睡去依依随雁断 The Dream that Flocks South 刘小川 Lucy XC Liu
《牡丹亭·惊梦》【山桃红】
《牡丹亭·离魂》【集贤宾】
The Dream that Flocks South
When a being is erased from the corporeal world, it hides in dreams, memories, desires and becomes an extension of this world we are familiar with, an undercurrent that surges ferociously and fluidly in the darkness because it is freed of the limitations of time and space. These dreams, memories, desires are a much more permanent existence than us, they always remind us what we are subconsciously inclined towards, sometimes to an extent that makes us abandon the stability needed in an individual or a society. “I drift asleep with the southward flocks, and startle awake with the ever-chirping crickets” is a line from the poem Chrysanthemum Dream in the classic novel The Dream of the Red Chamber. The Dream that Flocks South is a moment of indulgence which will eventually face erasure, between drifting asleep and startling awake.
This exhibition discusses erasure on cultural and personal levels. The giant scale, immersive sculpture and performance The Dream that Flocks South uses the love story in the Kunqu opera piece The Peony Pavilion which is referenced in The Dream of the Red Chamber as a thread, dialectically depicting how literature as rebellion to socio-political orders is an eventually shattered dream. The video Unnamed Poem in Mourning delves deep into the no man’s land of grieving, eventually coming to terms with it by taking the world of the dead as a reflection of the realm of the living; the photo series I Gave My Tongue to the Wind describes the connected fate of grandma and me despite our extremely different marginalized qualities.
关于艺术家 About the Artist
https://lucyxcliu.com/
Ins: Lucy.xc.liu
Lucy XC Liu is an artist and writer who wrestles with grief and historical residue by portraying hunger, uncanniness, or individuality as challenges to the version of history often used to justify power. She is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship and the Paris Photo Prize. Her works have been exhibited in the US, Italy, Greece, and France, including the Los Angeles Center of Photography and Espace Beaurepaire in Paris.
She has attended guest readings at the Emily Dickinson Museum, Amherst College, and Unnameable Books. Her poetry chapbook The Rye of Pondering was selected by renowned poet Cameron Awkward-Rich and published by Jubilat Journal at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
As an art journalist and writer, she interviewed artists including Gregory Crewdson, Viviane Sassen, Stephen Shore, James Welling, and the curator Gu Zheng. Her article about Kunqu opera was published in Folklife Magazine at the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.
参展作品 Exhibited Artworks
睡去依依随雁断 The Dream that Flocks South
沉浸式雕塑和表演
Immersive sculpture and performance
近100平方米手工纸
Near 100㎡ of handmade paper
2021
刘小川 饰 杜丽娘 王佳鑫 饰 柳梦梅
王佳鑫,昆曲小生,嗓音清亮,唱念规范,做工细腻。擅演剧目有:《牡丹亭·惊梦》、《玉簪记·琴挑》、《长生殿·定情、惊变、埋玉》等。曾荣获第十三届全国高校京剧演唱大赛(昆曲)一等奖,中国戏曲红梅银花奖。主演全国首部学生版《长生殿》中唐明皇一角。
作品描述:我把《红楼梦》撕碎、浸水、榨成纸浆后,一勺一勺浇在地上造成新纸,铺满整个展览场地,取其中“大地落了片白茫茫真干净”之意。展览前,作品如雪洞一般,开展现场,我邀请观众进入作品,走在纸上,将其踩脏踩烂。
《红楼梦》纸浆所制的地毯
在雕塑中,我与搭档王佳鑫将以沉浸式剧场的方式表演昆曲《牡丹亭》中《惊梦》《离魂》两折戏的片段。《惊梦》讲述杜丽娘在牡丹亭内睡着,梦见书生柳梦梅手持柳枝冉冉而來,二人一见钟情,遂相好于湖山石边,《离魂》则是当杜丽娘醒来后,思念柳梦梅,因这一梦郁郁而死。这两折戏分别在《红楼梦》第二十三回“牡丹亭艳曲警芳心”和第十八回“皇恩重元妃省父母”中起到了重要的寓言作用。在一地已被抹除的《红楼梦》之上,我们将调度人群,在纸张中移步换景,利用空间上的转变,使得《离魂》中的梦醒之人望着《惊梦》时梦酣春透之处。
历史上的当权者常常用暴力手段摧毁或者排挤诸如《红楼梦》《牡丹亭》的文学作品,因为它们赏识人性中自然的向往,文学家表达了一种态度,这相较于保持沉默,便是一种反叛,文化梦的破碎是必然的结果。
I tore The Dream of the Red Chamber, soaked it in water, turned it into pulp, and spooned it onto the floor to make new paper to cover the entire room, referencing the line “The land is abluted by snowfall” from this book. Before the exhibition, the room is speckless as if covered in snow. When the exhibition opens, I invite the audience to walk onto the paper and into the work, thus treading and tearing it.
In the sculpture, I will create an immersive theatre with my partner Jesse Wang. We will perform excerpts from the acts “An Interrupted Dream” and “The Departing Soul” from the Kunqu opera The Peony Pavilion. In “An Interrupted Dream”, the young lady Du Liniang falls asleep in the peony pavilion, and dreams of the young scholar Liu Mengmei who approaches her with a willow branch in hand. They have an affair in the garden. When Du Liniang wakes and realizes that all is a dream, she is heartbroken and falls ill.“The Departing Soul” depicts her death. These two acts hold important metaphorical value when they are referenced in The Dream of the Red Chamber. On the floor covered by an erased and illegible version of this book, we will guide the audience to different spaces in the paper sculpture, using the switch of space and scene to indicate the opposition between dream and reality.
Political oppression in history destroys or marginalizes works of literature like The Dream of the Red Chamber and The Peony Pavilion, because they appreciate the desires in human nature. To express an attitude, as opposed to remaining silent, is already an act of revolt. This dream of culture is deemed to be shattered.
参考文献:
《牡丹亭》,汤显祖
《红楼梦》,曹雪芹
《戏剧及其重影》,安托南·阿尔托,1938
《反叛者》,阿尔贝·加缪,1951
《走进阿尔托》,文集《在土星象下》,苏珊•桑塔格,1980
Consulted Works:
The Peony Pavilion, Tang Xianzu
The Dream of the Red Chamber, Cao Xueqin
Le théâtre et son double, Antonin Artaud, 1938
L’homme révolté, Albert Camus, 1951
Approaching Artaud, from Under the Sign of Saturn, Susan Sontag, 1980