史蒂夫麦奎因-《猎物》

Steve McQueen

Prey

1999

16mm film transferred to DVD, 6 minutes 19 seconds

Dimensions variable

史蒂夫.麦奎因

猎物，1999

16mm胶片转成DVD格式播放，6分19秒

尺寸变量

史蒂夫•麦奎因（Steve McQueen）的电影《猎物》是一个富有节奏、充满深刻诗意的作品，作品虽然艰涩难懂，但却引人注目。不过，逼真的躲避和逃离表演，是电影至关重要的设计。正如作品标题表明的那样，作品玩弄了捕获和逃脱的概念。电影开始，是带有两个大卷盘的盘式磁带录音机的特写镜头，卷盘一红一绿，摆放在夏日的草地上。踢踏舞的录音正从磁带上播出，但几乎爆裂出来的踢踢踏踏的噪音，可能让你联想到从怪异的莫尔斯电码到蝙蝠的声纳反射或者可能是无节奏敲鼓的任何东西。在前一半大约6分钟的电影中，我们近距离地观看到录音机的磁带不停地旋转——一种平滑运动，连同录音机里的踢踏声一起, 既是声音的一种清晰呈现，又是一种不太协调的对比。突然，磁带录音机似乎不受约束地开始移动，逐渐从观众眼前后退。随着镜头的推移，录音机跌跌撞撞地沿着不平坦的草地跑了几秒钟，然后开始起飞，在即将飞起之时，我们才意识到它是系在一个小的气象气球上。录音机带着噪音，在明亮的白色天空中越飞越远，然后慢慢地消失——从听觉上和视觉上——延续到电影的后一半。最后，就在磁带录音机几乎消失的当儿，它开始打开降落伞返回地面，摄像机的角度又一次下降到与草地同一水平。随着电影重新开始循环也再一次开始。

包括艺术家在1999年的特纳奖展览在内，这部电影在一定程度上是对丰富原色的尝试性介入：红色来自一盘磁带，绿色则来自另一盘磁带、周围的草地以及放在附近的带蓝色的绿塑料袋。磁带在电影播放中途逃离观众也含有逃避这些丰富色彩的意义；物体逃避到带有淡蓝色的白色天空中，有人可能认为，这是逃进了艺术的抽象概念之中。

电影放映使用宽银幕，高度在观众之上，因此，随着磁带升上天空，观众必须仰头凝视。正如艺术家所言，“我想让人们置身于这样一种场景:他们在观看影片时对于自己非常敏感。”1在这种情况下，这部电影的身体性连同由声音创造出来的近乎雕刻一般的距离特征——近和远——在观众中间加剧了一种类似于欲望的感觉：我们想让物体回到身边。

这种欲望构成了麦奎因一系列灵活决定的一部分，他把观众放在不成功的猎人的位置。同时，这部电影与野生动物纪录片具有某些相似之处——摇摆不定的摄像机蹲放在草地上，观察着它陌生的猎物—— 踢踏舞者的声音似乎暗示着有人企图“诱捕”录音带中的舞者。磁带录音机本身就是中央情报局和联邦调查局使用的符号：是生硬的权力机器（人们可以把电影摄像机归入其中的一个）的另一个指标，他们试图确定像跳舞这样忽发奇想的快乐的活动的本质——弗莱德•阿斯泰尔（Fred Astaire）和金格尔•罗杰斯（Ginger Rogers）那敏捷的会飞的双脚也许从来不会沾地。抽象的声音可能已经被录音机所捕获，但随着脚碰地板的声音飞逝在天空中，这仿佛是舞者的脚在嘲笑这种世俗的想把他们捆住的企图。

劳拉•麦克利恩•法里斯

1.‘让我们变得更加更加关心身体’（Let’s get physical），麦奎因接受艺术月刊帕塔利西亚•比克斯（Patricia Bickers）的采访（1996年12月-1997年1月）

Steve McQueen

Steve McQueen’s film Prey is a rhythmic, deeply poetic work, elusive, yet compelling to watch. The very act of eluding and evading, however, is a device central to the film, playing, as the title indicates, with concepts of capture and escape. The film begins with a close-up of a reel-to-reel tape recorder with two large spools, one red and one green, lying in long summery grass. A sound recording of tap-dancing is playing from the reels, but the clicking, almost popping, noise could be anything from an unearthly Morse code to the sonar echo of a bat or perhaps an arrhythmic drumbeat. For roughly the first half of this six-minute film, we closely watch the tape recorder’s reels spin around – a smooth motion, which, together with the tippity-tap recording, is both a visualisation of the sound and an incongruous contrast. Suddenly, the tape recorder appears to move, independently, retreating from the viewer. As the camera follows, the recorder bumbles along the uneven grass for a few seconds before taking off, at which point we realise that it is attached to a small weather balloon. The recorder, with the noise that it carries, retreats off into the bright white sky, slowly disappearing – audibly and visibly – for the last half of the film. At the end, when it has all but disappeared, the tape recorder begins to parachute back to earth, and the camera’s angle drops to grass-level once more. The cycle begins again as the film restarts.

Included in the artist’s 1999 Turner Prize exhibition, to some extent the film is a foray into rich primary colour: red from one tape reel, green from the other reel, the surrounding grass and a bluish-green plastic bag that lies nearby. The flight from the viewer halfway through the film also involves a flight from these rich colours; the object flies away into a white sky tinged with baby blue, and, one might argue, into an almost painterly abstraction.

The film is projected large, and at some height above the viewer, so that one must gaze upwards as the tape recorder rises into the sky. As the artist has said, ‘I want to put people into a situation where they’re sensitive to themselves watching the piece.’ In this case, the physicality of the film, together with the almost sculptural qualities of distance – near and far – created by the sound, exacerbates a sense in the viewer that is almost akin to a desire: we want the object to return to us.

This desire forms part of a series of subtle decisions by McQueen that put the viewer in the position of unsuccessful hunter. Whilst the film bears some similarity to wildlife documentaries – the unsteady camera crouched in the grass, observing its strange quarry – the sound of the tap dancer seems to suggest that an attempt has been made to ‘trap’ the dancer within the recording. The tape recorder itself is of a type used by the CIA and FBI: a further indicator of blunt machines of authority (and one can include the film camera as one of these) attempting to pin down the essence of a flighty, joyous activity like dance – the swift, flying feet of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers perhaps, which never touch the ground. The abstract sound might have been captured by the recorder, but as the sound of foot hitting floor flies away into the sky, it is almost as though the dancers’ feet mock this earthly attempt to strap them down.

Laura McLean-Ferris