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象征 March of the Elephants (2022), Single-Channel Video (color, sound), 41'21"

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澜沧江流域是亚洲象的传统栖息地，而在傣语中，“澜沧”本就意味着“百万大象”。大象因其体量，一再被赋予超越其自身的象征。而这些象征层层叠加，穿越时代，反过来遮蔽了大象自身。录像“象征”试图通过在不同历史语境中大象与现实的遭遇，回观诸物与话语之间的纠葛，以及它们如何共同穿越历史，建构出新的现实。

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The Lancang River basin is the traditional habitat of the Asian elephant, and in the Dai language, 'Lancang' originally means 'million elephants'. Because of their size, elephants have repeatedly been given symbols that transcend their own. And these symbols are layered on top of each other, traveling through time and in turn obscuring the elephants themselves. Through the encounter between elephants and external in different historical contexts, the video March of the Elephants (象=image/elephant, 征=represent/march, while 象征 means symbol, and also means 'march of the elephants' ) attempts to look back at the entanglement between things and discourses, and how together they traverse history to construct new realities.

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作品大致分为三个段落，对应着大象穿越的三个时代和三种话语：傣族神话传说中的大象，17年时期和70年代初的大象，以及当下的大象。作者试图挪用相应时期的视觉材料、声音材料以及相应话语来进行自反性的叙事，其中包括19世纪法国殖民者的版画、傣族南传上座部佛教寺院壁画、50年代的电影与老照片、70年代的连环画，以及今天的手机图像、监控图像、无人机图像等。从这些来源不同却相互连接符号中，我们可以看到作为实体的大象如何穿过不同的历史，并被各种象征话语持续遮蔽。

This video is roughly divided into three passages corresponding to the three eras and three discourses that the elephant traverses: the elephant in Dai mythology and legend, the elephant during the period of socialist construction and the early 1970s, and the elephant in the present. The author attempts to appropriate visual materials, sound materials and discourses from the corresponding periods for a self-reflexive narrative. The materials include 19th century French colonial prints, Dai Southern Theravada Buddhist monastery murals, 1950s films and old photographs, 1970s comic strips, and today's mobile phone images, surveillance images and drone images. From these differently sourced yet interconnected symbols, we can see how the elephants march through different histories and are continually obscured by various symbolic discourses.

 

本作品由广东时代美术馆委任。

This work is commissioned by Guangdong Times Museum.