美国国家公共电台 NPR Artists Take On Global Migration: 'It's Hard To Watch And It's Hard Not To Watch'

 

NOEL KING, HOST:

A short drive from the White House, where immigration policy is a major focus of the president's agenda, a museum has filled three floors with artists' reactions to displacement¹, to relocation and to flight. NPR special correspondent Susan Stamberg says the exhibition is pretty intense.

SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE²: Every day brings the stories on radio, TV, social media - what can art say that's different?

DOROTHY KOSINSKI: Art has a language of its own. It's very direct.

STAMBERG: Dorothy Kosinski is director of The Phillips Collection, where the exhibition "The Warmth Of Other Suns - Stories Of Global Displacement" is on view.

Do the artists look at suffering in a different way?

DANI LEVINAS: I don't think so. I don't think so.

STAMBERG: Dani Levinas, chairman of the museum's board.

LEVINAS: But they know how to express it.

STAMBERG: In paintings, photographs, videos - installations chosen by curators from the New Museum in New York. Many of the artists are immigrants themselves and come from all over - Algeria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Mexico, Syria. Albanian artist Adrian Paci explores hope, impatience³, frustration⁴.

NATALIE BELL: What you see in this video is a stairway, the kind that you would use to board an airplane, on an empty tarmac.

STAMBERG: New Museum curator Natalie Bell.

BELL: What's absent in this film is the airplane. So you see a number of men attempting to board, climbing up these stairs and waiting.

STAMBERG: For what? They're on a stairway to nowhere. The plane may never come. French Algerian artist Kader Attia has strewn a gallery's wooden floor with faded blue clothing - T-shirts, jeans, sweatshirts, shoes. The installation is called "The Dead Sea."

BELL: It at once evokes⁷ an image of clothing that's been washed up on the shore, but it also serves as a kind of memorial of the people who've been lost at sea.

STAMBERG: Sometimes I turn the page on such sites; maybe you do, too - gotten numb⁵ from so much tragedy. Some 71 million souls forcibly displaced from their homes, the U.N. says. Too much - you just can't think about it. But this exhibition, in its persistent⁸, gentle enormity, forces attention.

So many of these various objects in the exhibition are very specific; they're things we know. And yet they have such a powerful emotional impact on us. What's that about?

BELL: Well, I think that there can be a way that objects can evoke⁶ memories or reflections, even if they're very everyday objects. Another...

STAMBERG: Not just that but feelings, feelings

BELL: Yeah. You know, we spend a lot of our time encountering these stories through the news. And when we slow down and spend a moment with these objects individually when we encounter them physically⁹, it can be very different, and it can be very powerful.

STAMBERG: Children appear in several of these images. In a video, they stand on opposite sides of the Strait of Gibraltar.

BELL: They're between Spain and Morocco, and you see children walking from the shore from each of those countries.

STAMBERG: Holding toy sailboats they have made with old flip-flops, they start moving toward one another. Francis Alys - Belgian-born, Mexico-based - imagined them serving as a bridge across the waters. Instead, buffeted¹⁰ by waves, tossed, thrown - they disappear.

The most stirring of these 75 or so objects in this immigration show is Erkan Ozgen's video of a 13-year-old Syrian boy describing the bombing of his town, seeing neighbors being killed, going without food, water - the horror of it.

BELL: He's not speaking a word. He's deaf and mute, so he's using hand language to tell the story. And somehow taking the words out of this story made it all the more powerful.

STAMBERG: It's a short video, yet the impact is immense.

BELL: I think it is one of the most powerful pieces because it's hard to watch, and it's hard to not watch. It's hard to turn away.

STAMBERG: I do, before it's over, and realize that's what we do now - turn from the terrible realities of this global displacement we're living through. So far from our shores in so many places, so smack¹¹ on our borders this very minute, art like this can turn us back.

In Washington, I'm Susan Stamberg, NPR News.

1 displacement   

n.移置，取代，位移，排水量

参考例句：

• They said that time is the feeling of spatial displacement.他们说时间是空间位移的感觉。
• The displacement of all my energy into caring for the baby.我所有精力都放在了照顾宝宝上。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 impatience   

n.不耐烦，急躁

参考例句：

• He expressed impatience at the slow rate of progress.进展缓慢，他显得不耐烦。
• He gave a stamp of impatience.他不耐烦地跺脚。

4 frustration   

n.挫折，失败，失效，落空

参考例句：

• He had to fight back tears of frustration.他不得不强忍住失意的泪水。
• He beat his hands on the steering wheel in frustration.他沮丧地用手打了几下方向盘。

5 numb   

adj.麻木的，失去感觉的；v.使麻木

参考例句：

• His fingers were numb with cold.他的手冻得发麻。
• Numb with cold,we urged the weary horses forward.我们冻得发僵，催着疲惫的马继续往前走。

6 evoke   

vt.唤起，引起，使人想起

参考例句：

• These images are likely to evoke a strong response in the viewer.这些图像可能会在观众中产生强烈反响。
• Her only resource was the sympathy she could evoke.她以凭借的唯一力量就是她能从人们心底里激起的同情。

7 evokes   

产生，引起，唤起( evoke的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• The film evokes chilling reminders of the war. 这部电影使人们回忆起战争的可怕场景。
• Each type evokes antibodies which protect against the homologous. 每一种类型都能产生抗同种病毒的抗体。

8 persistent   

adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的

参考例句：

• Albert had a persistent headache that lasted for three days.艾伯特连续头痛了三天。
• She felt embarrassed by his persistent attentions.他不时地向她大献殷勤，使她很难为情。

9 physically   

adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律

参考例句：

• He was out of sorts physically,as well as disordered mentally.他浑身不舒服，心绪也很乱。
• Every time I think about it I feel physically sick.一想起那件事我就感到极恶心。

10 buffeted   

反复敲打( buffet的过去式和过去分词 )； 连续猛击； 打来打去； 推来搡去

参考例句：

• to be buffeted by the wind 被风吹得左右摇摆
• We were buffeted by the wind and the rain. 我们遭到风雨的袭击。

11 smack   

vt.拍，打，掴；咂嘴；vi.含有…意味；n.拍

参考例句：

• She gave him a smack on the face.她打了他一个嘴巴。
• I gave the fly a smack with the magazine.我用杂志拍了一下苍蝇。