上海外滩美术馆 Rockbund Art Museum

上海外滩美术馆呈现中国艺术家彭祖强首个亚洲机构个展“一些省略、静默和不透明的声音”。彭祖强（1992年出生于中国长沙市，常驻法国巴黎）主要以影像为创作媒介，他的实践围绕电影与媒介历史，关注历史、身体和语言之间的情动共振。

“一些省略、静默和不透明的声音”尤为回应那些临时组建又突然断裂的媒介历史，展览的核心作品是在一件全新委任的三频影像装置《四散》（2025），灵感来源于上世纪六十至八十年代仅在中国流传的8.75毫米胶片格式。另一件影像装置《青园》（2022）则触及神秘运营的马来亚地下电台及其传闻。彭祖强使用实验电影手法创造抽象的视觉形式，尤其是在暗房中几乎纯手工的物影成像（photogram），进一步重组那些本就晦涩的记忆载体，从而挑战时基媒介的线性叙事，并追问摄影机与当代影像生产的伦理。这种手工电影的图像创作也隐喻着8.75毫米胶片的特性：具有实验精神却也脆弱——在六十年代的冷战愁雾之下国内资源匮乏，仍需为国家导向的流动放映计划创造独一无二的物质媒介。

展览题目“一些省略、静默和不透明的声音”正是回应这样难以抵达的历史。展览由三件影像装置和一件显色印刷作品构成。在《青园》中，艺术家将家乡湖南、一位友人的东南亚装饰风格民宿、一段隐匿的地下电台史和一家国际主义人士短暂下榻的饭店虚构成一段若有若无的历史。马来亚地下电台于1969—1981年间在湖南益阳神秘运营，而几乎同时期，一种特殊规格的8.75毫米胶片也在中国用于电影放映。在新作三频道影像装置《四散》中，艺术家建构了一个以抵抗历史失忆的记忆场域。他将手工印刷的8.75毫米档案胶片与以超8摄影机拍摄的若干素材拼凑出从胶片发明到农村流动放映的零散叙事。媒介学研究将8.75毫米胶片看作是国家主导的生产工具；而在这种具有操控性的视角之外，彭祖强更关注媒介本身的抵抗性修辞，以此反思历史的局限性与档案的不可抵达。8.75毫米胶片本身具有实验性的基因：这个特殊规格的胶片格式在诞生之初便没有与之适配的摄影机，彼时偏远地区的电影放映仅通过拷贝和特别的缩印制作来流通。换句话说：8.75毫米胶无法通过拍摄生产新的影像记忆——被视作是抵抗生产的“无相机”媒体。

而无相机图像的当代意涵是什么？彭祖强思考图像生产与传播所隐藏的权力结构与暴力，转而回到影像的光化学形式。步入展厅的首件作品《似曾相识》（2023—2024）是艺术家第一次完整使用物影成像的影像处理技法：通过抽动一条3米长的金属绳索在16毫米胶片上直接曝光。而这样的物影成像的过程在《四散》中得到了进一步的实验，他将 8.75毫米档案胶片卷直接接触曝光到16毫米与35毫米彩色印片胶片上。通过对光线、色彩与化学层面的控制，最终显影成不断变幻的抽象图像——由此隐喻胶片作为情动媒介所具有的亲密性与挑衅性。当下，关于流动胶片放映的记忆正逐渐淡去；然而，官方记录之外那些隐秘的情感与带有异议的道听途说，却在彭祖强的展览中产生了共鸣。

The Rockbund Art Museum presents Chinese artist Peng Zuqiang’s first institutional solo exhibition in Asia: Short-term Histories. Working primarily with moving image and installation, Peng (b.1992, Changsha, China), based in Paris, experiments with the history of film and media, with an attention to the affective resonance within histories, bodies, and language.

The exhibition responds to the improvised and abrupt fractures characteristic of short-lived and ephemeral media histories, such as the unique 8.75 mm film format that circulated in rural China from the 1960s to 1980s in Peng’s newly commissioned centerpiece Afternoon Hearsay (2025), as well as the underground Malayan radio station featured in another video installation Cyan Garden (2022). Peng further rearranges ambiguous carriers of memory by experimental film techniques that create abstraction, such as the handmade “photogram” process in the darkroom, thus challenging the linear narratives of time-based media while questioning the ethics of camera and contemporary image-making. The handmade cameraless photographic process itself acts as a mirroring gesture, reflecting that the invention of 8.75 mm film was an experiment for the state-led portable film screening project. The fragile nature of the 8.75 mm projector also speaks for the limited material resources in China, enshrouded by the gloom of the Cold War.

The exhibition is composed of three film installations, and one chromogenic print. In The Cyan Garden, the artist weaves a fictional history, drawing from his home province of Hunan, the forgotten history of an underground radio station, a friend’s Southeast Asian-styled Airbnb, and a hotel where rumoured revolutionaries briefly stayed. The clandestine radio station Voice of the Malayan Revolution operated out of Yiyang, in Hunan Province, from 1969 to 1981. Almost concurrently, a unique 8.75 mm film format was widely used for mobile film screenings in rural China. In the newly commissioned three-channel video installation Afternoon Hearsay, the artist presents a “site of memory” for resistance to historical amnesia. He juxtaposed hand printed archival 8.75 mm films with footage shot on Super 8 to assemble a disjointed narrative that extends from the invention of this specific film format to the now-unrecognizable film printing factories, as well as mobile projections in the countryside, border lands and other rural regions. In media studies, 8.75 mm film is remembered as a state-led production tool. Peng focuses instead on the resistant rhetoric of the media itself, thereby reflecting on the limitations of history and the inaccessibility of archives. The film stock is experimental by nature: at its inception, the 8.75 mm standard had no corresponding camera, and its circulation for screenings in remote areas relied on a process of reduction printing from other film format copies. In other words, since 8.75 mm film could not produce new visual memories through filming, it can be seen as a “cameraless” medium resisting production.

But what contemporary meanings do cameraless images possess? Peng Zuqiang reflects on the power structures and violence hidden in the production and diffusion of images and returns to their photochemical form. The first piece the viewer sees upon entering the exhibition is Déjà Vu (2023–2024), the artist’s first complete use of photogram techniques: he directly exposed a 30-meter-long metal wire onto 16 mm film. This process of photogram was further experimented with in Afternoon Hearsay, where he exposed 8.75 mm archival film reels on 16 mm and 35 mm color print stock. With controls in light, color and chemicals to manually bring out a shifting, abstract imagery—this becomes a metaphor for the intimacy and provocation of film itself as an affective medium. Today, memories of mobile film screenings are gradually fading, yet the hidden emotions and dissenting rumors outside of official records find a resonance in Peng’s exhibition.