文／佛洛里恩‧克拉莫（鹿特丹威廉‧德‧庫寧藝術學院教授）
在2021年冬天撰寫此文之時，預測COVID-19對西方社會和文化的影響仍言之過早。但我們能夠肯定的一點是，疫情暴露了全球化的弊端和西方放任式管理的漏洞。當管理不力的政府遇上氾濫的民粹主義思潮、白人至上主義者以及對於科學的反動言論，便造就了失控蔓延的全球大流行病。
鹿特丹藝術家丹尼斯‧德貝爾（Dennis de Bel）是藝術家自營空間Varia成員，該空間「旨在發展日常技術的集體使用方法」。德貝爾在疫情期間受訪，並回憶疫情於西歐爆發初期的情況：
「2020年二月初，我剛從中國回到荷蘭，當時新聞不斷報導肺炎病毒已蔓延全球，傲視一切的西方人如我，作夢也沒想到，居然會有病毒不斷朝荷蘭擴散的這一天。但我很快就意識到，荷蘭政府彷彿對正在襲來的疫情視而不見。而在最初通報前幾十、幾百例確診病患時，我還繼續在安荷芬設計學院教課，好像什麼事情都沒發生一樣。能夠親自在課堂上教導學生實務操作固然很好，但面對不斷攀升的確診人數，繼續在課堂上課顯得非常恐怖且不可思議。當時網路上流傳著中國和義大利駭人的疫情照片，我們到底該何去何從？於此同時，我外出時已經開始戴起口罩了。（我的女朋友是中國人，他們有許多面對傳染病的經驗……）路人見我們戴口罩就罵，有的還故意對著我們咳嗽，甚至在一旁訕笑。」[1]
這段訪談內容出自網路藝術評論者及研究者喬瑟芬‧波斯瑪（Josephine Bosma）編輯的《疫情交流手記》（Pandemic Exchange）一書。波斯瑪在2020年針對疫情對藝術家日常生活的影響，訪談一系列的藝術家，並將內容集結成冊。整體來說，受訪藝術家的自白紀錄了生命政治在新社會景觀中的急迫性和深入洞察，這包括控制人類生命之政治權力的古典意涵（可追溯到法國史學家及哲學家米歇爾‧傅柯），以及制衡生物工程、網路和訊息處理的21世紀當代含義。這場疫情也揭示了西方政治本土主義者的雙重標準：西方政府將當地人口的日常活動限縮在最低範圍，卻無視聯合國醫療協議；而又盡最大生命政治力量將難民隔絕在歐盟境外，這則無視國際人權。
同時，新型態的網絡化生物工程的生命政治則體現在急速、超額投資的基因分析和疫苗工程，在封城期間人們大規模轉向遠端作業，我們的日常生活（包含食物供應）愈來愈依賴手機上的外送應用程式，現金幾乎在我們生活中淘汰，而加密貨幣和NFT藝術品等數位投機資產則迅速發展、百花齊放。在西方國家，這些數位科技的發展在某方面來說較晚出現且出現後更具擾動性，因為在疫情前，這些數位科技在日常生活中發揮作用的機會低於科技化程度較高的東亞地區（包括台灣、中國、新加坡和韓國）。
封城措施迫使多數的藝文工作者和藝術機構必須仰賴政府緊急補助維生，並將其創作生產和展示的場域轉移至網際網路平台。對許多人來說，這都是人生中第一次的經驗。在網路藝術和新媒體藝術領域外，藝術圈大多將網際網路用作活動的宣傳管道，或偶爾發表文章、活動紀錄照片和影片等等，很少用來發展線上的藝術創作計畫。但這場疫情在一夕之間讓藝術機構和活動組織變成線上串流頻道，從講座、表演到線上展覽，無所不包。這也造就了數量難以負載的線上直播活動轟炸，讓已經整天在電腦前進行遠端會議的觀眾更加疲憊。
生物藝術和更廣義的「新媒體藝術」及「藝術與科學」領域近來是臺灣當代藝術機構的新寵，只不過這些創作領域在西方國家的地位無法和臺灣的景況相提並論。「藝術與科學」機構和藝術節（通常是半學術性或純學術活動）大多是在美術館、藝術空間和雙年展的當代藝術體系之外。對於生物藝術來說，這種隔閡更為壁壘分明，而生物藝術出了專業機構後，更缺乏認可。儘管如此，仍偶有例外，例如希斯‧邦廷（heath bunting）和設計事務所（Bureau d’Études）等，他們的作品結合了對生物科技、生命政治和生命權力的反思，此外尚有印尼藝術團體Lifepatch，其社群藝術團體的身分已經廣受藝術與科學之外的專業領域之認可。
法國團體綠色外星人（Aliens in Green）和設計事務所在2007年對於提出的「實驗室星球」（Laboratory Planet），現在看來是對2019/2020年爆發的全球疫情下生命政治情勢的預言。「實驗室星球」目前為一個當代藝術實踐、文化工作、研究和運動者的平台。
在全球疫情前，以數位科技結合藝術創作和批判研究的藝術家，在封城期間則轉做非數位相關的工作，這可以說是在當地社群和居家空間微觀層次上的生命政治。喬瑟芬‧波斯瑪《疫情交流手記》一書中，訪談對象多為西方世界藝術家，其中不乏網路藝術和電子媒體藝術的藝術家，諸如活躍於網路的藝術團體!Mediengruppe Bitnik、美國文化行動主義團體The Yes Men成員伊果‧瓦莫斯（ Igor Vamos）、美國藝術家琳恩‧赫胥曼‧里森（Lynn Hershman Leeson），這些藝術家皆回憶這場疫情「是人生破天荒第一次面臨要儲備糧食和其他民生必需品的情況。」[2]一般來說，這也會對食物和生物生態過程產生全新的認知。墨西哥聲音及視覺藝術家亞坎傑洛‧康斯坦丁尼（Arcangelo Constantini）則表示這場疫情讓他意識到，「人們必須學會和體內協助處理食物、使我們保持健康的數百萬種細菌和真菌合作。」[3]
前述藝術家組織Varia提倡開源文化，並關注志願者經營的去中心數位網絡，其成員自行出版獨立誌《Magiun》，刊物名稱取自一道羅馬尼亞傳統菜餚，內容包括烹飪方法和食譜等食物共享實踐。第一期內容即關注封城期間的「隔離飲食」。撰文作者群反思疫情如何重塑他們對食物的認知，食物不再只是超市裡的商品，而是他們能夠更有意識地料理和品嚐的佳餚。獨立誌編輯愛麗絲・史特利（Alice Strete）如此敘述此一經歷：「更有創意地重新料理剩飯剩菜，倒掉的食物明顯減少，烘焙的頻率更高，也愈來愈開心⋯⋯」[4]她也回憶道，「除了她以外，尚有其他人也對食物有不同的感受，或改變料理的方式。」[5]
而食物在當代藝術中並非新穎的創作媒材。1971年，藝術家卡蘿‧古登（Carol Goodden）、蒂娜‧（Tina Girouard）和戈登‧馬塔–克拉克（Gordon Matta-Clark）在紐約開設了藝術家自營餐廳「食物」（FOOD），這家餐廳不僅成為藝術家的收入來源，三人也透過食物建立更大的社群。1990年代，泰國藝術家里克利‧提拉瓦尼（Rirkrit Tiravanija）則延續這種用食物建立關係的概念，將其拓展至更為主流的白立方展示空間。
不過，更廣義的食物政治問題一直到最近才被端上檯面討論，也就是食物成為了生態、生物科技、經濟系統和政治權力的一部分。除了Varia，鹿特丹「吃藝團」（Eat Art Collective）、藝術學院畢業生組成的倡議團體「食物站」（Food Station）（這兩個團體也都提供外燴餐飲服務）以及筆者曾參與的藝術團體「末日義消」（Voluntary Fire Brigade of the Apocalypse）也進行了此類型的推測藝術研究。「末日義消」在疫情軟性封城期間，每週定期舉辦「雜草蔓行」（weed walks）聚會，成員在鹿特丹各處的公園和綠地中尋找可食用的植物，做為尋找末日食材的自救練習。
然而這場全球大傳染病卻巧妙地打破疫情前生物藝術和當代藝術的藩籬，同時將前者導向更生活化、參與性更高，並且是民間自發、以社群為目標的創作實踐，近似於2000年代初期Lifepatch、藝術與科學實驗室外的創作。從宏觀的角度來看，生物藝術的崛起似乎是在個人經驗系統瓦解時的應變和自救策略。儘管在佛教文化中，末日意味佛法滅盡的末法時代，西方的末日想像則建立在聖經中的《啟示錄》（Book of Revelations），其內容圍繞在善惡力量之間的終戰，耶穌基督隨後復活並成為君王，最終出現新天新地。《啟示錄》的寓言仍影響西方世界對於末日的世俗想像，諸如大眾文學、漫畫和電影等流行文化中皆可見一斑。
基督教基本教義福音派教徒（evangelical Christianity）對聖經中的此情此景仍深信不疑，尤其是美國福音派教徒。他們和歐洲新世紀神祕主義者一同建立起反科學和否認COVID-19疫情現實的厚實同溫層。在西方語境下，否認COVID-19疫情存在的人，往往屬於否認生態危機、環境及社會系統瓦解以及拒絕接受消費資本主義可預見的終結等更大的族群。矛盾的是，這種否認主義在傳統拒絕接受唯物論族群中最廣為流傳，但這些人又是將末日預言奉為圭臬的人。西方文化想像中的世界末日，是個巨大的斷裂和終結，而非一段緩慢漸進的過程，這樣的理解活許最能解釋否認主義者的矛盾。從西方藝術家微觀的生命政治創作計畫和因應策略中可看出，藝術家意識到且承認這樣的衰敗過程。但與西方主流文化和疫情否認論族群相反的是，這些藝術家／運動者／研究學者除了將系統的崩解視為暫時性的危機或短暫的休止外，亦把疫情下的現實納入其創作和生活實踐當中。
相反地，喬瑟芬‧波斯瑪的訪談則記錄了西方世界自1960年代以來出現的網絡化藝術是如何解讀為更廣泛的「開放社會」論述和文化逐漸全球化的一部份，從白南准《全球常規》（Global Groove, 1973）及馬歇爾‧魯漢的《地球村》（Global Village）到1990年代的網路藝術（net.art）。 雖然近來的文化、政治和經濟發展似乎將這種論述或意識形態打上了問號[6]，網絡化和參與式藝術實踐對西方藝術系統及其潛在的（策展和機構）選擇和排除性結構仍是種系統性的挑釁。因此，這類型的藝術實踐仍然是股重要的反對論述，這種反動精神近似於印尼藝術團體ruangrupa試圖將西方菁英策展的當代藝術體制「卡賽爾文件展」（documenta）轉化成「Lumbung」（印尼語，意即穀倉或鍋具）或共享資源的作法。但當ruangrupa和其協作者逐漸脫離在地社群實踐時，似乎許多西方藝術家（包含波斯瑪書中受訪的那些藝術家）似乎仍在封城狀態中學習效法他們原先的做法。希斯‧邦廷雖是第一代網路藝術家以及初代生物藝術家，但他仍是個例外，他批評網路作為一種意識形態[7]，指出其商業化和監控的另一個面向，並退回到超地方的實踐。[8]
開放社會最新且更廣泛的政治、經濟和生態批判必須納入了航空旅行、數據中心和加密貨幣等思考，並反思其規範和生命政治調控的鬆動。直觀來說，將當前危機歸咎於比爾‧蓋茲（微軟創辦人及蓋茲基金會執行長）和喬治‧索羅斯（對沖基金所有人及開放社會基金會執行長）的那群否認疫情論和陰謀論者，恰恰證實了新自由主義全球化的強大驅動力。
另外，疫情期間也出現了不尋常的新政治和意識形態聯盟。西方世界缺少有效防疫政策的同時，從傅柯到阿岡本提出的生物政治古典批判，似乎也突然和否認COVID-19的群眾結盟。[9]這種荒謬的現象也體現在所謂新型、民粹主義形式的生物藝術實踐中：以喝漂白水來消毒防疫、在YouTube頻道上分享的融化實驗影像紀錄，聲稱2021年2月在美國德州下的雪（創下該州首度降雪的紀錄）是「比爾‧蓋茲製造的假雪」。[10]
在西方國家，疫情期間的封鎖是史上氣候變化以來的第一個具體影響。就其最終結果而言，各種封鎖機制導致當代藝術實踐中的個人主義、違逆性和全球化的典範出現批判性的修正。Magiun獨立誌、末日義消的認識雜草等活動，看似曇花一現的藝術計畫皆反映並體現了這樣的轉變。同時，緩緩潛行的世界末日似乎有可能使所有的當代藝術創作以某種方式成為網絡化藝術和生物藝術實踐。
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
When this article was written, in winter 2021, it was still too early to predict the long-term impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Western societies and culture. It is safe to say, however, that it laid bare the downsides of globalization and deficiencies of Western laissez-faire governance. A mix of that weak governance with a widespread populist, white suprematist and anti-scientific resentments allowed the pandemic to get out of control.
In an interview, Dennis de Bel - a Rotterdam-based artist and member of Varia, a “space for developing collective approaches to everyday technology” - recalls the beginning of the pandemic in Western Europe as follows:
“I had just returned from China, early February 2020, when news of the virus reached the world. I never expected that, the arrogant westerner that I am, it would come even closer, to the Netherlands. It soon became clear that the Dutch government didn’t see that happening either, and, after the first dozen or hundred cases were known, I was still teaching at the design academy in Eindhoven as if nothing had happened. That was nice, physically teaching hands-on stuff, but also super scary and unbelievable. How could everything just continue while scary pictures of literal life or death situations in China and Italy were circulating? Meanwhile, I was already wearing facemasks everywhere (my girlfriend is Chinese and has experience with pandemics…). We were scolded, coughed at, and mocked everywhere”.[1]
This statement appeared in a book consisting of interviews with artists on the effects of the pandemic for their daily lives, conducted by the net.art critic and researcher Josephine Bosma. In sum, their testimonies document a new urgency of, and insight into, biopolitics: both in its classical meaning (going back to the French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault) of political power controlling human life, as well as in an updated 21st century sense that includes bioengineering, networking and information processing. The pandemic disclosed nativist double standards of Western politics: while daily life and mobility constraints were kept to a minimum for the native populations, factually ignoring U.N. medical containment protocols, refugees were kept outside EU borders with maximum biopolitical force, factually ignoring international human rights.
Simultaneously, the new type of networked bioengineering biopolitics manifested in the accelerated, hyper-investment-driven genetic analysis and engineering of vaccines, in the massive-scale shift towards telework during the lockdowns, people’s increasing dependence on mobile phone app-based delivery services for their daily lives - including food supply -, the near obsoletion of cash and a boom of digital speculative assets including crypto currencies and NFT art. These developments were partly newer and more disruptive in Western countries where, before the pandemic, such technologies had played a lesser role in people’s daily lives than in more technologized parts of East Asia (including Taiwan, the People’s Republic of China, Singapore and South Korea).
The lockdowns forced most art practitioners and art institutions into subsistence on emergency government aids and to shift their production and presentations to the Internet. For many of them, this was the first time. Outside the more specialized realms of net.art and new media art, the Internet had mostly been used as a publicity channel for art world events and for the occasionally published article, archived images or videos, but rarely for true online art projects. The pandemic turned arts institutions and initiatives overnight into Internet streaming channels that streamed everything from lectures, performances to remote-controlled camera videos of exhibitions. This created an overabundance of video streaming events and fatigue for audiences that already had spent their workdays in front of teleconferencing screens.
While in Taiwan, bioart and more generally the field that refers to itself as “new media art” and “Art/Science” is shown in major contemporary art museums, it does not have a comparable standing in Western countries. Art/Science institutions and festivals (which often are semi- or fully academic) largely exist outside the contemporary art system of museums, art spaces and biennials. For bioart, this divide is even more significant. It practically lacked any recognition outside specialized institutions, with the occasional yet still marginal exceptions of artists such as heath bunting and Bureau d’Études whose works combine reflections of biotechnology with biopolitics and biopower, or the Indonesian Lifepatch collective whose significance as community artist has been recognized outside the specialized Art/Science field.
In hindsight, the prediction of a “Laboratory Planet” by the French Bureau d’Études/Aliens in Green collective in 2007 proved to be prophetic for the bio-political situation of the pandemic that began in 2019/2020. Today, the “Laboratory Planet” reads like a platform, or point of departure, for contemporary art practice, cultural work, research and activism at large.
Artists whose work had combined art and critical research into digital technologies before the pandemic shifted to non-digital occupations during the lockdown could be characterized as biopolitical on a micro-level of local communities and domestic spaces. In Josephine Bosma’s Pandemic Exchange book, the (mostly Western) artists from the larger orbit of net.art and electronic media art (among them, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Igor Vamos of the Yes Men and Lynn Hershman Leeson) recall, among others, how “for the first time in our lives, we stocked up on food and other essentials”.[2] Often, this led to a new awareness of food and bio-ecological processes. Mexican sound and visual artist Arcangelo Constantini reports how the pandemic made him realize that “we have to learn to collaborate with those millions of species, bacteria, and fungi that live inside us and help us process our foods and stay healthy”.[3]
Members of the (aforementioned) artist-run initiative Varia, whose work normally evolves around Open Source culture advocacy and volunteer-run decentralized digital networks, published the print zine “Magiun”, named after a traditional Romanian dish and covering communal food practices, including cooking and recipes. Its first issue focused on “Eating in Isolation” during the lockdowns. Its contributors reflect how the pandemic recalibrated their awareness of food, from a supermarket consumer commodity to something consciously engaged with, prepared and enjoyed. Editor Alice Strete describes the experience as follows: “reusing leftovers more creatively, throwing out significantly less food, baking more, getting more excited […]”.[4] She recalls not being “alone in feeling differently about food, or changing the way I do things”.[5]
Food is not a new medium in contemporary art. In 1971, Carol Goodden, Tina Girouard and Gordon Matta-Clark opened the artist-run restaurant “FOOD” in New York, which became both a means of financing the artists’ lives and a way of building community through food. In the 1990s, this has been continued - as a more mainstream, individual white cube gallery art practice - by Rirkrit Tiravanija.
Only lately, however, the larger politics of food - food as part of a comprehensive ecology, bio technologies, economic systems and political power - have (literally) come to the table. In Rotterdam, next to Varia, the artists groups Eat Art Collective, the former art students initiative Food Station (both of which also worked as catering services) and the participatory, artist-run collective Voluntary Fire Brigade of the Apocalypse [in which the author of this text has been involved, too] conducted this type of speculative artistic research. The latter group organized weekly “weed walks” during the pandemic in which public parks and green zones of Rotterdam were explored for edible plants, as a self-educating exercise.
Effectively, the pandemic thus broke down the previous separation between bio art and contemporary art, while shifting the former towards more quotidian, participatory, bottom-up and community-oriented practices, similar to Lifepatch’s work in the earlier 2000s, and outside institutional art/science laboratories. In a larger perspective, they appear to be a coping and self-help strategy in times of personally experienced system breakdown. While in Buddhist culture, the apocalypse means the end stage of reincarnations,[6] its Western imagination is historically rooted in the Book of Revelations of the Christian bible whose narrative circles around an end-fight between the forces of good and evil, followed by the resurrection and reign of Christ and, ultimately, a new heaven and earth. This still informs secularized and pop-cultural Western imaginations of the apocalypse, such as in popular fiction, comic books and movies.
This biblical scenario is still literally believed by fundamentalist evangelical Christians, particularly in the USA. Along with European new age esoterists, they form the hardcore milieu of those who reject science and deny the reality of the Covid-19 pandemic. Corona denialism, in a Western context, tends to be part of a larger-scale denial of an ecological crisis, overall system collapse and foreseeable end of consumerist capitalism. Paradoxically enough, this denial is most alive in population groups that traditionally reject materialism and whose belief in the apocalypse is the most elaborate and concrete. This apparent contradiction might best be explained with the Western cultural imagination of the apocalypse as a sudden violent rupture and end, as opposed to a slow and gradual process. The Western artists’ micro-biopolitical projects and coping strategies acknowledge this process. As opposed to both Western mainstream culture and Corona deniers, these artists/activists/researchers do not merely understand the system collapse as a temporary crisis or hiatus, but as a new reality to which art and life practices adapt.
Conversely, Josephine Bosma’s interviews document how the Western networked arts that emerged since the 1960s can be read as part of a larger “Open Society” discourse and progressive globalization of culture, from Nam June Paik’s Global Groove (1973) and its likely inspiration through Marshall McLuhan’s “Global Village”, to net.art in the 1990s. While recent cultural, political and economic developments seem to put question marks behind this discourse or ideology,[7] networked and participatory art practices still amount to a systemic provocation to Western arts systems and their underlying structures of (curatorial and institutional) selection and exclusion. They thus remain a significant counter-narrative, in similar yet different ways to how the Indonesian ruangrupa collective tries to turn the elite Western curatorial contemporary art institution documenta into a “Lumbung” (Indonesian for collective barn or pot) or commons. While ruangrupa and its collaborators depart from their own local community practices, it seems as if many Western artists - including those interviewed in Bosma’s books - are still learning them in the lockdowns. heath bunting remains a rare exception of an artist belonging both to the first generation of net.art and early bio art who critiqued networking as an ideology, pointed to its flip side of commercialization and surveillance,[8] and retracted to hyperlocal practices.[9]
An updated, larger political, economic and ecological critique of the Open Society paradigm would have to include among others air travel, data centers and cryptocurrencies, and reflect on the loosening of their regulatory and biopolitical controls. Intuitively, the Corona deniers and conspiracy mythologists who blame (Microsoft founder and head of Gates Foundation) Bill Gates and (hedge fund owner and head of Open Society Foundation) George Soros for the crisis, at least identify powerful drivers of neoliberal globalization.
Conversely, strange new political and ideological alliances emerge. In the absence of effective pandemic containment policies in the West, classical critiques of biopolitics - from Michel Foucault to Giorgio Agamben - suddenly seem to align with present-day corona deniers.[10] This absurdity also materializes in what called be new, populist forms of bio art: from drinking bleach as a preventive measure against Covid-19 to alleged proofs, through video-recorded melting experiments shared on YouTube, that the snow that fell in Texas in February 2021 (for the first time in that state) was “fake” and “manufactured by Bill Gates”.[11]
In Western countries, the pandemic lockdowns thus historically coincide with the first tangible effects of climate change. In their ultimate consequence, they lead to a critical revision of paradigms of individualism, transgression and globalization in contemporary artists’ practices. Seemingly ephemeral projects such as the Magiun zine and the weed walks of the Voluntary Fire Brigade of the Apocalypse reflect and embody this shift. At the same time, the creeping apocalypse seems to potentially make all contemporary art practice networked art and bio art, in some way or the other.
[1] Josephine Bosma (ed.), Pandemic Exchange, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2021, p. 150; open access PDF: https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/pandemic-exchange-how-artists-experience-the-covid-19-crisis/ . [2] !Mediengruppe Bitnik, in Bosma, p. 41 [3] Bosma, p. 106 [4] Magiun, issue 1, p. 3, www.magiun.online [5] ibid. [6] 僅次於大流行病和透過全球交通和貿易的升溫、網際網路發展為資本主義平台等等。 [7] 例如其1998年作品《擁有、被擁有或保持隱形》，他將一篇他的報導文章中的每一個字連結到同一個.com網址，從而反映網際網路的商業化。 [8] 如其網站中的紀錄 http://irational.org/cgi-bin/cv2/temp.pl [9] 例如阿岡本反對目前防疫措施的評論： Agamben, Giorgio. “L’invenzione di un’epidemia.” Quodlibet, 2020, https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-l-invenzione-di-un-epidemia [10] Fact check: Explaining ‘fake Texas snow’ posts and ‘scorched snow’ videos”, Reuters, February 23, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-not-fake-snow-idUSKBN2AN1R8
Comments