Digital Montage: On Collage and the Legacy of Modernism数字蒙太奇：论拼贴艺术和现代主义传统

玛丽·沙泰尔/文　郑秀君/译

Copy-Paste. Today we take for granted this functionality on our laptops as if it had always been there. But the fragmentation， dislocation and recombination of visual and textual content only have a short history that finds all its meaning in art. Flourishing in the early 20th century through the movements of Cubism， Dada and Surrealism， collage and montage still have a visible impact on digital art. Beyond its actual process， the practice brought distinct aesthetics and new ways to represent society and technology.

如今，我们对笔记本电脑的复制粘贴功能早已习以为常，仿佛它一直都在。其实，视觉和文本内容的剪切、移置和重组出现的时间并不长，而且只在艺术领域受到关注。20世纪初，随着立体主义、达达主义和超现实主义运动兴起，拼贴艺术和蒙太奇迅速发展，至今对数字艺术仍然有显著影响。除了实际操作，拼贴艺术还带来独特美学以及反映社会和技术的全新方式。

Collage： Kicking off the information age

拼贴：开启信息时代

Collage is the action of pasting （in French）; montage is the action of assembling. Depending on your affinities， the artistic practice might bring about the vision of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso’s Papiers collés， the geometric compositions of Jean Arp， the photomontages of Hannah Höch， Raoul Haussman and John Heartfield， the Merz assemblages of Kurt Schwitters or the surreal narratives of Max Ernst. All these productions vary greatly. Yet they mark a shift away from the traditional art forms of painting and sculpture into a new media whose style and content both reflect changes in society.

collage一词源于法语，指粘贴的动作，montage则指组装的动作。每个人的喜好不同，拼贴艺术引发的联想也不同，如乔治·布拉克和巴勃罗·毕加索的纸贴法，让·阿尔普的几何构图，汉娜·霍赫、拉乌尔·豪斯曼和约翰·哈特费尔德的照片蒙太奇，库尔特·施维特斯的“梅尔兹”集合艺术，或马克斯·恩斯特的超现实主义叙事。这些创作迥然不同。不过，它们代表着艺术从传统的绘画、雕塑转向一种新媒介，这种媒介的风格和内容都反应了社会变迁。

The end of the 19th century set pace for an industrialised culture. Train and mail， cinema and radio， entertainment and consumption became reachable at an increasing rate. Images turned widely available with entry to museums and movie theatres， but even more so with the beginning of shutter photography. The commercialisation of portable cameras and roll films in the late 1880s made the recording of photographs accessible to the masses. Likewise， the arrival of autotypy allowed for the mechanical reproduction of images. Pictures and illustrated prints went mainstream for the first time， with an unprecedented boom of the press media in the 1920s.

19世紀末，文化开始受工业化影响。火车和邮政、电影和广播、娱乐和消费加速大众化。人们进入博物馆和电影院，得以广泛接触到图像，照相技术的兴起更是提升了图像的可及性。19世纪80年代后期，便携相机和胶卷逐渐商业化，影像拍摄走进千家万户。同理，复写的发明也为图像的机械复制创造了条件。20世纪20年代，新闻媒体业空前繁荣，图片和插图印刷品首次成为主流。

Accelerated modern perceptions required art forms to reflect hectic lifestyles， and collage brought this dynamism. Artists sourced content either in photographs， newspapers， labels， advertisements， theatre tickets or other urban substance. When combining fragmentary images from different spatiotemporal1 situations， artists documented or altered an overarching2 vision of modern times.

现代感知体验加速，艺术形式需要反映忙碌的生活方式，拼贴就此大放异彩。艺术家们取材于照片、报纸、标签、广告、电影票等城市物料，在组合来自不同时空的碎片化图像时，对包罗万象的现代图景或如实描摹、或加以改变。

Turning to digital tools

转向数字工具

The appearance of media for digital image processing and recording， as well as the use of computer software to edit verbal and visual content， changed the scope of collage dramatically. One process that encapsulates3 the move from mechanical to digital reproduction is scanning—scanners provided with the possibility to translate analogue4 information into digital data. Images could be transferred instantaneously without losing the sharpness of the originals; in other words， more copies， better， faster.

處理和记录数字图像的媒体的出现，言语和视觉内容编辑软件的应用，都大大扩展了拼贴的范畴。扫描仪能将模拟信息转换成数字信号，扫描这种操作便是从机械复制向数字复制转变的缩影。图像实现即时传输，且清晰度丝毫不减。也就是说，可以复制得更多、更好、更快。

Robert Rauschenberg， who knowingly used collage as a technique to reflect on American visual culture， consumerism and the mass media， pioneered the use of scanners in his later works of the 2000s. The artist assembled photographs which he then transferred individually on paper before photographing and scanning the resulting copy.

罗伯特·劳申伯格有意用拼贴工艺反映美国视觉文化、消费主义和大众传媒，于是在2000年代后期的作品中开创性地使用扫描仪。他将各种照片组合在一起，然后分别转移到纸上，再拍照扫描成品。

Many contemporary artists such as Ria Patricia Röder follow this tradition in mixing analogue and digital through the use of scans. Her scanograms are digitally created with the scanner without any further manipulation after the exposure. As such， the scanner not only helps with creating a final， digital rendition but acts as a tool to manipulate 2D and 3D objects to provide effects of focus and blur， and intriguing perceptions of dimensionality.

许多当代艺术家遵循这一传统，用扫描仪混合模拟信号和数字信号，例如里娅·帕特里夏·勒德尔。她的扫描作品是数字化创作，用扫描仪曝光后没有再进行任何加工。由此看来，扫描仪不仅促成最终的数字化视觉再现，而且是一个对2D和3D素材操纵自如的工具，能制造出聚焦或模糊的效果和新奇有趣的维度感知体验。

Internet： A new source of graphic traffic

互联网：图像信息流的新来源

Along with digital technologies， the internet revolutionised our approach to images， written material， and by extent， collage. Suddenly， press institutions and companies were not the only one to spread content （at a cost）. All people could create， distribute， and access information for free as browsers advanced the democratisation of the web. With internet channelling vernacular5 knowledge， people could relate to， empathise with， and appropriate others’ content. The amount of data available gave artists a new breath in collecting and recalibrating existing material. An excellent example is Lorna Mills， who creates GIFs from online videos which she fragments and displaces out of their first interface. Her use of re-contextualisation offers a gripping portrait of online communities which parallels social depictions found in Modern collages.

除了数字技术，互联网也变革了我们处理图像、书面材料的方式，在一定程度上也改变了拼贴艺术。一夜之间，出版机构和出版公司不再垄断（付费）内容的传播。浏览器推动网络大众化，人人都能免费创作、发布、获取信息。互联网成为各地风土人情的传播平台，人们得以理解、共情、借用他人发布的内容。对于艺术家而言，互联网上可获取的数据量使他们在收集和校准现有素材上有了令人耳目一新的选择。洛娜·米尔斯就是一个很好的例子。她从网络视频的原始界面截出片段，制成GIF动图。她用重新语境化呈现出一幅引人入胜的网络社群图景，可与现代拼贴艺术中的社会描写相媲美。

While the illustrated press offered a configuration6 that assigned meanings to images through texts， captions and branding， on the web， purpose and context are up to personal interpretation and information is fluid， participatory and interactive rather than definite and site-specific. The notion of background on the web is therefore versatile， and the material that artists reframe often comes as already manipulated， de-contextualised or repurposed.

帶插图的报刊通过文本、图片说明和标记将意义赋予图像，而在互联网上，意图和情境取决于个人解读，且信息是流动的、参与式的、交互的，而非凝滞、场域特定的。因此，在互联网上，事件背景具有多种解读的可能，艺术家用来重构的材料往往经过加工、去语境或更改用途。

As digital artists alternatively fuel their montages with personal photographs or pictures from the internet， the source of information becomes irrele-vant. In Alexandra Gorczynski’s compositions， for instance， both online and offline media come at play， drawing an intentional ambiguity on reality versus virtuality.

数字艺术家在他们的蒙太奇作品中交替使用个人拍摄的照片和网络上的图片，信息的来源因而变得无关紧要。例如，亚历山德拉·戈尔琴斯基的作品既取材于网络媒介，也取材于线下媒介，刻意绘制出亦虚亦实的效果。

Continuing or disrupting the aesthetics of Modernist collages？

现代主义拼贴美学：传承还是瓦解？

In Modern times， photography had a documentary and irreversible nature and collage allowed for the connection of disparate7 events that assumably took place. But as digital photography came along， viewers started to wonder about the actual happening of action in space and time. To address this new photographic paradigm， digital artists either erase the boundaries and edges in their montages or exacerbate8 the fragmentary nature of the content they put together.

现代摄影具有纪实和不可逆的特性，而拼贴却能将多半已经发生但互不相干的事件联系起来。然而，数码摄影的出现使观看者开始在意行动在时空中的实际发生过程。面对这种摄影新范式，数字艺术家有两种解决方法：要么消除蒙太奇中的边界和边沿，要么加重所创建内容的碎片感。

In the first scenario， post-photographic9 montages provide with visions of alternative realities playing on people’s awareness that the image has been altered. For Felicity Hammond， the digital collage composes a simulated form of existence that shows the precariousness10 of our post-industrial economy. Growth juxtaposes decay. Hoardings and lustrous large-format advertisements confront abandoned sites falling into landfills of detritus11. While the composition departs from the scattered aesthetic of 20th-century collages， the content shares Modernists’ aim to describe society overall， as well as attention to advertising and consumer culture.

第一种情况下，后摄影蒙太奇使人们看到另类现实，让人们产生错觉，以为图像被改变了。对于费利西蒂·哈蒙德而言，数字拼贴组合成一种模拟存在形式，展现后工业经济的动荡：一边是欣欣向荣，另一边是衰败凋零；熠熠生辉的巨幅广告牌正对着逐渐沦为垃圾填埋场的废弃场地。这种拼贴在构图上背离了20世纪拼贴艺术的零散美学，但内容上和现代主义一样，都是为了描述社会全景，都关注广告和消费文化。

Meanwhile， other digital artists overtly show the fragments composing their images. Akin to Modernist aesthetics， Crosslucid12 assembles pieces from magazines， science and travel journals but also books， vintage catalogues and glossy periodicals. The art collective sees collage as “a medium in [its] practice [that] comes back to the idea of recomposing and fusing realities， re-assembling existing particles， a way of prototyping a speculative world”. Comparably， Carolyn Janssen explains， “Collage allows me to incorporate all forms of my practice—by photographing sculptures， tiny sets， costumes and drawings I’ve made IRL13. The technique allows the digital canvas to act as an almost hyperlink to my physical world—with any cement texture， food leftover or doodle up for grabs14.” In turn， the artist repurposes these scattered photographic elements as miniature objects which she combines in a Photoshop-y manner to construct meticulous and uncanny sceneries mark by mark.

另一种情况是突显组合成图像的碎片。艺术团队Crosslucid从杂志、科学期刊、旅游日志、图书、老式目录和用亮光纸印刷的期刊中选材，集合各种碎片，颇有现代主义美学的意味。该艺术团队认为拼贴是“一种媒介，在实践中回归重构和糅合现实、重组现有部件的理念，也是建立一个臆测世界原型的方式”。卡罗琳·詹森提出了类似的观点：“拼贴使我能通过拍摄我在现实生活中创作的雕塑、小型布景、服装和绘画融合我所有的创作形式。有了这项技术，数字画布好比超链接，触发这个链接可以跳转到我的现实世界，因为无论是水泥纹理、残羹剩饭，还是随手乱画的作品，都可以成为素材。”艺术家继而可以改变这些零散的摄影元素的用途，将其作为微型物件，像操作PS图像处理软件那样，一步一步，用它们组合出细腻、怪诞的画面。

While in modern times， the city presented a new space for dreaming with the fantasy of a hectic urban lifestyle， professional possibilities， leisure activities， and social change， now artists’ imagination gives in to other-worldly places that merge real and virtual elements in an ethereal whole. This move away from grounded social possibilities into abstract social aspirations or predictions reveal hope for other realities or at least a wish to reconcile with beauty as we realise the crude being of our present and future existence.

现代城市提供了新的想象空间，引发人们对快节奏都市生活方式、职业可能性、娱乐消遣和社会变革的幻想。不过，当今艺术家的想象力超然于世俗生活之外，趋向能将现实与虚拟元素融合成一个超凡整体的地方。从实际的社会可能性，转向抽象的社会追求或预见，透露的就算不是对其他现实可能的向往，至少也是我们与美和解的愿望，因为我们已感受到当下的存在和未来的存在中的混沌。

（译者为“《英语世界》杯”翻译大赛获奖者，单位：中山大学）

1 spatiotemporal时空的。  2 overarching 首要的；概莫能外的。

3 encapsulate简述；概括。  4 analogue模拟的。

5 vernacular（艺术的）民间风格。  6 configuration 语言学中常用的术语，指语言中词汇或语法成分的排列方式和组合规则。

7 disparate迥然不同的；无法比较的；不相干的。  8 exacerbate使加重。 9 post-photographic后摄影的（指使用数字技术的摄影，区别于传统银盐的前摄影）。

10 precariousness不稳定、不确定的状态。  11 detritus（尤指某项活动后留下的）废弃物，垃圾。  12 系由西尔瓦娜·齐布拉（Sylwana Zybura）和托马斯·C.托特（Tomas C. Toth）于2018年在上海共同创立的艺术团体。  13 IRL = in real life 在現实生活中（多用于电子邮件、社交媒体等）。

14 up for grabs提供的；可供争夺的。