Lecture performance showcases the power of language

演讲表演展示了语言的力量

Listeners are forced to ask what the artist is doing—and what they are doing themselves

听众被迫问艺术家在做什么-以及他们自己在做什么

Print edition | Books and arts

Feb 21st 2019| BERLIN

A bearded Swede in a three-piece suit stands at a lectern. Spotlit, Erik Bünger tells his listeners about an exchange between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell in 1911. According to Wittgenstein, Russell could not say with certainty that there was no rhinoceros in his study. Mr Bünger (pictured) says he is not interested in who was right, but in why Wittgenstein chose a rhinoceros. “There was certainly an elephant in the room,” he concludes. “And that elephant was a rhinoceros.”

bearded 蓄着胡须的

three-piece suit 三件套西装

lectern 讲台

一个蓄着胡须、身穿三件套西装的瑞典人站在讲台上。

spotlit 聚光灯下

Ludwig Wittgenstein 一位奥地利哲学家

Bertrand Russell 一位英国哲学家

say with certainty 言之凿凿

rhinoceros 犀牛

Laughter ripples through the audience at Video Art at Midnight (VAM), a monthly event at Berlin’s beautiful Babylon cinema. A series of video artists, including luminaries such as Wolfgang Tillmans, have shown work at VAM in the decade since its inception. Mr Bünger instead offers a lecture performance. In the 40 minutes of “The Elephant Who Was A Rhinoceros”, he leads the auditorium through a series of connections. The spectral rhinoceros turns into a metaphorical elephant, which becomes a white bear, which (Mr Bünger says) will flash in listeners’ minds when they are told not to think about it. A cultural history of language takes in Adam’s naming of the animals in the Garden of Eden, cave paintings and the invention of the alphabet. Invert the letter A, Mr Bünger says, and you see the devil and his horns.

laughter ripples through the audience 笑声在观众席中荡漾

ripples 涟漪，波纹

luminaries 发光体，杰出人物

the decade since its inception 成立十年以来

spectral 光谱的，幽灵的

metaphorical 比喻的，隐喻的

the Garden of Eden 伊甸园

alphabet 字母表

invert the letter A 颠倒字母A

Gradually the amusement is muted as listeners begin to question what he is doing—and, indeed, what they are doing. To begin with, they “can follow everything, feel surprise and even laugh,” says Renia Vagkopoulou, Mr Bünger’s wife, who has seen all his performance works many times. At some point, things become more complex, as people are forced to interrogate their responses. “Some even get a little shocked. What starts as a theoretical exercise becomes more and more personal.”

the amusement is muted 娱乐消失，没什么好玩的

interrogate 审问

By getting the audience to grapple with its own role, Mr Bünger’s work fits into an established artistic tradition, says Manuel Olveira, an expert in the lecture form and director of MUSAC, a contemporary-art gallery in León, Spain. He cites John Cage’s “Event” of 1952 (which incorporated a talk on Buddhism), Dan Graham’s “Performer/Audience/Mirror” of 1975 (in which the artist narrated his own movements and observations), and Andrea Fraser’s “Museum Highlights” of 1989 (in which she posed as a guide to the Philadelphia Museum of Art). Like Mr Bünger, each raised questions about how knowledge is produced and disseminated. “Lecture performance is a vibrant category within the wider performance medium,” says Adela Yawitz, a Berlin-based curator, mentioning several other practitioners. The form is fluid, she notes: performances can be live or taped, discrete or combined with other media.

通过让观众努力适应自己的角色，邦格尔的演讲符合既定的艺术传统

incorporated a talk on Buddhism 包括了一个关于佛教的演讲

narrated 叙述

Philadelphia Museum of Art 费城美术馆

disseminated 散播的

vibrant 活力的，充满生气的

fluid 流动的=不固定的=多变的

live or taped 直播或录播

discrete 独立的

Performance art is not the only means by which lectures have broken free from formal education. Internet streaming has led to the rise of TED talks, which attract billions of clicks a year, as well as boosting the audience for stand-up comedy. Mr Bünger admits to being inspired by comics such as Larry David and Louis CK, and concedes that, at first sight, his art may seem reminiscent of formats such as TED. But at a deeper level, he insists, “my lecture performance is the absolute antithesis of TED”. He sees short video talks as “vehicles of pure solutionism”: hard questions reduced to slick formulae. For him, lecture performance lays bare the imbalance of power between lecturer and listener, and highlights the alchemy of language.

stand-up comedy 单口相声

comics 喜剧演员

reminiscent 怀旧的，回忆的

antithesis 对照，对立面

solutionism 解决主义

hard questions reduced to slick formulae 难题简化成了巧妙的公式

lays bare 揭示

alchemy 点金术

His previous work evoked similar themes. “A Lecture on Schizophonia” (2009-2011) explored the impact of recorded speech. “The Third Man” (2010) dealt with the aura of song, roping in ABBA and Kylie Minogue. “The Girl Who Never Was” (2014) tells the serpentine story of a child whose voice was once thought to have been captured on a primitive audio recording, but who turned out not to have existed. “I’m placing a voice in the heads of my listeners,” Mr Bünger explains of that piece. “Most will see the girl in their mind’s eyes—she will come to exist.”

evoked 引发

aura 灵气，氛围

roping in 捆绑，加入

serpentine 曲折的

Human speech, maintains Mr Bünger, “refuses to follow the binary logic” of truth and falsehood or past and present. It is more slippery and magical than that. When the lights go on in the Babylon cinema, the magic seems to have worked. “Now, whenever you see an A, you will see something else,” chuckles Mats Birgert, one half of the video-art duo Birgert and Bergström. “That’s what art is about.”

binary logic 二元逻辑

truth and falsehood 真理与谬误

slippery 狡猾的，不稳定的

chuckles 轻声笑

duo 二人组