Jia Li

Experiencer / Illustrator / LCC MA IVM

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Chris WARE-INTERVIEW

Chris ware

Building Story:

It is a story with no beginning or no end. You wouldn't know where to start or stop. And hopefully reflected something or the way that we remember reality rather than the way we think we go through it which is straight which we don’t. We can go through it and put it back together in all sorts of different ways. And that’s also the way we meet people we learn about them in a piecemeal way. You don’t meet somebody and in here their biography from birth to that moment. You figure things out about them and put them together and in sort of mosaic so and the whole book itself is kind of an attempt to try to make like a dream book. The sort of thing that everybody I think imagines at a certain point in their dream life or they’ll hear a beautiful piece of music or see a wonderful painting or amazing film and they’ll wake up and think that was such a dream and they’ll realize like wait! I made that was in my mind I did that myself and then it fades and I wanted to try to make a book that had that sensation to it at least something that seemed almost untenable in a way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WaYuLEvz5M

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张文江 | 卡夫卡研读

卡夫卡（1883—1924）保存下来的文稿中，有八本八开本笔记，译文收于《卡夫卡全集》第五卷（叶廷芳主编，黎奇、赵登荣译，河北教育出版社，1996）。本文试解说其中三则，来自第三本八开本笔记本，原文写于1917年10月21日至23日（同上，29—38页）。叶廷芳编选《误入世界——卡夫卡悖谬论集》，对此稍作删减，可作为整理本（天津人民出版社，2007，35—38页）。各段之间并无组织，因为写于同一时间，或有松散的联系。三则笔记都是寓言故事①，也有人看成小说（上海译文出版社《卡夫卡文集》中，收在小说卷，2002）。

日常的迷惘

一种日常的情况：他所忍受的是一种日常的迷惘。A要同H地的B拍板一笔生意。他到Ｈ地去谈判，来回路上都只用了十分钟，回家后他对此特快自夸不已。第二天他又去Ｈ地，这回是去最后拍板。由于这估计要用好几个小时，Ａ一大早就出了门。尽管所有枝节情况都跟昨天一样，至少Ａ是这么认为的，这回他走到Ｈ地却用了十个小时。当他晚上精疲力竭地到达那里时，人们告诉他，Ｂ对他迟迟不来非常恼火。半小时前到Ａ所在的村子去找Ａ了，他们俩本该在路上碰到的。人们建议Ａ在那儿等。可Ａ怕生意泡汤，马上就动身，匆匆往回赶。

标题为遗嘱执行人所加，或为“在阳光下”所见。引言所站之处，为神之视角。只有在此视角观看，才能看见日常生活中的人，处于不同程度的混乱中，对此却没有充分觉知。神之视角必须下降和消解，否则将成障碍。往下看见的洞穴景象，也就是人类社会的常态。

日常生活之所以看不清真相，是由于大多数人缺乏耐心，对眼前发生的事情，过快地作出解释，构成各种各样的成见。卡夫卡极度忠实自己，故能撞破其中的的诡异。站到洞穴之外观看，这些景象并不奇怪。好比毕加索的画，看似有形形色色的变形，其实，都可以当作高维度的投影。

郑力烽提示：“这个故事很像《渔人之路与问津者之路》。”第一天的A，对应渔人；第二天的A，对应问津者。（参见拙稿《渔人之路和问津者之路》）第一天A出于无心，很快到达目的地，只用了十分钟。第二天做好充分准备，在计较和安排下，还是迟到了。“尽管所有枝节情况都跟昨天一样，至少Ａ是这么认为的。”这是导致迷惘的关键。第一天，时间和空间，大体正常；第二天，时间和空间，和原来似同实异。参见《渔人之路与问津者之路》：“既有时间的变化，则此路已非彼路，彼人已非此人。渔人一旦走出桃花源，原路早已山高水复。”

B在H地一直在耐心地等，最后半小时终于等不及，就出发去找A。然而恰恰这时候，A来了。A和B对称的镜像，描述的正是人类的习惯行为。卡夫卡本人编选的《对罪愆、苦难、希望和真正的道路的观察》之2：“所有人类的错误无非是无耐心，是过于匆忙地将按部就班的程序打乱，是用似是而非的桩子把似是而非的事物圈起来。”（同上，《全集》第五卷，3页）

这回他没有注意时间，很快就赶了回去。到家后他得知，Ｂ一大早就到了这儿，Ａ一出门他就来了；他在门口还碰到了Ａ，提醒他生意的事，可是Ａ说，他现在没有时间，他必须马上动身。尽管Ａ的行为是那么令人难以理解，Ｂ还是留下来，等待Ａ回来。尽管他已经问了好多遍，Ａ到底回来了没有，可是现在还是在楼上Ａ的房间里等着。得知现在还能跟Ｂ谈，解释一切原因，Ａ高兴地跑到楼上去。就在他已经快要到达楼上的时候，他绊倒了，扭伤了筋，疼得几乎昏了过去，甚至叫不出声来了，在他轻微的哀鸣中，他听到，Ｂ在黑暗中，不清楚是在远处还是就在他的身边，怒冲冲地踏着楼梯走了下去，终于离开了这里。

卡夫卡的寓言，往往有二段，互相衬托对照。相比第一段，第二段更奇诡，阴差阳错，不可思议。

A在赶回去的路上，不知不觉，重新进入无心状态，一溜烟到了家。同样的路程，只花了十分钟，也可能更短。其实，B一大早就到了，并且和A在门口相遇。但是B的到来，没有符合A的原先预设。A沉浸在自己的思维习惯中，居然没有认出来，活生生地与B失之交臂。我们观察自己和别人，不是经常犯类似错误吗？以经济学而言，交易的自愿达成，应该是双方获益。在对等生意中，A着急，B也着急，所以B一早赶来，并不奇怪。最后还是错过了，“不清楚是在远处还是就在他的身边”，空间似在移动，飘忽不定，如梦如幻。

A和B行事不同，出于对同一事物的不同认知。从更深层次看，在不同认知下，是否存在同一事物，终究难以确定。本节B和上节B之间的巨大反差，前者等待九个半小时，后者一早到来，站在神之视角观看，两者可以相等。

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details

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some details from FMP

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Some details from FMP

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The final work is in large size. So I consider making a small zine which could be owned by people. I printed the details on blank backgrounds and make a folding book.

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A zine experiment 

When I look at the final work’s composition and details, which remained me of the jigsaw, I thought they have the potential to re-organize and make something more interesting. So I changed some of the planes and make this zine.

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Since it is important to modify the details based on this actual size, I printed it out when I finished the first version. This actual size image looks different from the laptop. So I re-draw some elements and print them out. I stick these elements on the large image to decide what should be added.

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How could I make the image more narrative? I found the answer in Chris Ware’s work, which is adding more details. So I add the family portrait, dead plant, daily sauces, Chinese characters and etc. to make the image tell a story by itself.

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Tetsuya Ishida

His fame comes not just from his reputation as a maverick but also for his brilliant characterizations of Japanese society and the personal isolation that resulted from the country’s economic downturn through the 90s. “Ishida captured the feelings of hopelessness, claustrophobia, and emotional isolation that burdened him and that dominated Japanese society during this era,” wrote Nick Simunovic of Gagosian Gallery, Hong Kong, site of one of this artist’s exhibitions.

His deeply unhappy characters are often entwined with buildings or machines, are representative of his view of Japan as a soul-less, mechanized society. Ishida died in 2005 after being hit by a train in an incident thought to be a suicide, ending his 10-year career.

Ishida’s work is rendered with careful detail that creates an air of stillness in each of the paintings. The slowness of the brushstroke invites the viewer to take approach the work with the same speed, taking in every inch of the paintings in the same methodical way that they were made. Like Alice in Wonderland, the artist’s scale shifts quickly from very big to very small from one painting to the next. In Prisoner his body is enlarged to the size of an office building and encapsulated with only his hands and head sticking out, while uniformly dressed young men stand at disparate intervals in the plaza in front of him. In On Holiday a baby pushes Ishida’s oversized head in a stroller.

Whether you appreciate his dark humor or think his work is capable of saving lives, Ishida’s paintings offer a poignant critique of contemporary Japanese culture that is worth a look.

“Ishida stated in interviews that it was during this period that his parents and school principal put pressure on him to thrive academically and develop a career as a teacher or chemist. This experience later appeared in some of his paintings that explore the society's expectations of youths.” ---From Wikipedia

Tetsuya Ishida, whose works explore the society's expectations of youths, influence me a lot. By combining the machine and human-being, trapping the characters in a small space or deforming worker’s limb, his works always give a strong sense of absurd. I imitated the elements and transferred into my personal languages.  

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Artworks by Huang Haixin

“My works explore public images indicative of contemporary life. Particular mass media images reveal to mean ambiguous atmosphere between humor and horror: safety instructions, ribbon cutting ceremonies, political conferences, etc. I explore the threat of violence and fear in society, the absurdity and the loneliness behind these politically-correct, capitalistic images. However, life is full of contradictions, I'm not ridiculing anything or making any demands, but rather outlining a kind of lighthearted contradiction which makes use of the context of signage to create the effect of a symbolic self-negation.”

Huang Haixin’s works usually show the weird and ridiculous aspect of our society.  Her style is humorous but also absurd. I was inspired by her language.  In my final work, my characters fire on the face or hide in a blind dating room... It is hard to explain why they will do that but it might feel weird and ridiculous when you think about it.

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digital details

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digital experiment 

details

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Hand-drawn draft 

83.7 x 126 cm

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In the next step, I organized the elements into space.

I made the sketch as a central one. And then I extended the lines and planes based on it. In this process, I just play with the composition and let the image “grow by itself”. Finally, it turns out to be great. This experiment is the significant moments for my project because the final work’s composition is based on this experiment.

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Since I decided to sketch each life stage separately, I consider how to develop the composition. It was hard to make a perfect composition in one large paper immediately. 

I was inspired by Stefhany Y. Lozano’s artworks. In these works, I felt that the spaces have the potential to develop and connect to the next image’s space. Because these spaces are made by simple line and plane. 

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All visual response from the research.