Liu Yujia’s Border Hotel: An Allegory for Today’s World
The hybrid, broken, lost, and reconstructed borderlands she captures are an allegory for today’s world.
By Yang Yini Translated by Bridget Noetzel
With her camera, Liu Yujia made several archeology-inspired surveys of Hotan, Xinjiang, in summer 2009 and winter 2019. These two surveys, conducted ten years apart, record the massive changes in Hotan’s natural landforms and urban landscapes. In addition to her work over this brief decade, Liu adds a historical perspective to this exhibition by citing Aurel Stein’s three archeological expeditions to Hotan in the early twentieth century. The unbroken, silent landscapes captured by Stein and Liu—the Kunlun Mountains, the Taklamakan Desert, glaciers, riverbeds, and the Red Willow Sand Dunes—represent a longer span of time. The artist juxtaposes these two photographic records of Hotan’s landforms in the dual-channel video Archaeological Journal - Topographic Exploration of the Riverbed. Stein’s black and white photographs convey colonization, intellectual authority, and Buddhist artifacts buried underground for a thousand years, and Liu’s pictures call to mind the groups and economic activities around Hotan jade today and the larger political circumstances of the area. By juxtaposing, alternating, and mingling the archeological records she and Stein made, Liu constructs a borderland vision of landscape and power.
Liu’s ongoing long film project Treasure Hunt has been broken into several pieces and scattered throughout the apartment exhibition space, including a dual-channel video showing Hotan’s landforms and the route taken by Stein’s archeological expeditions, short videos and livestreams of Hotan jade markets, members of local ethnic minorities extracting raw jade from rivers and selling it, minority women singing “Ode to the Motherland” in local languages, and a minority man looking directly into the camera as he shaves. The objects in the exhibition space, such as a life-size replica of Stein’s tent, photographs of landforms and anthropometric surveys placed on a table, a handmade rug with images from The Great Tang Records of the Western Regions, and even a replica of the parlor used by the British consul-general of Kashgar in the late nineteenth century—the opening of the consulate established the British sphere of influence in Xinjiang—are all designed as physical extensions of the video.
Liu constructs the ancient Buddhist artifacts that Stein excavated from the sands of the desert and the jade buried in the Kunlun Mountains and surrounding riverbeds as two treasures that echo one another. Stein took many pictures of his dig sites, capturing deep holes, dense sandstorms, and the heads and bodies of Buddha statues, while Liu portrays large-scale jade mining at the foot of the Kunlun Mountains, giant wheels repeatedly rolling over the earth, an abandoned excavator, and a giant hole that no one bothered to fill back in. These mirrored images reveal one narrative of the relationship between the land and human activities. The subject switches quickly. The continuous and everchanging mountain range comes into view as Liu adjusts the camera focus, revealing the second kind of relationship between the land and human activity. In contrast to the large-scale mechanized extraction of jade from deep in the Kunlun Mountains by governments and corporations, the indigenous people who rely on ancient experience to collect pieces of jade that have accumulated in dry riverbeds in winter highlight another possible relationship between the land and human activities. These narratives layer and alternate in the exhibition space, branching off in different directions.
One of these branches is about the jade trade. Hotan jade markets, part of the livestream economy, are the focus of the camera and geographical survey instruments. In front of a replica of Stein’s tent, Liu has placed four Huawei mobile phones or tablets on stands playing the jade market portion of her longer Treasure Hunt project. The use of mobile phone and tablet screens and the noisy yet familiar livestream sales tactics evoke viewers’ everyday experiences, establishing a personal connection with the borderlands as a subject. The exhibition cuts between Stein’s archeological photographs and files and the jade economy, and this split runs throughout the exhibition, directly interrogating why Xinjiang is only valued as an Other. The discourse that Stein brings to the exhibition space is undoubtedly connected to true modernization, post-Industrial Revolution Britain’s urgent need for raw materials and new markets, and the resulting competition with Tsarist Russia for influence in Central Asia in the nineteenth century. This modernization took place in the form of colonialist violence, expropriation, and occupation. In the post-Cold War present, with global colonialism characterized by inequality and resource seizure in the name of capitalism, the hybrid, lost, broken, and reconstructed borderlands she captures are an allegory for today’s world.
Another of these branches extends into the apartment’s meeting room. The politics of modernization do not simply manifest in the economy; they also regulate the body and language, which eventually leads to intense changes in local culture and everyday life. Liu collected illustrations of ethnographic surveys that appeared in Stein’s books and arranged them on the table as a sort of compendium. Anthropometry was a research method in nineteenth-century biological anthropology, which summons the specters of nation-states, evolutionary theory, and racism. At the same time, the man shaving on the left screen comes into view, and those specters take on new corporeal form. The act of viewing this juxtaposition of spectacles is accompanied by the singing of “Ode to the Motherland” in an ethnic minority language. As an audiovisual construction, these three pieces identify how everyday life can be regulated.
This missing explanation is offered by the last Princess Consort in The Pale View of Hills (2018); instead of revealing scars, her explanation is almost silent. Liu has magnified Reyanam Dawut’s moments of work. Clips of her daily tasks in the kitchen are placed in the apartment’s kitchen, and videos of her as she cleans the bathroom and the sound of running water are placed in the apartment’s bathroom; both installations twist the past and present together through the transformation of the space. Reyanam Dawut lives in the Kucha prince’s palace, which has been converted into a museum—in order to develop the local tourism economy, the Kucha prince’s palace was renovated into a museum and opened to the public in 2004. She plays the role of someone who is still living, in order to emphasize that this era is in fact dead. Since the nineteenth century, museums have been compared to tombs, but while tombs permit or anticipate the return of spirits, museums reject the return of all specters and any kind of resurrection. Past times, peoples, cultures, and social structures are judged to be perfectly dead, so that we may welcome new powers and futures.
刘雨佳，边疆宾馆的今日世界寓言 | Art baba展评
文 | 杨旖旎 翻译 | 那瑞洁
刘雨佳的摄影机在2009年夏季、2019年冬季对新疆和田地区进行了多次“考古测量”，仅相隔十年的两轮测量却记录下了和田地区地貌和城市景观的巨大变迁。除去此短时段之外，艺术家通过引用斯坦因在20世纪初的三次和田考古旅行，得以在展览空间中引入一个历史中时段的视角；而作为长时段的则是斯坦因和刘雨佳的摄影机中那绵长沉静的地貌：昆仑山脉、塔克拉玛干沙漠、冰川、河床、红柳沙包。二者对新疆和田地貌的摄影记录被艺术家并置在双屏影像《考古日志——地形探索》中，斯坦因的黑白影像道出了殖民、知识权力和埋藏在地下上千年的佛教文物，而艺术家的影像则召唤出今日围绕和田玉石的人群和经济行为、以及作为大背景的政治风景。通过并置、穿插与杂糅斯坦因和艺术家的“考古记录”，艺术家构建出了关于风景与权力的边疆图景。
正在进行中的长片项目《寻宝》（Treasure Hunt）被拆解成几组片段，散落在公寓展览现场的各处，分别是以和田地貌和斯坦因考古路线为内容的双屏影像、和田的短视频直播玉石贸易市场、在河道挖掘并售卖玉石原料的当地少数民族、用少数民族语言唱《歌唱祖国》的民族妇女，以及故意对着镜头剃须的少数民族男子等。展览空间中的物件，比如等比例复制的帐篷、桌上摆放的斯坦因地貌和人种测量摄影档案、以大唐西域记为图像内容的手工地毯，甚至是仿照19世纪末英国驻喀什噶尔的总领事馆——总领事馆的建立标志着英国在新疆确定势力范围——所陈设的桌椅，也都被设计为这一影像的物质性延伸。
斯坦因从沙漠底下挖掘出的古老佛教文物，与埋藏在昆仑山脉和河床底下的玉石，被艺术家构建为相呼应的“两种宝物”。斯坦因在挖掘现场所拍摄的影像：那些深深凹陷的坑、厚厚的风沙，以及佛身、佛头，与昆仑山脚下大片荒废的大型玉石开采基地，巨轮频频轧过的土地、废弃的挖掘机、未及时回填的大窟窿，这一镜像对照揭示出的是地貌与人类活动关系的第一种叙事。话锋转得很快，那些依旧绵延的、千百年不变的浩大山脉随着艺术家摄影机的变焦而显形，揭示出地貌与人类活动的第二种关系。与政府和企业在昆仑深山中对玉石的大型机械开采不同，那些在冬日干涸的下流河床中，依靠古老经验捡拾河流冲积而留下的玉石的原住民，又道出关于地貌与人类活动的另一种关系。这些叙事在展览空间中层叠穿插着，又不停演化出支流来。
其中一脉支流是关于玉石的贸易。直播经济下的和田玉石交易市场也成为摄影机-地理测量仪的聚焦点。在复制的斯坦因帐篷前，艺术家用四个支架支起华为手机或平板，来播放《寻宝》这一长片中的玉石交易市场部分。对手机和平板屏幕的使用、嘈杂又熟悉的直播买卖，一遍遍地唤起观者的日常经验，建立起自己与作为对象的边疆的切身联系。展览在斯坦因的考古摄影档案和玉石经济之间来回变焦，这一贯穿整个展览的对切，直接讯问着新疆如何只能以他者的身份获得价值认同。斯坦因带入展览空间的话语无疑有关真正的现代化，工业革命之后英国急需原材料和销售市场，也因而在19世纪开始与沙俄争夺中亚势力范围。这场现代化以暴力、剥夺和侵占的殖民形式发生。而在“后冷战”之后的今天，以资本为名义的不平等和资源侵占构成了全球性的殖民性，艺术家摄影机里那关于混血、破碎、失去与重建的边疆也是今日世界的寓言。
另一脉支流延伸到公寓的会议室。现代化政治不仅从经济手段上，也通过身体和语言进行规训，最终导向当地文化和日常生活的剧烈改变。艺术家收集了遍布在斯坦因著作中对当地少数民族的人种测绘插图，并以图集的形式将其排列在桌面上。人种测量作为19世纪体质人类学的研究手段，在此召唤出了民族国家、进化论和种族主义的幽灵；与此同时，左侧电视机中剃须的少数民族男子进入视线：幽灵具备了新的肉身。对这一并置奇观的观看行为伴随着少数民族语版《歌唱祖国》的歌声，三者从视听上共同构建出一段关于日常生活规训的指认。
缺失的自白是由《远山淡景》（2018）中的末代王妃来诉说的，但这份自白无关伤痕，却几乎是沉默。艺术家放大了热亚南木·达吾提劳作的时刻，在公寓的厨房中播放热亚南木在厨房的日常劳作，在公寓洗手间中分别置入一段热亚南木打扫洗手间的影像、一段她洗手间中的下水道声，由此通过对空间的转化将历史和当下拧在一起。热亚南木居住在已经变成博物馆的库车王府内——为发展地区旅游经济，库车王府在2004年被修缮为博物馆并向观众开放——扮演一个“竟然还未死去”的人，来强调某个时代的死去。博物馆从19世纪开始就被比喻成坟墓，但是与允许或期待幽灵回归的坟墓不同的是，博物馆拒绝一切幽灵的回返、拒绝复生。过去的时代、人物、文化和社会结构被判为绝对永逝，以迎接新的权力和未来。