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| Blue Books in ASE Foundation in Shanghai | Date ：2025-05-16 | From ：iamlimu.org |
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本次展览基于我的长期策展兴趣和研究成果，探讨中国当代语境下书籍、叙事和艺术创作之间的关系。展览试图凸显以书作为媒介的历史和在当下的意义，并拓展对于书籍本身多元的物质性、感官触觉的特质和不同叙事方式的讨论空间。展览探究艺术家与书的历史渊源。两者之间的关系往往颇为复杂，涉及作者身份、观者/读者群体等问题——更具体而言，包括书由谁来书写？又为谁而作？我们需要了解哪些背景知识才能真正理解其思想和语境？
书作为知识的象征，通过内容和传播方式体现权威性。此外，书写（创作）——此处应理解为广义的“留下痕迹的方式”，通常带有与能识别痕迹的人交流的意图——亦是一种斗争方式，通过参与知识传播来构建世界。
展览回溯了1979年至今书籍在中国的当代艺术发展中所发挥的作用。1979年，《读书无禁区》一文发表于《读书》创刊号，掀起席卷全国的“文化热”，对中国知识分子产生了深远的影响。随后开启的80年代西方思潮译介和出版热潮，更是影响了几代艺术家的思考方式。
过去30年，书在中国的角色几经变迁，艺术家亦采取不同的策略来处理与这一特定媒介的关系。对艺术家而言，书籍为他们开辟了别样的叙事空间。许多艺术家选择以书为媒，摆脱展览作为艺术呈现单一媒介的束缚。他们意识到这一媒介所蕴含的独特表达潜力：不仅能“观看”，还能“阅读”；更为重要的是，读者还可以切实地“触摸”作品。如今，艺术家书已然成为重要的艺术媒介，不仅通过被阅读来传播知识，更是成为了艺术家思想的重要概念载体。艺术家书的可触性、可观性、可与人产生身体互动，其所提供的触觉体验和感官愉悦更是其他艺术形式所无法比拟的。
在一些艺术家看来，书也是一种去权力化的艺术形式，能够让更多人接触到作品。同时，展出的许多艺术家项目亦围绕女性主义视角、去殖民化和方法论等议题展开，以书的形式挑战主流叙事。我们的研究和展示探讨不同的立场和关系：书籍和艺术实践；通过去中心化思想传播进行的知识传播与社群构建；边缘群体叙事；以及挑战以人为中心世界观的多种书写方式，提醒人们更关注自己与周遭非人类世界的相互依存关系。每一本书都象征着一次抗争。因而，展览的中文名称以“读”字一以贯之，以兼收并蓄之姿凸显书籍项目百花齐放之貌，并向观者发出邀约。展览全景式地呈现了以书籍为媒介的艺术表达以及通过书籍所展开的多种传播形式。尽管阅读习惯和社会语境不断变化，但艺术家书依然能够提供电子屏幕所无法替代的物性和触觉互动体验。“读”不仅仅是阅读之意，亦是斗争之体现，同时向观者发出留下痕迹的邀约。伊恩·亨特（Ian Hunter）曾说，阅读介于呼吸和评判之间。大多数情况下，呼吸是一种自然活动；而评判则如庭审或选美，是一种充满社会和文化意味的高度社会化活动，没有任何自然性可言。因此，正如史蒂芬·穆克（Stephen Muecke）所言，阅读取决于文化和历史，而非“个体差异”。
文/比利安娜·思瑞克
Artists and projects: Zhang Peili, Jasphy Zheng, Ding Yi, Li Mu, Liu Ding, New Measurement Group, Li
Shuang, Cheng Xinhao, Zheng Guogu, Yang Yuanyuan, Qiang Weikang, Huang Yongping, Liu Chuang,
Tao Aimin, Feng Huo Magazine, 45 degrees as a Reason, November 24th as a Reason, Black Cover
Book, White Cover Book, Grey Cover Book, The Wildlife project, Birdhead, Hu Jianping, Geng Jianyi,
Xia Chengwei, PDF magazine.
This exhibition is the outcome of a long-term research project and a curatorial interest in articulating a
relationship between books, storytelling, and artistic practices in China. It aims to underline historical
and current understandings of the book as a medium, while also opening space for the book’s plural
materialities, its tactile qualities, and different forms of storytelling. The exhibition offers insights into
the historical trajectories of artists whose relationships to books are often complex and entangled with
questions of authorship and readership—specifically, who writes books and for whom, and what kinds
of literacies we need to grasp these ideas and their context.
Books represent knowledge and symbolize authority through their content and distribution. Conversely,
writing—understood here in an expanded sense as leaving a trace intended to communicate with
others—serves as a way to participate in struggle and disseminate knowledge as a form of
worldmaking.
This exhibition research explores the role of the book in the context of China from 1979 until the
present day, positioning 1979 as an important symbolic point of Cultural Fever, with the beginning of
DuShu publishing and its leading article “No Forbidden Zone in Reading”. This moment greatly
influenced Chinese intellectuals and marked the beginning of a period of translating Western thought,
alongside a publishing fever during the 1980s that influenced many artists and their ways of thinking.
Over the last thirty years in China, the book has played various roles, with artists using different
strategies to address their relationship to this specific medium. For artists, books open different kinds
of space towards storytelling. Many artists intentionally choose the book as a way of distancing
themselves from the exhibition as the sole mode of artistic presentation. In books, artists recognize the
potential of this specific medium of expression to enable not only the act of viewing the work, but also
reading the work, and more importantly, allowing readers to touch the work. Today, artists’ books are
important artistic tools, not only for knowledge transmission and reading, but also as important
conceptual vehicles for artists’ thought. Allowing for touching, viewing, and physically engaging,
artists’ books offer tactile experiences and sensorial pleasures that other art objects cannot provide.
For some, artists’ books are a way of democratizing art as many people can own these works and have
access to them. At the same time, many artistic projects featured in this exhibition are entangled with
decolonial and feminist perspectives and methodologies, using books as tools for challenging
dominant narratives. This research explores different positions and relationships: between books and
artistic practice; knowledge transmission and community formation through decentralized
dissemination of ideas; storytelling by those on the margins; and forms of literacy that challenge
human-centric worldviews, inviting us to be more attentive to our interdependence with more-than-
human worlds.
Each book makes its own contribution to struggle. Thus, this exhibition doesn’t have a unique title in
Chinese. Instead, it has as many titles as there are artists’ books, each inviting you to engage with
them. The exhibition provides a comprehensive presentation of artistic practices that repeatedly return
to the book as both a medium of expression and a form of dissemination.
As our reading and social habits evolve, artists’ books continue to offer us physical and tactile
interactions that digital screens cannot provide. I propose we understand the character Du (to read)
not merely as a way of reading a script, but as a way of embodying struggle and as an invitation to
leave a physical trace. Scholar Ian Hunter notes that reading is somewhere between breathing and
judging. Beathing is an automatic and natural activity most of the time, while judging—as in courts or
beauty contests—is a highly social activity so charged with social and cultural meaning that there is
nothing natural about it. Therefore, here I propose to recall Stephen Muecke’s reminder to understand
reading as a form of cultural and historical determination, rather than as a matter of individual
difference.
Drafted by Biljana Ciric
关于ASE基金会
ASE基金会是一家立足于中国，拥有全球视野的非营利性基金会， 致力于支持和推动当代艺术在中国的普及、发展以及着重对艺术 及艺术相关活动的文献进行学术层面的研究、整理及展览和出版。 基金会的四个功能为:永久性艺术收藏、ASE艺术图书馆、ASE · 空间和艺术赞助项目。
除此之外，基金会强调对青年艺术家及艺术策展人的扶持与赞助， 并通过开展各类公共教育活动，将基金会的实践带入更广泛的语 境之中，突出“在地性”和“公众性”，从而拓展艺术机构在公共生活 中的边界与功能，提供一个生成艺术审美及思辨能力的公共艺术 空间。
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