文／賴怡辰
人類一直在拔草。1868年自然主義畫家朱勒斯．布列東 （Jules Breton）就畫下《拔雜草的人們》（The Weeders），即便是物種大量消失的現在，公園、路旁、田壤…仍然處處有雜草可拔。念園藝系的人們（例如我），實習課拔草、勞動服務拔草、照顧植物拔草。當園丁的人們（例如我），拔草更是工作的基調，認識植物為了不拔錯草。拔草有時被形容為「與土地拔河」，是一種透過個人身體勞動與土地建立親密情感的活動；有時候則是「對抗入侵種，保護本地生物多樣性」，一種透過集體身體勞動對抗共同敵人，以凝聚社群及土地認同的活動。
住在紐西蘭原生雨林區的藝術家馬可．哈維 （Mark Harvey），用錄像作品《雜草搏鬥》（Weed Wrestle）忠實展示他氣喘吁吁地徒手拔除一棵入侵自家後院森林的黑荊樹（Acacia
mearnsii）的過程。喜歡溫暖環境的黑荊，隨著全球氣候暖化，現在在許多新環境生長良好，名列世界百大入侵種。對比藝術家鄭波的作品《蕨戀》，同樣全身投入地與植物體肢體／枝體往來纏繞，哈維與植物的搏鬥的身體，陽剛而且徒勞。而哈維正是利用展現這樣的徒勞，反省其英國殖民者後裔、男性的身體所象徵，堅信個人自主的「有毒男子氣概（toxic masculinity）」 1 ，以及抗議殖民者忽視原住民和原生環境狀態，不斷開發的入侵者姿態。拔草，是一個透過身體與土地、植物體交涉，思辨自身所承載社會文化的過程。
雜草，許多時候用來統稱那些在人類現行生產方式下無經濟價值的草本植物。雜木、雜草，與那些具經濟效益的作物相反，同在土地上吸收營養卻無產值，生長勢還常常超越作物——米蟲狀態，臭賤[1]（tshàu-tsiān）存在。對此，許多藝術家以雜草作為創作媒材，檢視「有用」與「無用」邏輯的界線。王家琛與陳宇萱在2018年製作、出版的《紙植─台灣外來植物圖鑑》收集全台各地的入侵種植物製紙。一反粗俗形象，雜草紙張張風格獨具又不失精美細緻；斯洛維尼亞設計工作室Trajna也以歐美最令人頭痛的日本虎杖（Japanese knotweed）混和木纖維與回收紙纖維製成印刷用「非雜草紙」（Notweed Paper）。與其找尋配合慣行製程的材料，反過來研究植物特性，開發他們的經濟價值以幫助雜草們翻身的努力，就是要證明，從雜草變成植物材料，改變的不是植物本身，而是人類看待及運用他們的方式。造紙之外，居住紐約的藝術家伊立．艾隆斯（Ellie Irons）發起《野生及入侵的色素》（Feral and Invasive Pigments）計畫，收集都市內的雜草——或用艾隆斯的稱呼「陪伴植物（companion plants）」——製作色素，並用這些色素幫植物們繪製肖像及遷徙地圖。她表示，這些自然色素的品質與商業用的色素相當，且製作出的顏色跟隨植物採收的季節、研磨程度、以及纖維含量變化，比起單調統一的商業顏料，這些色素「讓她的畫作更加豐富。[2]」雜草在工業化量產方式上的無用，鼓勵人們開發另一種想像材料及生產的方式。
[1] 臭賤http://pedia.cloud.edu.tw/Entry/Detail/?title=%E8%87%AD%E8%B3%A4
[2] Making Paint, the Natural Way http://eyeondesign.aiga.org/making-paint-the-natural-way/
雜，也用來形容那些焦點之外的背景元素。雜音、雜訊，不受控制且不時干擾焦點。因為不是重點，便也不需一一認識，得以一「雜」字概括了之——需要被忽視的一類。分類，是植物園規劃的基礎，常以地理或系統分類，或以社會文化類別來規劃園區內植物的棲所。分門別類下，植株與土地的關係多少建立在人為的知識框架上，特定區域有理當生長的植物；那些在分類系統下任性跨界、或研究上無重要性的植物們，便成為雜草。雜草是知識傳遞上的錯誤訊息，必須拔除或壓抑以免干擾焦點。植物園作為植物學研究及展示的媒介，也間接決定了哪些植物理當成為知識的焦點、哪些又是雜訊。陳建北教授在2013年於台北當代藝術館實驗空間的展覽《你甘知影阮的名—台北植物園》，便藉著對焦植物園的雜草，討論焦點製造的盲點。展覽裡展出他以手機——公民科學的工具——於多國植物園內拍攝的雜草照片搭配座標定位的手機擷取畫面，用普及的鏡頭「轉移焦點」提出另一種觀看植物的方式，挑戰科學機構的威權並探訊其他知識生產的可能性。
雜草，有時是社會中價值評斷下多餘或不應當的生命。保羅·柯艾略 （Paulo Coelho de Souza）的暢銷小說《牧羊少年奇幻之旅》（The Alchemist）告訴讀者「當你真心渴望追求某種事物，整個宇宙都會聯合起來幫你完成。」現實中，許多生命卻承受了整個宇宙的摧毀力量。美國黑人女性主義詩人奧德芮‧洛 （Audre Lorde）在詩作《生存禱文》（A Litany for Survival） 中，便敘述了有色女性在白人社會裡，無論行動或沉默都懼怕的生存狀態。文末，她結論「...我們最好還是發聲，謹記著，我們從未該當存活。[1]」生存在一個不支持甚至壓迫自身存在的社會裡，好好活著，即是對抗不正義體制的政治作戰[2]。雜草，作為人類社會上多餘的存在，也以其生命的韌性/任性質問：以人類價值觀來決定非人物種該或不該在某地生存，是否正當？
在俄羅斯出生，18歲後開始旅居世界不同城市的藝術家安娜．切芮妮可瓦（Anna Cherednikova）受到城市中雜草們的環境適應性及倔強的生長姿態吸引，開始記錄他們從水泥建物的裂縫中開枝展葉的模樣，集合成攝影集《不要的》（Unwanted）。旅居荷蘭的南韓藝術家崔玟智（Minji Choi）則以訪談《為美國黑櫻桃木訪談》（Interview for American Black Cherry）、報導式錄像《地上的洞》（A Hole On The Ground）、攝影《遺留》（Left Behind），結合被砍伐丟棄的美國黑櫻桃樹樹幹及樹苗，製成自然史博物館式的展示裝置《自然化的垃圾》（Naturalised Junk）及《（非）原生》（(NON)native）。她追溯美國黑櫻桃樹（Prunus SerotinaEhrh.）從1740年被引進荷蘭作為造林樹種，經歷人類社會價值觀轉變，而在過去六十年間身分轉變，成為「外來入侵種」的歷史。外來種、雜草，時常被描述為具有擴張快、生長式強、善於搶奪資源，而擠壓其他生物生存空間的特質。似乎這些植物本身的「壞」性質讓他們成為必須被壓抑的對象。崔玟智的歷史回溯正是要指出這些生命存在的「不應該」，其實是人類的價值框架下的產物。她說「今天，在荷蘭的美洲黑櫻桃樹是五百多種生物的棲息所。非人的生態圈已經接納了這個物種，人類社會卻仍極力要去除他。」在《遺留》系列的ˊ握品中，被砍伐過的美洲黑櫻桃樹從殘枝斷片再度冒芽，用旺盛的生命質問觀者：何謂一個存在的該與不該？
[1] “...So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.” [2] Ahmed, Sara, 2014, Selfcare as Warfare https://feministkilljoys.com/2014/08/25/selfcare-as-warfare/
雜，有時候用來描述糾葛牽絆、亂無章法的存在樣態。關在室內、長在培養土裡的盆景植物們鮮少有雜草相伴，因為他們存在關係網絡之外，與閒雜外物無從互動。室外雜亂的植物景觀，是眾多物種及力量互動的表現：鄰近植物灑落種子，風、水流或動物等載體攜帶遠處的種子，四處遺落。因為土地相接天空相連，因為他者經過 ，所以花床、田裡、公園出現人類計畫外的元素。由於這緊密的跨物（種）協作，透過雜草我們得以試讀都市的紋理脈絡。
亞伯拉罕‧克魯斯維利加斯（Abraham Cruzvillegas） 2015年在倫敦泰德美術館渦輪大廳 （Turbine Hall）的作品《空地》（Empty Lot）便以科學式的手法客觀呈現了這物種協作的多樣性。他從倫敦各區域的公園收集土壤樣本，分別填入展場內不同植栽槽中，然後在展場中提供生長燈和水，讓土壤裡的種籽抽芽成長。六個月的展期，植物們慢慢勾勒出倫敦風情畫。然而，只能從挑高的平台遠距觀賞作品，讓觀眾們與這些樣本的互動——或者該說干擾，減至最低；這些被移入室內，有穩定光照及水源的種子庫，像風景畫一般，是遺世獨立的時間斷片。現場觀眾所見，更是這斷片中的片段。也許這是為什麼，《空地》的紀錄照片，清一色聚焦在那視覺上壯觀的三角植栽槽陣列——因為在每個單一的時間片段，這些雜草的變遷實在沒什麼「好看的」。
雜草無理、無聊的樣態，也許正質疑這種抽離的巨觀、或旁觀視角。他們要求一種別於人們所慣行理解他者的方法，另一種觀看的方式：雜草矯正人們的姿勢：他們要求蹲低、湊近，要人們透過長期互動、關照，而得以領略雜草地景之美。藝術家亞歷山卓．托藍 （Alexandra R. Toland）在2006年至2008年間，利用一百個金光閃閃、附照片的植物標牌，把德國柏林當時尚未改建成公園的三角鐵路 （Gleisdreieck）荒地轉化為雜草畫廊 （Gallery of Weeds），讓基地上現有植株描繪這塊荒地的物種及文化多樣性。標牌上寫有植物們的原生地、花期、播種方式以及功用等資訊，以及他們的名字——用了六種語言標示。值得一提的是，這些標牌都是移動式，以跟隨植物們在土地上的更迭遷移。植物們在土地上遷移，因為這些植物是存在於地方各種物種（包括參訪者）及力量的網絡中，而非孤立在美術館內的供人觀賞的展品。而標牌們隨之遷徙，則宣示了另一種展示及理解地景的方式：雜亂無章之下欲知詳情，請走入草叢內，加入關係網絡，互動、關照、並隨之變動。
除了挑戰觀看的方式，「雜亂」這視覺上的負面感受，也鼓勵人們實驗觀看之外產生知識的方式：也許味覺，一種更親密的探詢。在臺灣，由林芝宇、賴瑋婷組成的「雜草稍慢」，在各地採草烹茶奉茶，鼓勵人們以味覺感受當地風土。當然，下肚的地方風土不只觸發味覺，他們與身體的超親密互動讓人不得不進一步探問：「這風、那土，有沒有毒？」雜草茶總是一把魔幻鑰匙，打開人們身土不二的想像——只是雜草稍慢的雜草茶不是神遊太虛的那種，而是把人重新回土地的那種。在許多訪談中，林芝宇提到雜草稍慢計畫的靈感來自於她遇見一片施用殺草劑、了無生機的土壤，而興起「想為土地做點什麼」的念頭。而雜草，透過雜草稍慢的引介，薩滿一般，成了土地與人最適切的溝通管道。
5.
雜草，在知識框架的空隙中繁茂生長，提醒人們，他們那永遠不夠周詳的分類法：原生或外來、有用或無用、人為或自然、好或壞……。人類學家安清 （Anna H. Tsing）在《摩擦》（Friction）一書中描述這個空隙（gap）：「…這個空隙不是一個超然、跨越歷史的另一個空間。相反的，唯有在某特定歷史建立起的觀點下畫出的界線，才能夠體驗到這個讓某些事物的存在、或存在的方式無法辨識或理解空隙。從另一個觀點看去這個縫隙，有可能是極普通的樣態。」圍繞著雜草創作、跟著雜草思考、追溯雜草歷史的藝術作品們，有些指出那個空隙、有些提出另一種理解的方式。
芳草碧連天，我相信人類（例如我）還是會繼續拔草。但透過對雜草的觀照，我們回望自己、並想像其他存在方式的可能性。
本文獲國家文化藝術基金會、文新藝術基金會贊助現象書寫–視覺藝評專案支持
English Version
0.
People have always been pulling weeds. Even now, with the disappearance of many species, there are still weeds waiting to be pulled in parks, roadsides, and fields. People who study horticulture (such as me) are pulling weeds in practical classes, labor service, and plant care. For those who are gardeners (like me), weed pulling is the keynote of their work, and they learn about plants so that they don't pull the wrong ones. Sometimes it is described as "tug of war with the land", an activity that builds intimacy with the land through individual physical labour, and sometimes it is "fighting against invasive species and protecting native biodiversity", an activity that builds community and land identity through collective physical labour against a common enemy.
Artist Mark Harvey, who lives in New Zealand's native rainforests, uses his work to create a new form of art. With his video work "Weed Wrestle", Mark Harvey faithfully shows his panting and hand-pulling of an Acacia mearnsii tree that invaded his backyard forest. Preferring a warmer environment, the Acacia mearnsii is now growing well in many new environments as the global climate warms, ranking it among the top 100 invasive species in the world. In contrast to the artist Zheng Bo's work "Fern Love", Harvey's body is also devoted to entwining with the limbs/branches of the plant, which is masculine and futile. Harvey uses this futility to reflect on the "toxic masculinity" of his British colonial descendants and male body, which symbolizes his belief in personal autonomy, as well as to protest against the colonizers' disregard for the aboriginal people and the state of the native environment, and their continuous development of an invader's posture. Plucking grass is a process of intercourse with the land and plants through the body and a process of identifying the social culture that we carry.
2.
Weeds are often used as a generic term for herbs that have no economic value under current human production methods. In contrast to economically productive crops, weeds and miscellaneous plants absorb nutrients on the land but produce nothing, and often grow beyond the state of the crop, the rice worm, and exist in a stinky, cheap (tshàu-tsiān) state. For this reason, many artists use weeds as a creative medium to examine the boundary between "useful" and "useless" logic. In 2018, Wang Jiachen and Chen Yu-hsuan produced and published "Paper Planting: An Illustrated Guide to Exotic Plants in Taiwan", which collects invasive plants from all over Taiwan to make paper. Trajna, a Slovenian design studio, also uses Japanese knotweed, a headache in Europe and the United States, to mix with wood fibres and recycled paper fibres to make Notweed Paper for printing. Instead of looking for materials to match the usual production process, the effort to study the properties of plants and develop their economic value to help turn them around is to demonstrate that it is not the plants themselves that change from weeds to plant materials, but the way people see and use them. In addition to paper-making, New York-based artist Ellie Irons is working on a project that will help turn weeds into plant material. Ellie Irons, a New York-based artist, has launched the Feral and Invasive Pigments project, which collects urban weeds-or "companion plants," as Irons calls them-to make pigments. --to make pigments and use them to help paint portraits and migration maps of the plants. The natural pigments, she says, are of comparable quality to commercial pigments, and the colours they produce vary with the season in which the plants are harvested, the degree of grinding, and the fibre content, which "enriches her paintings more than the monotonous commercial pigments. "The uselessness of industrial mass production methods for weeds has encouraged the development of alternative imaginative materials and production methods.
3.
Weeds are sometimes redundant or undeserved lives judged by society's values. Paulo Coelho de Souza's best-selling novel, The Alchemist, tells readers that "when you truly desire something, the entire universe will unite to help you achieve it. In reality, many lives have endured the destructive power of the entire universe. In her poem "A Litany for Survival," Audre Lorde, a black American feminist poet, describes the fearful existence of women of color in white society, both in action and in silence. At the end of the poem, she concludes, "... We would do well to speak out and remember that we were never meant to survive. "To live in a society that does not support or even oppress one's own existence, to live well is to fight against the political warfare of an unjust system. Weeds, as redundant beings in human society, also question, with their resilience/wilfulness of life, whether it is right to use human values to determine whether a non-personal species should or should not live in a certain place.
Born in Russia and living in different cities around the world since the age of 18, the artist Anna Cherinikova has been a part of the world since the age of 18. Attracted by the adaptability and stubborn growth of weeds in the city, Anna Cherednikova began to record the way they sprouted from the cracks of concrete buildings and collected them in her photo book Unwanted. Minji Choi, a South Korean artist living in the Netherlands, has used the interview "Interview for American Black Cherry", the reportage video "A Hole On The Ground", and the photography "Left Behind" to combine the felled and discarded She combined the trunks and saplings of felled and discarded American black cherry trees to create the natural history museum-style displays Naturalised Junk and (NON)native. She traces the history of the American black cherry tree (Prunus Serotina Ehrh.) from its introduction to the Netherlands in 1740 as a forestry species to its transformation into an "invasive alien species" over the past sixty years as a result of changes in human social values. Invasive species and weeds are often described as fast-spreading, strong-growing, and good at grabbing resources and squeezing other organisms out of their living space. It seems that the "bad" nature of these plants makes them objects that must be suppressed. Min-Ji Choi's historical retrospect is to point out that the "undeserved" existence of these beings is in fact a product of the human value framework. Today, she says, "the American black cherry tree in the Netherlands is home to more than 500 species of creatures. The inhuman ecosystem has accepted this species, but human society is still trying to get rid of it. In the "Left Behind" series, the felled American black cherry tree sprouts again from the broken branches, asking the viewer with its vigorous life: what is the right and wrong of an existence?
4.
Miscellaneous is sometimes used to describe a tangled, tangled, disorganized existence. Bonsai plants that grow indoors in the soil are rarely accompanied by weeds because they exist outside of their network of relationships and have no way of interacting with the untidy outside world. The chaotic plant landscape outdoors is a manifestation of the interaction of many species and forces: neighbouring plants scatter seeds, and distant seeds are carried by the wind, water, or animal carriers and left everywhere. Because the land is connected to the sky, and because others pass by, elements from outside the human plan appear in flowerbeds, fields, and parks. Because of this tight inter-object (species) collaboration, we can try to read the texture of the city through the weeds.
Abraham Cruzvillegas's 2015 work Empty Lot in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Gallery, London, objectively presents the diversity of this species collaboration in a scientific manner. He collected soil samples from parks across London and filled them into different planting tanks in the exhibition space, where he then provided grow lights and water to allow the seeds in the soil to sprout and grow. During the six months of the exhibition, the plants slowly created a picture of London. However, the work can only be viewed from a distance on a raised platform, leaving the viewer with minimal interaction - or interference - with these specimens; the seed banks, moved indoors with a steady source of light and water, are like landscapes, a fragment of time left alone. What the audience sees here is a fragment of this fragment. Perhaps this is why the documentary photographs of The Open Space focus exclusively on the visually spectacular array of triangular planting troughs - because there is nothing "pretty" about the transformation of these weeds in each single moment in time.
The irrational, boring look of weeds may question this detached mega-view, or spectatorial perspective. They demand a different way of seeing than the way people are accustomed to understanding the other: weeds correct people's posture: they demand to crouch down, to get closer, and to take in the beauty of the weed landscape through long-term interaction and care. The artist Alexandra R. Toland is an artist who has been working in the field for more than a decade. Between 2006 and 2008, Alexandra R. Toland transformed the Gleisdreieck wasteland in Berlin, Germany, which had not yet been transformed into a park, into a Gallery of Weeds, using one hundred gleaming, photographic plant signs to depict the species and cultural diversity of the wasteland with existing plants on the base. and cultural diversity. The signs include information about the plants' native range, flowering season, seeding method and function, as well as their names - in six languages. Notably, the signs are mobile to follow the plants as they move across the land. The plants move across the land because they exist in a network of local species (including visitors) and forces, rather than as isolated exhibits for viewing in the museum. The signs move with them, announcing another way of displaying and understanding the landscape: to learn more about the chaos, one must go into the grass, join the network of relationships, interact, care, and change with it.
In addition to challenging ways of seeing, the negative visual sensation of "clutter" also encourages people to experiment with ways of generating knowledge beyond viewing: perhaps taste, a more intimate inquiry. In Taiwan, the "Weed Slightly Slow", formed by Lin Zhiyu and Lai Wei-ting, collects grasses in various places to prepare and serve tea, encouraging people to experience the local customs with their taste senses. Of course, the local terroir does not only trigger the taste sensation but also the super intimate interaction between them and the body makes people ask further questions: "Is this wind and that soil toxic? Weed tea is always a magic key to open people's imagination of the body and the earth - only the weed is a little slower weed tea is not the kind of divine travel to the sky, but the kind that brings people back to the land. In many interviews, Lin Zhiyu mentioned that the inspiration for the Weed Slower project came from her encounter with a piece of soil that had been inactivated by herbicides, and the idea of "doing something for the land" came to her. Through the introduction of Weed Slightly, weeds have become the most appropriate communication channel between the land and people.
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Weeds, flourishing in the gaps of intellectual frameworks, remind people of their never-quite taxonomy: native or alien, useful or useless, man-made or natural, good or bad ....... Anthropologist Anna H. Tsing describes this gap in her book Friction: "...this gap is not a transcendent, historically transcendent other space. Rather, the gap can only be experienced as a line drawn under the perspective established by a particular history that makes the existence of something, or the way it exists, unrecognizable or incomprehensible. This gap can be seen from another point of view and can be extremely commonplace. Some of the artworks created around weeds, thinking along with weeds, and tracing the history of weeds, point to that gap, and some suggest another way of understanding it.
I believe that humans (like me) will continue to pull weeds. But through looking at weeds, we look back at ourselves and imagine the possibility of other ways of being.
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