附文 – 戈尔丁眼中的反思 | Reflections In A Goldin Eye

 

金眼中的反思

译 ｜ 向铮

 

三十五年过去了，《性依赖的叙事曲》重版印刷了 21 次。我喜欢这本书，这是我现在在这里的原因。令我惊讶的是，它仍能在全世界引起共鸣。自拍摄那本摄影集之后，我经历了很多不同的生活。但摄影集里展现的生活是最具“叙事曲”性质的，也许那时的岁月塑造了我的一生。我仍然相信这些照片讲述了那个时代的真相。对我来说，每隔十年对作品集的后记进行一次重新编辑，让它更具有当代语境是很重要的。前言是永恒的，是对这部作品的真实叙述。但就像我不断地重新编辑我的幻灯片一样，我想利用后记持续更新我的生活记录。

 

我成长在郊区融合被否定的时期。这个时期的文化、人们的心态和所有表象都一成不变。我不认可那些家庭自己讲述并向世界展示的“神话”。我很早就意识到我的经历很可能不被认可。最后我的人生变成了诸如 “ 我从来没有那样说过，我从来没有那样做过，这些事情从来没有发生过。”  我需要离开。

 

这本摄影集里的我拍摄的照片，让怀旧之情永远不会给我的过去上色。我想记录我的生活，没有任何人可以修改：这种生活不是安全、干净的版本，而是关于事物真正的样子、感觉和气味的完全呈现。我不认为我还能凭借现在的年龄和身体去过当时的生活，它需要某种程度的无畏、狂野、快速的变化——衣服、朋友、恋人和城市。

 

人们常说《叙事曲》帮助了他们，我在想，也许是因为它向年轻人展示了另一种生活方式，让他们不必接受那些会伤害他们的生活“范本”，那些所谓社会规范的条条框框正摧毁他们，让他们缺乏归属感。这本摄影集为那些在周围世界中没有自我回应的孩子们提供了一面镜子。让他们知道他们并不孤单。

 

在过去，有人告诉我他们因为《叙事曲》而搬到纽约。在那里他们认识了其他伟大的艺术家，伟大的人物，以及另一个灿烂且美丽的世界。他们发现了那是一个朋友可以代替家人的世界，你所选择的同处的人让你的生命更加鲜活。亲密关系的建立并不是基于别人对你的过度期望。你可以自由地成为你想成为的任何人。最近还有人告诉我，我的作品阻止了他们自杀。如果我有幸能帮助一个人生存下去，那这就是我作品最终极的目的了。

 

人们常说这本书是关于“边缘化”的人。我们从未被边缘化。我们就是世界。我们是我们自己的世界，我们本可以不在乎那些“异性恋”的人对我们的看法。我让我的朋友成为明星，而《叙事曲》保留了他们存在的痕迹。

 

80 年代有一定的自由和不朽，而这种自由和不朽也随着那个时代结束了。艾滋病让世界天崩地裂。随着很多人的死亡，一切都发生了变化。我们的历史被切断了。我们失去了整整一代人。我们失去了一种文化。我们不仅失去了演员，还失去了观众。很少有人能继续保持那个时代的精神。80年代的生活态度不存在了，一切都被清理干净了。

 

最近，当我处理失踪的朋友们的照片时，就好像他们被冻在了琥珀里。很长一段时间我都忘记了他们不在这个星球上了。但是这些照片告诉我失去了多少；最了解我的人，承载着我的历史的人，和我一起长大并打算一起变老的人都离开了。他们也一并带走了我的记忆。《叙事曲》中的照片依旧保持着原样，但是Cookie死了，David死了，Greer死了，Kenny死了。我一直和他们说话，但他们不再回应。这种哀悼不会结束，它会继续，会转化。现在这本摄影集是一本失落的书，也是一首爱的叙事曲。

 

尽管我周围的每个人都去世了，但在年轻的时候你总会有一种感觉：你是不朽的。死亡与你没有直接关系。从年轻到老，我没有经历过这种转变。在 60 多岁的时候，你对死亡的认识会大有不同，你会看到时间是多么的有限，以及惊叹于它白驹过隙一般的速度。五十岁之后，对国家来说女性变成了透明人。对我来说是一种解脱，它带来一种我喜欢的自由。美国没有尊敬长辈的传统。年轻人真的不屑一顾，随着变老我失去了信誉。年轻人把我当作一个疯狂的老太太，因为我看起来像个朋克奶奶。我和其他五十多岁的女性讨论过，她们中的许多人都深有同感。可我一点都不在乎。

 

世界发生了翻天覆地的变化，现在已经面目全非。这是黑暗的日子。每个人都必须找到反击的方式，因为这是我们所拥有的全部。我们不能选择为我们而战的政府官员，没有可以拯救我们的领袖，没有可以为我们伸张正义的法庭。虽然我们有媒体，但它受到了威胁。走在街上的人们是我们的唯一机会。

 

当我在 1988 年戒毒并从自我隔离中走出来时，我意识到艾滋病蔓延的严重程度，我的许多朋友正在死去。我在纽约策划了第一场关于艾滋病的展览——《见证者：对抗我们的消逝》 (Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing)。因为展览内容含有大卫·沃伊纳罗维奇（David Wojnarowicz）的精彩的愤怒言论受到了审查。这激起了人们的愤怒，他们走上了街头。这些目击者的存在为艺术界开始围绕艾滋病组织相关工作奠定了基础。

 

2017 年再次戒毒后，我需要重新找到属于我的战斗。和往常一样，我做了我的身体告诉我的事情。三年来，我一直迷失在奥施康定（Oxycontin）的致命药瘾中。我摆脱了自己的阿片类药物危机，意识到美国正处于可怕的过量用药危机的阵痛中。我不能眼睁睁地看着另一代人消失。

 

我决定通过个人的政治行为方式来抗议。我组织了一群名为 P.A.I.N（Prescription Addiction Intervention Now，处方药成瘾干预组织） 的艺术家和活动家。我们的第一个任务是针对 Sacklers家族，即奥施康定的始作俑者。他们的私人制药公司引发了阿片类药物过量流行，他们从 50 万美国人的成瘾行为和死亡中获利。为了引起他们的注意，我们在他们最富盛名的舞台——博物馆与艺术行业，把叫他们出来。他们通过这个“有毒”的慈善事业，创造了一个神话。但我们成功地改变了他们在公众心目中慈善家的形象。

 

我的作品在这些博物馆中被永久收藏。但我愿意冒着毁掉职业生涯的风险，以艺术家的身份直接面对Sacklers家族。P.A.I.N.是一个小型团体，但我们通过直接行动制造了很多“噪音”。2018 年，我们在大都会博物馆将数千个假的奥施康定药瓶扔进“尼罗河”，从那时起，我们就在世界各地的博物馆中登台亮相。我们与博物馆等机构联系，让他们切断与Sacklers家族的资金往来并取消家族冠名，我们成功地推动机构履行了道德使命。

 

通过让公众了解阿片类药物的成瘾危机，我们正在推动药物使用和过量的去污名化进程。P.A.I.N.不是反对所有的抗阿片类药物，我们是反对通过阿片类药物牟利的投机商。我们正在与其他活动家合作，为药物使用者创造一个安全的世界。

 

这些年来我一直没有谈论过的是我在 70 年代末和 80 年代初的性工作经历。这是我得以购买胶卷并冲洗放大摄影书中的这些照片的途径。我一直需要保守这个秘密。许多人已经以一种非常简化的方式描述《叙事曲》，认为它只是关于毒品和性的。我担心这会成为窥探者的过滤器，通过它可以概括我的所有作品。并且，我是谁以及我所做的一切都会因这个角色而名誉扫地。

 

性工作者是一个需要付出努力的工种，这是一个表现出应有尊重的术语。词汇的选用很重要。同样的语言演变也适用于有药物依赖的人，我们这些曾经被称为“瘾君子”的人。我觉得分享我最后的一个秘密很重要，虽然我自 70 年代以来一直坚持保守这个秘密，但是我想在今天公开以对抗污名化。如果这个秘密可以让其他人感到不那么羞耻，那么我的所作所为就是值得的。

 

几十年来，我对人际关系和相互依赖的看法发生了变化。在我的朋友和爱人之间我仍然没有作出情感上的区分。但我不想要我过去需要的那种绞杀一般的亲密关系。我不需要通过他人来证明我的存在。我的房间里没有南·戈尔丁，只有南。

 

摄影对我来说是一种救赎，它帮助我描绘了我的沉沦和之后的自我重建。多年以来，除了天空，我没有再拿起相机将镜头对准其他事物。我不再需要拍摄我的生活或生活中的人。我的照片不再是我的日记，我的绘画才是。在新冠疫情隔离期间，时隔多年我重新开始拍摄一位新朋友。我想向我的朋友展示她的美丽。当你足够深入地观察一个人时，你能看到一张脸在一年内会发生的变化，也能看到亲密关系如何为照片“上色”，这很迷人。

 

当我还是个孩子的时候，我想如果我没有在这个世界上留下些什么，将会是多么遗憾。通过《叙事曲》，我找到了留下痕迹的方法。

 

写于布鲁克林

2021

 

 

 

 

REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDIN EYE

 

IT'S THIRTY-FIVE YEARS LATER and the twenty-first printing of the Ballad. I love this book, it's why I'm here now. It amazes me that it still resonates in the world. I've lived many lives since then.

 

That was perhaps the lifetime that formed me the most, the years of the Ballad. I still believe these photos tell the truth of that time. It's important, for me, to recontextualize the afterword every ten years. The foreword Is forever, that's the real narrative of this work. Just like I constantly re-edit my slideshows, _ want to continue updating the record of my life.

 

I grew up in a period in which the glue of suburbia was denial. It maintained the culture, the mentality, the outer face. I didn't accept the myths that families tell themselves and present to the world. I saw very early that my experience could be negated. That I never said that, I never did that, that never happened. I needed to get away.

 

I took the pictures in this book so that nostalgia could never color my past. I wanted to make a record of my life that nobody could revise: not a safe, clean version, but instead, an account of what things really looked like and felt like and smelled like. I don't think I could, at this age and in this body now, live the life that I lived then. It took a certain level of fearlessness, a wildness, quick changes- of clothes, of friends, of lovers, of cities.

 

When I wonder what people are talking about when they say that the Ballad helped them, _ guess that it showed young people there was another way to live, that they didn't have to swallow the version of the norm that hurt them, that they didn't feel part of, that was destroying them. The book gave a mirror to kids who had no reflection of themselves in the world around them. They knew that they weren't alone.

 

In the old days, people told me they moved to New York because of the Ballad. They were introduced to other great artists, other great personalities, and a whole other world of brilliance and beauty. They found a world where friends could replace family, where the people who kept you alive were the ones you chose. Relationships weren't based on toxic expectations of who you were.

 

You were free to be anyone you wanted. Somebody told me recently my work averted their suicide.

 

If I can help one person survive, that's the ultimate purpose of my work.

 

It's commonly said that this book is about "marginalized" people. We were never marginalized.

 

We were the world. We were our own world, and we could have cared less about what "straight" people thought of us. I made my people into superstars, and the Ballad maintains their legacy.

 

In the '80s, there was a certain freedom, and a sense of immortality, that ended with that decade.

 

ADS cracked the earth. With everyone dying, everything shifted. Our history got cut off. We lost a whole generation. We lost a culture. We didn't just lose the actors, we lost the audience. there are few people left with that kind of intensity. There was an attitude towards life that doesn t exist any-more, everything's been so cleaned up.

 

Lately when I'm working with the photos of my missing friends, it's as if they are frozen in amber. For long periods of time I forget they're not on this planet. But the pictures show me how much I've lost; the people who knew me the best, the people who carried my history, the people.

 

Brew up with and I was planning to get old with are gone. They took my memory with them. the pictures in the Ballad haven't changed. But Cookie is dead. David is dead. Greer is dead. Kenny is dead. I talk to them all the time, but they don't talk back anymore. Mourning doesn't end, it continues and it transmutes. This book is now a volume of loss, as well as a ballad of love.

 

In spite of everyone dying around me, there is that sense in your youth that you're immortal.

 

Death isn't relevant to you directly. I went from being young to being old, I didn't experience the transition. In your sixties, it's a much different awareness of death, of seeing how limited your time is and how quickly it goes. After fifty a woman is invisible in this country, which is sort of a relief, it gives you a freedom that I like. Americans are not conditioned to respect their elders. Young people are really dismissive, you lose your credibility. They treat me like a crazy old lady because I look like a punk grandma. I've talked to other women over fifty and many of them fee! the same. I would like to just not give a fuck.

 

The world has changed so much as to be unrecognizable. These are dark days. Everybody has to find their way to fight back, because that's all we have. We don't have elected officials that are going to fight for us. We don't have leaders that will save us. We don't have courts that will give us justice.

 

We have the media but it's been jeopardized. The people in the streets are the only chance we have.

 

When I got sober in 1988 and came out of my self-imposed isolation, I realized the extent of the AlDS epidemic and how many of my friends were dying. I curated the first show about AIDS in New York, Witnesses Against Our Vanishing. The catalogue was censored because of the brilliant and furious words of David Wojnarowicz, which provoked outrage and brought people to the streets.

 

Witnesses helped lay the foundation for the art world to start organizing around AIDS.

 

When I got sober in 2017, I needed to find my fight again. As always, I did what I know in my body. For three years, I'd been lost in a deadly addiction to Oxycontin. I came out of my own opioid crisis and realized that America was in the throes of a terrible overdose crisis. I couldn't stand by to watch another generation disappear.

 

I decided to make the personal political. I organized a group of artists and activists called P.A.I.N.

 

(Prescription Addiction Intervention Now. Our first mission was to target the Sacklers, the family behind Oxycontin. Their private Pharma company ignited the opioid overdose epidemic, profiting off the addiction and death of five hundred thousand Americans. To get their ear we called them out on the stage where their name was most celebrated--the museum world. Through their toxic philanthropy they created a myth, but we succeeded in changing their legacy.

 

My work is in the permanent collections of these museums and at the risk of ruining my career confronted them as an artist. P.A...N. is a small group but we make a lot of noise through direct action. We started by throwing thousands of fake Oxy bottles into the Nile at The Met in 2018 and since then we've acted up in museums across the world. We've been successful in pushing institutions to live up to their ethical mandate by cutting ties with the family and taking down their name.

 

By giving a public face to the opioid epidemic we're helping to destigmatize drug use and over-dose. P.A...N. is not anti-opioid, we're anti-opioid profiteers. We're working with other activists to create a safe world for drug users.

 

One thing I haven't talked about all these years is my sex work in the late '7Os and early 80s.

 

That's how I could afford to buy the film and to develop the photos in this book. I've always needed to protect this secret. Many people already write about the Ballad in a very reductive way, that it's only about drugs and sex. I worried that this would become the voyeuristic filter through which all of the work would be viewed. That who I am and everything I do would be discredited by that role.

 

A sex worker is a hard worker, and it's a term that shows due respect. Words matter. The same evolution of language applies to people with substance-use disorder, those of us who used to be called junkies. I feel it's important to share my last secret, the one I've held onto since the '70s, in order to combat stigma. If it gives a voice to somebody else to feel less shame, then it's worth it.

 

My thoughts about relationships and interdependency have changed over the decades. I still make no emotional distinction between my friends and my lovers. But I don't want the same kind of stranglehold intimacy that _ needed in the past. I don't need somebody else to prove I exist.

 

There's no Nan Goldin in my house, there's only Nan.

 

Photography has been redemptive for me, it's helped me chart my descents and my reconstruction.

 

For many years, I didn't pick up a camera except to photograph the sky. I lost the need to photograph my life or the people in it. My photos were no longer my diary, my paintings were. Then during the COVID-19 quarantine, I started photographing a new friend for the first time in years. I wanted to show my friend her beauty. It's fascinating to see how much a face can change over a year when you look at someone deeply enough and how the degree of intimacy colors a photo.

 

When I was a kid I thought, What a waste if I don't leave a mark on the world. Through the Ballad I found a way to make a mark.

 

Brooklyn, June 2021