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當我就讀藝術學院時,手開始出現顫抖症狀;這是我能畫出最直的線。現在看來,其實這對某些事來說還算不錯,例如搖勻罐中的顏料,或甩乾拍立得相片。但當時的感覺確實像世界末日,這摧毀了我成為藝術家的夢想。
事實上,顫抖症狀來自於我專研點描畫的結果。經年累月地描繪極小的點;因為顫抖的緣故,最後這些點從完美的圓形變成類似蝌蚪狀。為了改善這一點,我將筆握得更緊,卻使顫抖症狀變本加劇,因此我只能將筆握得更緊。這成了惡性循環,最後導致劇痛和關節問題;我幾乎握不住任何東西。就在努力追尋從事藝術的畢生夢想後,我離開藝術學院,同時與藝術分道揚鑣。
但幾年後,我對藝術依舊無法忘懷,我決定求助神經科醫生,診治顫抖症狀,卻發現我的神經已永久受損。事實上,醫生看了一眼我畫的扭曲線條,開口說,「嗯,你何不試著與顫抖共處?」
因此我依言照辦。回家後,我拿起筆來,任由我的手不停顫抖。我創作出類似這樣的塗鴉,即使這並非我理想中的藝術作品,感覺卻很棒。更重要的是,一旦我設法與顫抖共處,我發現我依然能創作藝術。我只需要尋找不同的方式,創作我想要的藝術。
現在,我依然喜愛點描畫的片段感,看著這些小點聚集成一幅完整的圖畫。因此我開始嘗試以其他方式分割圖像,避免因顫抖而影響作品。例如用腳沾顏料,在畫布上行走;或以木條組成二乘四的3D結構,用噴燈在表面烙上2D圖像。我發現,如果使用大型素材從事大型創作,手部的問題完全不會造成影響。當我跳脫單一藝術創作方式後,我找到激發創造力的方法,使我的藝術視野完全改觀。這是我第一次領悟到這個觀點-處於侷限中確實能激發創造力。
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以下為系統擷取之英文原文
So, when I was in art school, I developed a shake in my hand, and this was the straightest line I could draw. Now in hindsight, it was actually good for some things, like mixing a can of paint or shaking a Polaroid, but at the time this was really doomsday. This was the destruction of my dream of becoming an artist.
The shake developed out of, really, a single-minded pursuit of pointillism, just years of making tiny, tiny dots. And eventually these dots went from being perfectly round to looking more like tadpoles, because of the shake. So to compensate, I'd hold the pen tighter, and this progressively made the shake worse, so I'd hold the pen tighter still. And this became a vicious cycle that ended up causing so much pain and joint issues, I had trouble holding anything. And after spending all my life wanting to do art, I left art school, and then I left art completely.
But after a few years, I just couldn't stay away from art, and I decided to go to a neurologist about the shake and discovered I had permanent nerve damage. And he actually took one look at my squiggly line, and said, "Well, why don't you just embrace the shake?"
So I did. I went home, I grabbed a pencil, and I just started letting my hand shake and shake. I was making all these scribble pictures. And even though it wasn't the kind of art that I was ultimately passionate about, it felt great. And more importantly, once I embraced the shake, I realized I could still make art. I just had to find a different approach to making the art that I wanted.
Now, I still enjoyed the fragmentation of pointillism, seeing these little tiny dots come together to make this unified whole. So I began experimenting with other ways to fragment images where the shake wouldn't affect the work, like dipping my feet in paint and walking on a canvas, or, in a 3D structure consisting of two-by-fours, creating a 2D image by burning it with a blowtorch. I discovered that, if I worked on a larger scale and with bigger materials, my hand really wouldn't hurt, and after having gone from a single approach to art, I ended up having an approach to creativity that completely changed my artistic horizons. This was the first time I'd encountered this idea that embracing a limitation could actually drive creativity.
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當時我即將畢業,我十分高興能找到一份正職,終於買得起新的美術工具。我有一套十分簡陋的工具組;我自認能創作出更棒的作品,只要擁有我理想中的藝術家必備工具。事實上,我連普通剪刀也沒有,我一直使用金屬剪代替,直到我從辦公室偷來一把剪刀。
因此我離開學校、找到工作、領到薪水,我前往美術用品店瘋狂地採購。回家後,我坐下來,全心投入工作,努力試著創作某些完全跳脫框架的作品。但我坐了好幾個小時,卻毫無靈感。同樣情形日復一日地上演,我瞬間陷入創作低潮。很長一段時間,我處於黑暗中,無法創作。這完全沒道理;因為我終於能致力於藝術創作,卻絲毫沒有創作靈感。
但當我在黑暗中摸索時,我意識到,事實上我已被之前不曾擁有的眾多選擇麻痺。此時,我想起那雙顫抖的手;與顫抖共處。於是我領悟到,如果想找回創作力,必須不再專注於跳脫框架的念頭,試著回到框架中。
我思索,難道追尋極限使人變得更有創造力嗎?如果我只能用價值一美元的素材創作呢?當時我花了許多夜晚-好吧,我想我現在還是經常在星巴克度過夜晚時光-我知道可以跟店員多要一個紙杯,因此我決定要50個。令人訝異地,他們二話不說地給了我。藉由一些我原本就有的鉛筆,僅花了8毛錢,我就完成這項作品。那一刻我恍然大悟:我們必須先處於侷限中,才能超越限制。
我把這個侷限於框架中的想法運用到畫布上。我思索,如果無法在畫布上作畫,只能在自己胸前作畫呢?於是我畫了30張圖,一次一層、彼此相疊,每幅畫都代表某個影響我人生的事件。或者,如果無法用筆刷作畫,只能用手劈呢?(笑聲)因此,我將雙手沾上顏料,直接劈向畫布。事實上我劈得太用力,造成小指關節瘀青,好幾個星期,我的小指只能直挺挺地豎著。
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At the time, I was finishing up school, and I was so excited to get a real job and finally afford new art supplies. I had this horrible little set of tools, and I felt like I could do so much more with the supplies I thought an artist was supposed to have. I actually didn't even have a regular pair of scissors. I was using these metal shears until I stole a pair from the office that I worked at.
So I got out of school, I got a job, I got a paycheck, I got myself to the art store, and I just went nuts buying supplies. And then when I got home, I sat down and I set myself to task to really try to create something just completely outside of the box. But I sat there for hours, and nothing came to mind. The same thing the next day, and then the next, quickly slipping into a creative slump. And I was in a dark place for a long time, unable to create. And it didn't make any sense, because I was finally able to support my art, and yet I was creatively blank.
But as I searched around in the darkness, I realized I was actually paralyzed by all of the choices that I never had before. And it was then that I thought back to my jittery hands. Embrace the shake. And I realized, if I ever wanted my creativity back, I had to quit trying so hard to think outside of the box and get back into it.
I wondered, could you become more creative, then, by looking for limitations? What if I could only create with a dollar's worth of supplies? At this point, I was spending a lot of my evenings in -- well, I guess I still spend a lot of my evenings in Starbucks — but I know you can ask for an extra cup if you want one, so I decided to ask for 50. Surprisingly, they just handed them right over, and then with some pencils I already had, I made this project for only 80 cents. It really became a moment of clarification for me that we need to first be limited in order to become limitless.
I took this approach of thinking inside the box to my canvas, and wondered what if, instead of painting on a canvas, I could only paint on my chest? So I painted 30 images, one layer at a time, one on top of another, with each picture representing an influence in my life. Or what if, instead of painting with a brush, I could only paint with karate chops? (Laughter) So I'd dip my hands in paint, and I just attacked the canvas, and I actually hit so hard that I bruised a joint in my pinkie and it was stuck straight for a couple of weeks.
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或者,如果無法靠自己創作,必須仰賴他人完成創作內容呢?因此,整整六天,我在網路攝影機前過日子:我睡地板、吃外賣食物,請別人打電話給我,和我分享關於人生中的轉捩點的故事。他們的故事成了藝術創作;我把這些故事寫在旋轉畫布上。
(掌聲)
或者,如果創作的目的並非展示,而是銷毀呢?這就像最終極限-成為一位沒有作品的藝術家。這個毀滅性概念轉變成長達一年的計畫,我稱之為「告別藝術」;每件作品完成後都必須銷毀。創作「告別藝術」之初,我將焦點放在強制性毀滅,例如這幅Jimi Hendrix圖像,由七千多根火柴棒組成(笑聲)。接著,我採用自然銷毀方式進行創作。我尋找暫時性素材,例如口中吐出的食物(笑聲)、塗鴉粉筆,甚至冷凍酒。
最後一系列的毀滅性創作是-嘗試創造一些不曾真正存在的畫面。因此,我將蠟燭排在桌上,將它點燃,然後吹熄。用同一批蠟燭一再重覆這個過程,然後將拍攝的影片組成一幅大型圖像,因此最終圖像從未完整存在;它在誕生前即遭受毀滅的命運。
從事「告別藝術系列」期間,我創作了23件不同作品,不曾留下任何可展示的實體作品。我原本以為的最終限制,事實上成了最終解放。每一次的創作過程中,毀滅階段都使我重新歸零;我感到宛如新生,隨時能開始進行下一個計畫。這並非一夕可成之事;有時我的計畫一開始就遇上阻礙,更糟的是,花了許多時間後,成果卻難以見人。但既然已投入創作過程,我堅持到底,最後的成果往往出人意料。
摧毀每一件作品的過程中,我學會了放下。放下結果、放下失敗、放下不完美。得到的回報是,我找到持續不斷的藝術創作過程,不因結果而受限。我發現自己處於持續創作狀態,只想著下一個創作計畫,靈感如泉湧般不斷浮現。
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Or, what if instead of relying on myself, I had to rely on other people to create the content for the art? So for six days, I lived in front of a webcam. I slept on the floor and I ate takeout, and I asked people to call me and share a story with me about a life-changing moment. Their stories became the art as I wrote them onto the revolving canvas.
(Applause) Or what if instead of making art to display, I had to destroy it? This seemed like the ultimate limitation, being an artist without art. This destruction idea turned into a yearlong project that I called Goodbye Art, where each and every piece of art had to be destroyed after its creation. In the beginning of Goodbye Art, I focused on forced destruction, like this image of Jimi Hendrix, made with over 7,000 matches. (Laughter) Then I opened it up to creating art that was destroyed naturally. I looked for temporary materials, like spitting out food -- (Laughter) — sidewalk chalk and even frozen wine.
The last iteration of destruction was to try to produce something that didn't actually exist in the first place. So I organized candles on a table, I lit them, and then blew them out, then repeated this process over and over with the same set of candles, then assembled the videos into the larger image. So the end image was never visible as a physical whole. It was destroyed before it ever existed.
In the course of this Goodbye Art series, I created 23 different pieces with nothing left to physically display. What I thought would be the ultimate limitation actually turned out to be the ultimate liberation, as each time I created, the destruction brought me back to a neutral place where I felt refreshed and ready to start the next project. It did not happen overnight. There were times when my projects failed to get off the ground, or, even worse, after spending tons of time on them the end image was kind of embarrassing. But having committed to the process, I continued on,
and something really surprising came out of this. As I destroyed each project, I was learning to let go, let go of outcomes, let go of failures, and let go of imperfections. And in return, I found a process of creating art that's perpetual and unencumbered by results. I found myself in a state of constant creation, thinking only of what's next and coming up with more ideas than ever.
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我回想遠離藝術的三年時光:遠離我的夢想,只是如行屍走肉般度日,不曾試著找出不同方法,繼續這個夢想;我只是離開、放棄。如果我不曾嘗試與顫抖共處呢?因為對我來說,與顫抖共處不僅關乎藝術或擁有創作技巧,事實上,這關乎人生和擁有生活技能。因為最終,大部分我們所做的事都發生在這裡,侷限於框架中,在有限的資源下。學習在自我極限中發揮創造力,是改變自我的最佳方式;集合眾人的力量,將可改變世界。
將侷限視為創意來源的想法改變了我的人生歷程。現在,當我遇上瓶頸,或發現自己陷入創作低潮-有時我依然得與低潮抗爭-但我不曾逃避這個過程,試著提醒自己其中的可能性。例如用上百隻活生生的蟲創作一幅圖像;用圖釘替香蕉紋身;或用漢堡的油脂作畫。
(笑聲)
我最近努力的方向是,試著將我學到的創作訣竅轉變成可讓他人複製的技巧。
侷限或許是最不可能駕馭創造力的方式,但或許是使我們跳脫框架的最佳方法。重新進行規劃、挑戰既有的規範,除了勉勵彼此活在當下,也許我們可以時時提醒自己:擁抱侷限。
謝謝。
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When I think back to my three years away from art, away from my dream, just going through the motions, instead of trying to find a different way to continue that dream, I just quit, I gave up. And what if I didn't embrace the shake? Because embracing the shake for me wasn't just about art and having art skills. It turned out to be about life, and having life skills. Because ultimately, most of what we do takes place here, inside the box, with limited resources. Learning to be creative within the confines of our limitations is the best hope we have to transform ourselves and, collectively, transform our world.
Looking at limitations as a source of creativity changed the course of my life. Now, when I run into a barrier or I find myself creatively stumped, I sometimes still struggle, but I continue to show up for the process and try to remind myself of the possibilities, like using hundreds of real, live worms to make an image, using a pushpin to tattoo a banana, or painting a picture with hamburger grease.
(Laughter)
One of my most recent endeavors is to try to translate the habits of creativity that I've learned into something others can replicate.
Limitations may be the most unlikely of places to harness creativity, but perhaps one of the best ways to get ourselves out of ruts, rethink categories and challenge accepted norms. And instead of telling each other to seize the day, maybe we can remind ourselves every day to seize the limitation.
Thank you.