Rockbund Art Museum 上海外滩美术馆

Paperback

平装书籍

"An Opera for Animals" takes the history of different versions of opera as a departure point to explore both contemporary and traditional uses of performance, fantasy, and group spectacles in relationship to the environments that they inhabit. Intimately connected to the making of myths, the fabrication of events, orchestration, and invention of new technologies, opera emerged seeking to synthesize different aesthetic forms into a unified experience audiences could immerse themselves within. Like the complex history of the museum or exhibition, it has gradually developed into another collective kind of ritual. At the height of its development in the West, opera increasingly became conjoined to the vision and forceful influence of colonization, and we re-contemplate the medium as a compromised interface that precipitated struggles with indigenous worlds and other knowledge systems.

“百物曲”以“歌剧”的不同形式与发展兴衰作为楔子，展开探讨表演和想象在不同时期及语境中的意义。作为一种艺术形式，歌剧尝试融合多种美学，不论神话的创造，事件的撰写，或乐曲的编排，新技术的发明，皆与其密不可分。如同博物馆和展览的发展经历了漫长而错综的历史，歌剧亦逐步发展成为另一种集体仪式。其通过控制每个细节和桥段来主导观众体验的形式，正如我们当代制度化社会的隐喻。展览以剧场表演为入口重新审视人类的行为，透过观察世界舞台上不同的文化和知识系统，讨论殖民时代早已消亡的当下，一幕幕保护文化异质性的抗争如何仍在上演。