由成都、重庆、贵阳和昆明所代表的西南，这个由西南中国四方山川水系定义的区域，从西部的三江源头到中部的高原盆地，河网交错，茶马古道密布的大型平原，到西部高地和南部边陲，由于横断于它与中原之间的秦岭、乌蒙山脉到巴山蜀水，相对独立于以中原为中心的主流文化。正因此，历史上的西南要么是被排斥在主流意识之后的“国家边陲”和“异象之邦”，要么是被推至改革前沿的过去的“三线建设”和今天的“西部实验区”，如同在古老的土壤中培植的未来主义样品，西南三省一地的现实是一种落后与超前、迷信与幻想、以及历史与未来的诡异杂交。
30年来，艺术界最令人耳目一新的创作活力分别发生于西南不同的城市。后文革时期的代表性的伤痕画风和社会批判艺术以及形式主义风格，拉开了一个区域和一个时代的序幕。自八五新潮发展出来的现代性思潮和艺术社会化的进程，更是不仅将西南地区带上了全球化的舞台，同时也是将另一种城市叙事的维度置入了中国语境。进入二十一世纪，有关于西南地区的发展部分——西部开发、经济起飞、外来影响和世界劳工等——似乎被过度阐释了。相对这些西南地域的可见部分，本次贵阳双年展着眼于发生于我们视线之外的部分，它从文化艺术传承和影响方式的隐蔽图版和潜藏的现实，它的本能与幻境、它的前世和来生，以此探讨深植于西南四方传统中的艺术原生态，以及它在突变的现实中的倔强反弹，以证明在西南这片可能性的领土藏污纳垢的背后，也是藏龙卧虎的文化艺术空间和制造丰富现实的文化异邦。
“口传和耳闻的四方”的主题是针对在成都、重庆、昆明、贵阳四个不同地方城市中并存的四种不同艺术场域中体现出来的艺术和生存方式，来呈现当代艺术在这些地方所具有的影响力和多元化的格局。将四个城市、四种不同的艺术生态展示在贵阳艺术双年展的舞台上，是比较和衡量不同艺术风貌和成就的标尺，是西南当代艺术的论坛。
从历史和地理上看，西南是文化落后的南蛮、烟瘴之地，被外力征服似乎是必然的。虽然地缘和文化征服是共同发生作用的，但西南地区一直表现出某种各自在地缘和文化上的相对独立性。西南作为一个表达空间方位的词汇，已经被汉文化的意识形态改造成富有政治意味的多意词，从政治体制、军事和生产技术等方面来看，西南不仅在地理上，而且也在文化上处于中华帝国的边缘位置。因此，一直受惠和从属于中原。并且以帝国的北方为中心的西南也并不可能独创出任何超越中华文化的独立的话语体系，中原文化及话语体系在地缘上的渗透和现代化，最终导致了西南各民族的汉化。这方面，我们可以将之归为文化扩张的结果。今天延绵的西南山河依旧，但自然地貌的作用如同宗族社会一样早已成为过去时。不过站在贵阳艺术双年展的平台上，放开思绪还是有价值的。那仍然是能够唤起历史想象的节点。无论是放眼西南还是环顾世界，我们都意识到：这里一直是西南中国的尽头，又是向着更远的世界的开端。
四方是指史称西南的云、贵、川、渝的四个方位，口传和耳闻则是对艺术和文化在这一地区的传承和表达方式进行的描述和概括。在我们涉及到的西南四个城市的都市化和现代化进程中，文化和时尚主要是通过媒体和电视影像被迅猛传播的，在全球化的时代，有时最糟糕的结果也许就是所有的人都在共享同一个东西，其实铺天盖地的讯息只是提示和告诉我们这样—个声音，即：西部是落后的!艺术家和普通人一样生活在这样一些费劲和吃力地想要追赶和跟上当代潮流和时尚尾巴的“国家郊区”中，这些城市急切地寻求改变，通过努力的学习和模仿来建立和获得外部世界的认同。于是，雷同的城市规划，仿造的建筑样式和房地产、盗版的图书影像、二手的文化汛息，娱乐、新闻、泊来的商业圈和翻版的机场、酒店、高速公路，成为西南艺术家们的面对的境遇和日常生活。双年展上的艺术家以切身的体会和敏锐的表达，展示出西南四城悠久的历史和现今迅速的发展，有什么能比艺术家更能表达上述城市的进步神速的变化？这些生活于斯的当代艺术家为西南赢得了文化及进步的声誉，并且为中国西部抵消了经济和商业的落后形象以及陈旧文明的俗套。
同时，上述的四座城市的社会生活中存在着一种“乡土社会”和的“市井文化”的内部力量。这种草根性质的力量指自然根植于民间的文化内部力量，带有很大的自发性，有着坚韧的品质，柔弱的表象下能承受巨大的外力、饮食、方言、风俗和地方伦理影响着他们接受外来文化的方式，国家力量和“草根力量”的背景不同，前者带有法律和权力色彩下强制和干预的性质，属于权力约束的范畴，后者的依据则是地方伦理以及在此基础上形成的社会契约，为乡土知识与民间智慧的产物。指出上述差异，即是试图提出当代艺术发展中的更为复杂的文化背景和处境。新时期以来，西南三省一地是中国社会形态的内陆“招商引资”和“开放搞活”的特例，她从来都是以多元文化混生为特点。无论在其建筑和城市文化上，都体现得尤其明显。这是中国现代化最后的实验场，今天，在新的现代化和城市化热潮的推动下，四座城市正经历前所未有的高速以至爆炸性的都市化过程，在政治和资本利益的结盟的推动下，疯狂地投入到全球化的巨浪中，这给传统的城市化模式带来了本质的改变，迟来和慢一拍的发展节奏，从宏观上看，这些城市正成为现代化中的过期城市和国家郊区，并且在人们社会生活和文化心态中造就着日益的浮躁和焦虑。从微观上看，一系列独特和生机勃勃的草根社会和乡土知识营造出来的别样的现代化方式，如城乡结合、中西合璧，城市无边的蔓延和改变，大量农村人口涌入城市等。这给艺术家们带来了全新的挑战和观察发现、创造新的城市文化样式的机会，这一倾向同样也是以民间社会的动力和智慧为动力的。这些成功而又矛盾的典范，最终有助于我们去想象和实现新型的，以文化多样性为基础的未来民主社会和文化型态。
在一个没有当代艺术运作机制的国度里，没有当代美术馆和公众艺术气氛，没有画廊和艺术传媒，没有收藏家和观众的城市中，艺术家自己建立的那些自营空间和艺术工作室，艺术家营造的公共空间以及艺术家们出没的场所中，当代艺术却异常地活跃并显示出日益旺盛的生命力。这里艺术活动的方式很大程度存在于口耳之间的传播之中，持续不断地形成了西南每一代艺术家面对现实生活及艺术传承的突出特点。对西南艺术近数十年历史而言，它即是来源也是路途，既是对资讯的接纳，也是对自身的表达。新时期以来，对应着社会发展和文化消费，西南艺术家们经历了不同时期的创作实验，在视觉图式的快速的变化的过程中，艺术家们重要的艺术经历就是通过耳闻目染和口传心授来分享和表现时代的思想和方法，来寻找自身创作的参照和方向，这些艺术家所坚持的个人视野和审美判断，以及那些特有的根植于地方生活基础上的交流方式和艺术传奇，形成了值得评介和关注的口传和耳闻的艺术传统及特有的文化现象。
在国家、种族和个人性之外，地方性是对艺术形成和影响至深的因素，艺术家的居住地和所生活的城市如同方言一样，被带入到在与外部世界联系的过程中，并潜移默化地影响和形成了各自不同的品质和艺术文脉。尤其突出的是新时期以来的现当代艺术历史中，西南上述城市中产生并成就了无数的艺术个人神话，作为名传四海的艺术领军人物，他们在时代历史中在自己生活的城市起到了凝聚人心和承传文化的作用。并形成了一种口传心授如族谱式的承传关系及持久的影响力，本届双年展相关部分特别以“个人神话”为题，以“英雄榜”的方式予以推举。
近年来在中国西南部城市中发生的当代艺术活动，主要出现于艺术家工作室和临时场所，尤其是一部分艺术家自营空间之中，这些艺术的来源地分别是：昆明的创库艺术家主题社区，成都的蓝项艺术中心，重庆四川美院旁的十一间工作室和坦克仓库艺术中心，贵阳城市零件艺术空间。正如成都、重庆、昆明和贵阳这四座城市的居民对于方言和饮食的迷恋和执着的喻意。本次双年展试图以移植上述艺术场域的方式，并以这些现场为核心，来呈现被这些各自不同的艺术空间所带动的城市文化和地方性的当代生活，并探讨他们在接受当代文化影响的过程中所表现的独特性和超越地域文化的艺术潜力。
以“口传和耳闻的四方”为本次贵阳艺术双年展的主题，展示来自成都、重庆、昆明和贵阳四座城市中当代艺术的生存方式与生活形态，是期望从地方文脉的角度来探讨在国际化和现代化的影响下，仍然在世界和国家力量之外，运行着另外一种野生的民间的草根文化。这种方式象方言、饮食和民间的智慧，契约一样作用于艺术和艺术家，生生不息持续不断地存在于每一代艺术家的现实生活及艺术生命之中。我们乐观其成地看到本次展览的现场部分新一代年轻艺术家的表达方式不仅不是简单的新旧更替，而是同以往的艺术和生活形成一种延续的关系。
叶永青2005年6月于重庆
2007年1月改于北京
Word of Mouth from the Four Corners
The Chinese Southwest, represented by Chengdu, Chongqing, Guiyang and Kunming, is marked off by mountains and rushing rivers, from the western Three Rivers Region to the central highland basin, the plateaus crisscrossed by rivers and caravan trails stretch west to the Hengduan Mountains and south to the Chinese frontier. Separated from the Chinese central plains by the Qinling and Wumeng Mountain Ranges, this region has always been relatively independent of mainstream central Chinese culture. Because of this, the historical southwest has always been pushed behind the national consciousness as the “national frontier” and “imaginary state”, or the forefront of reform with the “third line construction” and today’s “western experimental zone”. Like a futurist prototype planted in ancient soil, the reality of the three southwestern provinces is an odd hybrid of backwardness and advancement, superstition and fantasy, history and the future.
In the past 30 years, the most refreshing creative energies in the art world have happened in the various cities of the southwest. The ‘scar art’ and social critique art that were representative of the late Cultural Revolution period opened the stage for a region and an era. The modernist concepts and socialization of art that developed out of the 85 New Wave did more than just pull the southwest onto the stage of globalization; it also brought a new type of urban narrative into the Chinese field. Entering into the twenty-first century, the part regarding the development of the southwest – western development, rapid economic growth, external influences and global labor – seem to have been overly expounded upon. As for these visible aspects of the southwest, this Guiyang Biennial shows us what happened outside our line of sight; it comes from the hidden template and obscured reality of cultural art’s methods of inheritance and influence, its nature, illusion, past life and future incarnation to seek out the primal state of art rooted in the four corners of the southwest, and its stubborn resistance in the face of drastic change to validate that behind the protective veil of this potential-laden land, there lies an unrealized space for cultural art and a foreign land that will create a rich cultural reality.
The theme of “Word of Mouth from the Four Corners” focuses on the art and ways of life presented by the coexistence of art amidst the different settings of Chengdu, Chongqing, Kunming and Guiyang to bring out the influence and diverse face of art in these places. The presentation of four different artistic states from four different cities on the stage of the Guiyang Biennial is a different way of viewing artistic style and measuring artistic achievement, it is the forum of southwestern contemporary art.
Historically and geographically, the southwest is the culturally backwards barbarian frontier. It was virtually inevitable that it would be overrun by external forces. Though geography and cultural subjugation worked together, the southwest has always shown a type of cultural independence. As a term that describes a location, the southwest has already taken on political undertones in the Han cultural ideology. From the angle of the political system, military affairs and production technology, the southwest has already taken on a marginalized position in the Chinese empire. Because of this, it has always benefited from and belonged to the central plains. Moreover, the southwest that is centered on the north of the empire would never be able to develop an independent system of discourse that transcends Chinese culture. The regional infiltration modernization of central plains culture and its system of discourse have led to the Han assimilation of every southwestern ethnic group. We can classify this as the result of cultural expansion. Today the landscape of the southwest remains the same, but the effects of the geography, like the clan society, have become a thing of the past. But there’s still value in standing on the platform of the Guiyang Biennial and opening one’s mind. It’s still something that can recall the historical imagination. Whether scanning the southwest or looking over the world, we can all come to see that this may be the edge of southwest China, but it is also a starting point for moving to a world afar.
The “four corners” refers to the four southwestern locales of Yunnan, Sichuan, Guizhou and Chongqing, and “word of mouth” is a generalized description of the ways in which art and culture are passed on and expressed in this region. In the process of urbanization and globalization that is taking place in these four southwestern cities, culture and fashion are mainly spread through media such as television and film; in the age of globalization, the worst result is possibly that everyone is enjoying exactly the same thing, and what we are being told over and over again is this – western China is backwards! Artists and common people alike, all live within this taxing “suburb of China” environment of endlessly chasing after the tail of contemporary fashions and trends; these cities are desperately seeking change, studying and imitating to gain recognition from the outside world. So the environs and daily life that southwestern artists are faced with consist of duplicate cities, copied buildings and real estate, pirated books and movies, second-hand cultural information, mass-imported entertainment, news and business cliques and carbon copy airports, hotels and highways. The artists of the Guiyang Biennial Exhibition, through personal understanding and sharp expression, have brought out the old histories of the aforementioned southwestern cities as well as the explosive development of today. Who could be better than artists at expressing the rapidly advancing changes that have occurred in these cities? These local contemporary artists have gained the prestige of cultural progress for the southwest, and wiped out the economically backwards image of southwestern China as well as the conventions and norms of an outmoded civilization.
At the same time, in these four cities there exists a sort of internal power of “native society” and “marketplace culture”. This power of the grassroots kind is rooted in an internal folk cultural strength that is spontaneous with a tenacious character. The weak exterior can withstand a lot of external pressure. Food, local dialects, customs and regional mores affect the way in which these people accept outside cultural ways. The backgrounds of “national strength” and “grassroots strength” are different, the former is marked by compulsion and intervention based on law and power which belongs to the category of authority and restraint; the latter relies on local mores and the social contract that forms atop this foundation and is a product of local knowledge and folkways. Pointing out the differences above is an attempt to show the more complicated background and status in the development of contemporary art. Throughout the new era, the three provinces of the southwest have always been special inland cases in the societal form of “attracting business and investment” and “open up and enliven the economy”, and she has always been marked by cultural diversity. This quality stands out rather markedly in all aspects, from architecture to urban culture. This is the last laboratory of China’s modernization, and today, under the latest waves of modernization and urbanization, these four cities are going through explosive urbanization on an unprecedented scale. Under the allied forces of politics and capital, these cities have madly jumped into the massive tide of globalization, which has fundamentally changed the traditional model of urbanization with its mellow pace. On a macro level, these cities are becoming expired cities and the national outskirts of modernization. In their social lives and cultural paradigm, the people are growing more restless and anxious by the day. On the micro level, there’s a different modernization method that’s being created whole series of unique and dynamic grassroots societies and bodies of local knowledge, such as the melding of urban and rural, east and west, the sprawling and dynamic city boundary and the masses of people flooding in from the countryside. This has given artists a wholly new challenge and opportunity to observe, discover and create the new urban cultural archetype. This trend is also driven by the motivation and wisdom of folk society. These successful yet contradictory models will in the end help us to imagine and realize the new and future democratic society and cultural form based on cultural diversity.
In a nation with no mechanism for contemporary art, with no contemporary art museums or public artistic atmosphere, in cities without collectors, contemporary art is unexpectedly thriving and projecting an ever-increasing vitality in those personal spaces and studios the artists are constructing, the public spaces created by artists and the places where artists appear. Here, much of the process of artistic activity happens through word of mouth, which has gone on to become a standout trait of the way in which each generation of southwestern artists face the reality of life and the passing on of art. As to the history of southwestern art in recent decades, it has been both a source and a path forward; it is both the channel for receiving information and the medium for expression of the self. Since the new era, southwestern artists have gone through different stages of creative experimentation in tandem with social development and cultural consumption. Through the process of rapid changes in visual methods, an important artistic experience for these artists has been to share and present the concepts and methods of the times through word of mouth, and used this as a reference and guide in the search for one’s own creations. The personal outlook and aesthetic judgments maintained by these artists, and the unique interaction methods and artistic legends rooted in local life have coalesced into an orally-transmitted artistic tradition and unique cultural phenomenon that warrant attention and appraisal.
Aside from the natural, ethnic and personal, the local has had a deep influence over the formation of art; the artist’s homes and the cities they reside in are like dialects; they have been brought into the process of interacting with the outside world and have deeply influenced and shaped distinctive qualities and artistic strains. What particularly stands out are the innumerable legendary art figures produced in these four cities during the recent history of modern and contemporary art. As widely renowned leading figures, they have through the history of recent times, served the cities they lived in to bring the people together and act as cultural carriers. They have formed into orally transmitted, family tree-like hereditary relationships and lasting influences; part of this biennial exhibition will focus on “personal legends”, to be presented in a “hall of heroes” fashion.
Most of the artistic activity in recent years has taken place in artists’ studios and temporary facilities, especially a few spaces created by the artists themselves. These sources of art are: Kunming Loft Arts Community, Chengdu Lanxiang Arts Center, the Tank Warehouse Arts Center next to Chongqing Sichuan Arts Academy and the eleven studios inside, and Lingjian Art Space in Guiyang; they are just like the persistent and permeating love for dialects and local cuisine among the residents of Chengdu, Chongqing, Kunming and Guiyang. This biennial exhibition attempts to bring out the urban culture and localized contemporary life that has been catalyzed by these different art spaces by transplanting them into the show and using them as the core of the exhibition ground. It will also probe into the unique and transcendentally local artistic capacity that is expressed through their process of receiving contemporary cultural influence.
The “word of mouth” theme for this Guiyang Biennial Art Exhibition will present the ways of life for contemporary art from these four cities, Chengdu, Chongqing, Kunming and Guiyang. It hopes to explore, from the perspective of localized cultural strains, the wild, folk, grassroots culture that is in operation under the influence of internationalization, modernization and even under global and national forces. This method is like dialects, cuisine and folk knowledge, like a contract used for art and artists, continuously persisting throughout the real lives and artistic lives of each generation of artists.
Ye Yongqing
June 2005, Chongqing
Revised January 2007, Beijing