美力拜拜：游孟書作品集

序（部分）：
游孟書， 美力拜拜
唐雪宜 博士

我第一次遇見游孟書是在2007年，她當時是在雪梨藝術學院攻讀博士學位，而我在書寫關於跨國際的中國藝術，當時游孟書正在我居住城市進行創作，用她敏銳批判性的視角關注東方與西方的政治關係。也因為我們的興趣交集在全球化的影響對於藝術、身份、以及各種可能性的未來視角，我們的友誼也因此展開。

現在書寫這篇文章已經是2020年六月，我不確定現在的情勢是否是我跟孟書或是其他任何相關人士，在這些年裡所預期的。美國在川普四年執政之下，失去了許多長年把持的文化勢力，所代表的民主價值也黯淡無光。與此同時， 習近平在位六年，中國大陸降低對海外市場的依賴，形成自我的消費國度，強化了民族偉大復興的思維，鞏固海外政治權利 。

肺炎疫情迫使各國關閉邊境，禁止旅行，全球貿易受阻，為了抵制中國的衝擊， 排華反中的情緒在美國以及我的國家澳大利亞節節高漲，最近中國共產黨更指示中國學生不要到澳大利亞留學。

當年游孟書跟我在雪梨談論好似前衛的議題，什麼澳大利亞的亞洲情節、人口流動、概念與資本、還有美國的問題等等，但現今的情勢已今非昔比。當下因為各國情勢的重整，這些對於彼此國家文化傳統相關連的論述，儼然已成過往雲煙。
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2015年所發表的『美力拜拜』似乎在預先宣告1990～2000初期文化與政治邏輯的解體。十多年在國外的旅行、留學、創作經驗，糾纏著她自己的美國夢，游孟書從中國大陸回到了台灣，用這個展覽來宣示終結批判美國權力與其對亞洲美學的影響。

飽和的色彩挹注，剪輯自傑夫昆斯的作品片刻，『美力拜拜』雕塑自身為慾望的物件。這裏有米奇，那裡有超人。這些充滿很多共同的童年幻想物件，還有其他那些召喚超世界的想像空間。
(待續)
You Meng-shu, Mei Li Bai Bai
Dr. Christen Cornell
I first met You Meng-shu in 2006, while she was studying for her Doctorate at Sydney College of the Arts I was writing about transnational Chinese art and You Meng-shu was making it – in my home city, and with a keen critical eye on the politics of East and West. Our friendship was almost inevitable, driven by a mutual curiosity about the effects of globalisation on art, identity, and visions of possible futures.
Writing this now in June 2020, I’m not sure that this was a future that either one of us, or anyone for that matter, anticipated in those years. The USA has lost much of the cultural power it held for so long, no longer seductive or representative of democracy after four years of Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Mainland China has built its own consumer class (making it less reliant on overseas markets), and has consolidated a formidable sense of national pride and global political entitlement under six years of Xi Jinping.
Coronavirus has closed national borders, prohibiting travel and much global trade, and anti-Chinese sentiment in the USA and my home country of Australia have led to defensive attacks from China – the most recent being a directive from the Chinese Communist Party that Chinese students do not undertake overseas study in Australia.
The very conditions that brought You Meng-shu and me together in Sydney are no longer in place, and the conversations that seemed so cutting edge at the time – the positioning of Australia within Asia, the increasingly mobility of people, ideas and capital; and the problematic allure of America – all seem so symptomatic of a previous era. National borders have been reinstated. Curiosity in one another’s cultural traditions seems far from the general rhetoric of the times.
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Exhibited in 2015, Mei Li Bai Bai seems to have anticipated something of this disintegration of the cultural and political logics that defined the 1990s and early 2000s. After more than a decade of travel, study, art production, and a wrestling with her own fascination with America, You Meng-shu returned to Taiwan via Mainland China, and used this exhibition to mark the end of her long-term relationship with critiques of American power and their influence on Asian aesthetics.
Rendered in lurid, Jeff Koons inspired colours, the sculptures of Mei Li Bai Bai suggest themselves as objects of desire. Here a Mickey Mouse, there a Superman. These are objects of fantasy from so many childhoods, and those that ignite an imaginary of better and more exciting worlds.
Continued…