气质性的空墟—围绕城市性格的策展人手记

毕月/Beatrice Leanza

徐知兰 译/Translated by XU Zhilan

刘晨 校/proofread by LIU Chen

气质性的空墟—围绕城市性格的策展人手记

毕月/Beatrice Leanza

徐知兰 译/Translated by XU Zhilan

刘晨 校/proofread by LIU Chen

1-3胡同材料目录，2015研究项目，由速溶胡同/头条工作室完成/Hutong Material Catalogue， research project 2015， by Instant Hutong/Ramoprimo Studio

“……行动就是形式。”

——凯勒·伊斯特林，《超国家机器——基础设施空间的力量》［1］21

目前有一股来自当代设计知识领域的变质效应正在加速产生影响。它产生于一个重要的时间节点，即技术进步与设计师最终产品——无论是物件、设施、还是程序——为人们所接触到的容易程度相互交叠，正在让个体能够与他们的构成性规则及结构形成更为个人、更具感染力和更为日常可见的关系。信息作为对不断影响扩大的全球参与范式进行形态转换的终极标志，现在与数据、设备和空间紧密交织在一起，它们的结合似乎给我们提供了能在现实生活中自发成为活跃的用户、消费者和生产者的机会。凯勒·伊斯特林的《超国家机器》探索了这种随着“基础设施技术”而新出现的表面上的透明性所具有的短路效应，今天这种技术“不仅仅包含管线组成的网络，还具有通用的标准和理念，它们控制着从技术配件到管理风格的所有事物。……与隐而不见的状态相反，现在，基础设施是在我们所有人之间进行联络和交通往来的显性节点——它们是统治日常生活空间的规则”［1］11。伊斯特林对于当代去物质化控制机制的调查揭示了空间的固有语义学意义，它将基础设施定义为“构成城市形态的操作系统”，即规则和环境——从免税区到宽带网不一而足，由此实现的全球化治理是有形物件和无形协议共同繁育的成果。她的发现证实了一处批判性的边缘地带，代表了一些策展人的视角，他们有志于将城市与对变化和反思的参与性实践项目联系在一起，并提出具有建设性的理论暗示结论。

伊斯特林对基础设施空间的解读扩展了拉图尔创立的行动者网络理论［2］的谱系，这一理论关注“中介”，也就是无形的社会叙事。它作为一种积极的形式帮助形成了我们与空间和物质对象之间的关系——从建筑到社区、街道和机动车——后者也同样具有积极的形式“作用”。全球化城市的空间与社会行为的程式化——市区、郊区、度假村、大型商城等——本质上包含着一种预设的“性格”或趋势，使潜在的行为得以发生。因此，城市的背景可以被视为一系列历史元素构成的网络，它们层层叠加在一系列空间、行为与文化的关联性词汇上，这些关系在城市的“主操作系统”中被消费、再生产和得到体现。隐喻地说，如果电子设备表面上赋予了我们许多手段与工具，让我们能在新兴的“数字城市主义”大道上纵横驰骋、自由地定制所有这些词汇，那么，它们所具有的分裂和瓦解效应也同时需要新的干预策略来提升系统的各项机能，产生新的集体参与和契约伦理。

通过基础设施对城市进行反思，并将城市作为基础设施进行思考，提示我们应该重新想象时代与空间的关系。社会与个人形成于过去的物质条件背景下，这些条件也限定了社会与个人的现在与未来，因此当代城市（重新）产生的轨迹成为这些特质性关系之间的相互作用——也就是在其维护与再生产过程中涉及的空间、组织与道德经济之间的相互作用。这种进行中的重塑过程，调和了政治叙事、社会选区和消费大众之间的对话，弥合了各种不同知识领域与人类实践对于未来的设想，它居于当代文化“行动”的核心位置，考虑到20世纪中期以来各类艺术实践领域的不断拓展，这一过程可被视为一种对空间政治的回归批判。从由极简主义与概念艺术的出现而引发具象空间的死亡，到“关系美学”与“体制批判”所擅长的去物质化论辩，直至固执己见的“客体本体论”，这些思潮的往复变迁与1980年代以来针对后现代背景下游离地理学进行的跨学科研究的转折交织在一起，它们在随之产生的后续思潮“对立文化实践”中具有主导地位，而后者回应了不断变化的、因地而异的身份与知识的概念，它们依托于后殖民主义话语，同时也推动了许多批判性实践，催生了新的 “社区”范式与“归属感”1）［3］。空间、场所、身份之间的变革性关联，及其与不断排列组合的机构与地点之间的联系，终将被21世纪的创意产业理性化，融入为消费主义、壮观景象与游憩活动提供服务的基础设施空间，在博物馆一般的购物中心的崛起过程中，这一现象达到了顶峰。

策展人批判性的努力可能佯装为伊斯特林所谓的“乘数器”形式进入当代城市空间，这些要素会影响或调整各自所在体系的性格或气质。它们植入了能够评估、反映并重新审视我们的意识的中介，同时让我们亲身感受那些横贯在生活环境中的变化。戏剧《诸多无限》在这方面提供了一个有说服力的案例。这项获得许多大奖的杰出剧目最初在2002年公演，由远见卓识的导演卢卡·隆柯尼与剑桥大学宇宙学家和数学家约翰·戴维·巴罗的共同合作完成。以巴罗为剧作家，隆柯尼为舞台魔术师，《诸多无限》通过5幕独立的场景，探索了“无限”的数学概念。每一幕剧都别开生面，并关注各自独特的方面。这出戏的演出场地是斯卡拉仓库的空旷场地——这座飞机库一样的建筑综合体曾经是斯卡拉歌剧院的实验室所在地，位于米兰曾经的偏远工业区博威萨。观众一到达剧场，就被分为70人一组进入演出场地。他们会按顺序上楼，分别经过5个不同的演出场景，因此空间里总是同时有5组观众占据其中。《诸多无限》将城市作为剧场，在其中营造了一个“瞬间”，由此不同形式的智力活动、空间活动和社会运动都在其中得到了活生生的体验和集体上演。巴罗对此解释说：“讲故事似乎是刺穿层层（关于无限概念的）悖论的方式，因此通过让观众沉浸于其他的场景中的方法，这些悖论变得令人熟悉，而那些违反直觉的‘无限’特征则活生生地耸现在这些场景中。”［4］《诸多无限》以吉莉安娜·布鲁诺称之为“一种对时代政治的彻底重塑”［5］的方式唤醒和激起了观众的积极参与，我们现在通过自己身边平淡无奇的建成环境中不均质的空间获得这种体验——这些建成环境是一个不断分解与瓦解的超链接世界，在这个世界里，有关附近、距离和归属的概念会经常被重新定义。

"［…］ the action is the form."

—Keller Easterling， Extrastatecraft - The power of Infrastructure Space［1］21

An accelerating， metamorphosing effect radiates from the fields of contemporary design knowledge. It originates at a momentous temporal crossroad when the overlay between technological advancement and the ease of accessibility to design's end-products - be those objects， utilities or processes， is empowering individuals to a more personal， affective and quotidian rapport to their constitutive rules and structures. Information，the ultimate shape-shifting signifier of an ever expanding paradigm of world-wide participation，coalesces today into an entanglement of data，devices and spaces that we are seemingly offered to self-operate as active users， consumers and producers of the reality we inhabit. Keller Easterling's Extrastatecraft explores the shortcircuiting impact of this new apparent transparency in the emergence of an "infrastructural technology" that today "more than grids of pipes and wires，includes the shared standards and ideas that control everything from technical objects to management styles.［…］ Far from hidden， infrastructure is now the overt point of contact and access between us all - the rules governing the space of everyday life"［1］11. Easterling's investigations into the dematerialized mechanics of contemporary control unearth an immanent semantics of space that defines infrastructure as an "operating system for shaping the city"， that is the formulas and environments，from free zones to broadband networks， through which global governance is exercised as a proliferation of both tangible objects and immaterial protocols. Her findings substantiate a critical perimeter which presents curatorial perspectives interested in engaging the city and participatory practices of change and reflection， with productive theoretical implications.

Easterling's reading into infrastructure space build onto a genealogy of actor-network theory as developed by Latour［2］， focusing on "agency"， i.e. immaterial and social narratives， as an active form contributing to the shaping of our relation to space and spatial objects （from buildings， to neighbours，streets and vehicles） "as" active forms. The formulas of spatial and social conduct of the global city -zones， suburbs， resorts， malls - essentially embed a preconfigured "disposition"， or tendency， of potential activities to be performed wherein. The urban context can be therefore observed as a web of historical constructs， stratified over a spatial，behavioural and cultural vocabulary of relationality consumed， reproduced and embodied in the "host system" of the city. By way of a metaphor， if our electronic devices seemingly enable us with the tools and measures to freely customize this vocabulary across new avenues of "data-urbanism"， their atomizing， disaggregating effect is simultaneously calling for new strategies of intervention to upgrade the system's faculties towards a renewed ethics of engagement and collective participation.

Rethinking the city through-and-as infrastructure prompts us to reimagine the timesand-spaces where sociality and personhood are created alongside the past material conditions that contribute to their present and future definitions. The contemporary locus of urban（re）generation becomes therefore the interplay of these dispositional relations - the spaces， the organizations and the moral economy implicated in their preservation and reproduction. This form of ongoing reworking， that is the moderation of dialogical processes among political narratives，social constituencies and the consuming public，bridging visions from diversified fields of knowledge and human practice， is at the heart of contemporary culture's "doing"， one that can be looked upon as a recursive critique of spatial politics predicated on the ever expanding fields of artistic practice since the mid 20th century. From the demise of representational space with the emergence of minimalism and conceptual art， to the dematerialization exercised by the rhetoric of Relational Aesthetics and Institutional Critique， until the self-absorption of Objectoriented Ontology， these perambulations are intertwined with the transdisciplinary turn of studies addressing the disembodied geographies of the postmodern condition since the 1980s. These were paramount in the consequent formulations of "oppositional cultural practices" that responded to changing notions of place-bound identity and site-bound knowledge postulated in post-colonial discourse， as well as informed a variety of critical endeavours through which new paradigms of "community" and "sense of belonging" have been produced until nowadays1）［3］. The transformative nexus between space， place， and identity and its connection to the ongoing permutations between institutions and locations， is what eventually the creative industries of the 21th century have rationalized into an infrastructure space of consumerism， spectacle and play， epitomised by the rise of the mall as museum.

Critical curatorial endeavours can enter contemporary urban space in the guise of what Easterling calls "multipliers"， elements that can affect or retune the temperament or disposition of the systems in which they are suspended. They emplace forms of agency that can assess，reflect upon and readdress our awareness and simultaneously offer physical engagement with the experience of the changes traversing our living environments. The theatre piece Infinities offers to this extent a powerful exemplification. An awardwinning dramaturgical wonder staged originally in 2002， it is product of the collaborative efforts of visionary director Luca Ronconi and John D. Barrow， a cosmologist and mathematician from the University of Cambridge. With Barrow， the playwright， and Ronconi， the stage wizard， Infinities explores the mathematical concept of "infinity" through five separate scenarios， each of which functions as a performative tableau focusing on one of its singular aspects. The play was hosted in the vacant spaces of Magazzini della Scala， a large hangar-like complex that used to house the laboratories of La Scala Opera House and is located in Milan's once remote industrial zone of Bovisa. On arrival， the audience was let inside in groups of seventy， which would sequentially move up through the five different scenarios so that five different groups were simultaneously inhabiting the space. Infinities took the city as the theatre， creating within it a "moment" through which different forms of intellectual， physical， and social movement came to be lived and collectively performed. Barrow explained: "Story-telling seemed to be the way to penetrate its ［the concept of infinity］ paradoxes so that they became familiar by the device of immersing the audience into other realities where the counter-intuitive features of the infinite loomed as large as life."［4］Infinities evoked and provoked an active engagement with what Giuliana Bruno calls "a radical refashioning of a politics of time"［5］as we nowadays experience it through the uneven spaces of our ordinary， built environments: a hyperconnected world in endless solution and dissolution，where notions of proximity， distance and belonging are constantly reconfigured.

The spatio-temporal dynamic activated and engaged by the project encapsulates a strategic form of agency that simultaneously speaks to and challenges the various transformative registers as well as the "ongoing biographies" sedimented across the interiors and exteriors of the city［6，7］. Urban regeneration more than an artefactual rejuvenation of architectural forms must perform as an agent of relational transformation and act with punctuality and precision along the locational specificity of discarded social narratives and material histories - urban voids - that can substantiate what we otherwise often found labelled as an encounter between top-down regimentation and bottom-up experimentation. In this infra-dimensional space，designers can "code" moments of not-totallyplanned deviation from the status quo， working with the temperamental character of these latent forces， thus creating novel interactional scapes between spaces and communities， and so allowing for motives of change and resilience to mobilize extant relations of production， inheritance and place into new conformations.

4.5行动中的思想，上海西岸艺术中心，2016年1月10日-3月15日，展览由reMIX工作室设计/Ideas in Action， exhibition views in West Bund Art Centre，Shanghai， January 10 - March 15， 2016， exhibition design by reMIX Studio

6.7管·白塔寺，2015北京设计周北京白塔寺历史街区装置，众建筑设计/ Tubular Baitasi， installation in Baitasi historic district （Beijing）， Beijing Design Week 2015， by people Architecture Office

项目激发和吸引的时空动态，包含着中介的策略形式，它们在与各种变量以及沉淀在一座城市内外的许多“形成中的自传”进行对话的同时，也对它们提出挑战［6，7］。城市复兴的进程不仅仅是人工恢复建筑形式的过程，也必须成为相关变化过程的中介，并且在区位特性上与被遗弃的社会叙事与物质历史——城市的无用空间——保持精确的一致，后者也证明了我们平时经常见到的所谓自上而下的制度化与自下而上的实验之间的冲突。在这个亚维度空间里，设计者能够通过“编写代码”形成许多并不完全在计划中的、偏离现状的瞬间，与这些隐藏力量的气质特征协作，在空间与社区之间创造出新的互动景观，并允许变革力和活力将生产、遗产和场所之间的既有关系组织成新的构象。

在云计算与共享经济繁荣的支持下，对影响力的分析判断与专业服务的传递得以 加速发展，推动了学科之间日益增长的相互渗透与开源技术稳定持续的发展；尽管如此，最令人痛心的却是，城市复兴的时空在意识形态上与生产行为和对权力与资本的等级制度的回应相关联，将城市作为全球渴望的对象进行崇拜。这些跨国现象共同产生的隐性前提是，认为今天表现出的设计是跨学科、物质系统与非物质系统的“元项目”，这些结构必须通过以专门技术为基础的各种过程相互作用才能发挥作用，同样重要的是，必须使区位特征里那些具有文化气质的机能获得更大的力量，让它们能通过中小尺度的集体参与方式重新获取对城市应有的权利。尽管这些专项调查来源于不同的生产方式，从数码知识、匠人思维到草根智慧等，它们的驱动力却具备共同特征，即积极创造价值、共同实现理想以及道义上的志趣相投。让这些创新企业吸引到共同价值的是它们在协同创造与知识整合的高效生产网络中的动态布局；也是它们在可补救范围内的迂回行动，这种方式能重新激发在生产、遗产和场所之间已经断裂或陈旧的关联，形成相互关联和彼此依赖的创新过程。这也成为最近上海艺术设计双年展2）上一个展览的主题，展览由上海西岸艺术中心举办，笔者就是策展人之一。题为“行动中的思想”的展览表达了彼此相关的多学科设计实践，骄傲地呈现了整体思想的形式，它们来源于并呼应了各种在中国发生变化的当代场景，跨越从物品到城市的制造，通过在许多社会、文化和空间条件的关系之间进行变化关联形成展览，这些条件来自于不均等或被忽视的各类发展框架。展览分为4个核心部分——基础设施模型、增长的协议、填充，以及物质与客体——它们都被布置在一个“动态的总平面”上。展览由总部设在北京的临界工作室设计，这种方式鼓励观众在各部分之间进行有机的横向解读，并允许他们将其作为视觉与空间景观来体验。

围绕着这些当代设计实践的道德经济，涌入了各类设计知识领域，它对重新评估拉图尔和伊斯特林针对“社会”的本质提出的问题和解决方法至关重要。在中国急迫的多元化现象、人口分化、流于形式的公众听证会和当前各类社会价值观的背景下，这些质问显得比以往更为重要，并进一步被改变游戏规则的范式所扩大和加强，中国失控的私人企业也因此随着劳工体系与生产体系变化而左右摇摆。这些都是公共文化机构与组织进行讨论的必然前提，本文的作者也在努力获得第一手资料的同时，担任北京设计周2013年以来的创意总监。尽管这种大规模公众事件具有天然的曝光性质，其临时性的特点也能对行动与反思采用实用主义的姿态（空间与时间上的开放）——将城市作为生活实验室，测试集体智慧形式在自身演进过程中自我沦陷的可能性。2011年以来在大栅栏历史街区，在当地开发商合作下建立起来的长期项目平台，以及2015年在白塔寺进行的类似工作，试图产生出这种类型的合作机构——即仅仅通过空间的操作，与目前生活中的动态要素共同作用，这些要素也构成了它们的背景。设计者被邀请来加入这些对话，他们对错综复杂的空间尺度、来源于街道、棋牌室和餐桌等的社交形式具有非常敏锐的感受，由此通过已有的实践知识和有意将其服务于社会需求的兴趣，重新编写了它们目前的构成代码。

通过这些可以到达且容易辨识的项目——无论是半临时性的干预、长达几个月之久的展览或是为期一天的论坛，这些穿梭于城市肌理内部的即兴行为，是城市未来必不可少的要素。它们所提供的暂停、反思和开放对话的时间，在当今信息过度的城市中是一种稀有品。尽管在城市的时间碎片化维度中运行，它们也仍然成功地使机遇、理想和需求成为建筑实用主义的三大支柱，并通过一份集体想象将它们转变为“实施宣言”的集合。

Most poignantly though， with a growing osmosis among disciplines and the steadfast development of open-source technologies augmented by an acceleration in diagnosing impacts and delivering specialized services thanks to cloud-computing and the proliferation of the sharing-economy， the space and time of urban regeneration becomes ideologically associated with productive actions and responsiveness to the hierarchies of power and capital that fetishize the city as an object of global desire. The implicit premise to this assembly of positions that are growing across a transnational expanse， is the recognition that design performs today as a "metaproject" across disciplinary and systemic structures of both intangible and material nature， which must labour at the interplay of processes grounded in practical know-hows as much as empower culturally dispositional faculties of locational character that can reclaim the right to the city by way of small to medium scale forms of collective engagement. While their specificity of investigation employs modalities of production sourcing from digital knowledge， craft-thinking as much as grassroots intelligence， a common denominator of positive value-making， co-actualization and a light-weight awareness of ethical like-mindedness， drives their motivations. What draws shared significance to these creative enterprises is their dynamic positioning within generative networks of co-doing and combining of knowledge， their detouring within the remedial scale of actions that can rekindle broken or obsolete relations of production，inheritance and place into novel processes of mutuality and co-dependency. This has also been the subject of a recent exhibition presented in the context of the biennial Art & Shanghai Exhibition2）organized at Shanghai West Bund Art Centre， of which the author was one of the curators. Titled "Ideas in Action"， this themed part of the show presented relevant multidisciplinary design practices， sporting forms of integrated thinking found， inspired by or echoing across contemporary scenarios of change in China， that spanned from object-to-city making by way of rerouting connections across the social， cultural and spatial givens of uneven or unattended frameworks of development. Divided in four core sections -Infrastructural Matrix， Growth protocols， Infill and Materiality & Objecthood - they were laid out in a "dynamic masterplan" designed by Beijing-based reMIX Studio as a way to encourage an organic cross-reading among them and allow audiences to inhabit as a visual and spatial landscape.

The moral economy registered around these kinds of contemporary design practices and effusing the fields of design knowledge is the key to reassessments of Latour's and Easterling's approach and questions around the nature of the "social". These interrogations prove ever more essential in the context of China's urgent diversities， segmented demographics， eroding public fora and civic values，further aggravated by the game-changing paradigms with which its rampant private enterprises are swaying the labour and productivity system. These are issues that public cultural institutions and organizations must take as discursive horizons， and the author of this text has strived to engage firsthand while acting as the creative director of Beijing Design Week since its 2013 edition. Albeit divulging in nature，the temporary character of this largescale public event allowed for the emplacement of pragmatic overtures（physical and temporal openings） of both action and reflection to engage the city as a living laboratory， testing the possibilities for a form of collective intelligence to become enmeshed in its evolvement. The long-termed event platforms established with the collaboration of local developers in the historic districts of Dashilar since 2011 and in Baitasi in 2015 have attempted at conjuring this type of collaborative agency over sheer spatial manoeuvring， working with the existing life dynamics producing their contexts. Designers were invited to enter these dialogues with sensitivity to their intricate scales， inherited forms of sociality consumed across the streets or in gambling parlours as much as at dining tables， thus re-coding their extant formations with practical knowledge at hand and an interest to put that at the service of social needs in mind.

The provisional acts threaded within the urban fabric by way of such accessible， legible projects - be those semi-temporary interventions， months-long exhibitions or daylong forums， are vital for urban futures. The time of pause， reflection and openended dialogue they offer is rare currency in today's information-overflown cities. And while they work within cities' temporally shredded dimensionality they succeed in making opportunity， ambition and necessity equal mainstays of architectural pragmatism， and with a little bit of collective imagination， turning them into a constellation of "operative manifestos".

注释/Notes：

1）作为这种长达几十年的艺术与建筑之间相互交流影响潮流的组成部分，2015年的透纳奖由聚合建筑师事务所获得——这是一支由20多位设计师合作组成的年轻团队，以非正式、参与性的方式开展工作，他们的许多项目都是社会参与的公众主导干预措施，为对当代文化语言背景下两者发挥的作用与姿态提供了探讨的延续性和挑战。/As part of this decades-long intercourse between art and architecture，the 2015 Turner prize won by architecture practice Assemble - a young collective of more than 20 designers working along an informal， participatory model of mostly public-oriented interventions of social engagement - offers continuity of debate and a challenge to the role and positioning of both in contemporary cultural discourse.

2）2016上海艺术设计双年展于2016年1月1日至3月15日在西外滩艺术中心举办。更多信息详见www.artdesign-sh.co和《论行动的思想》，详见http://www.thebao.com/shanghai-artdesign-biennale-2016-ideas-in-action/The 2016 Shanghai Art & Design Exhibition was held at West Bund Art Centre from January 10 until March 15， 2016. For more information see www.artdesign-sh.com and on Ideas in Action specifically http://www.thebao.com/shanghaiartdesign-biennale-2016-ideas-in-action/.

/

［1］ Keller Easterling. Extrastatecraft - The power of Infrastructure Space. London: Verso， 2014.

［2］ Bruno Latour. Reassembling the Social， an Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Clarendon， 2005.

［3］ Esther Choi. Sociable Realism， on Assemble. Artforum， 2015（11）: 133-134.

［4］ John D. Barrow. Where Things Happen That Don't: Staging the Infinite. paper on Infinities， last accessed at http://thalesandfriends.org/wp-content/ uploads/2012/03/barrow_paper.pdf （March 22， 2016）.

［5］Giuliana Bruno. public Intimacy: Architecture and The Visual Arts. Cambridge， Mass: The MIT press，2007: 213.

［6］ Victor Buchli. An Anthropology of Architecture. London: Bloomsbury Academic， 2014. Institutions and Community: 89-116； Consumption Studies and the Home: 117-135.

［7］ Georges Teyssot. A Typology of Everyday Constellation. Cambridge: The MIT press， 2013.

Temperamental Voids: Curatorial Notations Around the City as Disposition

作者介绍：北京设计周创意总监

2016-03-15