更新时间:2014-09-15
王安石 • 残废科幻:《火星综合症》与《残废科幻》影评 文：Faust Ov 2014-07-12 18:12:01
《火星综合症》与《残废科幻》影评 文：Faust Ov
2014-07-12 18:12:01
《火星综合症》与《残废科幻》影评
文：Faust Ov
身体与思维在中国艺术家薛鉴羌的两部伪科幻电影的时空实验中融合。。。
笛卡尔认为人类在思维存在与肉体存在之间挣扎，思维与身体尽管彼此不契合而被结合在一起。中国导演薛鉴羌用他自己的方式诠释我们时空中的存在及暴力的重要，融合了笛卡尔的对立二元。在华语视像艺术节上放映了他的两部以此为主题的作品：《火星综合症》（2009）和《残废科幻》（2013）。
薛鉴羌的实验片涮了科幻片一把，用一种超存在的体验试图将观众和其中虚构的人物带到一个他们格格不入的真实地方。这是我们的社会通常运行的方式，一个过度拥挤的世界，我们中间的大多数都无法在其中而只能在边缘生存，被其决定自然影响：身体与思维不仅仅是人类（还有动物？）特性，而是作为一种集体性在薛鉴羌的两部作品中展现，臣服于社会并上缴超出肉体存在的能力。
《火星综合症》以一段未删节投在大屏幕上的色情录像开始，一个男孩拥抱这个图像，却不是为了性。几分钟后我们被扔到北京郊区，进入导演及其他三个男孩一起的某种纪录片中：摄像机拍摄着似乎是一个男妓和他顾客之间的相遇，也许准备拍一段色情录像。一开始的几分钟似乎还能用逻辑解释，但很快一切变得荒诞，那个极为自信的男妓开始因为顾客狂暴的欲望而害怕发抖。
没有事件发生，我们进入在这个用索尼摄像机夜视功能下绿色的外星世界。有时薛鉴羌会打断画面插入之前的一些镜头，突出人物在遇到摄像机后对暴力看法的改变。结尾的画面又回到影片最初：我们是自我创造的生物，我们爬向那些由自己创造的不可企及的图像，试图塑造和改变自己。
自谢尔盖•爱森斯坦的理论开始，我们知道剪辑能改变观者对时间的概念，有时以最为复杂的方式，有时则是一个简单的把戏：薛鉴羌的行动很简单也容易理解，但他在单纯的剧本概念之外加入了一层意思，他的影片是在一个稳定的时间里呈现进化空间的概念电影。肉体存在改变着（社会）而思维存在（时间）则是当下的囚徒，回避着未来。
《残废科幻》的背景是几乎当下，没有任何信息让我们觉得这是未来。人类已经去了外太空无数次，我们去了月球也联系上了火星人，但一切并未如我们所愿发展。并没有发生战争（也许），中国政府现在准备会见来自火星的代表团。同时在山西，导演的家乡，当地的年轻混混完全对这样一桩人类与外星人接触的事件漠不关心。
中国的边缘地区与这样的重大事件完全绝缘，他们在新的规定下生存，但日常生活仍然由啤酒，偷窃与恐吓，屈辱和空气中飘荡的暴力因子组成。《残废科幻》中我们看到的群体是一群互相斗殴，并慢慢形成自我意识的年轻人。天空坠落，在其另一面滚动着过去，时间反复，爱与忠诚的体现摒弃了语言而成为了物质的存在。
现实在我们的眼前目睹着它自己存在的变形。《残废科幻》与《火星综合症》或许不是最容易消化的影像，但如果我们放任薛鉴羌优异的技巧和非叙事才能侵入我们的大脑，我们可能可以经历到一场大脑游戏—一个狡猾的游戏。
（发表于：http://www.easternkicks.com/reviews/martian-syndrome-and-deformity-sci-fi，该网站每周访客达五千人以上，为伦敦著名东亚电影网。译：谢晶晶）
artian Syndrome + Deformity Sci-fi
FRIDAY, 9 MAY, 2014
FAUSTOV
MARTIAN SYNDROME (火星綜合癥). CHINA 2009 (DIRECTOR'S CUT 2013). DIRECTED BY JIANQIANG XUE (AKA KOKOKA). 78 MINS. IN MANDARIN WITH CHINESE AND ENGLISH SUBTITLES.
DEFORMITY SCIFI (殘廢科幻). CHINA 2013. DIRECTED BY JIANQIANG XUE (AKA KOKOKA). 97 MINS. IN MANDARIN WITH CHINESE AND ENGLISH SUBTITLES.
1 COMMENT
Body and mind melded in a time travel experimental duo of pseudo science fiction movies from Chinese artist Jianqiang Xue…
According to Descartes mankind struggles between res cogitans (mental substance) and res extensa (corporeal substance), mind and body joined together despite their incompatibility. Chinese director Jianqiang Xue, who signs his works as Kokoka, merges Descartes’ dualism with his own personal take on the existence and importance of violence in our place and time. At the Chinese Visual Festival Kokoka will be present with two of his movies centred on this theme: Martian Syndrome (2009) and Deformity Sci-fi(2013).
Jianqiang Xue’s experimental flicks joke with science fiction, quoting an otherworldly experience that tries to abduct audiences and fictional characters bringing them to a real place where they do not fit. That is how society often works, an overcrowded world where most of us can’t live but survive at the borders of it, influenced by its decision making nature: body and mind are not just a human (and animal?) feature, but collectiveness too shares it in Xue’s Martian Syndrome and Deformity Sci-fi, surrendering to society the ability to get out of its corporeal substance.
Martian Syndrome starts out with an uncensored pornographic video projected on a big screen in front of a guy who tries to embrace it for no sexual reason. A few minutes later we’re thrown in the peripheral area of Beijing with the director and three more boys on a sort of documentary: a cameraman is shooting an encounter between who appears to be a male hooker and his client, maybe there to shoot a porn video. Logic can explain the events for a few minutes but soon it all turns absurd and the extremely confident hooker starts to shake and fears his client’s violent desires.
Nothing happens and all flows in this alien green world shot with the night vision option of the Sony camera used to film Martian Syndrome, but sometimes Jianqiang Xue interrupts the stream and places frames from the previous sequences highlighting how the perception of violence and people changed throughout his meeting with the crew. The ending scene goes back to the beginning: we are what we eat, we are crawling towards those unreachable images created by us in order to shape ourselves, deform ourselves.
We know since the times of Sergej M. Ėjzenštejn’s theories that editing can alter the viewer’s perception of time, sometimes in the most complicated ways, some others with a simple trick: Jianqiang Xue’s movements are simple and easy to catch but he adds a meaning to it that goes beyond the idea of a mere screenplay, his are conceptual movies in an evolving place in a steady time. Corporal substances changes (society) while mental substances (time) are prisoners of the present avoiding the future.
Deformity Sci-fi is set in a near present and nothing allows us to think that it could be the future. Mankind has been in outer space countless times, we reached the moon and we contacted martians but things with them didn’t go as well as we’ve always hoped. There hasn’t been any war (maybe) but now the Chinese government will have to meet a delegation from Mars. Meanwhile in Shanxi, Jianqiang Xue’s hometown, local gangs of youngsters ignore completely an historical event like a meeting between human and extraterrestrials.
The outskirts of China are totally dislocated from the main events, they live according to the new rules but everyday life is still made of beer, petty theft and threats, humiliation and a soft overwhelming presence of violence in the air. The group we’re looking at in Deformity Sci-fi is composed of bodies fighting each other slowing becoming more conscious of their being, made of more than flesh. Sky falls down and the past is rolling on the other side of it, time goes back and forth, demonstrations of love and loyalty reach a physical status abandoning words.
Reality is witnessing a deformity of its very own existence in front 0f our eyes. Deformity Sci-fi and Martian Syndrome might not be the easiest movies to digest but if we allow Jianqiang Xue excellent technique and great non-narrative skills to enchant us, then we might experience some kind of a mind trick – a clever one.
Deformity Sci-fi and Martian Syndrome screen as part of the 2014 Chinese Visual Festival.
Deformity Sci-fi screens with ‘Meat’ with a Monk onSaturday, 10 May 2014 at Safra Theatre, Kings College London.
Martian Syndrome screens with Kun 13: Critisizing Ai Weiwei and Wu Haohao on Thursday, 15 May 2014 at Safra Theatre, Kings College London.
Tickets are available on the Chinese Visual Festival website.
