张思扬
My mother is a broadcaster, but I have never heard her voice. Last year, during the Chinese New Year—a time of immense sensitivity for Chinese families—my grandfather gave me a cassette recording of her voice.
I transformed the exhibition space into an "abstract machine." This machine is both a receiver, carrying waves that may forever remain unfamiliar yet still reverberate, and a recorder, capturing my imagination, reconstruction, and response to this delayed voice. It is not made of cold metal, but instead a dynamic network woven together by devices, performances, and fragmented narratives. Four performers move through it, their voices not attempting to mimic my mother’s original voice (which is unknowable to me), but deconstructing and re-presenting the identity of the “broadcaster.” Their chants and whispers, somewhere between surreal texts, tongue twisters, and personalized fragmented stories, echo through the space like the ghost of vocal training, emitting familiar yet unfamiliar frequencies. One silent performer constantly condenses their breath on glass, a recall of something once existing, something that once was for my mother.
Small installations reflect the mechanical principles of radio and recording devices: a ticking dismantled metronome mechanism, a lead crystal die made from early radio wave physical media, and a handcrafted aluminum plate etched with audio waveforms. They point to the materiality of sound and its existence in time. In the center of the room, a weathered fabric hangs, engraved with the words "Why do we ultimately decay?"—a tribute to Theo Angelopoulos' film Eternity and a Day. This evokes a reversal of memory: when the protagonist’s mother calls for her child, I grapple with the opposing absence.
我的母亲是一位广播员，但我从未听过她的声音。在去年的春节，一个对中国家庭来说无比敏感的时间点，我的祖父将一份她的磁带录音给了我。
我将展览空间转化为一台 “抽象机器”。这台机器既是接收器，承载着可能永远陌生，但仍在回荡的声波；也是记录器，记录着我对这份迟到之声的想象、重构与回应。它并非由冰冷的金属构成，而是由设备、表演和碎片化叙述编织而成的动态网络。四位表演者在其中穿梭，他们的声音并非试图模仿母亲的原声（那对我而言是不可知的），而是对“广播员”这一身份的解构与再现，他们的吟唱、低语，介于超现实文本、绕口令与个人化的碎片故事之间，如同 声乐训练的幽灵，在空间中回荡着既熟悉又陌生的频率。 其中一位沉默的表演者，不断地将吐息凝结于玻璃之上，这对母亲来说也是一种曾经存在之物的召回。
小型装置呼应了无线电和录音设备的机械原理：一个不断滴答作响的拆卸下来的节拍器机芯，一个由早期无线电波物理介质做成的铅晶体骰子，以及一张刻有音频波形的手工铝板。它们指向了声音的物质性及其在时间中的存在方式。在房间的中心，悬挂着一块风化的布料，上面刻着“我们为何最终会衰败？”——这是对西奥·安哲罗普洛斯的电影《永恒和一日》的致敬。这唤起了一种记忆的反转：当主角的母亲呼唤她的孩子时，我与相反的缺席作斗争。