张巍：低度现实与二手神话
文/秦博
在《人工剧团》（Artificial Theater）中张巍通过数字合成的方式对素材进行编码、组合，构成了这些吊诡、怪诞的图景。
这组作品是架空于摄影现实的影像，所展示出的图式形象直接来源于我们日常的消费积累。制造这些图像的素材来源于张巍所拍摄的普通人，这些普通人里夹杂着北漂、蚁族、民工等各不相同的身份，从拍摄素材之初，他就弱化了面对镜头时这些零度话语人群的身份焦虑感，因为他所截取的仅仅是这些临时演员的五官相貌。作为流行文化下成长的一代，张巍与他所拍摄的模特同处在国家意识形态剧烈变革的时期，公共形象一拨又一拨的轮番上阵，成为这些普罗大众精神支柱。置于当下，偶像文化对他们来说早已不是陌生的事物了。作为纯粹的编码素材——产生于最真实的自然人，这些未经摆布的五官画面只是为了构成最终的奇景，但这些图像素材的提供者从未想到他们会变成这些高大的公众形象屹立在观众面前——虽然这些形象并非那么逼真；他们同样不知的是，在《人工剧团》里这些素材是这个时代最为规避的痛点、最为真实的能指。
《人工剧团》作为神话具有不完整的指示结果，可当我们观看张巍所提供的虚拟形象时，并未产生任何不适的疑虑，即使这些图像是真相制造的虚像。
这些被制造出的图像反而加深观看者对它们的认同，恰似这些图像并非出自偶然一样，张巍主动的清除掉偶然与瞬间，但神话图像却有了穿透意识的说服力。我们无法把它的表征归为眼前之所见，因为我们在历史的长河中回溯的已经足够久远，具体形象与实物的悬殊早已变得模糊不清。选择认同既是我们对事物存在价值的肯定，而这种宽泛的选择是张巍对于工业生产意识的转喻批判，作为生产者的他，制造出了直抵我们内心的焦虑。
当大众形象以真实的词汇构成了我们熟知的符号形象时，画面表象上那些我们看不到的图像才是我们无可辩驳的真实，而处在对立位置的最终图像，却是张巍虚构出的，这种语言关系的成立需要依靠观看者对消费主义——虽然我们否定消费主义——自身的认可。试想，如果我们在批判消费的同时，又以“真”、“像”这类感觉的逻辑确认结果时，这些所生产的形象与我们的判断便成为了一个荒谬的结论。
这正是由于张巍与观看者以共谋的方式搭建出了这些后制品时代的二手神话，这种介入方式使观看者痛并快乐着，因为普通大众的话语处境难以在彼此间或自身形成时代的认同感，但他们却可以把非验的、超验的共同寄托在这些神话形象之上，并祷告着低度现实的美好愿景，可惜这样并不能产生致幻的快感。消费时代使我们最内在焦虑外化于愿景与诉求之上，这种愿景与诉求集中体现在神话制造的速度与程度中。《人工剧团》所营造出这些无一例外的经典时，使观看者产生了对画面形象的肯定，而这些二手神话使观看者产生的愉悦亦是后工业时代所产生的意识形态扭曲的表征。如果我们只对外物形象做出不加思索的反映，而忽略了内在结构及语境要素的重要性，我们只能选择了向低度现实妥协。经过翻新的座座丰碑成为了这组作品的窗口，追究起来却是无法辨别的编码排布，无数个身份重组、拼贴成就了这二手神话，而这些器官的曾经拥有者组成了一个看不见摸不着的话语世界，在更加低度的现实空间里零度话语始终是我们不愿提及的现象，可张巍却在《人工剧团》中把这一切展示了出来。《人工剧团》是一场由观看者完成的作品，亦是张巍的话语战争、政治方式。
Zhang Wei: Low-Degree Reality and Second-Hand Myth
Through the adoption of digital combination and encoding of materials, Zhang Wei manufactures these bizarre, grotesquely-conceived images in his Artificial Theater.
This series is based on images which are built on stilts from photographic reality, demonstrating schema that derive from our daily accumulative consumption. The materials for these pictures were obtained from ordinary people including workers in Beijing, the “the ant tribe” and migrant laborers. From the very beginning of shooting, he purposefully weakened the anxiety felt by those zero-language groups for their social statuses when they faced the camera, because he only needed the looks of those extra actors. As the generation growing up in popular culture, both Zhang and his models are living in an age when the country’s ideology is having dramatic changes and public figures emerge one after another to become the spiritual pillars of civilians. Currently, idol culture is not new for them any longer. As pure encoding materials, generating from the most real natural person, those unadjusted faces only serve the purpose of constituting the ultimate wonder, but the materials providers never imagined they could stand in front of the audience by such exaggerated images, though not so real and vivid; neither did it occur to them that those materials in Artificial Theater represent the most evaded pain and most real signifier.
As myth, Artificial Theater indicates an incomplete result. But when we view the virtual images presented by Zhang, we never feel uncomfortable or anxious in any way, even though they are no more than virtual images made-up from truth.
Such artificially made images only intensify the sympathy of viewers, just as they are not created by accident. Zhang excluded any elements of fortuity or instantaneity, but mythical images have persuasion which can penetrate consciousness. Trapped long enough in the retrospection of the history, dim by the wide gap between concrete images and real objects, we feel lack of sureness to interpret the representation as what we see before our eyes. Agreement is what we choose to express our confirmation of the value of things, while such a freedom of choice is a metonymy of his criticism against industrial production awareness. As a producer, he made a passage of anxiety straight to our inner.Only when public images constitute our familiar signals with real words and phrases, can those pictures invisible in the representation become indisputable truth. While the ultimate pictures at the opposite position are fabricated by Zhang, such a language-related establishment requires the viewer’s recognition of consumerism itself — though we deny it. Try to imagine that if we identify the outcome using sensuous logics such as “vividness” and “likeness” while criticizing consumption, those images deriving from that and our judgments would arrive at a ridiculous conclusion.
This is exactly because Zhang and viewers, by establishing mutual connection, created such second-handed myth in a post-product age. Such a way of intervention allows viewers to enjoy and suffer. The general public found it hard to form identification of the age between each other or themselves with their language conditions, but they can look for non-transcendent or transcendent hopes from these mythical images and pray for low-degree reality. Sadly, it won’t bring any hallucinogenic excitement to them.
The consumption age exposes our innermost anxiety to ambitions and wishes, which are reflected in the speed and degree of myth fabrication in a concentrated way. When Artificial Theater created, without exception, those classics, views are confirmative of the images, but the delight from watching these myths actually represent the distorted ideology generated in the post-industrial age. If we allow ourselves to react readily to those superficial exteriors and ignore the inner structure and importance of context, we’ll end up compromising on low-degree reality.
Innovated monuments one after another become the windows of this series, but upon investigation, only unrecognizable encoding configuration was found; numerous identity reorganizations and collaging make such a second-hand myth. While the former owners of these organs make up an intangible world of language. Zero-language in a more low-degree real space is the last phenomenon we’d like to mention, but Zhang showed all of it in his Artificial Theater. It is a piece of work to be completed by its viewers, as well as the war of language and political manner of his own selection.