary of work writ across a public space, and you're turning the pages of 20 years of art work as you move through the subway. But even that sketch actually has a different origin, it has an origin in a sculpture that climbs a six-story building, and is scaled to a cat from the year 2002. I remember that because I had two black cats at the time. And this is an image of a work from Japan that you can see the afterimage of in the subway. Or a work in Venice, where you see the image etched in the wall. Or how a sculpture that I did at SFMOMA in 2001, and created this kind of dynamic line, how I stole that to create a dynamic line as you descend down into the subway itself.
这是我素描本中 一张很小的图片的大小。 你们能看见 它是如何爆炸式放大到 一个跨越三个街区地铁站的尺寸。 而且你可以看见 进入地铁站的过程 就像一段 在素描本纸张间穿梭的旅程, 你们可以看见横跨公共区域的 像工作日记一样的东西, 当你穿过地铁时,你仿佛正在翻阅 二十年来艺术工作的记录。 但是甚至那个素描实际上 也有不同的起源, 有个起源 是一个爬了六层楼的雕塑, 它在 2002 年被缩小成 一只猫的大小。 我记得是因为那个时候 我有两只黑猫。 这是一个来自日本的照片作品, 你们可以看见地铁站内的残像, 还有一件威尼斯的作品, 可以看见刻在墙上的照片。 或者是2001年我如何在 SFMOMA艺术馆制作的雕塑, 创造了这种动态线条, 当你走下地铁站, 我是如何借鉴 并创造这个动态线条的。
And this merging of mediums is really interesting to me. So how can you take a line that pulls tension like a sculpture and put it into a print? Or then use line like a drawing in a sculpture to create a dramatic perspective? Or how can a painting mimic the process of printmaking? How can an installation use the camera's lens to frame a landscape? How can a painting on string become a moment in Denmark, in the middle of a trek? And how, on the High Line, can you create a piece that camouflages itself into the nature itself and becomes a habitat for the nature around it?
这种媒介的出现 对我来说非常有趣。 如何能够在一张画作中体现出 雕塑线条的那种张力呢? 或者像画图一样, 在雕塑中用线条来创造 戏剧性的视角? 或者绘画如何模仿版画的过程? 一个装置能如何利用相机镜头 为景观做框架? 弦上的画在长途跋涉中 如何能变成丹麦的一瞬? 在纽约的高线公园,如何创造一个 能够伪装到大自然中, 并成为周围自然栖息地的作品?
And I'll just end with two pieces that I'm making now. This is a piece called "Fallen Sky" that's going to be a permanent commission in Hudson Valley, and it's kind of the planetarium finally come down and grounding itself in the earth. And this is a work from 2013 that's going to be reinstalled, have a new life in the reopening of MOMA. And it's a piece that the tool itself is the sculpture. So the pendulum, as it swings, is used as a tool to create the piece. So each of the piles of objects go right up to one centimeter to the tip of that pendulum. So you have this combination of the lull of that beautiful swing, but also the tension that it constantly could destroy the piece itself.
最后,我还想介绍一下 另外两件尚未完成的作品。 这个叫做“坠落的天空”的作品 将成为哈德逊河谷的一件永久作品, 仿佛是天文馆下凡, 降落于地球。 这是 2013 年的作品, 即将被重新安装, 在新开放的MOMA艺术馆重生。 这作品的工具本身就是雕塑。 这个会摆动的钟摆, 被用作一个工具来创造作品。 所以每一组物体 都堆叠到距离钟摆尖端一厘米处。 于是你既能感受到 这种优美的摆动所带来的平静, 也能体会到时刻都有可能 破坏作品本身的那种张力。
And so, it doesn't really matter where any of these pieces end up, because the real point for me is that they end up in your memory over time, and they generate ideas beyond themselves.
这些作品最终会如何并不重要, 因为对于我来说真正有意义的是, 它们最终会随着时间 消逝在你的记忆中, 并且产生了超越本身的思考。
Thank you.
谢谢。
(Applause)
(掌声)