Offered By
采泥藝術
台灣，台北市
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《人的莊園》 Animal Farm (2010-2014)
我們也住在動物園裡，過著被制約的生活。
社會是一個籠子，而我們都笑著看他人關在裡面。
We are all imprisoned in a zoo, living a restricted life.
Society is a cage, and we are staring with a smile at other encaged.
「人的莊園」源自一個長達五年、投入眾多人力與資源的拍攝計畫，也為周慶輝首度嘗試「編導式攝影」的影像創作計劃。藝術家以「動物園」為創作發想和拍攝場域，透過電影佈景的製作規格搭配動物園的真實牢籠，在動物園置入了夢幻化的表演舞台劇場和真實感的家居生活空間，在清晨與黃昏時刻造境演出，以荒謬、錯置的手法，讓活生生的人類搭配標本化的動物，在一種既是家園也似牢籠、從文明內室延伸到野外自然的詭譎情境中，共同演出一齣齣看來視覺華麗卻又啞然無語的默劇，雙向鋪陳了現代文明生活的浮華與困境。「人的莊園」開創一種宏大劇場、社會論述型的「編導式攝影」。影像中的每個角色主要以70年代流行服飾與造型風格打造而成的世俗人物，除了關係到藝術家對過去某個美好年代的特殊懷念，同時，也藉由呈現一個個自然人的面容姿態，一如一個個被抽空靈魂的物，對映出他們置身當代社會文化的無形框架中，因無法擺脫而日漸麻木的人文處境。
Animal Farm,is based on his five-year-long photography project that involved a large team and significant funding. In this project, Chou turns to zoos as his muses and sites of actual photo making, where vivid tableaus are created to suggest the sumptuous yet often baffled life of modern civilization. Theatrical sets were fabricated against the zoo environment, where the actors played their assigned roles as photos were taken at dawn and dusk. By so doing, Chou inserted surreal theatrical scenes and lifelike vernacular spaces into artificial enclosures in which wild animals were brought together and domesticated. Absurdity and displacement were emphasized as the artist situated humans among animals that were reminiscent of specimens. The home now looked like a cage, while the border between manmade interiors and the wilderness became blurred. While creating this so-called “directed photography” that is grand and theatrical in style and serves as a form of social discourse, Chou has also made close-up, sympathetic portraits for individual character on his sets. These secular characters were styled in fashionable clothing and looks from the 70s, revealing the artist’s particular, nostalgic feelings for a certain belle époque in the past. The representation of their clear visages and postures as ordinary people, on the other hand, contrasted the inescapable yet gradually numbing human condition in the contemporary social and cultural environment they lived in.
