「破身影」除了指涉台灣1990年代地下文化關鍵字的「破」（破裂、破爛），也是對「Brocken Spectre」（布羅肯鬼影）的訛譯與誤讀，該詞原指登山者在頂峰時背對陽光，身體在前方雲霧中投射出的巨大陰影，舊時常被誤認為幽靈；以「破身影」為名，展覽並不著力於再現歷史，更像是試圖捕捉文化史的鬼影。
作品是破敗身體的歷史迴光，也是對於晚近文化檔案的改編、致敬與再想像。藝術家用創作語彙再現90年代歷史文本，用今日的作品向那個藝術創作猛烈發展的世代致敬。
藝術家蘇匯宇作品《屁眼．淫書．速可達》，作品充滿挑釁意味的名字來自90年代活躍的小劇場劇團「台灣渥克」。「台灣渥克」在地下文化快速發展且相互激盪的90年代，推出充滿次文化符號的劇場創作，迸發銳利的創作能量。《屁眼．淫書．速可達》的作品名，來自渥克早年的三齣劇作《速克達瑪麗》（1993）、《屁眼來的人》（1996）與《四大淫書》（2000）；藝術家從中擷取角色元素、交織多條敘事線，重現當年挑戰規範底線的渥克舞台。
1995年，藝術家吳中煒以「台北空中破裂節」，執行了一次近乎瘋狂的計畫：在台北縣重新橋上，將一個全長三十公尺的巨大人型氣球綁上桌椅、電視與充氣娃娃等各式雜物，懸吊至空中再將之一次砸毀，並以此名為「空中破裂」。這樣失序而幾近失控的創作計畫最終以失敗作收。藝術家許哲瑜作品《重新破裂》將發生在重新橋上的「台北空中破裂節」與同年發生在重新橋下的「全民計程車暴動事件」串聯起歷史事件，並用個人獨特的影像敘事風格，說出一段以創作為名的事件狂想。
藝術家余政達的作品《倘若（島嶼的）身體是一個優秀的（邊緣）粽子》靈感來自於1995年一篇刊載於文化評論雜誌《島嶼邊緣》中的文章 〈粽浪彈：身體像一個優秀的粽子〉，該文從對端午節與粽子的各種綺想與文化分析展開，探討情慾流竄的身體，及背後的政治性。藝術家從中擷取了「粽子般的身體」近乎S/M施虐與被虐狂的意象，以雙頻道錄像的形式，拍攝BDSM（虐戀／綁縛／調教）表演藝術家珂琳所撰寫、演出的類小說劇場《奴隸拍賣會》。
破身影 Broken Spectre
日期 Date | 2017.7.1. – 9.17.
地點 Venue | 台北市立美術館(E展間) Taipei Fine Arts Museum(gallery E)
策展人 Curator | 游崴 Yu Wei
The three commissioned video installations by Hsu Che-Yu, Su Hui-Yu and Yu Cheng-Ta in this exhibition respectively echo three archives of Taiwan’s cultural history in the 1990s, including the Taipei Breaking Sky Festival (1995), the plays by the Taiwan Walker Theatre in its early days, and an article featuring a discussion on the queer body in Isle-Margin, a magazine of cultural criticism. This exhibition gazes again at the physical function-based cultural practices shaped by wrecked body, sensual pleasure and unmaterialised utopia during that period of time.
The historical texts underpinning the three works were somewhat unorganized at first glimpse, yet they coincidentally embodied a kind of playful, interfering, hybridised and vernacular cultural practices that contrast starkly with the eloquent, systemised discourses of the mainstream culture. In the exuberant underground scene after the lifting of martial law (1987) and the Wild Lily Student Movement (1990), the broken corporeality metamorphosed into various little narratives. They have crept up on the liberation of Politics as its shadow, and have been transformed into a counter-culture strategy, which also inspired the imagination about periphery and rebellion throughout the 1990s.
Broken Spectre, the title of this exhibition, not only refers to the keyword pò (broken / to break) of Taiwan’s underground culture in the 1990s, but also insinuates the term “Brocken Spectre,” a phenomenon which occurs when the sun shines from behind the climbers who are looking down from the peak into the mist. The sunlight projects their shadows that are enlarged through the mist, which had been mistaken for spectres. This exhibition managed to turn this huge, ghost-like silhouette erecting in front of us into a historical metaphor—it is a projection of the human body like yours and mine on the one hand, and resembles a ghost summoned out of the physical body by necromancy on the other.
This exhibition is dedicated not so much to representing historical facts as to capturing the spectre of cultural history. In addition, the three commissioned works are not simply the terminal lucidity of the broken corporeality, but also the tribute to as well as the adaptation and re-imagination of Taiwan’s modern cultural archives.
