2022年9月，我23岁生日这天是在德国卡塞尔度过。晚上八点三十分，我在河畔的赛艇主题酒吧喝他们家的house beer，我坐在吧台边缘，背对富尔达河，旁边是一群德国青年在周中聚会，我看向酒保，酒保同情地看着我这个游客。我是第15届卡塞尔文献展的游客，尽管展览空间就在离我十米开外的地方，我逃到了这里避难，从而嗅不到丝毫documenta文献展的味道。
In September 2022, my 23rd birthday was spent in Kassel, Germany. At 8:30 in the evening, I was drinking their house beer in a rowing-themed bar. I was sitting on the bar’s edge with my back facing the Fulda River. Next to me was a group of German youths having a mid-week party. I looked at the bartender. The bartender looked at me, the tourist, sympathetically. I am a visitor to Documenta 15. Although the exhibition space is just ten meters away from me, I escaped here for refuge, so I could not smell the slightest of documenta.
我的朋友这时候给我发消息，说他在香港的留学计划泡汤了，倒霉的他前两年成了一桩人权官司的证人，去香港时被边境警察拦下，说案子还没有完结。从当事人被刑拘、限制所有牵连人员的自由、在国际社会缓慢发酵以来，这丑事已经持续了一年有余。所有的刑惩看起来都不会在他人的庆祝晚宴前结束。而我继续在吧台前喝我的 house beer。这啤酒名字取做“Ahoi Hütt”，因为是和一个当地酒厂合作的，就把船坞和酒厂的名字硬是拼了起来。
My friend sent me a message at that time, saying that his study abroad plans in Hong Kong fell through. Unfortunately, he became a witness in a human rights lawsuit two years ago. When he went to Hong Kong, he was stopped by the border police, saying that the case had not yet been concluded. This scandal has lasted for more than a year since the person involved was detained, the freedom of all those involved was restricted, and it slowly fermented in the international community. All the punishment doesn’t look like it will end before someone else’s celebratory dinner. And I continued drinking my house beer at the bar. The name of this beer is “Ahoi Hütt”, because it is in cooperation with a local brewery, so the names of the dock and the brewery are spelt together.
相似的，如果说一定要用一个词汇来描述documenta 15的话，我会说“断裂”（rupture）。我两天来一直在卡塞尔的街头走，我不会说德语，所以所有的热情好客在我面前打住，也在大部分国际游客面前打住。深夜路边的德国青年用德语喊住我，他蹲坐在那边，而我很没有素养地匆匆走过，他一定在心里狠狠地咒骂了我或许咒骂了中国人。我听不懂这门语言，不然或许会停下来，或许不会，我太饿了，只想在这黑森林北部的城市里讨点东西吃。
Similarly, if I had to use a word to describe documenta 15, I would say “rupture”. I’ve been in Kassel for two days now, and I don’t speak German. That feeling of a home stops in front of me, and also in front of many outsiders. In the middle of the night, a young lad on the side of the road said something to me in German. He was squatting over there, and I hurried past in an uneducated manner. He might have cursed me or cursed the Chinese, I guess. I don’t understand the language, or I might stop, maybe I wouldn’t anyway. I was so hungry, I just wanted to have something to eat in this city lying in the northern Black Forest.
有天中午，又是一个阴森森的雨天，我在亭子里等汉堡的时候，一个德国老太太从雨中走来，将一个赭色的帆布包在我面前打开，说在找她的手机。我于是问她：“需要我给你打一个电话吗？”她说不用，反正马上会有人给她打过来。好吧，那到时候你就知道你手机放哪里了不是吗，我心中很疑惑地想道。
The people here kept reminding me of the tear that I have with this city, and what this city has witnessed. One day at noon, it was another gloomy rainy day. While I was waiting for my burger under an umbrella, an old German lady came in the rain, opened an ocher canvas bag in front of me, and said that she was looking for her mobile phone. So I asked her, “Do you need me to ring your phone by calling it?” She said no, and someone would call her right away anyway. Well, then you will know where your phone is by then, won’t you, I thought doubtfully in my heart.
她于是问我，是为了文献展而来的吗？我答是的。我很惭愧，每五年，这座寂静的小镇就引来一大批来自世界各地的粗鲁游客。她说她一眼就能看出来我刚从documenta的展厅出来，因为我脸上一副受够了的样子。我心想，可实际上我每天无事可做的时候，就板着这样一副面孔，或许只是如此。我笑了，应和说上一届文献展似乎有趣得多——更加有活力，有创造精神……
Then she asked me, did I come for the Documenta? I answered yes. I’m ashamed. Every five years, this sleepy town attracts an influx of rude tourists from all over the world. She said she could tell I had just come out of those exhibitions because of the fed-up look on my face. I thought to myself, but in fact, when I have nothing to do every day, I just have such a face, maybe it’s just that. I laughed, responding that the last Documenta seemed much more interesting – more dynamic, creative…
我没有去过上一届文献展，我的朋友去了，还有一个西班牙作家去了之后写了一本《卡塞尔不欢迎逻辑》（Kassel no invita a la lógica），成为了上一届文献展对我来说最好的两个广告。她竟然回答道“是的，这一届糟透了。”她说她还没来得及看一眼这一个持续一百天的文献展。
I haven’t been to the last documenta, but my friend went, and a Spanish writer wrote Kassel no invita a la lógica, which became the two best advertisements for documenta for me. She actually replied, “Yes, this year is terrible.” She said that she hadn’t had time to take a look at the 100-day documenta exhibition.
她说，“每5年，documenta就像是搬来了一面镜子——让我们本地的居民来看看这个世界是有多糟糕——于是，我们只好屏住呼吸，告诉自己，这一切都会好的，会好的……”我笑了，蹦了一句“I know right”？
She said, “every 5 years, documenta is like putting a mirror in front of we local residents to let us see how bad the world is—so we have to hold our breath and tell ourselves that everything will be fine, it will be Okay…” I laughed and said, “I know right”?
可我一直认为这一切都不会好起来，但人们总是可以在精疲力竭的创作与自我满足之后对于存在于现在的过去说一句：it is fine 或者 it will be alright. 我说，“从世界各地，各个角落来的人都在这里，有太多的零碎想法和冲突……”
But I always think that all this will not be okay, but people can always say a word about the past that exists in the present after exhausting creation and self-satisfaction: it is fine, it will be alright. I said, “From all over the world, people are here, there are too many fragmented ideas and conflicts…”
谈到冲突，她突然蹦出来了documenta今年基于现实考量的“透明性”——“transparency”。在疫情之后、欧洲爆发战事之后、国际上的民族情绪已经变得理所当然之后，政府需要卡塞尔、出资方需要控制预算、策划方有自己的审美能力，意识形态在这里冲突，结果透明性的哲学背书尝试去解释正在发生的事情。
When it comes to conflicts, she suddenly popped up documenta’s “transparency” based on realistic considerations this year – “transparency”. After the epidemic, after the outbreak of war in Europe, and after the international national sentiment has become a matter of course, the government needs Kassel, the funder needs to control the budget, and the curator has their own aesthetic ability. Ideology conflicts here, and the result is transparency. Philosophical endorsements try to explain what’s going on.
可是这种透明性在文献展的几个月里无法欺骗自己。我到卡塞尔的时候许多艺术家已经离开，随处可见一场基于德国意识形态敏感红线——“反犹倾向”和生命政治化、信息化、后殖民化背景下对审查强烈的抵触情绪发生激烈冲突之后的一个口号——“谷仓不是你们的政治游戏”（Lumburg is not your political playgroud）。“谷仓”是这次卡塞尔文献展策展人——来自印尼的ruangrupa小组提出的概念，在印尼的语境下，这是一种放置农产品的建筑，代表了让集体中各个部分能够共存的文化愿景。当ruangrupa小组说出“谷仓不是你们的政治游戏”这话的时候，我想，就奠定了它的对立面的存在。无奈地说，又回到了我们熟悉的，一切都是政治的玩物，集体、共存、互利、艺术、生存。
But this kind of transparency could not deceive itself during the months of Documenta. When I arrived in Kassel, many artists had already left, and everywhere there indicated the tension between a sensitive ideology red line – “anti-Semitism” and the strong resistance to censorship in the context of life politicization, informationization, and post-colonization. A slogan after the conflict exceeds – “Lumburg is not your political playground.” Lumburg is a concept introduced by the curator of documenta in Kassel – the ruangrupa group from Indonesia. In the context of Indonesia, this is a building for placing agricultural products, which represents the cultural vision where various parts of the collective coexist. When the ruangrupa group said that “the barn is not your political game”, I think it also admits the existence of its opposite. Reluctantly speaking, it is returned to what we are familiar with. Everything can be a political plaything: collective, coexistence, mutual benefit, art, and survival.
在这样的现实下，卡塞尔已然不可能达到它所号称的transparency，而是尝试以一种低调的invisibility（不可见性）来诉说艺术家的政治理想与未来框景的溃散——当代艺术对于“溃败”的再创作。“谷仓”主题下可见的作品里尽是无家可归的流离失所，和手握稻穗却无处安放的“割裂”——就如同这所城市与展览的距离感，切开了主办方、艺术家、赞助者和游客，成为了一场彻头彻尾的政治表演。而居民、游客和亚非拉艺术家们称为了浮夸表演的主角。
Under such a reality, it is impossible for Kassel to achieve the so-called transparency, but try to use low-key invisibility to tell the artist’s collapse of political ideal and their frame of the future——the re-creation of contemporary art from “The Rout”. The visible works under the theme of “Lamburg” are full of homeless displacement, and the “separation” of holding rice ears but nowhere to put them – just like the sense of distance between the city and the exhibition, which cut the organizer, artists, patrons and tourists, and became a political show through and through. Residents, tourists and Asian, African and Latin American artists became the protagonists of the flamboyant show.
那德国老太太对我说：“透明性，是你们的哲学，不是吗？”我一时不知道说什么才好。
That old German lady said to me: “Transparency is your philosophy, isn’t it?” I didn’t know what to say for a while.
那么，在这样的溃烂变质之后，所有人回到自己的“家”，聚会结束，最后，quand la fête etait finie，驱使我们参与这场表演的心又何以为“家”？那个老妇人赶路走了，她英语颇为流利，说：“it’s what documenta all about”，然后祝我一切安好，我也说祝她一样。她走后只留下了一股黄色雨衣上的潮湿味道，我的汉堡还没做好，雨下得我还是很冷。
So, after such festering, everyone returns to their “home”, the party is over, and at the end, quand la fête etait finie, what is “home” of the heart that drives us to this show? I doubted. The old lady hurried away, she was quite fluent in English, said: “it’s what documenta all about”, and then wished me all the best, and I said the same to her. She’s gone and all that’s left is the damp smell of a yellow raincoat, and my burger wasn’t ready yet, and I still felt cold under the rain.
而我和所有游客一样只是过客，卡塞尔就要恢复平静，还原成没有人向你打招呼的样子，推特上的“谷仓不是你们的政治游戏”不再更新，被广告赞助商打上了广告。我临走的前一天晚上去电影院看了备受争议的《东京卷轴》（Tokyo Reel）。我不喜欢，但是这些政治宣传和那个时代的中东图景或许真的发生过，难道我们真的又要焚烧关于战争和民众记忆的一切，去假装战争终结、人心向善了吗。我不理解，或许因为这样的疑惑，我意识到自己从来没有机会和胆量融入德国社会，或者任何一个。
I’m a passer-by like all tourists. Kassel will restore calm, return to the way no one greets you, the “Lumburg is not your political game” on Twitter no longer kept updated, and it was marked by advertising sponsors. The night before I left, I went to the cinema to see the controversial Tokyo Reel. I don’t like them, but this political propaganda and the Middle East images of that time may have really happened. Are we really going to burn everything about the war and the memory of the people again to pretend that the war was over and people were innocent? I didn’t understand, and perhaps because of this confusion, I realized that I never had the chance and the guts to integrate into German society, or any one.