在艺术市场和资本的重重围堵下，我们经常听到“当代艺术彻底堕落”或者“已经死了”、“前卫精神不复存在”之类的言论。金融危机给了我们一个良好的时机，反思被金钱价值所塑造出的这个时代盛大繁荣的景象，反思整个艺术体制的弊端。当拍卖的高价被抽离，大规模的收购计划被取消后，艺术品不再作为一个风险投资的依附物。这样一个时刻终于来临，我们每个人都要重新思考，艺术存在的价值到底是什么？什么样的艺术价值被积淀下来？艺术观念的探索，发生了什么样的转向？什么样的新问题被提出，新方法被呈现，新形式被创造？我们是否取得了艺术创作上推进性的成就？
    如同我们不能建造一朵花，只能期待它的种子一样，艺术的流向不能够被建造，我只能目之所及地推荐出感知到的新的艺术倾向。本期专辑所推荐的，都是参加了我在2008年策划的展览《乡愁》和《断舌》的青年艺术家，是目前比较活跃和强劲的实力派类型，他们的身上或多或少潜伏着新的艺术的倾向——“体验性的弥散”。“体验”意味着身体力行、亲身体验、身体经验、个人化的知识系统、感觉经验和生存经历。它是一个连续完整的、头脑中不断内省的、身体感觉过的、有某种个人化特征的、也许不登大雅之堂的、未被开掘和解释过的经验。当我们拥有一个体验时，它不断地与生活融合，没有空隙，没有中断，没有机械性的组合，是一个完整的整体。如同维特根斯坦所说，私人语言属于不可言说的黑暗王国。个体的生命充满了内在的经验和能量，其内在性只能自己感到，他人无法知道，所以不能参与交流。它一定属于受压制的、地位低下的、被埋没的、无政府主义的、无可救药和次等的阶级，被赶出权力体系和商业认定系统的界限。他们都秉持了阿尔窦的所说，“为文盲写作，为失语症患者发言，为无头类思维”。艺术的创作者“成为”对象，他和感知物互相拥抱，既不是同情，也不是模仿，更不是想象中的认同，而是记忆、渐变、某种内在和深层的相似性。生活体验突出了艺术创作中个体化的作为异类的存在。艺术家把那些垃圾的、肤浅的、惯性的和僵死的东西从作品中排除，而把茫然的、偏僻的、荒诞的、事实本身的、龌龊卑劣的、那些不曾被定义污染过的瞬间体验饱和地呈现。艺术家如同体验的研究员、观察员、开采员和运动员，保持强大的敏感和好奇心，不断地开发自己、打开自己和暴露自己，在周围寻找映射对象，不断地积累某一方面的强度，在一瞬间把这些爆发出来。犹如一道闪电，击中所有人的内心。
    “体验性艺术”不是如同批评性艺术那样，与整个社会调情；不像现场艺术，刺激到场观众；也不像点子艺术一样，卖弄聪明。它的目的指向创造出前所未闻的或从未被重视过的感受，这与我们长期持有的正确的价值观和政治性之间保持了一定距离。正是因为它在我们曾经的情感里非常贫瘠，无一所为，所以在他们的作品里才显得格外耳目一新，壮丽恢弘。艺术家的身份从80年代的精英知识分子，转变为商品经济下的偶像明星，而现在，他们成为普通庸人、市井小民、愤青、底层流氓、心存邪念者、傻瓜。他们不再救世、展示知识体系、利用典故，而是转变、振动、挤压、抽离或清理感觉世界这个不可言说的混沌体，与每个人的经验互相衔接。任何新形式的可能都是潜在的、具体的、局部的经验的实现和爆发，互相的通感和关联性却是普世的。
    体验是一种感觉和经验之间的接触世界的方法。艺术家可以用一种动人和独特的风格向人们展示位于理念与日常的冲动、感觉、想象之间的一种新的艺术类型，来自顽强的、茫然的、屡挫屡战的生长性的本真的表达。从一种“沉沦式的闲谈”中逃脱，把原本沉默遮蔽的世界显现出来。他们往往会造成内容上的枯燥，尽量避免具有明确意义的象征、挥之不去的隐喻和显而易见的说明和阐释。人从一开始就是一部制造意义的机器，遇到的一切都蕴涵着某种意义，即使那些晦涩难懂和无声之事。主体和客体之间顽固地充满了无意义的关系，经常让观者束手无策。日常生活中仍有足够多的空隙可以穿梭，即使在那些众所周知的社会学的、东西文化的、象征的、隐喻的、典故的符号之间，依然可以重新发现神奇之物以新的感知方式，建设艺术语言的内在力量。
    正是建立在“体验性艺术”的基础上，我做了《乡愁》和《断舌》两个展览。《乡愁》重点指向底层文化、日常生活记忆、虚构与现实、历史关系、政治潜意识，讨论了艺术家在意识形态的缝隙里，建立自己深入现实的秘密通道。十几年前的中国现实，建立起来的无法抹去的个体切身体验，对有限的文化、物质、生活产品和生活经历的熟悉，这些混杂在一起的底层的审美记忆，把一些个人的、具体的、局部的现实，琐碎的个人化经验，从俗套的惯性中解放出来，以一种诗意化的语言重新解释这个世界。比如何岸的挟带着底层地痞流氓气息和无聊垃圾短信的“看看大哥你能帮帮她吗？”和石青影射的20年中国社会变迁如何使一个底层男人成为一个游手好闲的无动机杀人者和恋尸者过程的“厌食症”。
    《断舌》讨论了针对学术自由的干预，还有更大的来自资本的诱惑和压力，在面对金钱、重商主义和商业帝国的遮蔽时，知识分子越来越屈从于市场和民众的期待，维持整体的谎言系统，将自己隐藏在权力体系之内，成为技术官僚或媒体文化生产的奴隶。“断舌”作为一种压抑的隐喻，一种后集权社会中思想言论不能充分表达的知识分子处境和个人经验的隐喻。语言上的停止，却成为艺术家拒绝说谎话而进入真实生活的表达的开口。正如同黄永砯所说“断舌”又是“对语言文字系统的不信任和破坏”，切断旧有的体系，成为新的表达方式和言说系统的起点。比如充满了视错觉、逻辑悖论、身体和背景道具错位的张慧的绘画《怪坡》系列；充满了感性化力量和佛教生存经验的邵一的装置；有基督徒背景的，以宗教信仰的纯洁、透明、唯美的方式使东西方文化因素互相对撞的吴达新的装置摄影；以媒介实验贯穿始终，在日常生活和社会关系中发掘匪夷所思的荒诞的张辽源；利用艺术史因素、社会事件因素，借力打力的赵赵的装置和图片。他们都以视觉作品的形式，作为话题的讨论，各持一词，观点鲜明地参与在展览之中。

The Experience Mass
FU Xiaodong

Under the siege of both art market and capital, it’s not unusual to hear remarks like “the total degradation of the contemporary art”, “dead already” and “avant-garde no longer exists”. The financial crisis offered us a great opportunity to reflect upon the prosper of our time built up by the value of money as well as the detriments of the whole artistic system. Art works are no longer treated as the appendage to the venture capital, while the high price at auction were withdrawn and large-scale acquisition cancelled. When a time like this eventually arrives, it’s essential that every one of us reconsider – What is the value in the existence of art? What kind of artistic value will be deposited? What kind of turn will take place in the exploration of artistic concepts? What kind of new questions will be brought up, new approaches presented and new forms created? Whether we have achieved impellent accomplishments in the artistic creation?
I could only never create a flower out of thin air, but rather expect its seeds, neither can I create the trend of art, but rather recommend the new artistic tendency I perceived at the best I could. The young artists recommended in this issue had all participated in the exhibitions Nostalgia and Broken Tongue, both of which were staged by me in 2008. They are among the rather active and solid group, in whom hidden more or less the new artistic tendency – “the experience mass”. “Experience” means carrying out the practice in person and physically experiencing the individual knowledge system, perception and process of existence. It’s a complete and continuous experience, which is reflected over and over mentally and perceived physically, possessing some sort of individual feature, and not yet refined, exploited and explained. When we possess an experience, it continually blends with life, without gap, stop or mechanic combination, thus forming a complete whole. Wittgenstein once said that private language belongs to the unspeakable dark kingdom. The life of individual is drenched with inner experience and power, so its internality could not be perceived by anyone other than oneself, thus the inability to participate in the communication. It definitely belongs to the suppressed, low-status, drowned, anarchistic, impossible and inferior class, expelled from the power system and commercially recognized system. Those artists adhere to what Artaud said: “to write for the illiterate, to speak for the aphasic and to think for the acephalous.” The creator of art “becomes” the object, embracing the perceived while embraced by it. It’s neither sympathy nor imitation, much less the imaginary recognition, but rather the memory, the gradual change, and some inner and deep similarity. The experience of life gave prominence to the alien existence of individualization in the artistic creation. Artists present to the full extent the lost, remote, absurd, matter-of-fact, filthy, mean and not-yet-contaminated by definition instant experience, while eliminating the rubbish, shallow, inertia and stiff stuff from their works. Artists are like the researchers, observers, miners and athletes of experience, who continually exploit, open and expose themselves with overwhelming sensitivity and curiosity, and search for mirror target to explode in one moment the intensity accumulated continuously in some aspect, striking every one’s heart like a lightning.
Different from the critical art, which flirts with the whole society, or the live art, which stimulates the spectators, or the idea art, which shows off cleverness, “experience art” aims to create an unprecedented or never-valued experience, which maintains some distance from the righteous values and politics upheld by us for a long time. It is indeed its barrenness and inactiveness in our past emotions that make them particularly refreshing, grand and magnificent. The identity of an artist has transformed from the elite intellectuals in the 80s into the idols and stars under the commercial economy. Now, they have become the average, the low and worldly, the cynic, the hooligans, the evil-minded and fools. They no longer want to save the world, display the knowledge system, nor allude to the classic quotations, but rather change, shake, suppress, withdraw from or clear this unspeakable chaos – the world of feelings, to link with every one’s experience. Every possibility of new forms is the potential, specific and partial realization and explosion of experience, while the mutual empathy and relevance are universal.
Experience is a way of approaching the world, between feelings and learnt lessons. Artists exhibit a new artistic genre between ideals and daily impulses, feelings and imaginations through a touching and unique style. It comes from a true expression of the stubborn, lost and never-give-up growth, escaping from a “sinking chat” to reveal the originally silent and hidden world. They often lead to the dullness in content, striving as they could to avoid symbols with definite meanings, persistent metaphors and obvious explanations and illustrations. From the very beginning, human beings are a machine to create meanings, and everything they encounter contains some meaning, obscure and silent as it may be. Between the subject and the objects is filled with meaningless relations, rendering the viewers helpless. There’s still enough gap in daily life for us to travel through the well-known signs of sociology, eastern and western cultures, symbols, metaphors and classic quotations to rediscover the wonder, building the inner strength of artistic language through the new way of perception.
It was on the basis of “the experience art” that I staged the two exhibitions of Nostalgia and Broken Tongue. Nostalgia mainly pointed to the underdog culture, memories from daily life, fiction and reality, historical relation and political subconsciousness, discussing the establishment of the secret path into reality by artists in the gap of ideology. The indelible firsthand individual experience established by the reality of China more than 10 years ago, mixed with the familiarity of the limited cultural, material and daily life products and life experience, created an aesthetic memory of the underdog. The individual, specific and partial reality together with the trivial individualized experience liberated the perception from the conventional inertia, redefining the world in a poetic language. For examples, HE An’s Could you give her a hand, big bro?, which carries the style of scoundrels and hooligans as well as senseless trash short messages,  and SHI Qing’s Anorexia, which reflects the 20-year social change of China through the process of how an underdog turned into an idle killer who kill for nothing and a necrophile.
Broken Tongue discusses the interference towards academic freedom as well as the greater temptation and pressure from the capital. While confronted with the shroud of money, mercantile system and commercial empire, intellectuals have succumbed more and more to the expectation of the market and people, sustaining the overall system of deceit and hiding themselves inside the power system, thus becoming the slaves of technological bureaucracy or media cultural production. As a metaphor for suppression, “broken tongue” points to the circumstance and individual experience of intellectuals in the post totalitarian society, who are unable to fully express their thoughts and words. The cease in language becomes the entrance into the expression of real life for artists who refuse to lie. Just like HUANG Yongping said: “broken tongue” is once again “the distrust and destruction of the system of language and words”, cutting off the old system to become the starting point of the new way of expression and speech system. For instances, the painting by ZHANG Hui, Strange Slope, which is filled with visual illusions, logical paradox and malposition of body and background props; the device work of SHAO Yi, which is drenched with sentimental strength and Buddhist experience of existence; the device photography by the Christian WU Daxin, which presents the clash between eastern and western cultural elements through the purity, clarity and aesthetic way of religious belief; the works of ZHANG Liaoyuan, which dig up the inconceivable absurdity of daily life and social relations with media experiments throughout; and the devices and pictures of ZHAO Zhao, which utilize the elements of art history and social events to reveal his true intentions, are just a few among many. They all adopt the form of visual art to be the topic of discussion, participating in the exhibition with their striking differences.