用“边角料”拼贴城市记忆

原创 值班编辑小丁 Local本地 收录于话题#路上观察11#城市记忆3

乔一和乔十是两个创意工作者，一位从事界面设计和插画，另一位利用废弃材料做装置艺术和雕塑。虽然两个人的文化背景和工作不一样，但他们找到了共同感兴趣的创作灵感，以及合作方式——各自发挥，同时协作迭代。他们近期的作品包括一本独立杂志，主要内容和日常生活中层出不穷的尴尬相关；还有一本由许多拼贴画构成的书，描绘了城中村以及快速变化的现代都市环境。

乔一和乔十

Joy & Josh

Local本地：简单介绍一下你们吧。

乔一：我在一家科技公司做产品设计师，主要做界面设计和用户调研。空闲的时候，我和乔十一起做些独立出版物，也会做些其他的小项目。

Joy: I am a product designer in a tech company. My daily work is designing interfaces and doing user research. In my spare time, I work with Josh to create zines and some other pieces.

乔十：我是一个艺术家，之前主要做雕塑，最近做的比较多的是拼贴。

Josh: I am an artist, with a background in sculpture, and more recently, collage.

Local本地：你们是什么时候开始在北京生活的？

乔一：我是 2015 年 10 月到北京的，住在东大桥附近。那时候得到了一个工作机会，而且当时北京的创业氛围特别好，有很多不同的选择，于是我拉着行李箱就来了。这个理由还挺实际的，我想继续当一名产品设计师，北京提供了很好的平台。

Joy: I came here in October, 2015 and stayed in the Dongdaqiao area. At that time, I received a job offer from a company. The startup scene was quite lively and there was quite a good variety of job opportunities, so I came and stayed. This was a very practical reason. I wanted to build my career as a product designer and Beijing seemed to have the best offer.

乔十：对，从我的角度来看也是，北京有很多的机会和艺术驻地项目，是挺好的选择。我第一次到北京是 2017 年 3 月，从红门艺术驻地项目开始，住在北京东北角的费家村。当时我对北京的印象是什么都是灰蒙蒙的，天气、房子、砖瓦还有外墙，和越南、老挝很不一样。在来北京之前我在东南亚转了一圈。

Josh: Yeah, from my perspective, there were a lot of opportunities and art residencies in Beijing. I felt it was a good option. I first arrived in Beijing in March 2017, and started with Red Gate Residency later that year, which was in Feijiacun, in the Northeast of Beijing. I remembered everything was quite grey, the weather, houses, tiles, and facades, which was very different from Vietnam and Laos, where I had been travelling before becoming more settled in Beijing.

东大桥路口

拆迁中的费家村

Local本地：你们喜欢这个城市的哪些地方？

乔十：来北京的第一个月，我花了很长时间在胡同里面走来走去，大栅栏、珠市口、北新桥和东四等等。我喜欢胡同，因为可以看到同类视觉元素的各种变化。我觉得特别有意思，灰色的胡同房子存在着各种形态，就像海洋里翻滚着不同阶段的泡泡的海浪一样。没有修复的破败房子，专为游客准备的粉刷一新的墙面，挂着各种广告招牌。还有各种违建，比如小棚子、奇特的小空间等等，所有这些元素编织进胡同的不同区域纹理里。

Josh: For the first month that I was exploring the city, I spent the majority of my time in the hutongs, like those around Dashilar, Zhushikou, Beixinqiao, and Dongsi. I like the hutongs because you can see a lot of variations of the same aesthetics. The grey buildings are all going through changes. They are like the ocean, with all of its different waves and jet streams. Some are run-down houses that have not been restored. Some have polished facades that are built for tourists. There are also add-ons to the buildings, like the ram-shackle sheds, odd little living spaces etc. All of these things are woven into the different areas of patchwork hutongs.

北京胡同，2017

乔一：除了胡同，我还很喜欢北京的公园。我们喜欢住在某个公园边上，偶尔能够去透透气，看看公园里的季节变化。

Joy: Other than the hutongs, I like the parks in Beijing a lot. I feel when you are living close to a park, you get this breathing space. Also you can see how seasons change in the parks.

Local本地：假如你们明天就离开北京了，会最想念什么?

乔十：在这么大的一个地方，我觉得自己是那么渺小，像是宇宙中一个微不足道的人。我会想念这座城市的规模，以及我所看到的纷繁复杂的一切。

Josh: Just feeling so small in such a big place, feeling like such a minute person in the endless mass of it all. I would miss the scale of the city, and the variety of everything I see.

乔一：挺有意思的是，有时候我回广东几天，会想念北京的地铁和公交，因为相比家里的马路，我更熟悉北京的公共交通。当然啰，我也会想念这里遇到的人儿。

Joy: Sometimes when I am back in Guangdong for a couple of days, I miss the metro and public transport in Beijing, because I am more familiar with them than the roads in my hometown. Also, I will miss the people that I met here.

乔十：让我着迷的是，这个城市变化得太快了。变化本身可能有好有不好，而且常常让人眼花缭乱。对这个城市的变化我常感到晕眩，像是在乘风破浪一样，非常刺激。假如你从二环往五环外走，能够看到这个城市的各种变化、各种层次，很奇妙。我在这里住了一段时间了，假如我搬去一个变化缓慢的城市，可能会觉得有点不习惯。

Josh: I’m also attracted to how this city changes so quickly. Of course, this kind of change has many good and bad points to it, and can be hard to get your head around. It's very dizzying for me, feels like you are riding a wave. It's very exhilarating. Seeing all the changes, and seeing all the layers of the city as you pass each ring road when you get further out, it’s crazy. I think if, after spending this time here, I moved somewhere that wasn’t undergoing all of this upheaval, it might perhaps feel a little odd.

Local本地：《超浓缩尴尬》是什么？你们为什么会做这个项目？还会继续做下去吗？

乔十：《超浓缩尴尬》是一本杂志，收录了一些尴尬小故事，以及奇怪的产品包装插画。2018 年底，我们认识之后没多久，参加了一场独立杂志发布活动，然后开始讨论可以一起做本杂志。但直到 2019 年年初，我们才付诸行动，当时我还在英国，乔一在北京。她觉得我是一个令人尴尬的英国人，她有时候也是如此。我们也觉得北京是尴尬的，中式英语有时候也挺尴尬的。在不同的标志牌或者产品包装上看到中式英语的时候，我觉得挺有意思的，因为真正看这些英文单词的人不需要理解它的含义，字母只是装饰品，表达一种全球化和国际化的感觉。

Josh: Ganga is a zine featuring awkward little stories and depictions of peculiarly branded, equally awkward supermarket products. Not long after we met in late 2018, we went to a zine launch event. Then we started talking about making a zine together. We didn’t really start putting our ideas together until early 2019, after I had gone back to the UK for Christmas, with Joy still in Beijing. Joy mentioned that she had this idea of me being an awkward British person, and she is a little bit awkward, in her own way. We also saw Beijing as awkward and Chinglish as awkward. It always amuses me when I see the Chinglish on signs or food packages. People who see it usually don't need to understand it, because the purpose of the Roman lettering is primarily for its aesthetic quality, an air of global sophistication.

乔一：我是受到了北京独立杂志文化的影响，才会想到自己做一本杂志。在不同的艺术书展上，我看到各种各样的独立杂志，感觉这种媒介非常简单，但是可以有非常丰富的表达。

Joy: The reason that I wanted to make a zine is because of the zine culture in Beijing. I learned more about zines in various art fairs. When I went to these art fairs as a customer, I was amazed by how simple but expressive zines can be.

《超浓缩尴尬》中英文版本

《超浓缩尴尬》内页

乔十：对于我来说，那时做《尴尬》还挺重要的，因为我做雕塑遇到瓶颈，需要找到新方向。画些小画、写些小故事，能帮我换换思路。做完这本书之后，我又重新开始做雕塑，就有了新的想法和关注点。

Josh: I think it was important for me to work on Ganga at that time. I had got a bit tired with my sculpture work, and I needed to find a new direction for it. I got to do some drawings and small pieces of writing. It was refreshing to do something different. Once we had finished Ganga, and I got back to my sculptures with some new ideas and new focus.

乔一：我们之前聊过说可能做第二本《尴尬》，比如写些新的尴尬小故事，或是邀请别人分享他们的尴尬时刻。但是后来我们开始了一个新项目，就暂时搁置了第二期。

Joy: We discussed making a second Ganga, writing new stories and perhaps inviting other people to share their ganga moments. The reason why we didn't continue is because we wanted to change our direction for the time being.

Local本地：《北平飞地》这本书的主题是什么？

乔十：在北京国贸附近拍照的时候，我无意中发现了化石营这个城中村。它藏在高高的灰墙后面，看不到里面的道路或建筑，直到你走进去了才能看清楚。当我第一次沿着小路走进去的时候，完全不知道自己会遇到什么，就像一颗在庞大迷宫里的弹珠。

我跟乔一讲起化石营，她之前也看过相关报道。我觉得这里很具有标志性，反映出北京这个城市面对的各种问题，还有这些问题中的美学因素。它处在全北京地价最贵的区域，房子看起来像胡同或是城市郊区的样式。对比周围的商务中心区，这个区域带点乡土气息，又有种社区的感觉。它是北京整体形象的浓缩，让人看到其中的层次，以及层次之间的相互作用。

Josh: I accidentally discovered this urban village, Huashiying, while I was taking photos of the CBD area. It was behind these high grey walls and fences. You can't see anything of the village, neither the streets within nor the buildings, until you are well inside. So I had no idea what I would find when I first went there, like a marble in an indeterminate mass of a maze.

I told Joy about it, and it turned out that she read some articles about it before. Huashiying for me is indicative of all the issues Beijing is facing, and all the aesthetics mirroring those issues. Right in the center of possibly the most expensive area in Beijing, the style of buildings in Huashiying is like those in hutongs or the houses in the outskirts of the city. There is a more rustic and communal feeling to it than the CBD around it. It delivers to us the overall image of Beijing, showing its layers and their interplay with one another.

乔一：我对这个话题感兴趣，因为想知道它为什么在这里，还有住在里面的人。之前我读到对化石营的报道，描述的角度有点负面。但是去了以后，觉得挺生机勃勃的。于是我开始研究它的历史，它如何发展成为一个城中村。有意思的是，这个区域的历史可以追溯到明朝，当时是一片狩猎的场地，清代变成一位阿哥的坟冢。这个区域凝结了北京城市化进程的历史，我把这段历史写下来，发展成为书中的一部分。

Joy: I was interested in this topic, because I am curious about why it's there, and the people. The articles I had previously read described it in a quite negative tone, but when we were there, it felt very lively. So I started looking into its history, how it became an urban village. It's interesting that the history of this area can be traced all the way back to Ming dynasty. It used to be hunting grounds for wild deer; later it was the tomb of a Qing dynasty prince. This hidden area is important, for it crystalised the history of urbanization in Beijing. I drafted up this history, a key section in our zine.

《北平飞地》

乔十：当我们在组织这本书的整体文字的时候，决定不同的部分采用不同的风格。乔一的文字采用了历史的角度，我则选择了一种实验性的写法，把文字当成拼贴。这部分的内容受到作家威廉·巴勒斯“剪裁手法”的启发，用这种方式来收集北京 CBD 指数级增长的推销文字。写这段的时候挺有意思的，因为我之前没有做过这样的尝试。我们也记录了和化石营中一些人的互动。

Josh: As we planned the overall structure of the whole text, we decided to split it into sections and use a few different approaches and styles with each of these parts. We began writing with an open, observational style. Joy led the way with the historical angle. In another part, I adopted a more experimental style where I treated the text itself like a collage. This part was partly inspired by William Burroughs’ cut-up technique, as a way of examining the language used to sell such a grandiose idea as the exponential growth of Beijing’s CBD. Writing this part was especially fun, particularly as I haven't done something like this before. We also included accounts of some interactions with people in Huashiying.

化石营，2019

Local本地：介绍一下你们所做的拼贴画吧？

乔十：在北京和其他中国城市，我拍了很多照片作为雕塑的参考。为了把这些照片素材用到作品中，我们两个做了第一张拼贴作品。当时我们参加了一个集体展览，这张拼贴作品以及我的雕塑在北京北部山上一座废弃的小屋里进行展出。

作为一种媒介，拼贴就像是自己给自己设计拼图，用一些关于自身的碎片瞬间，你要不断摸索出最终的图像是什么。又像是人的记忆随着时间流逝变得支离破碎，变得模糊、不再光滑，一系列的瞬间和一个个的片段，有些连在一起，有些又断开了。

Josh: I had a lot of photos from across Beijing and China that I had been using as reference points for my sculptures. In order to bring the photographic element in a bit more, we started making our first large-scale collage which we exhibited alongside the experimental sculpture in a group exhibition held in an abandoned mountainside hut in North Beijing.

As a medium, collage is like putting together a puzzle of cut up moments for yourself and then trying to find a solution for it. It’s like your memory becoming separated over time, losing its clarity and smoothness; a jumble of moments and sections of moments, disconnected in some places, connected in others.

北京集体展览，2019

《北平飞地》中的拼贴插图

乔一：我在化石营的时候，照片都是快速走过拍下的。乔十第一次去那里，被一个人吼了。我第一次拍照的时候，也被一个居民说了几句。我感到不受欢迎，所以想尽可能隐藏我的记录意图。通常我就是匆匆走过，拍下眼前看到的东西，比如拼贴中出现的人和狗，都是这么拍下来的。

我之前没有做过拼贴，所以也不知道怎么样做出好的作品。我们就试了几次，尝试不同的可能性，也探索如何做好拼贴。我们试了不同的纸，比如用于画国画的生宣软卡，还试了数码拼贴。我更熟悉电脑作图软件，总觉得用电脑做比手工做要快得多，但是其实两者有不同的质感。

Joy: For me, most of the photos I took were quick snapshots while I was walking in the village. The first time Josh went there, he got shouted at. The first time I went there, I received a similar reception. I felt we were not welcome there, and I wanted to hide my camera as much as possible. I usually just walked by, and took photos of the roads and whatever was in front of me. That's how I got those photos of some of the people, and the dog.

I hadn’t done any collages before this project, and I wasn’t so sure about how to make a good one. It took a couple of practices to understand what was possible with collage, and how to do it well. We’ve also experimented with different paper, such as shēng xuān soft card (used for traditional painting), and then we tried digital photomontages. I am more familiar with software, and always feel it’s faster to work digitally than doing it by hand, but there are certainly some textural differences between the two.

数码拼贴作品

手工拼贴作品

Local本地：为什么要做“暗房子”的项目？

乔十：我这十年的雕塑实践，核心的思考是重新利用废弃、变形的建筑材料来反映住房和建筑中的奇特性。我从来不购买任何建筑原材料，而是从建筑工地或是其他地方收集——这些材料不再被需要的特性对于我的创作是很重要的。以此为出发点，2015 年我在英国利兹工作室楼下的一间浴室陈列室里找到了一些废弃瓷砖，做了第一间“暗房子”。

Josh: A central idea to my sculptural practice of the last decade is to repurpose discarded, misshapen building materials to create works that mirror the peculiarities of housing and construction. I never buy them but instead collect them from building sites, amongst other places – it is imperative that they are no longer wanted. Stemming from this, Darkhouses started in 2015 when I began to build a small house using unwanted tiles from the former bathroom showroom below my studio in Leeds, UK.

后来，我在西班牙和爱尔兰参加艺术驻地项目，做的雕塑主要表现后工业化时代毕尔巴鄂的花哨华丽风格，还有都柏林郊区烂尾庄园的面貌。尽管所有这些欧洲国家经历了快速变化，但是中国的发展速度和规模都是超乎想象的，所以 2017 年我来到这里，亲眼看看这里的发展。

During residencies in Spain and Ireland in the years that followed, my sculptures took on the garishness of post-industrial urban Bilbao and the likenesses of spaces in ghost estates of suburban Dublin. While all of these European countries have undergone fairly rapid changes by their own standards, China takes the idea of growing so big, so fast to some other unreal level, so by 2017 I was very keen to come and see for myself.

在北京，我收集材料的渠道是北京的建筑工人，他们平时做装修和拆迁工作时，会给我留一些碎砖或是碎瓷片。因为城市在经历各种各样的变化，所以总是有富余的建筑原料，而且这些材料很多都是灰色的，好像是为了特意迎合胡同房子的样式。通过“暗房子”，我想去反映现代城市的发展速度，由此延伸出城中村以及其他附加的部分；我想再造出城市的肌理，建筑中的奇特性、还有各种临时过渡空间。

Construction workers in Beijing, those who were doing up a kitchen or tiling a wall during renovations and evictions, would give me the offcuts of tiles, or more. There were always plenty of materials because of all the regular changes the city experienced, even stylistically painted grey tiles that masqueraded as weathered hutong bricks. Through Darkhouses, I wanted to echo the speed of how the modern city grew with all of its urban villages and bizarre add-ons with how fast I could build them; to reflect the fabric of any city, the anomalies of construction and housing, all of the odd, make-shift spaces.

在北京怀柔做的“暗房子”，2019

“暗房子”，2019

Local本地：推荐一些北京生活的时候会去的地方。

乔一：平时我们会去的地方，第一个会推荐“五金”，一家隐藏在郎家胡同里的小咖啡店。那里卖独立出版杂志、自制果酱，还有自制的酸面包。它是一个很温馨的空间，就像一个小小的社区，大家围坐在长桌前聊天、吃早点。晚上有时候会去凹凸空间看演出、喝小酒。最近常去小块儿咖啡店，他们卖自制卡带，周末常常有很棒的小型演出。

除此之外，我们时不时会在这个城市的外围走走，其实还有很多我们不了解的区域，比如北京的南边和西边。每次我们发现了一些新的地方，就会产生新的问题，所以就一直呆在这个城市了。

Joy: One of the local places that we would recommend is Wujin, the little hidden cafe in Langjia Hutong. They sell zines, their own jams and serve breakfast with homemade sourdough. It's cozy, a little community where people sit around a small counter and chat. We also often go to Aotu Space for drinks, gigs and exhibitions. Another recent hangout spot is Nugget Records. They sell cassettes and have some cool gigs during weekends.

Other than that, we explore the rest of the city, visiting its outer reaches to see how far it goes. It doesn’t seem to ever end. There’s still plenty more that we haven’t seen in districts all across the city, particularly in South and West Beijing. Whenever we discover more of Beijing, it presents us with more questions, which keep us here longer.

五金咖啡店

五金咖啡店 © 北方照相馆

小块儿咖啡的演出

Local本地：可以透露一下接下来还有什么计划么？

乔十：我们目前在做一张大尺寸的拼贴作品，也是关于北京的。同时也安排了一些展览，计划在今年 12 月和明年过年以后。所以，我们还是有不少要做的事情的。

Josh: At the moment, we are working on a much larger collage work about other areas of the city. We are also currently in the process of lining up a few exhibitions, hopefully for December as well as in 2021, after the Spring Festival break. So, we have a few things to look forward to.

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P.S.

《北平飞地》

已在本地书馆上架，欢迎翻阅、带走

地址：西安市科技路西安大都荟 Localand D28 本地书馆

原标题：《用“边角料”拼贴城市记忆》

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