Xⁿ Talk | 杨·罗威斯 Jan Lauwers
Jan is a renowned Belgian theatre director and artist. He is also the recipient of the 2012 Venice Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. There is probably no more versatile artist than Jan, whose work encompasses theatre, installation, painting, video and other forms. By inviting him to participate in our project "Collage: The Card Players", I had a chat with him and his team, Needcompany, about collage, about images in their newly moved studio.
"It will be much easier, if everything is just an image."
——Jérôme Sans and Jan's talk
| Jan Lauwers, Brussels
Xⁿ: You started with painting, then turned to theater art, you also write, make video work. You are restless.
Lauwers: Making art is making images, no matter which medium you use.
龙虾餐厅，2007
Xⁿ: In this exhibition, we are going to show your video work C-Song Variations. C-Song has several versions, and its closely connect to your theater work The Lobster Shop.
Lauwers: C-Song has 4 versions in total. I showed No.1 in my retrospective exhibition at McaM (Shanghai) in May 2016. No.1 tells the story of 2 boys fighting with each other on the beach; their fathers are wandering around them. The boys fight until one of them is beaten to death. Then I shot 3 more versions, put them in the start, middle and end scenes in The Lobster Shop, to create a sense of transition.
C-Song Variations alternates scenes in a very high speed; the previous one and the following one are connected as well as misplaced. For which reason did you want to make it so intense? C-Song Variations was made after The Lobster Shop. It was made as a part of the installation / performance work "Deconstruction", displayed inside of the installation structure. It is the most independent work compared to the other "C-Songs".
海之歌 C-Song No.1，10‘26，2003
Francisco Goya 弗朗西斯科·戈雅，Fight with Cudgels 木棍决斗，1820-23
Xⁿ: I felt dizzy while looking at C-Song Variations, but there is always a strong image forced in my mind, is this the purpose of making C-Song Variations?
Lauwers: Yes, video can produce 24 images per second. How to use the 24 images interests me? Here we can find 2 possibilities. You saw C-Song No.1, and you saw The Lobster Shop, so you know the whole story. When you see the image of the father holding his head, mourning, you know immediately what he is doing. When the audience doesn't know the story, and you show him / her C- Song Variations, then you ask them to create their own story.
Xⁿ: In this case, you are using image to make video collage.
Lauwers: Cubists claimed their paintings are more real than realism paintings, because they provided all faces of the same object. This is in fact a deconstruction. To me, James Joyce applied the same method while writing "Ulysses": he stuffed 24 hours with all kinds of fragments of reality. This is way more interesting than writing a real story. If you have a story, written as a normal, simple narrative, you read it and you understand it. In other words, you need to understand yourself through other stories. If all fragments are laid in front of you, you just need to find your own story out of them.
The House of Our Fathers 父之屋，Installation + Performance 装置+表演，2016, Ming Contemporary Museum Shanghai
Xⁿ: I would like to ask you something else, in our last talk, you've mentioned " I am the tragedy of our generation", what does that mean?
Lauwers: Yes, 20th century is the century of deconstruction, I belong to this era. We abandoned, deconstructed and iconoclasts all faiths, deeply doubted Capitalism. We've destroyed the bad ones, also the good ones. The idea of "destroy the bad ones to build better things" is meaningless. It's time to reflect. But it's impossible to recuperate the past, only to construct something new.
Jan Lauwers
Born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1957
Currently working and living in Antwerp, Belgium
Jan是比利时著名的剧场导演、艺术家。也是2012年威尼斯金狮奖终身成就奖的获得者。大概罕有比他更综合多变的艺术家了，他的创作涵盖剧场、装置、绘画、影像等等形式。借着邀请他参加我们策划的《拼贴：玩纸牌的人》的契机，我在他和他的团队needcompany当时新搬入的工作室中进行了一次关于拼贴，关于“图像”的闲谈。
“如果任何事物都是图像，那一切就简单了”
——吉洛姆·桑斯 和杨对谈
| 杨·罗威斯，布鲁塞尔
Xⁿ: 你最早学习绘画，然后又转向了剧场，同时也在写作、拍摄影像作品...永不停歇。
Lauwers: 以任何形式做艺术，都是做图像。
Xⁿ: 我们将展示你的影像作品《海之歌：变奏曲》（C Song Variation）。《海之歌》系列有许多版本，而且它和你著名的剧场作品《龙虾餐厅》(The Lobster Shop)有非常密切的关联。
Lauwers: 海之歌一共有4个版本，No.1去年5月在上海明美术馆的回顾展上展出过。No.1讲的就是两个小孩在沙滩上打斗，他们的父亲像教练一样围绕着他们兜圈，直到一个孩子将另一个打死。后来又断断续续拍了3个版本，在《龙虾餐厅》里的开头、中间、结尾，情绪起伏的间歇，舞台突然暗下来，背景幕布上就播放了几个不同的《海之歌》影像，类似于制造转折点。
海之歌的故事最初源于戈雅的《木棍决斗》(Fight with Cudgels) 。深陷泥沼还狂热地相互攻击的两个男人形象，让我记忆深刻。龙虾餐厅是讲身份迷失，讲绝望和癫狂的，它们故事当然有串联的部分，之间的关系很难说请。
Xⁿ:《海之歌：变奏曲》以极其快速的节奏切换图像，前一个画面和后一个画面好像相连，又好像错位， 和No.1平直的叙事完全不一样。为什么《海之歌：变奏曲》具有如此紧张、高速切换的节奏？
Lauwers: 海之歌系列中，只有“变奏曲”是在龙虾餐厅完成之后做的。是为了慕尼黑艺术中心的展览“解构”（Deconstruction）做的，掩藏在庞大复杂的装置“父之屋”里面播放，它也是这系列中最独立的一件作品。
其实我已经15年没有再看过这件作品了，你应该可以想象这种情况，我费力气做完作品，然后总是嫌不够好，就弃置一边。因为你提起，我才再看了一遍，我发现这是一件非常棒的作品，对我现在正在思考的问题有很大启示。
Xⁿ:变奏曲看的时候觉得头晕目眩，但是看完总有强烈的画面留在脑海里。 我第一次看完变奏曲，总浮现出死去孩子的父亲绝望地躺在沙滩上，被海水冲刷，第二次看完脑海中留下父亲痛苦抱头的画面，这就是变奏曲的目的吗？
Lauwers: 是的。影像一分钟产生24个图像，怎么使用这24个图像，是我所关注的。这里存在两种情况，如果看了海之歌第一部分，看了龙虾餐厅，你知道整个故事，看到男人痛苦的抱着头，你就明白他在做什么。如果只看《海之歌：变奏曲》，给观众同样的图像，是让他创造自己的理解。
这也是我在剧场作品中一直尝试的，我在同一个舞台上展示多个焦点，多种能量，没有办法用传统的方式叙事。一直到《伊莎贝拉的房间》(2004) *，我的剧场作品才开始有一条明晰的线索，单向叙事。
*伊莎贝拉被看守灯塔的养父母养大，他们说她原本是沙漠王子的女儿。故事从她晚年展开，年迈且失明的伊莎贝拉在舞台上和她已故的养父母、已离去的爱人、朋友一起讲述她一生的故事
Xⁿ: 所以你在用画面做影像拼贴。
Lauwers: 立体派说他们的画比写实风景更真实，因为他们提供了一个事物的所有面，这就是解构。在我看来，乔伊斯写《尤利西斯》使用了同样的办法，在24小时的时间范畴里面塞进去各种现实的碎片。这比真实的故事有趣太多了，如果以寻常的方式讲述一个故事，你读了就明白了。换句话说，你要通过别人的故事来理解你自己。但是如果所有的碎片都摆在你面前，你只需要从中找出自己的故事。
Xⁿ: 我们谈一点离题的，上一次我们聊天的时候，你说“我是我们这一代人的悲剧”。
Lauwers: 对，20世纪是个解构的世纪，我属于这一代人，我们在丢弃、解构、偶像破坏所有信念，深深怀疑资本主义。把腐坏的摧毁，也意味着把好的也摧毁了。所谓“毁了旧的才能建更好的”，是个毫无理由的观点。
现在是时候反思了，重构也不太可能，也许只能就地建起新楼。
Xⁿ: 现在你处于什么状态？
Lauwers: 处于要推翻过去10年的转折点。在《伊莎贝拉的房间》以前，我受乔伊斯影响很大，在剧场作品中刻意不说明开头和结尾，不框定时间。刚才我说道，从《伊莎贝拉的房间》开始，我倾向于用开头-高潮-结尾的单向度方式叙事。现在欧洲的艺术情况令人乏味，大家总在作品中加入政治态度，而且总是“一对一”：明确的敌人和一目了然的观点，我觉得需要做些改变，可能艺术要更回归自律（autonomous），可能我过去10年自以为正确的叙事方式是错误的...
杨·罗威斯
1957年出生于比利时安特卫普
现工作生活于比利时安特卫普