The Larva of Time
时间的幼虫
21 JUN 2024 - 24 AUG 2024
策展人 CURATOR
龙星如 Iris LONG
艺术家 ARTISTS
科学家 SCIENTISTS
科学家 SCIENTISTS
展览网站 EXHIBITION SITE
https://ica.shanghai.nyu.edu/program/the-larva-of-time/https://www.berggruen.org.cn/activity/the-larva-of-time
轻盈的蝶翅⻜舞过数⼗万载，⽽分化的起点始于⻘藏⾼原东南部。彼时的海南和台湾等岛屿通过陆桥与⼤陆相连，⽖哇岛、苏⻔答腊岛、婆罗洲岛与泰国—⻢来半岛构成了巽他古陆。[1]
昆虫们在浩瀚的云彩和转瞬即逝的音节中告别了它们的名字，嗡嗡作响、刺痛、嗡嗡作响、掠过、爬行和钻出隧道。[2]
凡冒⿎，必以启蛰之⽇。[3]
蝴蝶之蛹，是一种黑洞一般的“可知边界”，即使在显微CT成像下，蛹中宇宙仿佛变得可视，但从幼虫到成虫之间的跃变，仍然是一个幽灵过程。某种来自祖先的，关于“再现”的鬼魂，仍然在出没。[4] 再现，故而成为能把握的世界。尽管我们的知识装置已经愈发向获取万物数据的过程倾斜，茧似乎象征着再现的事件视界，是成为知识过程之前的混沌。在拉丁文里，成虫是“imago”——可视之像，而“幼虫”（larva）则和“面具”、“鬼魂”同源——可见之前。
“时间的幼虫”是一次关于化变的共思，是由两位艺术创作者与两位生命科学家在近两年时间里，通过书信往来、互访、对话和田野所共同搭筑的，一个亲密亦广阔的无形茧体——此处之“茧/蛹”不仅仅是对一个古往今来已有很多意义负担的概念进行重新搭建，而是一种朴素的写照。在北京大学生命科学学院地下车库的实验室里，蝴蝶啃噬着小叶马兰；在墨脱的泥泞道路上方，蝴蝶翾然旋舞，宛如大地兀自生成了一块彩毯。张文心和郭城在这些地点，浸入科学语境下捕捉、制标本、观察和研究生产的序列，由知识的观察者成为搅动者，由确凿之地进入混沌之野。在张蔚的研究中，枯叶蛱蝶基因的平衡稳定过程暗藏了环境地理演化和自然选择驱动的双重底色，在白书农的写作里，尽管“环境因子”是生命系统的构成要素，但生命与生命，或者“膜”与“膜”之间，始终是渗透性的。这些关于生物演化时间尺度或生理空间边界的思索，是蛹中涌动的、破开性的力。
蝴蝶是向导，在这期间，它似乎是在时间中逆向飞行归于茧，潜入未成型的时空。从可辨识、孤立（singular）、鳞翅绮丽的被“学科”化的知识，回卷到等待魔法展开的成虫盘里。在这颗茧中，所有人暂且忘记了自己原初的身份与习惯，并非“跨学科”而更像是“未学科化”，非完美的、未竟的、幼虫一般的，这便是这个项目的基础立场。展览一共呈现11件作品，均来自这一项目的研究与委任，上纽ICA的空间也被转换成一条经验的甬道：有光之处和黑暗之处、地面和地下，形成同一颗茧的阴阳，这里是一间实验室，也是墨脱，是变质岩体的切面，是复眼下的观看，是诱捕飞虫的月亮，是上述所有的折叠。所谓的“动物性的深渊”（animal abyss）并不是一个黑洞或者一条鸿沟，而是将诸种潜在的形态囊括在茧中。
“时间的幼虫”或许可以由此成为一段关于“茧/蛹”的推想：它是棺柩与坟茔，子宫与原始汤，也是自我起源的实验室、消化并创造自己的容器。所有参与者的真实经验与创作，倒影出无法被妥善翻译的metamorphosis。每一个metamorphic的存在，都是由“他者”组成，并有“他者”栖居于身的，如埃马努埃莱·科奇亚（Emanulle Coccia）所言，“metamorphisis就是命运”。
[1]《揭秘雨林第一伪装大师“枯叶蝶”》，张蔚
[2] Le Guin, Ursula K. ‘She Unnames Them’, The New Yorker, 21 January 1985, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1985/01/21/she-unnames-them.
[3]《周礼》卷四十，《挥人》篇
[4] Coccia, Emanuele. Metamorphoses. John Wiley & Sons, 2021
The delicate butterfly wings have fluttered through hundreds of thousands of years, with the starting point of their differentiation in the southeastern part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. At that time, islands such as Hainan and Taiwan were connected to the mainland via land bridges, while Java, Sumatra, and Borneo formed the ancient Sundaland with the Thai-Malay Peninsula.[1]
The insects parted with their names in vast clouds and swarms of ephemeral syllables buzzing and stinging and humming and flitting and crawling and tunnelling away.[2]
The drum skins need to be stretched on the day of Jingzhe [Awakening of Insects].[3]
The butterfly’s chrysalis is the edge of knowing, akin to a black hole. Even under microscopic CT imaging, when the microcosm within the chrysalis becomes ‘visible’, the leap from larva to adult remains a ghostly process. Some ancestral ghost of representation still lingers. Represented, hence graspable. Although our knowledge structures have increasingly tilted toward the process of acquiring data on all things, the chrysalis seems to symbolize the event horizon of total representation, the chaos before the process of ‘becoming knowledge’. In Latin, the adult is an ‘imago’, a visible image, while the ‘larva’ shares the same linguistic origin as the words ‘mask’ and ‘ghost’, indicating a state before visibility.
The Larva of Time is a collective contemplation of transformation, constructed over the past two years through correspondence, visits, dialogues, and fieldwork by two artists and two life scientists. This is an intimate, expansive, and intangible chrysalis. Here, a ‘chrysalis’ is not just a reconfiguration of a concept burdened with meanings through history, but a modest portrayal. In the laboratory in the underground garage of Peking University's School of Life Sciences, butterflies nibble on Strobilanthes tetrasperma; above the muddy roads of Medog, butterflies flutter as if the earth itself has created a colorful carpet. ZHANG Wenxin and GUO Cheng immerse themselves in these locations, capturing, making specimens, observing, and producing research within a scientific context. They are transformed from observers of knowledge to agitators, translating places of certainty into fields of chaos. In ZHANG Wei's research, the balanced stability process in the dead-leaf butterfly’s genes has implications for both environmental geography and natural selection. In BAI Shunong's writings, although environmental factors are components of life systems, there is always permeability between forms of life, or between ‘membranes’. These reflections on the time scales of biological evolution or the spatial boundaries of physiology are the forces surging within and breaking through the chrysalis.
Butterflies served as guides during this collaboration, seemingly flying backward in time to return to the chrysalis, delving into unformed space-time. They rewind from recognizable, isolated, and beautiful scaffolds of disciplinary knowledge to the imaginal disc of the adult awaiting the unfolding of magic. In this chrysalis, everyone temporarily forgets their original identities and backgrounds, embodying a more ‘undisciplined’ than ‘interdisciplinary’ state—imperfect, unfinished, larval. The exhibition presents eleven works, all stemming from the project’s research and commissions. The Institute of Contemporary Arts space at NYU Shanghai is transformed into a corridor of experience; places of light and darkness, above and below, form the yin and yang of the same chrysalis. The space enfolds a laboratory, Medog, a section of metamorphic rock, a view under compound eyes, and the moon trapping flying insects. The ‘animal abyss’ is not a black hole or a chasm, but a liminal space where all beings truly exist.
The Larva of Time might be a speculative chrysalis: the chrysalis is a coffin and a tomb, a womb and a primordial soup, a self-generating laboratory, a container that digests and creates itself. The real experiences and creations of the participants reflect an untranslatable metamorphosis. Every metamorphic existence is composed of and inhabited by another. As Emanuele Coccia once wrote, ‘Metamorphosis is destiny.’ [4]
[1] Zhang, Wei. Unveiling the Master of Camouflage in the Rainforest: The Dead Leaf Butterfly.
[2] Le Guin, Ursula K. ‘She Unnames Them’, The New Yorker, 21 January 1985, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1985/01/21/she-unnames-them.
[3] ‘Chapter 40: Hui Ren’. In Zhou Li [Rites of Zhou].
[4] Coccia, Emanuele. Metamorphoses. John Wiley & Sons, 2021
“时间的幼虫”是北京大学博古睿研究中心“创意未来”这一关注领域下的一次跨学科策展及研究项目，并与上海纽约大学当代艺术中心（上纽ICA）合作呈现。此次策展实验始于2022年夏天，邀请艺术家和生命科学家一同关注艺术创作和科学发现过程中不被注意的时间印痕，探寻语境之间的震颤。本次展览由2022-23博古睿学者龙星如策划，呈现由白书农、郭城、张蔚、张文心联合创作的11件/组全新作品。所有参展作品均来自该项目的研究与委任。
“时间”作为四位参与者共同关注的认识论对象，可能是微生物的表面残留物、进化尺度上的分叉和多样性、地球生态的交替等等。罗安清在《生活在受损星球上的艺术》（明尼苏达大学出版社，2017）的引言中提出这样一种时间观念：当代人类借由“多种时间”席卷世界，而非建构单一的未来[1]。这期间的每一种时间推演都会在地球上留下明确的痕迹。这种时间观，与此次展览试图传达的时间理念异曲同工。“时间的幼虫”是一次关于化变的共思，是两位艺术创作者与两位生命科学家在近两年时间里，通过书信往来、互访、对话和田野所共同搭筑的，一个亲密亦广阔的无形茧体。
“多种”的时间可能是技术的、地质的、生物的、纠缠的与埋藏的。和常见的“艺术与科学”合作模式不同，本项目将四位参与者视为共同的创作者，而非将科学仅仅作为素材或“技术/工具/实验的提供方”。四位参与者彼此穿插进创作和研究现场，暂且忘记自己原初的身份与习惯。这个项目的基础立场并非简单的“跨学科”，而更像是“前学科”的尝试，是不完美的、未竟的、如同幼虫一般的。
展览同时也策划了一系列公共项目，提供批判性的、参与式的、有趣的进入角度。
本展览得到了北京大学博古睿研究中心、北京大学生命科学学院以及上海纽约大学当代艺术中心（上纽ICA）的慷慨支持。
The Larva of Time is an interdisciplinary curatorial and research project, realized as part of the“Creative Futures” initiative at the Berggruen Research Center at Peking University and exhibited in partnership with the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) at NYU Shanghai. Commenced in the summer of 2022, The Larva of Time invited artists and scientists to investigate unnoticed temporal imprints in the processes of artistic and scientific research, exploring the contextual resonances between art and science. Curated by 2022-23 Berggruen Fellow Iris LONG, the exhibition features eleven works, co-created by the exhibiting artists and scientists BAI Shunong, GUO Cheng, ZHANG Wei, and ZHANG Wenxin, all derived from the project’s research and commissions.
Time, an epistemological subject of shared interest among the four participants, has multiple manifestations in this project, ranging from the surface residues of microorganisms to bifurcations and diversity on an evolutionary scale to Earth's shifting geological and ecological epochs. The introduction of the book Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet (University of Minnesota Press, 2017) proposes a concept of time in which contemporary humans sweep across the world, bringing “multiple times” rather than constructing a singular future. Each version of time leaves distinct marks on the Earth, and this conception of time aligns with the temporal notions examined in the exhibition. The Larva of Time is a shared contemplation of metamorphosis, an intimate yet expansive invisible cocoon created by two artists and two scientists over nearly two years through correspondence, visits, dialogues, and fieldwork.
These plural times could be technological, geological, biological, entangled, and buried. Unlike common modes of collaboration between art and science, this project regards the participants as co-creators rather than merely using science as a source of material or a provider of technology, tools, or experiments. The four participants interweave their creative and research processes, temporarily setting aside their original identities and habits. The foundation of this project is not simply interdisciplinary; it is an attempt at something ‘pre-disciplinary’, something imperfect, unfinished, and larval.
The exhibition is accompanied by a series of related public programs that delve into the exhibition's subject from various perspectives, offering critical, participatory, or playful entry points.
The Larva of Time is generously supported by the Berggruen Research Center at Peking University, School of Life Sciences at Peking University and the Institute of Contemporary Arts at NYU Shanghai.
