Small World 小世界
This curatorial statement of Taipei Biennial 2023 is co-authored by Freya Chou, Reem Shadid, and Brian Kuan Wood.
“Small World,” the theme of the Taipei Biennial 2023, suggests both a promise and a threat: a promise of greater control over one’s own life, and a threat of isolation from a larger community. Our world can become smaller as we grow closer to one another, but also as we grow apart, and “Small World” takes place within such a suspended state.
During the pandemic lockdowns, many experienced their immediate surroundings as if for the first time — not only in the private space of the home, but also as a new experience of one’s own surroundings. In northern India, residents of Jalandhar were suddenly able to see the Himalayas after decades of traffic pollution dissipated from the air. The sight of nearby mountain peaks reflected what many were discovering in their private lives: in a shrinking world, the nearest things can appear unfamiliar. It was as if a spell had been broken, exposing a strange reality that had surrounded us the whole time.
Many relationships and livelihoods, friends and loved ones were lost in this difficult period. Mental health issues arouse that continue until today. But the sense of fear and alarm was also accompanied by a strange calm as the industries and economies that moved the world suddenly paused. For a brief moment, it was just us, meeting each other through windows and screens, still moving and performing our private lives to each other through machines, trying to work and to stay alive, freed from some commitements and increasingly along in facing others, asking how we can make time without losing time.
Like any capital city or imperial center, today’s platforms often appear to be the only gateway to the world outside and to relations with others. But such captivating allure also incites mistrust, especially when relations are based on attention—a specific mode of relation that favors volatile behavior and intense states of unrest and anxiety. When feelings of vulnerability and omnipotence are strangely interchangeable, it’s no wonder that attention gravitates toward tension: the two words share the Latin tendere—“to stretch.”
To stretch is to extend, to reach and grow to cover a distance between multiple points without letting go of others—to meet the cost of living, to care for the elderly relatives you pretend to respect, the children or grandchildren who treat you as a vending machine, the lovers who use you as a distraction, or even entire industries and economies that fall short of their promises. Overstretching can be overwhelming and confusing when it compensates for impossible contradictions and unbridgeable distances, for being unable to join together nor completely separate.
The pause of industry often felt like being transported to another era, where our relations were differently weighted and distributed, the supply pipelines differently routed. We may have encountered primordial versions of ourselves—the premodern creatures that still lie dormant within those of us who could still have a conversation with our own ancestors without sounding hopelessly lost. Or we may have encountered our most modern selves as vulnerable urbanites unsophisticated in the face of the wild, lost in a paradoxical world beyond services and conveniences, but also providing those missing services and conveniences for ourselves and others.
To some, a small world might promise a withdrawal from overperformance, an unplugging from doomscroll attention harvesting and growth economies that feed on themselves, turning us against each other in the process. In seeking refuge from an unsustainable situation, one might explore what emerges from a state of rest—a politics of relaxation and a contraction to a more natural bodily form unstretched by overextension or heroism. For some, the small world promises a lush interior garden free from industry and economy alike.
However, securing such an exceptional status can only be costly as a denial of real dependencies and interdependencies—rendering the garden on the inside as a fortress from the outside. This is where any politics of relaxation becomes militarized, because not everyone can be welcome in the garden. And the fortress exposes the secret of the garden: that its protective embrace also threatens a narrowing of possibilities, a simplifying of identity, a refusal of knowledge, a walled-off horizon.
Artists and musicians have inhabited this paradox for some time with a certain expertise. When scalar platforms of exchange or amplification carry the capacity to hijack works, whether by being sold or streamed, copied or locked away, chopped or screwed, celebrated or forgotten, fetishized or patronized, the power to grow and to extend makes it also necessary to cultivate specific intimate spaces—localized selves and timescales that resist duplication and dissemination.
So much art and music has arisen from a group of friends. Even companies, technologies, scientific discoveries, sometimes even revolutions and nations arise from small groups of friends. History would like us to think that these friendships were tactical and intentional, and probably many were, but in art and music it is often the case that friendships are more primary than the works that arose from them. On their own, friendships between people are rarely the subject of history because they testify to a certain simplicity in the act of creation heretical to the inflationary appetites of spectacle.
In fact, artists are often virtuosic, and they often overstretch, but not necessarily in ways that are visible or audible. The works they present are often shadows of something much larger that they create elsewhere, as thinkers or as social beings, or in an entirely other realm that resists immediate representation. While institutions and industrial interests try to elevate these shadows ever upward into historical inscription, many artists look downward to the ground, the underground, to the bedrock from which they receive strength and inspiration. The small world is also a paradoxical play at enlarging resistances to scale.
Musicians often cite their community as their inspiration, while simultaneously the medium of recording has wildly dominated music, sealing performances for perpetuity, often becoming musicians’ primary mode of transmission, thus expression. It’s not only electronic musicians who can never unplug. The recording is an instrument like a violin for a violinist: an amplifier and a point of tension between the sensing of music and its transmission. Such intimacy with machines and listeners separated by time and space might explain why artists and musicians inevitably need to be isolated and hidden at some points and intensely connected at others.
There is a lonely and entitled place that we have lost parts of ourselves and our societies to, but it may also be a place that welcomes strange acts of refusing to scale up or down, to amplify, unplug, move, or stay put. The small world might lure us towards illusions of impossible permanence and simplicity, towards absolute primacies and intoxicating authenticities that surpass all influences, promising the comfort of becoming immersed in ourselves. But it also encourages us to betray the need to translate and be understood, to please others for some eventual benefit that never arrives. Maybe we took too long to recognize an imbalance in scales as unbearable, and maybe it is only now that we can begin to explore how limited movement can bring expressive power.
2023台北雙年展提出「小世界」（Small World）作為主題，這一看似簡單的詞，實則蘊涵複雜交疊的面向 。它代表希望、承諾，同時也暗藏某種程度的懼怕、不安——希望能對自身小我的生活擁有更全然的掌握權，卻也懼怕被孤立於大我的群體之外。當世界在尺度上縮小時，可以拉近彼此的距離，但當人與人之間相互疏離時，世界在情感層面上也變得渺小：「小世界」就發生在這樣懸浮、矛盾弔詭的狀態中。
疫情封控期間，許多人儼然像是生平第一次體驗了周遭的一切，除了自己的私密空間外，連對所處的外界環境也都產生新的感悟。在印度北部的賈朗達爾（Jalandhar），累積數十年的空汙因為封城、世界的停擺而終於消散，當地居民意外地清楚看見了鄰近的喜馬拉雅山脈，那是他們從未能好好欣賞的世界美景。這群峰乍現的景象反照出許多人在全球疫情期間的體悟：在一個日益縮小的世界裡，原來近在身邊的事物是可以如此陌生；彷彿某種魔咒被打破後，那些早就存在我們生活中荒誕的真實也被迫無所遁形。
在這段艱辛時日裡，很多人失去了生計、遭逢親人的離去，以及各式各樣的人際關係出現裂痕；心理健康問題浮現蔓延，時至今日這些現象仍一直存在。然而，伴隨恐懼與緊張情緒而來的，卻是一種詭異的寧靜，因為原本推動世界運作的產業與經濟忽然停止了。曾經有段時間，我們孤獨地透過視窗和螢幕與他人維持聯繫，機器幫助我們扮演應盡的社會角色，持續工作以求謀生；我們看似從某種承諾中獲得解脫，但在面對其他該履行的義務時，卻顯得更加無力；不禁反覆質問自己，如何可以在不失去時間的條件下創造時間。
在當代社會裡，我們每個人都需要藉由平台來作為通往外在世界、維繫人際關係的途徑。「平台」一般而言意味高於附近區域的平面，近年這個詞逐漸被用以描述吸引注意力（attention）並予以轉化為影響力的基台，其功能可與電腦的操作系統或某項政府政策相比擬。不過平台所挾帶著的這股誘人魅力，最終產生了質變。當在平台裡，相互關係的生成取決於彼此間的「關注」程度時，便易造成行為變異或催生出強烈的不安與焦慮感。而當無所能和無所不能的情緒竟可以相互交替時，我們也就不意外發現「關注」（attention）與「緊張」（tension）的定義越來越模糊——畢竟從英文詞源來看，這兩個字恰好都衍生自拉丁文「tendere」，意指「伸展」、「撐張」。
伸展就是將範圍向外擴展到得以涵蓋多點之間的距離。如果試著用生活中需要應付的種種因子來理解「多點」的概念，除了支應日常生活開支，還需要照顧那些你假裝敬愛的長輩、將你視同販賣機的兒孫、對你予取予求的伴侶們，以及鋪天蓋地，長期欺騙、壓榨我們的工業系統和經濟體系。這些糾結不清的矛盾情懷、無可跨越的世俗距離，讓我們既無法緊密連結、又不能徹底分開，即便過度伸展可以成為彌補這一切的手段，但彈性疲乏後陷入的會是更困惑不安、更難以招架的窘境。
產業活動的暫停運作讓人宛如錯置於另一時空，我們的關係脈絡被以不同方式進行衡量和分配，供應網絡開始重新佈局。我們也在此寧靜時刻，學習內觀，漸悟出一些道理。有人回歸自我，重新檢視過往人生是否偏離正軌；也有些人巧遇了最現代化版本的自己，卓然發現其早已迷失在一個詭譎的世界，轉而面對自我原始的荒蕪，不願再成為披戴文明外衣的社畜，不斷地為了他人及自身所追求的便利社會願景而汲汲營營。
對某些人而言，「小世界」可能讓我們覺得有希望從追求超高績效的循環中脫身，斷離末日狂刷（doom scroll）、收集關注和成長型經濟的迴路（雖然此種經濟模式能自行提供成長所需能量，但在過程中卻建立起人與人之間的對立）。當有幸獲得一絲喘息時，意想不到的驚喜譁然乍現；某種「弛放政治學」（a politics of relaxation）於焉成形，身體收斂到一種比較自然的狀態，不會因為過度伸展或英雄主義作祟而被扭曲拉扯。對某些人來說，「小世界」許諾的是一個不受產業和經濟羈絆的內在花園。
然而，若要有效確保這種難能可貴的狀態，就必須付出高昂代價，因為這意味著必須拒絕現實中的依賴關係與互依互存的流通網路；小世界承諾的內在花園頓時搖身一變成了座抵抗外侮的堡壘。這時，所有嚮往解脫羈絆的原則，十分弔詭地變得具有防禦性，因為並非所有人都能受邀進入花園。堡壘意外地揭露出花園的一個真實秘密：那就是在給予保護的同時，也暗藏了狹隘的世界觀、身分認同的簡化、知識的拒否以及排他性。
藝術家與音樂人因長期周旋於此種矛盾中而有所領悟。當平台開始擁有挾持作品能力時，無論是透過銷售、串流、拷貝、儲存、混音、再製，或在爆紅與被遺忘、成為偶像與渴求過度關注的循環中，這些擴展的力量使得藝術家與音樂人不得不培養屬於自己的私密空間——一個足以抗拒剽竊與流通氾濫的堅定自我及度量衡。
一直以來，許多藝術和音樂的產生多源自一群朋友的合作；甚至公司企業、科技、科學發現，乃至革命的發生與國家的形成，都可能來自一小眾朋友的力量。縱然歷史的教訓讓我們相信此類友誼多是充滿謀略及意圖不軌，但在藝術與音樂的領域中，同心協力的情誼卻常構成創作的基石，由此綻放出繽紛的花朵，享受碩果累累的喜悅。在一切以結果論為訴求的社會裡，人與人之間的情誼本來就鮮少被放大討論，因為這種關係見證的是在創造過程中的某種簡單性，與凡事要求極大化的消費欲求，背道而馳。
事實上，藝術家經常在超負荷的高壓狀態下完成創作，但總是無人知曉。他們的思想或社會實踐往往留下更大的成就，藝術創作不過是他們在進行哲學思辨框架下的表現形式之一——一種為了滿足「立即再現」欲求的手法。縱然體制機構與產業利益不斷試圖將這些表現形式哄抬、吹捧到得以列入歷史正典，但對許多藝術家而言，他們反而更看重腳踏實地，務實地向下紮根，著眼於能滋養他們能量與靈感的基石。「小世界」因而成了一場矛盾的遊戲，試圖放大此種對成功定義的抵抗。
音樂人經常表示他們所屬的社群是創作的靈感來源，然而今日錄音製作卻強勢地主宰著音樂世界，將音樂人的演出永久儲存，並成了當前首要的傳播形式與美學表達。但這並非意味著音樂人永遠無法從這套製作模式中抽離。錄製音樂其實是一種展現的手法，猶如小提琴之於小提琴家，是一個將音樂放大的工具，以及在「感受音樂」與「傳播音樂」之間的張力點。或許就是這種與機器跟聽眾間親密的關係，受到了時間與空間的阻撓，導致音樂人或藝術家某些時候需要全然孤立隱遁，而在其他時刻又需要強烈的酬酢周旋。
「小世界」裡有太多的矛盾情結，我們雖然可能因為被孤立，而失去部分自我與介入社會的能動力，但在這裡我們有不需懼怕被同化的自由；我們可以拔掉插頭，放聲疾呼、不停遷徙與移動，但也能靜觀其變、放緩腳步，享受片刻的寧靜。我們也許都曾因醉心於不可能的恆常，奢侈地嚮往簡單的生活，而沉浸耽溺在安逸的舒適圈裡。但「小世界」也鼓勵我們堅定立場，拋開渴求被理解、認同的欲望，拒絕為一些永遠不會落實的利益去取悅他人。或許我們花了太長時間才體認到尺度失衡的難以承受，又或許，現在我們才終於可以開始探索匱乏之餘所迎來的無畏與堅毅。
本文為2023台北雙年展之策展論述，由周安曼、Reem Shadid以及穆柏安共筆。