Why are these young artists drawn to Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010)? Must dreamwork be understood as the manifestation of our unconscious in the Freudian sense? The dream narrative in Nolan’s work suggest technology’s possible to insert a mechanism that narrativize the present, pockets of past memories and emotive response to remembering… Here are some pictograms tapping into these thoughts. 電影《潛行凶間》吸引了不少年青創作人的好奇。夢敘事不再是佛洛伊德下意識世界的活動的敘事化表現,而是科技的植插,把個人記憶、現實、情緒變動化成一種監控和介入。這裡是幾個重構這個反前向線性的電影敘事體的創作分析圖。
誰需要童話、仙境?成年人。童話用美麗的外貌包裝著似謊話非謊話又不能盡言的現實碎片。五個作品,仙境是引入,內部內裡又一個世界。圖像解構,就是為了把外貌與內涵的勾連表達出來。Fairy tales are not just for children, nor are animation pictures. The works in this post seek to reveal appearances of fairy tale that hide the flip side of magic which could be horror.
36 works are in dialogue at The Ventriloquists 2021 to explore narrative concepts in articulating our thoughts and sentiments. The full list of works are presented below. 三十六個作品,共同探索陳述的觀念,各自發聲,理念情感成為交流談話的起點。
Why is narrativity a relevant artistic concept in a data-driven milieu? An exhibition with 35 works speak — as videos, photomontage, installation, pictograms, creative writing and game plans, by BA students at the School of Creative Media. The Ventriloquists 2021.《腹語系。微敘思考。2021》繼續開發陳述的藝術:層層推理。逐步走,慢慢說,用豐盈的小節。
The pictograms for this 101 moving image classic show more than just the exemplary precision of continuity editing and a classical 3-act structure in plotting. These pictograms function as analytical tools to show how the intensifying bond between the boy and the balloon evolves; to superimpose the 1955-56 location of the film Red Balloon onto the contemporary map of Paris, … and to single out the swerving energies and roughening emotions of the story world in mood-board like representation.《紅氣球》是學過活動影像拍攝的入門經典,或許是這樣,我們可能錯過了敘事藝術上的微細質感。氣球於小孩的動人關係不用質疑了,可是甚麼叫我們感動?這裡四個圖形分析,從唯物的層面揭示創作者的藝術心思,著我們不再輕易走漏眼。
An assembly line of human figures grinding human figures for food, dolls feed dolls, doll eats dolls. Ironing, flattering, being dressed, being cut up, being tamed… Beyond Svankmajer’s dramatization of carnivorous acts, Steven Tsang sees the politics of nonsense, which the animator structured against the paradigm of human civilization. The animator wants us to see differently, and asks a different sort of questions in following a narrative unique to his use of stop-motion animation. 看到喂小娃娃的大娃娃就知道是女的,看到舞動的水手裝就自動知道是男的。再看下去,人吃人,有血有肉的黑貓時不時推倒積木,一面是歷史砌圖,另一面是迷宮的路線…最終,它被鎖在籠裏動彈不得。屋子裡一個「人」也沒有,卻充滿了人類的活動。物件長年累月吸收了人類強加它們身上的「用途」、「價值」,也穿背著人類的規範,像鬼魅的模仿著我們的「正常」活動。曾俊良看到歷史、文明、性別的社會結構。能看到,因為看穿了動畫大師史文梅耶以物件為本的獨特敘事結構和跨媒想像。
Caroline Leaf’s The Street shows montage at work by abolishing the shot-to-shot editing system of continuity. Guido Manuli’s Use Instructions is a series of synecdoche through which we are dragged down to hell to the final destruction of Earth. Both animation pictures play with the 3-act structure dramatic conventions. Two narrative pictograms augment what is just beneath the surface of pleasing imaging. 動畫的敘事法花枝招展,起承轉合是借用觀眾熟識的架構安置觀眾,看真是掩眼法。《街道》以水彩的流動取締了傳統分鏡的敘事法,鏡頭接合的文法銷毀,蒙太奇的效果卻豐盈漲滿,記憶的行動成了一場戲。《用家指南》的舉寓令人捧腹大笑,狂笑後往未來看,是希望的滅絕,地球成了渣滓糞便,是誰開始的超級玩笑?
Narrative pictograms’ view on two kinds of time and space — the brothel as chronotope, timeless space (Flowers of Shanghai), and nested realities in the virtual worlds of the mind as dreamwork (Inception) — presented at Ventriloquists…Thinking Narratively, 4-19 July 2020. 如果敘事法的性質是時空的呈現以至再組織,進而擴展我們對存在的認知,那麼敘述圖形是另一種實驗性的創作,就是動用跨媒的資源去尋找語言或純影音未能盡興的展陳。《潛行凶間》和《海上花》是兩個截然不同的時空構圖;前者踏進夢的潛意識的禁地,化之為慾望的戲劇舞台,後者則專注現象學的濃密經營,時間一點一滴,一舉手一投足,吃喝閒話家常,紛陳世事,時間停留在這裡、此刻,摺疊勾連,並不向前。
Two artists read YU Hua’s novella World List Mists (1988) and translate it analytically and structurally into a pictogram form to augment textures of sentiments and narrative integrity, maximizing a fatal body of cybernetics through methods of scoring, cartography, chronology and storyboarding. 兩個圖像作品,兩個創作者對余華的《世事如煙》的轉化閱讀,呈現敘事性如何把哀愁、絕望化為結構,點對點的連線,網絡的展現,把個人的「命運」背後的人為操控層層展露。