“早春二月——从百工民艺到生活日常”
碧山工销社开幕展引言
设计作为一种思考方式和行为手段是否能连接起传统手工艺和乡村生活?以及能否能因地制宜,帮助拓展产业模式,推动当地的经济发展。在这个层面上,一个被我们常常挂在嘴边的时髦字眼变得落地化了,它推动、参与生产,启发思维,尽其可能,做出一些合理、有效的尝试。
以“新百工,新民艺”为理念的碧山工销社,希望连接起民间百工和当代设计,激活原有供销社在当代乡村生活中所担负的各项功能。开幕展围绕对日常生活的关注和解读展开,这里的“日常”不做人群限定,因此,城市和乡村,更像是两个彼此可以联系呼应的命题。
生活日常这个字眼,当作为一个展览的探索性命题切实出现的时候,是很大的挑战,也有很大的创意空间。项目开始的第一步,我们邀请到对乡村建设怀有热情,并具有丰富工业化生产经验的设计师、对传统手工艺怀有热情、并具有个人独到审美理解的手作人,这两部分群体组成小分队分批来到碧山,通过短期对周边手工艺生态的考察寻访,从木、竹编、金工、漆艺、陶艺五种材料工艺入手,尝试与乡村手工匠人进行合作,探索一种新的日常可能性。
展览只是起点。因此,这不单单是寻找、发现和保护的过程,作为一项长期的工作任务,还将涉及当地手工艺生态的恢复和重建,并在当代工业生产的背景下为这个命题注入新的活力。
生活往前,每件事情的发生都将有其意义。追问意义的过程,本身就有意义。
February, Early Spring - From Folk Crafts to Daily Life
An introduction to the Bishan state owned retail opening show.
Does design, as a method of thinking and set of behaviors, have the potential to connect traditional craftsmanship to rural living? Does it have the ability to expand existing production patterns and promote the development of the local economy? At this level, the fashionable term we like to use has become localized. It promotes engagement in the production process, enlightens, and tries as hard as possible to make reasonable and effective attempts.
With the concept of “New Works and New Crafts”, Bishan state owned retail hopes to integrate contemporary design and folk crafts, and thus to revive the original functions of a state owned retail within rural life. The opening show revolves around the examination and interpretation of daily life. While ‘daily life’ here does not refer to a specific group of people. Urban and rural are two propositions that connect and correspond.
When ‘daily life’ was considered as an exploratory subject for an exhibition, it became a great challenge, but it also provides great possibilities for creativity. At the beginning of the project, we invited designers who are passionate about the regeneration of rural areas and experienced in industrial production processes - craftsmen who are passionate about traditional crafts and their own approaches to art - to come to Bishan. They were divided into small groups to come separately, and spent time learning the ecology of the local craftsmanship. They cooperated with local craftsmen in crafts based on five different materials – wood, bamboo weaving, metalwork, lacquer and ceramics, to explore new possibilities every day.
The exhibition is merely a starting point. It’s not just to discover, explore, and protect the craftsmanship. It will be an ongoing mission that contributes to the revivification and rebuilding of the local craft ecology, and to stimulate new possibilities of crafts in industrialized contemporary society.
As life progresses, every event that occurs is endowed with meaning. And the action of inquiring into that meaning, has its own significance.