花骨——关于詹洋的绘画

文：付晓东

一、 重建植物、动物、怪物和人的联盟

在詹洋的作品中，充满了一种戏剧化的组合和描述，猴子的头生长在肥硕的花心，长着触角表情忧伤的某物，果实头，如同人的躯干一样的马，如同“缸中之脑”一般的裸脑……她将人类的特征缩小到很小的范围之内，将不同的物种嵌合在一起，发明、培养新的混杂的生命体。这些被创生的奇怪遥远的物种相遇在狭小的画面中，组合起新的故事。在她的画中，有一种超越人文主义，跨物种非政治的概念。她说：“马的躯干、腰、臀、腿都富有人体的一种美感，使形象拟人化，生动诙谐。接下来我会把动物画的更加人性化，情绪化，使之与人之间的互动关系更加融洽。”这种对非人类，或者说是人类动物的热情，令人着迷。这个星球上的生物原本应该是什么样子的？人类还可以继续地球统治2亿或者3亿年吗？未来是马克思主义的技术女性主义的未来，还是多物种女性主义？植物、动物、晶体、怪物，都是更加内在的“我们”。哈拉维在80年代就预言说：“我们都是嵌合体。”动物与技术，虚拟与物理的历史性的内爆。似乎这一天不太远了。正如哈拉维的宣言中所说的那样，“心灵与身体，动物与人类，有机体与机器，公共与私人，自然与文化，男人与女人，原始与文明之间的二分法都存在问题……它已经被技术取消化。”进而从拉图尔的名言“我们从来都不是现代人”，发展为“我们从来都不是人类。”

二、 白骨观是什么？

“白骨观”是五门禅法之一，源自《不净观》中的《九想观》，通过人对九相的观想，来对治世人的贪恋和执著。日本的《九相图》经常与女性联系到一起，尤其是一些容貌出众的著名女性，东亚各国普遍将不净与女性联系到一起，女性被认为是有碍修行的“色”，主要服务男性僧侣远离爱欲的需求。女性在白骨观中即作为历史中的客体，也可以作为修行中的主体。佛教修持讲色空不二，非空非有，亦空亦有，《心经》中说：“色不异空，空不异色，空既是色，色既是空，受想行识亦复如是。照见五蕴皆空，度一切苦厄。”其观法是：“当自观身作一白骨人，极使白净，令头倒下，入臗骨中。澄心一处，极使分明。此想成已，观身四面，周匝四方，皆有骨人。……乃至见于无量无边诸白骨人，纷乱纵横，或大或小，或破或完。……谛观是已，当自思惟，正有纵横，诸杂乱骨，何处有我，及与他身。尔时行者，思惟无我，身意泰然，安隐快乐。”詹洋在疫情期间，每天以画一根骨头来记录生活的痕迹，缓解当时的焦虑与不安，满墙密密扎扎的白骨，显现了她对生命无常，成坏灭空的体悟。她用每天反反复复的重复，去对抗曾经的那种不断渴求新变化的欲望，她说：“这种无形和无知觉的东西一点一点地侵蚀你时，在某种程度上也是一种滋养。”对向内无止尽的挖掘中，破除一个又一个的幻象，她最终面对的是白骨，既是自己，也是世界。

三、 潜意识与自性的复活

弗洛伊德伟大而惊人的发现是看到了意识的冰山下，力量巨大的潜意识，隐藏着我们那些不被知觉的创伤，不被社会规则允许的欲望和冲动。荣格更进一步的提出地下室和洞穴中埋藏更深的集体无意识。人类进化过程在心灵中会留下痕迹，被称为“原型”，一代又一代的传下来。原型的核心就是自性，回到自性，象征着整合与统一，回到没有冲突、分裂的心理状态。《坛经》（行由品）中说：“何其自性，本自清净！何其自性，本不生灭！何其自性，本自具足！何其自性，本无动摇！何其自性，能生万法！”在这里自性等同于佛性，本自清净，本自具足。在人工智能纪元开启高速发展的今天，人的意识世界已经被GhatGPT模拟得不相上下，人类不得不重视开发潜意识所具有的巨大算力系统，重拾人本身所具有的由微妙的心灵和斯特劳斯所说的野性思维的超越知识的能力。尼采认为“艺术比真理更有价值”，海德格尔认为，存在者不为人所熟悉的地方不是粗略的被科学所认识的地方，而是存在者整体的敞开状态能更为本质的运作，人的行为完全由整体之可敞开状态来协调。詹洋的绘画则重视这一开端，这既是由从小对自我个性的完整保护，也是个体执拗顽强的生长。完全把笔交给自己的身体、潜意识、自性，这一切曾经被理性收缴上去的自我支配和表达的能力，在她的作品上绽放了。潜意识这个无限的领域正式被压制的女性们，也是这些可以驾驭此能力的仙女们得以生存的地方。她与巨大的内驱力合一，接近其原本的力量的，她毫不约束自己，她在飞翔。这也是我为什么举办这个展览的原因。

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Flower and Bone: About Zhan Yang’s Paintings

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By Fu Xiaodong

I. Rebuilding the Alliance of Plants, Animals, Monsters and People

Zhan Yang’s works are full of dramatic combinations and descriptions: a monkey’s head growing in the stamen of a fleshy flower, something with tentacles and a sad expression, a fruit-like head, a horse in the shape of a human torso, a naked brain like “brain in a vat” ... She narrows down the characteristics of human beings to a small range, mosaicking different species together, inventing and cultivating new hybrid life forms. These created species, strange and remote, meet in a narrow frame and form new stories. In her paintings, there is a notion of transhumanism, of cross-species apolitics. “The horse’s torso, waist, hips, and legs”, she says, “are in the beauty of the human body, which makes the image anthropomorphic and vividly witty. I will paint the animals in a more humanized and emotional way, so that the interaction between them and humans will be more harmonious.” This passion for non-humans, or indeed human-animals, is fascinating. What were the creatures on this planet originally supposed to look like? Could humans have continued to rule the planet for another 2 or 3 million years? Is the future a Marxist techno-feminist future, or a multi-species feminism? Plants, animals, crystals, and monsters are all more intrinsically “us”. As Haraway predicted in the 1980s, “We are all chimeras.” That the historic implosion of the animal and the technological, the virtual and the physical, seems not too far away. As Haraway’s manifesto puts it, “The dichotomy between mind and body, animal and human, organism and machine, the public and the private, nature and culture, man and woman, the primitive and the civilized, is problematic ... It has been abolished by technology.” Hence “We were never modern”, Latour’s famous saying, becomes “we were never human beings.”

II. What is the Meditation on Skeleton?

The meditation on skeleton is one of the Five Meditations of Zen, originating from Nine Phases after death in meditations on uncleanness, in which desires and obsession are cured through one’s visualization of the Nine Phases after death. In Japan, the Nine Phases are often associated with women, especially famous women of outstanding appearance. It is common in East Asian countries to associate uncleanness with women, who are regarded as Rupa (i.e., Matter) that hinders the practice of Buddhism and serves the needs of male monks to stay away from eros. In the meditation on skeleton, women are both objects in history and subjects in practice. The Buddhist practice emphasizes the indistinguishability of Rupa and Emptiness. In the Heart Sutra, it is said that “Rupa is not different from Emptiness, and Emptiness is not different from Rupa; Emptiness is Rupa and Rupa is Emptiness, and the same applies to the feelings, thoughts, actions and senses. Seeing that the five skandhas are all empty, one can eliminate all suffering.” The method of visualization is: “Visualize your body as a skeleton, make it extremely white and clean, make your head fall down and enter into the pelvis. Clarify your mind and make it very clear. When this thought has been realized, look at the four sides of your body, all of which are filled with skeletons ... you will see an infinite number of skeletons, big or small, broken or complete ...When you have looked at this, ask yourself, there are all the bones, all the messy bones, and where is my body and the body of others? Then the practitioner, contemplating that there is no self, is at peace with his body and mind, and is happy in retreat.” During the epidemic, Zhan Yang drew a bone every day to record the traces of her life and to relieve her anxiety at that time. The dense white bones all over the wall showed her realization of the impermanence of life and the emptiness of achievement and destruction. She fought against the desire for new changes in daily repetitions. As she said, “This kind of intangible and senseless thing is also a kind of nourishment when it eats away at you little by little.” After breaking down all kinds of illusions in the endless digging inward, she is ultimately confronted with white bones, which are both herself and the world.

III. The Resurrection of the Subconscious and Selfhood

Freud’s great and amazing discovery was to see, under the iceberg of consciousness, the subconscious mind of immense power, hiding our traumas that are not perceptible, and desires and impulses that are not allowed by the rules of society. Jung went even further by suggesting a deeper collective unconscious buried in basements and caves. The evolutionary process of human beings leaves traces in the mind called “archetypes” that are passed down from generation to generation. The core of the archetype is the Self, and returning to the Self symbolizes integration and unity, a state of mind free from conflict and division. The Rostrum Sutra says, “The self is otherwise pure, and inherently without birth and death! It is otherwise sufficient, and capable of giving birth to all dharmas!” Here the selfhood is equivalent to Buddha-nature, which is originally pure and self-sufficient. In the era of Artificial Intelligence has opened the high-speed development, the world of human consciousness has been simulated by ChatGPT, and human beings have to pay attention to develop the huge arithmetic system that the subconscious mind has to regain the abilities of the subtle mind, or as Strauss said, the abilities of wild thinking that are beyond knowledge. Nietzsche believed that art is more valuable than truth, and Heidegger believed that the unfamiliar place of the beings is not the place roughly known by science, but the open state of the Being as a whole is able to operate in a more essential way, and that human behavior is completely coordinated by the open state of the whole. Zhan’s paintings emphasize this beginning, which is both the protection of the integrity of self-personality from a young age and the growth of the individual’s stubbornness and tenacity. The ability to dominate and express herself, which was once collected by rationality, has blossomed in her works by completely handing over the brush to her body, subconscious mind, and self-nature. The infinite realm of the subconscious is where women have been suppressed, and where these nymphs who can harness this power survive. She is united with a great inner drive, close to its original power, and she does not restrain herself. She is flying. That is why I organized this exhibition.

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