Notes on the creation of "Joyful Tragedy"
Text/Fu Wenjun
"Joyful Tragedy No.1" Fu Wenjun Digital Painting Photography 80x100cm 2014
"Joyful Tragedy No.2" Fu Wenjun Digital Photography 80x100cm 2014
Nowadays, the protection of traditional culture is facing various contradictions. When scholars proposed that "culture should not be over-consumed", culture received great attention, and the culture that was protected became a kind of elitist culture again. When tradition is valued by the elite, although it has been upgraded, it is also losing its vitality. And when tradition meets consumer culture again, traditional culture becomes more complicated. This leads to the question: What will be the tradition that is "enshrined" and what will be the tradition in the age of consumption?
In response to this thinking, I practiced it earlier. Before that, I did shabu conceptual photography, and used the shabu relics of traditional culture as the carrier of conceptual photography imaging. In this act, what I value is not only the photographic change caused by it as a visual carrier itself, but also the overprotective of traditional culture by cultural elitism. The use of Shabu as a conceptual photographic presentation carrier is an important artistic attempt to develop the functionality of Shabu. Because in such a situation, a revitalized function can save traditional things from becoming "landscapes" and "cultural relics".
"Joyful Tragedy No.3" Fu Wenjun Digital Photography 80x100cm 2014
"Joyful Tragedy No.4" Fu Wenjun Digital Photography 80x100cm, 2014
Traditional culture should be attributed to the people. Under the impact of the current modern trend of thought, traditional culture is facing extraordinary survival pressure, and this is also the inevitable "pain" of the transformation of all traditional cultures towards modernity. Only when traditional culture is "interpreted" by contemporary nature, or has a functional transformation based on folk, will tradition avoid the fate of disappearing. In my opinion, traditional culture faces a variety of games between elitism and market economy. The key to the success of traditional culture lies in the return to the bottom. Traditional culture can only take root at the bottom, which is an important foundation for its inheritance and development.
The logic of culture entering the market is an important opportunity for traditional culture. In contemporary culture, the logic of the market is difficult for anyone and anything to escape. In the multi-party game, the way of national protection is inevitably inadequate. Today's scholars, on the other hand, are still trying to confront consumer culture with cultural elitism, but on the other hand, they are fighting against the culture at the bottom. For the modern development of traditional culture, this is the most fundamental conservatism.
"Joyful Tragedy No.5" Fu Wenjun Digital Photography 80x100cm 2014
"Joyful Tragedy No.6" Fu Wenjun Digital Painting Photography 80x100cm 2014
As scholars, their duty is to reinterpret tradition rather than preserve it, as do artists. There are two ways to reinterpret tradition: first, seek modernity from tradition itself and combine it with the times to innovate; second, tradition combines contemporary culture, and obtains spiritual existence in the heterogeneous reorganization of reconnecting with the times. From the subversion of traditional culture on May Fourth to the attitude of protecting culture after opening up today. It has to be said that people's thinking has gradually improved, but there is a way towards the ultimate solution.
Both culture and art should be recognized for the fact that consumer culture is an important part of the culture of modernity and not just commercial society itself. When the traditional contemporary movement encounters consumption, simply banishing tradition from the market and isolating it from the market is biased, and the traditional scholars' research on consumer culture and mass culture in consumer culture is obviously insufficient.
"Joyful Tragedy No.7" Fu Wenjun Digital Photography 80x100cm, 2014
"Joyful Tragedy No.8" Fu Wenjun Digital Painting Photography 80x100cm 2014
For example, Sichuan opera suffered from the impact of other art forms after the reform and opening up, and went to the edge due to the failure of cultural consumption. However, through the protection policy and market-oriented packaging of the new elitism, the "revival" of the two extreme cultures has made it differentiate into bipolar cultures that are either "expensive" or "cheap" in market consumption, and the division of consumption also constitutes a cultural division. The opposition between "elegant" and "vulgar" is the distance between the elite and the masses, and it is increasingly showing an extreme trend, and there is no possibility of balance. So while we advocate modernity, the subconscious of our culture remains conservative.
"Joyful Tragedy" was created in such a cultural context and reflects this reality. You see the drama placed in the cup, like a greenhouse flower, brilliant, dazzling, and as bright and seductive as the product of consumer culture, but its more authentic state is in the cup, just a cultural landscape. When the grandeur of traditional culture is finally released and becomes a miniature landscape, this is a sad and lamentable thing.
"Joyful Tragedy No.9" Fu Wenjun Digital Photography 80x100cm, 2014
"Joyful Tragedy No.10" Fu Wenjun Digital Painting Photography 80x100cm 2014
The title of the work is "Joyful Acting tragedy", which is derived from the performance law of the traditional Chinese drama "Tragedy Joyful Performance". "Sadness" and "misery" are not the theater effects pursued by traditional culture. On the contrary, the "separation effect" is deliberately formed by laughter, and the audience instead "jumps" out of the tragedy of the storyline and the fate of the characters and makes a "wall view". For drama, tragedy is a dangerous move and a high move.
The crisis of traditional culture today is also the same. Where fate goes depends on the way we turn "sadness" into "joy", which really tests us. As today's scholars and artists, it is imperative to be able to do "wall view" and avoid the trap of contemporaryness.