当代艺术的当代性:以成都说唱音乐为例

目前全球创意经济导致了这样一种趋势：当代艺术与创意产业中的经济与社会问题密切关联而丧失了对审美准则的关注。艺术家如何对创意经济中的艺术生产进行思考和批评呢？为了回答这一问题,本文以成都说唱音乐为例探讨艺术家如何进行＂当代性＂的生产。这里的当代性是指各种时间被看作不同的,却又同样在场的时间的共存状态。这群艺术家用成都方言生产当代性的叙事,以此对创意经济进行审美批评。一方面,他们将成都说唱音乐作为＂艺术即生活＂的形式对当代艺术的机制化进行批评;另一方面,他们的说唱音乐执着于表现艺术的自律性,使艺术家的创造性不受经济的、政治的或社会权力的干扰。成都说唱不应当被看成仅仅是挪用其他国家的说唱音乐。它更体现了一种艺术时间形式,不仅表达了成都艺术家的创造性,而且表达了使当代艺术成为一种可能性的政治美学。

Drawing on the scholarship of contemporary art in visual culture, which art criticism, aesthetics, and philosophy, the paper explores ways in artists critique a current trend in art production： abandoning the aesthetic principle of art while embracing social and economic principles of the creative economy. Specifically, the paper examines the production of ＂contemporaneity＂ by a group of young rap artists in Chengdu. Contempora-neity refers to a temporal situation in which various times are counted as a coexistence of different but equally present times. The group of artists, who use Chengdu dialect to perform their music, produce narratives of contemporaneity in ways that they offer an aesthetic critique of the creative economy. They deploy ＂Chengdu rap＂ music as a form of ＂art as life. ＂ And, they insist on the autonomy of art, separating art creation from the interference of other forces （whether economic, political, or social）. My argument is that Chengdu rap music is not simply an ＂appropriation＂ of the hip-hop music of another country （e. g. , the United States）. Rather, it expresses a form of art time that speaks not only to the creative aura in Chengdu but also to the politics of aesthetics that makes their art possible in the first place.