14 15延展生命 张尕TRANSLIFE ZHANG GA

TranslifeZhang Ga

Bruno Latour, the French sociologist and philosopher cited an anecdote recalling the time he invited Donna Haraway and Isabelle Stengers to present their understanding of “the political arts.” Latour noted that, “To the total dismay of many politically-minded French citizens, Haraway spoke mainly about learning how to behave politically anew from her dog. ‘From her dog! What does this have to do with politics? Tell us more about domination, inequalities, power struggles, elections, and revolutions.’”1 That the quintessen-tial provocateur of political struggles and cultural polemics contrary to her familiar demeanor of belligerence, quietly turned her affection for educating herself to attempting a renewed relationship with her pet dog as a political part-ner, social equal and cultural interlocutor resonates with a growing consciousness in the current vanguard intellectual atmosphere. As seen in Graham Harman’s object-oriented philosophy, the speculative turn of materialism in the work of Ray Brassier and Quentin Meillassoux, the apocalyptic forecast by Reza Negarestani, and Eugene Thacker’s onto-logical biophilosophy, scholars in the tradition of Latour’s line of thought have furthered questioning the very reason of modernity and turned to an unmodern thinking about hybridity and cosmopolitics, calling for “a new attention to other species and other types of agencies. Here again, art, philosophy, ecology, activism, and politics exchange their repertoire in order to redefine the actors, the aims, the forums and the emotions of political involvement.”2

The rekindled interest in revisiting the principle of subjectivity – the foundation of the project of modernity – to remediate the irreconcilable divide of subject versus object, animate versus inanimate, human versus nonhuman and to renegotiate the domain of public spheres with all

things considered, comes as no surprise at a time in which extraordinary sensorial capacities are increasingly traversing over the former province of perception and sensation exclu-sively reserved to humans. Through accelerated computing powers and digitally designed prosthetics, symptoms of polymorphic life forms transgressing biological boundaries and natural principles are increasingly made emergent by biotechnological as well as algorithmic intervention into the world of the familiar, humanity’s remarkable transforma-tion of the earth, and the reformation of nature resulting in ecological disruptions and climate anomaly, altogether shat-tering the laws of equilibrium and faulting the very rationale of physics and metaphysics. Tsunamis and earthquakes may not be the direct consequences of human hubris, but ozone holes, deforestation, acid rain, oil spills, and radioactive plumes certainly are imprints of humanity’s insatiable thirst for things at the cost of natural things. New proposals and insights must be called for to un-manhandle the human process if we are to continue our dwelling on planet earth.

Subjectivity

Encapsulating modernity with striking clarity, Martin Hei-degger pointedly remarked, “That period we call modern . . . is defined by the fact man becomes the center and measure of all beings. Man is the subjectum, that which lies at the bottom of all beings, that is, in modern terms, at the bottom of all objectification and representation.”3

The modern subject first made its grand entry into world history via René Descartes’s declaration “Cogito ergo sum,” thus establishing the subjectivity of self-consciousness as

法国社会学家和哲学家布鲁诺·拉图尔（Bruno Latour）曾提到有关唐纳·哈拉维（Donna

Haraway）和伊莎贝尔·斯腾格斯（Isabelle Stengers）的一则轶事。他邀请这两位学者为新

开的一门硕士课的系列讲座谈谈对“政治艺术”的理解。拉图尔回忆到，“哈拉维主要讲的是如

何从她的狗身上学习一种全新的政治行为方式，这让不少充满政治意识的法国公民大失所望。‘

她的狗！狗和政治有什么关系！告诉我们统治，不平等，权力斗争，选举和革命的问题。’”1和她

常见的好战姿态相反，一贯强调政治斗争和文化论战的她很平和地把专注转向自我教育，试图重

建与宠物狗的关系，将后者视为一个政治伙伴，平等的社会成员和文化讨论的参与者，这反映了

当下前卫知识界中日益涌现行的一种意识。我们从格拉汉·哈曼（Graham Harman）的客体哲

学（object-oriented philosophy），雷·布拉西尔（Ray Brassier）和昆汀· 梅拉苏（Quentin

Meillassoux）的推论唯物主义（Speculative Materialism)的转向，雷萨·内加雷斯塔尼（Reza

Negarestani）对世界末日的预测和尤金·萨克（Eugene Thacker）的本体论生物哲学中可见一

斑。和拉图尔的思想脉搏想承的学者们对现代性的基本前提近一步予以质疑，并以一种非现代的

方式开始思考混合性（hybridity）和世界主义政治（cosmopolitics）等问题，呼唤“一种对其他

物种和其他代理（agency）的关注。艺术，哲学，生态学，行动主义和政治由此再次交换它们的

内容，重新定义政治参与的角色，目标，论坛和情感。”2

为了调解主体和客体，有生命的和无生命的，人类和非人类之间的鸿沟，以便将一切纳入思考

的范围来重构公共领域，（西方学界）重燃对于主体原则——即现代主义工程的基础——的研究

兴趣。这并不令人惊讶，因为在今天，独特的感知能力正日益侵入曾经一度为人类所独有的认识和

感觉的领域。通过日益发达的电脑运算能力以及数字辅助的身体延伸，以生物科技和电脑运算打

破生物界限和自然原则的多态生命样式逐渐成为现实，人类对地球的巨大改变，以及造成生态失

调和气候异常的对自然的改造，全然扰乱了均衡原理， 动摇了物理学和形而上学的根本依据。尽

管海啸和地震并非人类活动的直接结果，但是臭氧层空洞，森林砍伐，酸雨，石油泄漏和放射性

烟云等问题则反映了人类对自然的无度索取所带来的后果。如果我们还希望继续栖居在这个地球

上，我们就必须提出新的方案和洞见，以扭转人类的进程。

主体性

马丁·海德格尔（Martin Heidegger) 对现代性的总结可谓精辟非凡。他一针见血地指出：“我

们称之为现代的时期……是以人成为所有存在的中心和尺度为标志的。人是一般主体（subjec-

tum），是所有存在的基础，换言之，用现代术语来讲，人是所有对象化（objectification）和再现

（representation）的基础。”31 http://e-flux.com/journal/view/217

2 Ibid.

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the absolute foundation of representation and, consequently, as discussed by Jürgen Habermas, being as a whole was ultimately transformed into the subjective world of repre-sented objects and truth was transformed into subjective certitude. Modernity has been fundamentally a representa-tion of human subjectivity.

Subjectivity’s freedom with its autonomy of objective science, universal morality and law, and autonomous art ensured a departure from the gods and divine forces. It was subjectivity that postulated modern culture’s domain of inquiry and practice in pursuing truth through objective knowledge in the name of science, in constructing morality through normative rightness in the name of jurisprudence, and in uncovering beauty through iconoclastic experiments in the name of aesthetics. As G.W.F. Hegel wrote, “The principle of the modern world is freedom of subjectivity.”4

This trinity of modernity depends a priori upon the valid-ity of an objective knowledge that is capable of establishing a new authority as the self-understanding and self-relating truth. Thus scientific modernity is the premise and the archi-tectonic structure for the reasoning of political and cultural modernity. In order to produce truth, objectifying science must render, as Hegel noted, “all miracles disallowed: for nature is now a system of known and recognized laws; he is free through the acquaintance he has gained with nature.”5

According to Stephen Gaukroger, “One of the most distinctive features of the emergence of a scientific culture in modern Europe is the gradual assimilation of all cogni-tive values to scientific ones. This is not merely a distinctive feature of Western scientific practice, it is a distinctive feature of Western modernity: a particular image of the role and aims of scientific understanding is tied up in a funda-mental fashion with the self-image of modernity.”6 While the declaration of freedom from external authority severed humanity’s servitude to traditions imposed by the theocratic medieval, at the same time it also disowned nature from the alchemist occult, renouncing nature as the embodiment of the divine and rendering nature the object of knowledge, a domain of investigation, and a resource for exploitation.

The Kantian establishment of reason in the domain of objective knowledge, moral insight, and aesthetic evaluation reinforced the underlining logic of modernity while at the same time inseminating the disciplinary division of human cognition and compartmentalization of scientific inquiry.

When reason prevails, Habermas wrote, “Reason makes known its true identity – it becomes unmasked as the subordinating and at the same time itself the subjugated

subjectivity, as the will to instrumental mastery.”7 The will to instrumental mastery inevitably leads humanity to a pragmatic utilitarianism in the process of modernization. The practical reason comes to its material incarnation in “the formation of capital and the mobilization of resources; to the development of the forces of production and the increase in the productivity of labor; to the establishment of centralized political power and the formation of national identities.”8

It is the will to instrumental mastery that desires instru-mental reason to realize and fulfill subjectivity as the ulti-mate teleology of modernity, that is, the realization of human potential in the idea of progress, and that, with science as its guarding angel and technology its handyman, sets forth on a journey to make full exposure of nature’s potential with no reservations. “The revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging, which puts to nature the unrea-sonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such. . . . The earth now reveals itself as coal mining district, the soil as a mineral deposit,” Heidegger commented.9

With humanity cemented as the gravitational center of the modern world, humanity secures its certitude as the absolute subject by radiating an anthropocentric arro-gance. But at the same time when “Man is the subjectum, that which lies at the bottom of all beings, that is, in modern terms, at the bottom of all objectification and representation,” man is also “the subjugated subjectivity,” the objectified subject at the mercy of his own “will to instrumental mastery.”

Lynn White Jr. has critiqued the very notion of progress with its intrinsic logic deeply rooted in the Judeo–Christian tradition:

The victory of Christianity over paganism was the

greatest psychic revolution in the history of our culture.

It has become fashionable today to say that, for better

or worse, we live in the ‘post-Christian age.’ Certainly

the forms of our thinking and language have largely

ceased to be Christian, but to my eye the substance

often remains amazingly akin to that of the past. Our

daily habits of action, for example, are dominated

by an implicit faith in perpetual progress which

was unknown either to Greco-Roman antiquity or to

the Orient. It is rooted in, and is indefensible apart

from, Judeo-Christian theology. We continue today

to live, as we have lived for about 1700 years, very

largely in a context of Christian axioms.”10

现代主体以笛卡尔“我思故我在”的宣称首次登上世界历史舞台。笛卡尔将自我意识的主体性

确立为所有再现的绝对基础，进而，正如哈贝马斯 （Jürgen Habermas,) 所论述，存在最终被

整个转变为再现在主体世界中的客体，真理被转变为主观的确定性。现代性在本质上是人类主体

性的再现。

客观科学的自律性，道德和法律的普适性，以及艺术的自主性赋予主体性一种自由，使其能够

和神以及超然的力量分道扬镳。主体性规定了现代文化探寻和实践的范围：在科学的名义下以客

观知识追求真理，在法学的名义下以规范性的正义建立道德秩序，在美学的名义下在反叛传统的

实验中发现美。正如黑格尔写到：“现代世界的原则是主体的自由。”4

现代性的三位一体首先取决于客观知识的有效性，这种客观知识必须能够树立起自我理解

和自我指涉的真理的权威地位。因此科学现代性是政治现代性和文化现代性的前提条件和理论

基础。为了制造真理，科学在对象化的过程中必须如黑格尔所说“不允许任何奇迹的存在：因为大

自然现在只是一个由已知和公认的法则所构成的系统；人类对自然的理解逐渐深入，从而获得自

由。”5

在斯蒂芬·高克罗格（Stephen Gaukroger）看来，“科学逐渐成为所有认知价值的基础，

这是现代欧洲科学文化出现过程中的一大特点。这不仅仅是西方科学实践的一大特点，也是西方

现代性的一大特点：科学认识的角色和目标在根本上同现代性的自我形象联系起来。”6尽管摆脱

外在权威束缚的自由宣言宣告了中世纪神权强加在人身上的奴役的终结，但同时它也切断了自然

和炼金术士之间奥秘的联系，否认自然是神性的象征，将自然视为研究的对象，探索的领域以及可

供开发的资源。

康德在客观知识，道德洞见和审美判断三个领域中确立了理性的地位，以此强化了现代性的

重要逻辑，但同时也为后世人类认识的学科分立和科学探索的分门别类埋下了伏笔。

在理性盛行的时候，哈贝马斯写到：“理性泄漏了自己的真实身份——它既是征服的主体，同

时也是被征服的主体，理性实际上是通向工具统治（instrumental mastery）的意志。”7通向工

具统治的意志在现代化进程中无法避免地将人类导向实用的功利主义。实践理性体现于“资本和

资源流通的形成；生产力的发展和劳动生产率的提高；中央政权的建立和国家身份的形成。”8

通向工具统治的意志渴求工具理性将主体性的实现做为现代性的根本目的，亦即在进步的理

念中实现人类的潜力。在作为守护天使的科学和技术的协助下，通向工具统治的意志迈向了要将

自然的潜力毫无保留地全部发掘出来旅程。“现代技术的目的是解蔽（revealing），这是一个挑

战。这意味着向自然提出不合理的要求，要求它提供可以提取并存储的能源……由此地球被当作

一个采矿区，土地就是矿床，”海德格尔如是说。9

随着人类在现代世界的中心地位日益巩固，以一种人类中心的傲慢，人类强化了自己作为绝

对主体的必然性。“人是一般主体，是所有存在的基础，换言之，用现代术语来讲，人是所有对象

化和再现的基础，”但是与此同时人类也是“被征服的主体性，”是被对象化的主体，屈从于他自

身“通向工具统治的意志”。

小林恩•怀特（Lynn White Jr.）曾就根植于犹太—基督教传统的内在逻辑中的进步观念作出

批判，

“在我们的文化历史中，基督教对异教的胜利是最大的一个精神变革。我们的思维和语言方

式的确已经不再受基督教的影响，但就我看来，其实质和历史常常出现惊人的相似。例如，我们的

日常行为习惯明确地受一种对永恒进步的信仰的支配，这种信仰在古希腊，古罗马和东方国家的

文化中并不存在。这种信仰根植于犹太—基督教神学，并且依赖于它所提供的合法性。在1700多

年之后的今天，我们在很大程度上仍然生活在一个基督教原则主导的语境中。”10

过去150年中前所未有的技术进步显示了现代性的胜利，而一种人类迄今未有过的智能机器，

称为电脑的智能设备的新科学技术的出现，使这种胜利在过去几十年中进一步得到体现。大自然

在此似乎为数字当代（digital now）所固有的抽象力量的蔓延提供了又一个“持存物”（stand-

ing–reserve， 海德格尔语），尽管这也可能是她最后的保留地。如果现代性的特征是模拟拟真

（analog facsimile）的再现，那么数字当代则是随着精确性的呈现而形成，尽管这是一种由不

连续的比特和字节构成的精确性。如果现代性是一个未完成的总体计划，在此中时间和空间只是

3 Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche (New York: HarperOne, 1984), vol. 4, p. 28.

4 G.W.F.Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of

Right (New York: Oxford Univ Press, 1978) p. 286.

5 Hegel, The Philosophy of History (New York, Oxford Univ Press, 1956), p. 440.

7 Jürgen Habemas, The Philosophical

Discourse (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1987), p. 4.

8 Ibid., p. 2.

9 Heidegger, The Question Concerning

Technology (New York: Garland, 1977), p. 14.

18 19延展生命 张尕TRANSLIFE ZHANG GA

局部特征体现，那么数字当代则通过一种当下的时空普适性的变位，并置和全景的到场，释放出

电脑运算总体性（algorithmic totality）以支配世界的潜力。

从现代性的宏大叙事到后现代的分崩离析和数字当代的虚拟物质性的范式转换带来了一种

紧迫的焦虑和不确定感。尽管在社会学，人类学，人种学和女权主义的异议中，以及在“作者的死

亡”和“历史的终结”等宣称中，后结构主义者曾经多次宣判现代主义主体性的死亡，但主体性仍

然阴魂不散。阿诺德·盖伦（Arnold Gehlen）认为：“启蒙运动的前提已不复存在；但它的后果

却挥之不去。”11想要真正祛除现代性的阴魂，只能以生物哲学对主体性进行仔细的检验。

要重新思考主体性，必须重新思考生命的概念。

重新想象生命

在从古至今无数对于生命的理解中，存在着一些共同的核心属性：生命被描绘为活性并有感知能

力和目的性的存在。哲学和神学共同以形而上的方式和超验的论证探讨了生命的本质，但生命似

乎只能通过人类的视界和人类的优越地位去想象，这意味着生命的概念深深根植于拟人的传统。

尤金·萨克简明扼要地评论到：“生命由主体投射到客体中，由自我投射到世界中，由人类投射到

非人类中。”12在亚里士多德阐述生物学原则之前，希波克拉底（Hippocrates）就认为忧郁质，多

血质，胆汁质和黏液质（melancholic, sanguine, choleric, and phlegmatic）四种气质和

一年四季相对应。生命大体上被等同于活性，组织，以及信息。但生命也是一种发明和介入，不仅

仅体现在它的生物属性和亚里士多德式的分类中，也体现于“人类可以命名和建构生命，可以将其

工具化。生命自身就可以成为一种权力的形式……一种政治和生物政治（biopolitical）权力。”13

作为一种突破生物分类学限制的发明，生命进入到一个危险地带，深刻地体现了“一种逐渐出现

的由数学式的准确结合像素和无数眼睛构成的超复杂结构（hyper-complex）所流溢出的生命

形式”，一种对于将生命视为活的主体的干预。14

乔治·冈纪兰姆（Georges Canguilhem）在总结亚里士多德时写道：“生命等同于活性，因

此和物质相区别；生命－灵魂是形式或行为（act)，活的自然躯体是其内容。”15亚里士多德尽管将

植物视为生物学研究的基本对象之一，但他仅仅对动物进行深入的研究。对亚里士多德来说，灵

魂是活物的本质和统摄力量。在他从植物到动物的生命王国中，被赋予灵魂的人类，占据了主导地

位。

生命的概念从亚里士多德古老的生机论开始，经过许多世纪，发展到笛卡尔的机械功能

主义。这期间始终没有出现“生物学”这个概念。直到1802年，让-巴普蒂斯特·拉马克（Jean-

Baptiste Lamarck）在其著作《水文地质学》（Hydrogeology）中才首次提出这个概念。但是

生物学研究从未放弃建立“动物的等级序列，存在的等级链条”的努力，这种分级排序的观念始于

亚里士多德首创的生命研究。

罗伯特·霍克（Robert Hooke）发现了细胞的存在，这使我们对生命的理解不再局限于外

在性和可见性。显微镜分析使生物学研究不再局限于只能用肉眼观看和触摸得到数据，这不可避

免地“将研究的注意力转向将初级个体以及局部的生命形式整合为具有普遍生命形态的有机个

体，”为后来在抽象观念和想象的领域认识生命铺平了道路。16

卡尔·林奈（Carl Linnaeus）将生命作为自然秩序的体现进行研究，布丰（Comte de Buf-

fon）预测了达尔文进化论的到来，随后19世纪的克劳德·伯纳德（Claude Bernard）通过

“内部模式”（internal mold）以及“设计”，“规划”，“指导观念”和“秩序”等比喻，预见了分

子生物化学的到来。冈纪兰姆认为，这些比喻性描绘“的前瞻性在后来出现的核苷酸序列程序编

码这个概念中得到证明。”17

二十世纪的人类已经敏锐地意识到生命定义的多样化。生命是多重的，既可以是生物化

学过程，也可以是社会—政治存在。福柯发现生命是生物权力（biopower）的体现，威尔金斯

（Wilkins）和他的同事揭示了生命可以被理解为一个DNA序列，因此它首先是一种信息。生命不

仅是体内平衡和生物组织，新陈代谢，生长，刺激和应激反应，以及适应和繁殖的堆积，同时它也

是政治和文化，心理学和人类学，编码和解码，变异和畸形，以及信息学和人造体的总和。

The unprecedented technological advances of the past 150 years exhibiting the victory of modernity has been fur-ther manifested, especially in the past four decades, by the emergence of a new type of scientific apparatus that human-ity had never seen before: intelligent machinery, the smart device of computers. Nature seems to offer yet another kind of “standing–reserve,” probably her last hidden terrain, for the proliferation of abstract powers that are inherent in the digital now. If modernity is characterized by the representa-tion of analog facsimile, the digital now comes into being with the presence of precision albeit in discrete bits and bytes. If modernity is an incomplete project of totalization in which time and space are localized specificities, the digital now unleashes the potential of algorithmic totality in world domination by a transposed, juxtaposed, panoramic pres-ence of a spatial-temporal universality in immediacy.

The paradigmatic shift from the grand narrative of modernity to the fragmentation of the postmodern and the virtual-materiality of the digital now propagates an ever-pressing sense of anxiety and uncertainty. Although post-structuralists have placed modernist subjectivity on death row multiple times in sociology and anthropology, in ethnology and feminist dissent, in the declaration of the “death of author” and the announcement of the “end of history,” still the ghost of sub-jectivity lingers on. “The premises of the Enlightenment are dead; only their consequences continues on,”11 commented Arnold Gehlen. Only by taking subjectivity under the scrutiny of biophilosophy, can a true exorcism be performed.

In re-reasoning subjectivity, one must re-reason the very notion of life.

Life Re-imagined

Of the numerous concepts of life handed down from antiq-uity, some core properties are evidently shared in common: life has been portrayed as animate, sentient, and purposeful. Philosophy along with theology have debated the essence of life on metaphysical terms and through transcendental reasoning, yet it appears that life can only be imagined from the purview of the human realm and from the vantage point of human life, implicating its deep roots in the anthro-pomorphic tradition. “Life is projected from subject to object, self to world, and human to nonhuman,” as Eugene Thacker succinctly remarked.12 Before Aristotle articulated the principles of biology, Hippocrates had contemplated the four temperaments of melancholic, sanguine, choleric,

and phlegmatic as corresponding to the four seasons. Life has been largely conceived as animation, as organization, and, finally, as information. However life is also an invention and intervention, not only in its biological properties and Aristotelian classification and categorization, but also in that “Life maybe named, constructed, instrumentalized, it may itself become a form of power . . . a political and biopolitical one.”13 As an invention that goes beyond the constraints of taxonomy it enters a perilous zone of the visceral embodi-ment of “an oozing hyper-complex form of life composed of mathematically grouped dots and a multitude of eyes,” an intervention into the invention of life as the living subject.14

Georges Canguilhem summarized Aristotle, writing, “Life, identified with animation, thus differs from matter; the life-soul is the form, or act, of which the living natural body is the content.”15 Aristotle, although embracing plants and vegetation as part of his biological foundation, made his exclusive investigation on the animal. For Aristotle, the soul was the integrating force and the essence of a living substance. In his empire of living organisms, from the vegetal to the animal, that which was bestowed with soul, i.e. humanity, occupied the predominant position.

The concept of life from the antiquity of Aristotelian vitalism to Descartes’ mechanistic functionalism evolved without the term “biology” for many centuries until 1802 when Jean-Baptiste Lamarck coined the term in his book Hydro-geology. The object of biological studies, however, has never fallen short of establishing a hierarchical series of animals, a chain of being that finds its roots in Aristotle’s inception of the investigation of life.

Robert Hooke’s discovery of cells introduced an idea of life that was beyond the manifest and tangible. Microscopic anatomy transcended an object of biology which was based on data accessible only to sight and touch, inevitably “turn-ing attention towards the problem of integrating elementary individualities and partial life forms into the totalizing indi-viduality of an organism in its general life from,” paving the ground for the subsequent perception of life in the domain of abstraction and imagination.16

After Carl Linnaeus explored life as a manifestation of natural order and Comte de Buffon anticipated the arrival of Darwinian evolution, during in the nineteenth century Claude Bernard foresaw the coming of a macromolecular biochemistry through his metaphor of the “internal mold,” the images of “design,” “plan,” “guiding idea,” and “order.” Such figurative illustrations were later “given retrospec-tive legitimacy by the concept of a program encoded in

10 Lynn Townsend White, Jr, The His-

torical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis, Science, Vol 155 (Number 3767), March 10, 1967, pp. 1203–1207.

11 Jürgen Habemas, The Philosophical

Discourse (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), p. 3.

12 Eugene Thacker, After Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), p. 3.

13 Ibid., p. 5.

14 Ibid., p. 3.

15 Georges Canguilham, edit. François Delaporte, A Vital Rationalist,

Selected Writings From Georges

Canguilhem (New York: Zone Books, 2000), p. 67.

20 21延展生命 张尕TRANSLIFE ZHANG GA

sequences of nucleotides,” as discussed by Canguilhem.17

The twentieth century has come to an acute understanding of the multitudes of definitions of life. Life is many things; it is as biochemical as it is social-political. Foucault revealed life as incarnation of biopower and Wilkins and his colleagues unveiled that when life can be explained as a DNA sequence, it is also primarily information. Life is not only the aggregate of homeo-stasis and organization, of metabolism and growth, of stimuli and reflexive response, of adaptation and reproduction, life is also a congeries of politics and cultures, of psychology and anthropology, of encoding and decoding, of anomalies and monsters, of informatics and artifacts.

Among the drastic expansions of the concept of life, life viewed as information, as messages, programs, and instruc-tions, makes the epistemological turn and introduces an entirely different historical moment in which a living entity is no longer a mere biological phenomenon of natural metabolism, hereditary traits, and regenerative properties, but instead reconfigures life from the soul–form of antiquity and from the bête-machine materiality of modernity to the algorithmic virtual-materiality of the digital now, pronouncing that life not only can be manipulated but also engineered according to design schemes and patterns. That biological life is a thing of the past heralds the dawn of a post-human era.

“Every time a new living entity comes into being, a new substantial form comes with it: for this is a substance, uniquely characterized by its form,”18 Marjorie Grene wrote. Life of another order is swiftly inserting its irrefutable presence through test tubes, genetic modification, in vitro cultures, tissue engineering, and, ultimately, through the form of clones, hybrids, cyborgs and other emergent types of species, sentient machines, and emotive apparatuses. If in the past soul differentiated life from the inanimate, then artificial intelligence traverses the once orderly and regulated chain of being, introducing the inert into the world of the energetic. Muscles don’t have to be only flesh, neuron networks have become primarily associated with the artificial, computer bacteria and viruses are more formidably contagious than those in biology. Objects sud-denly have become subjects with a presence alien to our traditional wisdom and modes of perception.

Sensorium of the Extraordinary

Life through senses comes to its manifestation. The natural order has been taxonomically categorized with

the animate valued higher over the inanimate, animals over

plants, and vertebrates over invertebrates. The soulful homo sapiens was invariably placed on the top of the animal chain of being, with her eyes as the metaphoric window to the soul. Contemporary science has seconded that ancient idea, too: “Whatever self-awareness is, it’s bound up with visual aware-ness, vision occupies a third of our brains’ processing power,”19 said the Princeton psychologist Sabine Kastner. Michel Serres has critically observed that “philosophies of knowledge prefer to use sight and hearing as pointer of reference.”20 For sight and hearing swiftly communicate information through an imprint of shapes and forms, a memento of melodies and harmony. Seeing mandates a detachment, a presum-ably necessary step towards contemplation that knowledge deems indispensible. It is therefore the preferred perceptual state elevated from the potentially unsanitary contact of skin, the unclassifiable palate of taste, and the indescribable permeation of odors. In seeing there is a panorama, the world at large, in hearing there is ubiquity, all encompassing. By privileging vision and sound over other senses, a society of spectacle is guaranteed of its prosperity with a syndicated cultural industry producing endless temptations and arousing objects of desire. Seeing and being seen presuppose distance, hearing and being heard assume proximity. Distance is safety and proximity protection while contact is danger and odor uncertainty. In desiring instead of fulfilling, representation finds its agency. Modernity precipitates in representation. However representation is absence, its authority is signify-ing, entertaining the semiotic convolution of references and registers while the digital now is contemporaneity. It is the phenomenological presence of being-in-the-world, of immer-sion in all sensorial togetherness, of multiplicity in viscosity and engagement. Presence grants the power of experiencing the visceral and the bodily, bringing about the extraordinary that was once muted and suppressed and making tangible the imperceptible, both organic and inorganic, biological and artificial, such as the internet of things comingled with world of humans. Augmented and amplified, the digital now works its technological prowess to revitalize the corporally awkward and to proclaim the latent power of the impalpable. The entire sensorial faculty has been turned into sites of inquiry, social and cultural as well as physiological in artistic manifestation. The aesthetic dimension makes its new debut through the pronunciation of an expanded body space in a mediated social milieu. A recuperated vitalism may once again foray into the debate on life through the ameliorated sensorium of the extraordinary.

Lawrence Malstaf conjures up a transcendent velocity in his work Nemo Conservatorium. A participant takes a seat

在对生命概念的种种扩展中，将生命视为信息，程序和指令的观点促使了认识论的转向，

并标志着一个全新历史阶段的开始。在此新阶段中，生命体不再仅仅是自然的新陈代谢，遗传

特征和再生属性的生物学现象；在经过了灵魂－形式的古典形态和现代的动物－机器（bête-

machine）的物质性之后，人类进而将生命改造为数字当代中电脑运算的虚拟物质性，并宣布他

不仅能操控生命，还能根据设计和样式来营造生命。生物学意义上的生命已成为过去这个事实预

示着一个后人类（post-human）时代的带来。

马乔里·格林（Marjorie Grene）认为：“和每次新的生命体诞生相伴而来的是一种新的物

质形式的出现：因为这是一种由其特殊形式而规定的物质。”18另一种生命秩序正通过一系列表现

形式证明自己不容否认的存在。这些表现形式包括试管，基因改造，离体培养（in vitro culture）

，组织改造，以及克隆，杂交，生化人（cyborg）和其他新物种，情感机器和感情设备。如果说在

过去灵魂将生命体和无生命体作区分，那么人工智能则将这种曾经井井有条的存在秩序打乱，将

无生命体引进有生命体的世界中。肌肤不单纯是肉体，神经网络总是和人造网络联系在一起，电

脑细菌和病毒比生物意义上的病毒传播得更快。 客体突然以一种陌生于我们传统思维和认知方

式出现，变成了主体。

惊异之感

生命通过感知而显现。

在人类对自然的分类中，生命体的价值被视为高于无生命体，动物的价值高于植物，脊椎动

物的价值高于无脊髓生物。有灵魂的智人（homo sapiens）被置于动物存在等级秩序的顶端，

她的眼睛好比是心灵的窗户，这种古老的观点在当代科学中也得到佐证。普林斯顿大学心理学家

萨宾·卡斯特纳（Sabine Kastner）说到：“自我意识和视觉意识紧密相联。大脑三分之一的处

理能力都用在视觉上。”19。米歇尔·塞尔（Michel Serres）批判地写道“知识哲学倾向于将视觉

和听觉作为参考标准”。20因为借助对形状与形式的印象以及对旋律与和声的回忆，视觉和听觉

能够迅速地捕获信息。视觉要求一种超然，这或许是通向沉思的步骤，而沉思又是知识产生的必

要条件。因此，视觉作为一种知觉的地位而上升，高于有可能传播细菌的皮肤接触，无法归类的

味觉以及难以描述的嗅觉。视觉形成一种全景的概观和世界的整体图景，听觉形成一种普遍的

存在和整体的环绕。赋予视觉和听觉更高的地位是为了确保景观社会（society of spectacle）

的繁荣，文化辛迪加为这种社会提供无穷无尽的诱惑和唤起欲望的对象。观看和被观看两者之

间需要距离，倾听和发声两者间需要周边。距离带来安全，周边带来保护，而接触则带来危险，气

味产生不确定。再现在欲求而非满足中发现了它的媒介。现代性在再现中成型。但是再现是一种

不在场，再现的权威来自指涉， 游戏于所指的拐弯抹角的符号意义，而数字当代则体现其现时性

（contemporaneity）。数字当代是沉浸于总体感觉中，具有多重介入和胶合的的此在（being-

in-the-world）之现象学的现身。这种现身使我们能够肌腑般地体验身体，将一度被消弱和压抑

的惊异之感展现出来，将曾经不易察觉之物彰显出来，无论它们是有机体还是无机物，是生物体

还是人造物，比如与人类世界混杂的物联网（internet of things）。经由强化和放大，数字当代以

其技术的娴熟赋予尴尬的肉体以新的活力，显露出不可名状之物的潜在力量。社会，文化及生理

的整个感知范围以艺术的展现，被列入探索的领域。审美的维度通过在媒介社会氛围中拓展了的

身体空间重新登场。借助惊异之感， 一个复元了的活力论，或许将再一次介入对生命的探讨。

劳伦斯·马斯塔夫（Lawrence Malstaf）在他的《正在现场转播节目的艺术学校》（Nemo

Observatorium）中营造出超然的力度。参观众坐在装置中心的座位上，一阵狂风将塑料泡沫

颗粒卷起，并逐渐增强为剧烈的风暴。而旋风的风眼则是一片祥和安宁。观众产生一种超现实的

感觉，被这种雕塑般的稳定和心理上的震撼所感染和折服。在《重力细胞》（Gravicells），身体

因引力下沉且又向上反弹。遵循阻力的反作用力的奇异的工作原理，三上晴子与市川创太（Seiko

Mikami and Sota Ichikawa）揭示了一种既矛盾又一致的全新体验。在黑暗中知觉变得更加灵

敏。克利斯·索特（Chris Salter）进入潜意识的阈限状态，在此状态中，极小的知觉差异被调动起

来，并体现为一种惊人的微妙性。 《最小可觉差》（Just Noticeable Difference）不仅展现了

16 Ibid., p. 85.

17 Ibid., p. 213.

18 Marijorie Grene, David Depew, The Philosophy of Biology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 47.

19 http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S19/67/00A87/ index.xml

20 Michel Serres, The Five Senses

(London: Continuum, 2008), p. 169.

22 23延展生命 张尕TRANSLIFE ZHANG GA

and in no time a whirlwind simulated by styrofoam beads starts to gather force and soon escalates to a full stormy blast. In the center of this fierce vortex of wind there is peace and tranquility. An otherworldly sensation penetrates and seduces a participant with sculptural solidity and psycho-logical intensity. A body is sinking into the gravitational pull and bouncing upward, submitting to the counterforce of resistance in the uncanny working of Gravicells. Seiko Mikami and Sota Ichikawa unveil an entirely new bodily sensation that is at once contradictory and reconciliatory. In darkness perception heightens its alertness. Chris Salter ventures into a subconscious liminal state in which minute sensorial dif-ferences are mobilized to come forth with startling subtle-ness. Just Noticeable Difference is not only a work about the highly sensitive capacity for seeing and hearing, but even more about feeling and touching, with all senses working together wonderfully albeit off the beaten track of the norm, trespassing the realm of the ordinary. To unveil the invisible and imperceptible excites the fantasies of artists. Wu Juehui wants to see how cerebral power might manifest itself in a literal way. He works with Zhang Dan, a neural engineer, to fabricate Brain Station. Donning a translucent helmet, a participant’s fantasies, anxieties and confusions along with her wits, peace and logicality will shine through like a giant light bulb in tandem with the pulsating of brain activity. While Wu’s brain lights up, the gamut of sounding fish in Scale resonates with human caressing. Electrostatic forces are usually too ubiquitous to catch our attention. Zane Berzina and Jackson Tan have a particular interest in re-sensitizing bodily stasis. In E-Static Shadows users discover their electromagnetic halo and relationship with things around them in a transient audiovisual tactility, with once silent things becoming vivid and present. As much as invisible electrostatic is made visible, skin is an even better inducer that can fire up affection and plunge one into an intimate transaction. In touching and feeling others, the Scenocosme duo lights up a sensual solace and clinks a melody adrift. Edwin van der Heide’s neuron network–inspired structure sparks and claps as it senses the radio frequency of people’s movements. The network probes and feels as if acquiring a reciprocal exchange with men and women shuttling beneath an erected gridded pane, or a plane of sentient thingness. As Wang Yuyang’s metaphysical moon radiates, Marnix de Nijs woos one with ephemeral fame for a generous Warholian fifteen minutes. While Carsten Nicolai radicalizes one’s sense of space, disturbing the borderline between subjective perception and objective observation, Lee-Yong Baek marks

the illusion in his unassuming reflection of the Mirror image. Silvio Vujicic’s suspended cloud provokes wonder while Laurent Grasso mysteriously conspires a pervasive pollen sphere, reckoning an apparitional remoteness, a menacing signal of the world to come.

We must first expanding our conception of the body, the senses with which the body perceives itself, and the spheres wherein the senses of things coalesce with that of the body, by flattening the demarcations of species, genus, family, order, class, and phylum in favor of community of co-mingling in order to re-imagine the concept of life.

Sublime of the Liminal

Humans, kettles, cows, oranges, trees, electrons, phenomena, algorithms, the natural and the unnatural, relations, actions, interactions, suddenly the discrete, the irrelevant, the conscious and the unconscious all become what Edmund Husserl might have deemed intentional objects, what Latour may term actors. They form a new “parliament of things” from which cosmopoli-tics may start to debate the concept of life.

A renegotiation of the concept of life and a reordering of the taxonomy of nature may well begin with the imprudence of artists’ imaginations, in the intrepid spirit of unbridled naivety by irritating the elegancy of reason and offending the supremacy of subjectivity. For the saving grace, as Heidegger says, comes from impending danger. The dangerous pleasure of trespassing the normative, the ordinary, the safe, and the protected; the exhilarating predicament of deviating into the absurd, of treading upon the perilous waters of the unknown, of surpassing the biological limits to interweave the disparate and the irrelevant into a new tapestry of the animate together with the inanimate, animals and plants; to stitch anew the organic and inorganic, innate and synthetic, digital and analog; this is the liminal state in which a becoming is leaping forward, a threshold over which the new horizon surfaces. If life is an autopoietic system of self-constructing, self-maintaining, energy–transducing autocatalytic enti-ties, then what one might consider life in the digital now has gone far beyond that which is constituted by amino and nucleid acids, lipids and sugars, or the soulful species that has lingered from the dawn of knowing. Life today is a multitude of possibilities as John von Neumann noted, “Life is a process which can be abstracted away from any particular medium.” Life must not be only as we know it but

视觉和听觉的高度敏感性，更体现了感觉和触觉的作用，使所有感官完满运作，尽管其表现逾越

了常规和惯例。 艺术家也将想象力用于揭示看不见的和感觉不到的。吴珏辉试图将大脑的能量

直接呈现出来。他和神经工程师张丹一起制作了《脑电站》（Brain Station）这件作品。参与者带

上一个半透明头盔，这个头盔能够将他的想象，焦虑和疑惑，以及心智，平静和逻辑等大脑活动

以可见的形式呈现出来，就像一个大脑脉冲控制的巨型灯泡。在吴珏珲点亮大脑的同时，《音阶》

（Scale）中由12条电鱼组成的“和声团”随着参观众的抚摸而共鸣。静电通常不会引起我们的注

意。赞恩·伯兹那（Zane Berzina）和杰克逊·唐（Jackson Tan）关注于打破身体的沉寂状态，

重新启动其敏感。在《静电动影》（E-Static Shadows）中，观众能够看到身上的静电产生的电磁

光晕，在转瞬即逝的视听感觉中体会和周围环境的关系，将之前不可见的物质生动地呈现出来。在

《静电动影》中，皮肤使不可见的静电显现出来，而在Scenocosme 二人小组的作品中，肌肤的

接触更诱发喜爱之情，使人亲密交流。《灯光触摸》（Light Contact)使参与者的相互接触产生感

官的慰籍，并带来悠扬的旋律。埃德温·凡德海德（Edwin van der Heide）的《延展的火花网》

(Evolving Spark Network)受神经网络结构的启发，能够感应人活动产生的无线电频率，并相应

地发出闪光和噼啪声。作品具有网状平面结构，置于展览空间上方，它不停地探测并感知下方观众

的活动，好像在不停地对他们发出相互交流的邀请，因此也可称之为有感知能力的平面。王郁阳

制作的超自然月亮发出耀眼光芒，马尼克斯·德·奈思（Marnix de Nijs）为参观众提供沃霍尔式

的15分钟短暂名声，以吸引观众的参与。卡斯顿·尼克莱（Carsten Nicolai）强化了人们的空间感

受，从而废弃了主观感知和客观观察的界限，李庸白（Lee-Yong Baek）的《镜子》（Mirror) 以一

种幻觉打破了镜面反射的常规。斯威沃·乌基斯克（Silvio Vujičić）作品中悬浮的云让观众充满好

奇，劳伦特·格拉索（Laurent Grasso）在作品中用神秘的方式招来弥漫的花粉云，召唤出一种幽

灵般的遥远，一种即将到来的世界的不祥之兆。

我们必须首先扩展身体的概念，身体感知自身的知觉，以及物体和身体的感觉相融合的氛

围。我们需消除种，属，科，目，纲，门等生物分类概念的区分，提倡一种混合的生态群，以便重新

设想生命的定义。

临界之境

人，水壶，牛，橙子，树，电子，现象，电脑运算，自然和非自然的，关系，行为，活动。突然间，分离

的，不相关的，有意识的和无意识的，全部都可能变成埃德蒙德·胡塞尔（Edmund Husserl）所

谓的意向对象（intentional object）和拉图尔所谓的行为者（actor）。他们形成新的“物的议

会”（parliament of things），进而为世界主义政治（cosmopolitics) 就生命概念展开辩论创

造可能。

与生命概念的重新谈判和对自然分类学的重新定义不妨由艺术家的鲁莽开始。因为他们富于

想象，不受成见的约束，他们以无畏的幼稚激怒优雅的理性，冒犯主体的无上权威。因为正如海德

格尔所言，救赎来自即将到来的危险。对于规范，平凡，安全和受保护的领域的侵入带来危险的乐

趣；背离常规进入荒谬，游弋于未知的危险水域，超越生物学的限制，将生命体和无生命体，以及

动物和植物等分离和无关的因素编织成新的存在，这些所为让人兴奋；将有机物和无机物，天然

物和合成物，数字和模拟重组到一起；这是一种临界状态，存在的生成在此跃跃欲试。超越这个

临界状态我们将来到一个新的世界。如果生命是由自我建构，自我维持，能量转换和自我催化的

实体所构成的自创系统，那么在数字当代中人类对生命的观念就远远超出由氨基，核酸，脂质和

糖类所构成的存在，超出自知识形成以来就一直存有的灵魂生物。今天的生命是各种可能性的集

合，正如约翰·冯·纽曼（John von Neumann）所言，“生命是一种可以从任何特定的媒介中抽

取出来的过程。”生命并非必须以我们所知的形式存在；生命也可以是“可能的生命”（life-as-it-

might-be）或可能的过程（process-as-it-could-be），其显现可以是对我们所继承的将生命归

结为体内平衡，组织，新陈代谢，成长，适应，繁殖和刺激等因素的集合的生物学传统的模拟或重

构。生命不再仅仅是一种遗传性物质，而是植入电路的老鼠大脑，没有器官的身体，培养菌中呼吸

的柔软物质（breathing blobs in culture），细胞培养皿，电路板，晶体管，泵和阀门，以及置入

24 25延展生命 张尕TRANSLIFE ZHANG GA

also “life-as-it-might-be” or process-as-it-could-be, whose epiphany can be simulation or reconfiguration of what we have inherited in the biological tradition that attributes life to the aggregate of homeostasis, organization, metabolism, growth, adaptation, reproduction, and stimuli. Life is not any-more a mere hereditary substance, but hybrids of rat brains with power grids, bodies without organs, breathing blobs in culture, cellular dishes, circuit boards, transistors, pumps and valves, genes planted in soil. Life is not only guided by soul and intelligence, by also operated by algorithms and “if then” clauses. A life of multitudes is the new subjectum of the digital present, free from the hubris of representation. It is the presencing of that which emerges vividly without origin in either culture or nature, free from anthropomorphic mimesis and anthropocentric ostracism.

Silent Barrage is a mini manifesto of hybridity that fore-grounds a symbiotic future in which scientists and artists, technicians and designers conjoin to create a post-Cartesian bête-machine of sentience and intelligence, a future in which the animal soul may be on equal par with that of the human, going beyond the symbolism that art normally assumes. In Breathing, Guto Nobrega reveals evidence of a new life form conjured through a living plant and an artificial system in which an exchange of energy by breathing brings the hybrid to life. Artificial intelligence makes its assertive presence in the digital now. “How many robots have you killed today?” asked a recent poster seen across New York City perhaps signals a growing awareness of the inevitability of a future scenario in which an ethics of the post-human condition will be debated. As Performative Ecologies unfolds a dance ses-sion in which the sensibly socializing robots greet and probe an audience, attempting a convivial dialogue, the Fish-Bird Series strives for an untenable rendezvous of cross-species love affair, but tenderness awards the communication of the impossible.

Leo Peschta’s Tetrahedrom is a smart thing that maneu-vers in space on its own terms while Bit.Flow and Cloud Data enliven information as the indisputable driving force of entropy and equilibrium. If the digital now has acquired its vivid livelihood ambiguously through the clinking of servos and actuators by way of numerous codes and equations, such as Herwig Weiser’s liquid computer working as the embodiment of “chemicals that under normal circumstances are immiscible combine and separate again” rendering synthesiatic spectacles, then Bernie Lubell’s old fashioned computation forbids logical boards and sensors, a retrieval of pre-modern logic for the reworking of post-modernity. In

order for the “parliament of things” to cooperate and oper-ate, the fortification that divides the subjects and objects, organic and inorganic, biological and artificial must first be leveled or thrust open. A comingling of species, the planti-mal, plant and animal glued and synthesized into an “Edunia” is Eduardo Kac transplanted with a petunia, which testifies to a Frankensteinian beauty, not of alchemistic fantasy but of laboratory validity. “Hybridomas, bioreactor, taxi-dermy and preserved specimens, cryogenic vials,” are the materials of NoArk. The elements with which Oron Catts and his SymbioticA cohorts traverse the expanse of natural life and the solitude of lab life, adding their in-vitro cultured emergent “species” to the taxonomy of natural history. They engineer new tissues and cells of unidentifiable sorts, fabricate sub-life forms and mix the organic with the artifi-cially modified. If Noah’s ark was a pre-Aristotelian count of life in its divine order, perhaps NoArk suggests a new pos-sibility of classification in which each living thing whether it is naturally born or unnaturally made will have a place in the book of life. Planet earth is the cradle of life in Terika’s landscape paintings of authentic soil and trees with sunrise and sunset in quotidian circadian rhythms that reverber-ate with the order of nature, although perhaps a nature in perpetual danger of exhausting its reserves. For seeking a new habitat in outer space, Andy Gracie ventures into an astrobiological terrain of polyextremophiles, making experi-ments in which humans and tardigrades may blend their attributes together for an extratellurian new home, while Gilberto Esparza invents an environment-rescuer Nomadic

Plant that is as much a life form in its own right as an alarm-ing embodiment within the zone of impending.

Zone of the Impending

“The concern for the environment begins at the moment when there is no more environment,” Latour pointedly wrote.21 The environmental crisis is a crisis of subjectiv-ity and of modernity. Serres stated, “Modernity neglects, speaking in absolute terms, it cannot and will not think or act towards the global, whether temporal or spatial.”22 Latour’s revelation and Serres’ claim are reproaches to the loss of a global vision eclipsed by cultural conflicts and social struggles which have been perpetuated by the linguistic contention of the last several decades. At the critical moment when our ecological footprint on the biosphere has turned the zone of

泥土中的基因等元素的混合体。生命不仅受灵魂和理性的支配，也受电脑运算法则和程序语句的

驱动。生命的多样化是数字当代中新的主体基础，它摆脱了再现（representation）的傲慢。它是

一种既不源自文化也不源自自然的生动显现，摆脱了拟人的摹仿，摒弃了人类中心论的排他性。

作为一份关于杂交的袖珍宣言，《无声攻击》（Silent Barrage）预示了一种共生的未来，在此

未来中，科学家和艺术家，技术人员和设计师携手合作，创造出一种后笛卡尔式的，具有知觉和智

力的动物机器。在此未来中，动物和人类的灵魂或许具有相同的地位，跨越了艺术惯常的象征性。

在《呼吸》（Breathing）中，古托·诺布莱嘉（Guto Nobrega）证明了由植物和人工系统结合

而成的混合的新生命形式的存在。其生命来自呼吸带来的能量交换。人工智能在数字当代毋庸置

疑。纽约最近到处张贴的一张海报上这样问道：“今天你杀死了多少机器人？”这似乎预见了一种

对无法回避的未来情景的逐渐的认知，在这样的未来中，人们将就后人类状况的道德问题展开辩

论。《表演的生态》（Performative Ecologies）展现一个舞蹈的场景。敏锐的社交机器人向观

众致意并尝试和他们友好地交流。《鱼与鸟系列》（Fish-BirdSeries）力图为不可企及的跨物种的

爱情制造一场约会，只有观众温柔的介入才能使鱼和鸟之间的交流成为可能。

尼奥·佩斯塔（Leo Peschta）的四面体是一个聪明的物件，按照自身的规则，在空间中进行

自我调整，而《点·动》（Bit.Flow）和《云数据》（Cloud Data）这两件作品则生动地表明信息

是内爆和均衡的无可非议的动力。如果说借由无数代码和程式，通过伺服系统和传动器的叮当

声响，数字当代暧昧地获得了一种栩栩如生的体现，就像赫维希·威瑟（Herwig Weiser）的液

体计算机，展现了“在一般情况下不会融合的化学品结合而又离析”，构造了联觉的景观，那么伯

尼·卢贝尔（Bernie Lubell）则拒绝使用任何电脑主板或传感器，而以老式的计算方式，以前现代

的逻辑来修正后现代的运作。为了“物的议会”能顺利合作和运行，我们必须首先消除主体和客

体，有机物和非有机物，生物和人造物之间的壁垒。爱德华多·卡克（Eduardo Kac）实现了不同

物种的融合，将植物和动物结合在一起而形成植动融合体（plantimal），他将这个新物种命名

为“Edunia”，这颗矮牵牛花被植入了艺术家的基因，实现了一种弗兰肯斯泰因式（Frankenstei-

nian）的美丽。这并非炼金术士的幻想，而有实验室的佐证。“杂交瘤细胞，生物反应器，动物标

本和低温瓶”是《无方舟》（NoArk）的素材。奥隆·卡茨（Oron Catts） 和他的 SymbioticA团

队横跨从广博的自然生命到孤独的实验室生物的生物谱系，将上述元素通过离体培养的方式结合

到新“物种”中，并将其纳入自然历史的分类体系。 他们制造了无法归类的新组织和新细胞，创

立了亚生命形式，将有机物和人工改造的组织融合起来。 如果挪亚方舟是前苏格拉底时代以神

之次序来点数生命的话，那么《无方舟》（NoArk）则隐射了一种新的生命分类可能。在这样的分

类下，无论是自然产生，还是非自然生产的生命样式都将会在生命之书中找到自己的位置。在哈泊

雅（ Terike Haapoja ）的风景画中，地球是生命的摇篮。作品由真正的泥土和植物构成，其中日

出和日落遵循昼夜循环的节奏，和大自然的秩序相回应，尽管这个大自然可能正面临资源耗尽的

危险。为了在外太空寻找新的居住地，安迪·格雷西（Andy Gracie）进入天体生物学中极端微生

物（polyextremophiles）的研究领域，尝试将人类和缓步类微生物（tardigrades）的特性混合

起来，以便适应外星球之新家园的环境，而吉尔伯托·埃斯帕扎（Gilberto Esparza）的《游牧植

物》（Nomadic Plant）是一个环境营救者，它自身既是一种生命形式，同时也是悬迫之域中警

示的存在。

悬迫之域

“对环境的关注始于环境已经被破坏殆尽之时，”拉图尔辛辣地指出。21环境危机是主体性和现

代性的危机。赛瑞斯宣称：“现代性是短视的，说得绝对一点，它在思考或行动中不能也不愿从全

局着眼，不管是时间的全局还是空间全局。”22拉图尔的启示和赛瑞斯的论断是对丧失全球视野

的责难。过去几十年的语义争论所维系的文化冲突和社会斗争遮蔽了这种视野。我们面临着一个

危急的时刻，我们在生物圈中造成的破坏已经将生命之域变成悬迫之域，必须重启自然政治（a

politics of nature），以便将地球上所有成员都纳入讨论中；必须改变文化批评的语汇，使之能

够适应来源各异的事物和所有物种的主体。必须设想一种元政治（meta-politics）以构筑自然政

26 27延展生命 张尕TRANSLIFE ZHANG GA

life into a zone of impending danger, a politics of nature must be reactivated to incorporate into the discussion about all actors on planet earth, and cultural criticism must be reworked to modify its vocabulary to include things of various origins, subjects of all species. It is a meta-politics that must be imagined to articulate the politics of nature which is capable of regulating the proliferation of the human subject taking its toll on the natural object, of leveling the dichotomy between culture versus nature, of constituting a new collective that sees to the benefits of all and warranting the full expression of human and nonhuman, of subverting the comfortable postulates of the cultural praxis which privileges local over the global, singularity over multiplicity, identity over difference, representation over presentation, discipline over interdiscipline and the lingering apparition of the principle of subjectivity. In facing up to the impending danger, the calamity that is looming near, Serres calls for a reconciliation, a truce must be staged, and a natural contract must be made to “add to the exclusively social contract, a natural contract of symbiosis and reciprocity in which our relationship to things would set aside mastery and possession in favor of admiring attention, reciprocity, contem-plation, and respect.”23 If the “end of the nature” purports to an historical era in which nature is on the verge of bankruptcy owing to humanity’s over-borrowing, at the same time, it also signifies a moment in which the concept of nature will need to be rethought as much as the concept of life must be re-imag-ined. What tradition perceives of as nature is supplemented and augmented by the proliferation of “unnatural” beings in the sublime of the liminal, and by the ubiquitous synthetic phe-nomena in the sensorium of the extraordinary, and that “end of nature is also the end of a certain type of scientific certainty about nature,”24 as Latour told us. Artists may be eloquent discussants in the environmental crisis and prolific activists in the plight of the end of nature.

In Nuage Vert, the spectacle of society once again marks its striking presence. But the artist collective Hehe has turned awe and admiration into a site of admonition, of inimitable evidence of the guilt of consumer society. Li Hui tackles the issue of overconsumption with a whim that lends its mathematic probability. His theorem postulates that future human beings shall grow shorter in the hopes of reducing their consumption of resources. Andy Gracie mocks the superfluity of technology by re-appropriating a simple and effective agricultural technique found in east asian traditions into an unnecessarily complex scientific laboratory while Greg Niemeyer and Chris Chafe illuminate the concentration of carbon dioxide by playfully engaging

people in a sonified ripening process titled Tomato Quintet, a heuristic way to educate participants about ozone depletion. Diane Landry contemplates ever dwindling water resources by invoking a sharp contrast between humanity’s deplor-ably myopic attitudes towards nature with the eternity of cosmic time. An enchanted forest of a hybrid of computers and plants demonstrates its liveliness in Jane Tingley’s Plant

(iPod), a sort of conviviality in the new ecology of comingling is taking shape. While these artists exhibit art’s symbolic power in mobilizing social awareness and advancing critical propositions, others take to action their concerns by real intervention and pragmatic strategies. Ursula Damm designs a Greenhouse Converter that is an aquatic ecosystem to foster the conversion of carbon dioxide into oxygen while In Farm Fountain the artist duo Ken Renaldo and Amy Youngs build not only a sculpture but also an aquaponic mini-world replete with vegetables and fishes as provisions. Re:farm

Beijing enlists urban farmers to carve the interstices of urban land for healthy and fresh mini agricultural experi-ments. As Ines Krasic seeks to generate alternative energy through the chimes of Banana Poetry, Oron Catts’ Autotroph demonstrates its engineering prowess as a solar energy apparatus and sculptural elegancy in its formal integrity.

Weather Tunnel is a medley of manifestations of real-time global environmental conditions. Instead of a didactic, proselytizing representation, this collection of works by many young artists acts as a presentation of immediate and intuitive revealing of complex and otherwise incomprehen-sible scientific data, making a wide audience aware of the living conditions humanity faces. It collapses multiple worlds and time zones into a single plane and flat time.

TransLife

By re-sensitizing the imperceptible and by disintegrating the hierarchy of corporal division and the stratification of sensorial faculties, proposing a synchronism of senses, we may be able to overcome the cognitive segmentation of intellect and epistemological compartmentalization of knowledge that characterize the logic of modernity in favor of a holistic, unprivileged redistribution of the property of the body and the expanded perceptual space brought to light through technological augmentation and multiplication. By first being informed of the equality of bodily assemblages through their unimpaired embodiment, we may come to

治，后者能够调节人类主体对自然客体带来的损害，消解文化和自然间的对立；能够建立一种顾及

所有物种利益，并能保证人类和非人类都能发出各自的声音的新集体；能够祛除主体性原则的不

散阴魂，并颠覆文化实践的基本原则，这种原则重局部而轻整体，重独特轻多样，重身份轻差异，

重再现轻呈现，重学科内研究轻跨学科研究。为了面对悬迫的危险和逼近的灾难，赛瑞斯呼吁达

成和解，签署一份休战协议，草拟一份自然契约，“将其添加到社会契约中。这种自然契约是基于

共生和互惠的原则，在此原则下，我们对万物的关系不再是控制和占有，而是赞赏，互惠，沉思和

尊重。”23如果“自然的终结”意指一个特定的历史时期，在此间自然由于人类的过渡索取而濒临

毁灭，那么与此同时它也意指一个历史时刻，在此刻人类正如需要重新思考生命的概念那样，重

新思考自然的概念。随着临界之境中“非自然”存在的增加和惊异之感中合成现象的无处不在，传

统上被视为自然的对象被增补和扩大。拉图尔告诉我们，“自然的终结也是一种针对自然的特定

科学必然性的终结。”24艺术家可以在环境危机中充当雄辩的讨论者，在自然终结的困境中充当富

有成效的活动家。

社会景观在《绿云》（Nuage Vert）中以叹为观止的景象再次亮相。但艺术家组合Hehe将

敬畏和仰慕转化为一个告诫的场所，一个关于消费社会无可推卸的罪证的所在。艺术家李晖则以

一个具有数学可能性的奇思妙想探讨了过渡消费的问题。他的公式是，未来的人类应该变的矮小

以便减少资源的消耗。安迪·格雷西（Andy Gracie)通过对一种简单有效的东南亚传统农耕技

术进行艺术置换，将其转化到亢烦复杂的科学实验室来嘲讽技术的过剩。格雷格·尼迈耶（Greg

Niemeyer）和克利斯·谢夫（Chris Chafe）在《西红柿五重奏》（Tomato Quintet）中显示了二

氧化碳的浓缩，有趣地使观众参与到西红柿成熟的音响化过程中，以富于启示的方式使观众意识

到臭氧损耗的问题。戴安·兰德里（Diane Landry）将人们对大自然可悲的短视态度和宇宙时间

的永恒性尖锐地对比起来，进而反思水资源日益减少的现象。简·廷利（Jane Tingley）在《植物

（Ipod）》（Plant (iPod)）中使用计算机和植物构造了一个迷人的森林，生动而逼真，显示了一

种新的混合生态正在形成。这些艺术家在他们的作品中展示了艺术在唤醒社会意识和推进批判

立场方面的象征力量，而其他艺术家则以真正的介入和具体策略将其计划付诸实践。厄休拉·达姆

（Ursula Damm）设计了一个《温室转换器》（Greenhouse Converter），这是一个促使二氧

化碳转化为氧气的水生态系统。肯· 罗纳尔多（Ken Renaldo）和艾米·杨斯（Amy Youngs）组

成的艺术家二人组创作的《农场之泉》（Farm Fountain）不仅是一件雕塑作品，也是一个由植物

和鱼类构成的微型的水产农业复合养殖（aquaponic）群落。英尼斯·克拉斯克（Ines Krasic）

寻求在《香蕉之诗》（Banana Poetry）的旋律中找到一种替代能源，而奥隆·卡茨的《自养体》

（Autotroph）既是一件制作精良的太阳能设备，也是一件形式完美的典雅雕塑。

《天气隧道》（Weather Tunnel）呈现了全球环境的实时数据。这一组由众多年轻艺术家创

作的作品摈弃了说教和劝诫的再现手法，将不易理解的复杂的科学数据以一种即刻并直觉的方式

呈现出来,提供了一个人类生存环境的缩影，把对我们赖以生存的地球的关注纳入到展览中一个突

出的位置。

延展生命

通过激活难以察觉的感知，瓦解身体各部分及其感官的等级差异，从而实现所有感觉的同步，我

们有可能克服以理智的认知分割和知识的认识论隔阂为代表的现代性的典型逻辑，代之于经由

技术的力量所显明的身体新属性和扩展的知觉空间的整体和公平的再分配。只有在首先认识到身

体各部分的平等并予以完整的体现，我们才能够将生命重新设想为一种拥抱人类和非人类，自然

物和人造物的民主的多样性，从而建立一种共生关系，使我们能够超越以人类中心为主体的现代

性。 现代性的傲慢已使地球家园变成悬迫之域。

“延展生命”是要超越肉体的局限，延展它的潜力，消除活体和非活体的界限，以促使新生命

形态的出现，呼唤“一种对其他物种和其他代理（agency）的关注。艺术，哲学，生态学，行动主

义和政治由此再次交换它们的内容，重新定义政治参与的角色，目标，论坛和情感。”25“延展生

命”针对地缘政治的局限性提出全球化的元政治主张，将政治议题延伸到对臭氧层和电离层的讨

21 Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 58.

22 Michel Serres, The Natural Contract (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), p. 4.

28 29延展生命 张尕TRANSLIFE ZHANG GA

re-imagine life as a democratic multiplicity that embraces the human as well as the nonhuman, the natural as well as the artificial, we may establish a symbiosis that allows us to transcend the anthropocentric modernity of subjectivity which in its arrogance has rendered the earth’s habitat a zone of impending danger.

TransLife goes beyond the limits of corporality to an extended potential, to deterritorialize the boundary between the living and the nonliving in order for possible new forms of life to emerge, calling for “a new attention to other species and other types of agencies. Here, art, philosophy, ecology, activ-ism, and politics exchange their repertoire in order to redefine the actors, the aims, the forums and the emotions of political involvement;”25 TransLife proposes an alternative to the limita-tions of geopolitics, for a metapolitics of the global in which dis-cussions about ozone layers and the ionosphere may extend the debate of policies into earthly remedies and planetary health while at the same time taking issue with the scientific superla-tive and technological triumph brought about by the reason of modernity. TransLife envisions a new humanism of cosmo-con-sciousness with the biophilosophy of the twenty-first century as its ontology, politics of nature as its moral authority and direct engagement as its non-representative aesthetic manifestation. In this new “parliament of things,” as Latour advocates, the old political regime of domination, inequalities, power struggles, elections, and revolutions may give way to a cohabitation of species, justice for diversity, shared responsibility of humanity and the nonhuman, and the constitution of a new parliamentary order through negotiation and reformation.

Zhang Ga is a media art curator, Professor of Information Art

at Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University (Beijing),

and Associate Professor of Media Design at the School of Art,

Media and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design (New

York). Among his many curatorial projects, he is Artistic Director

/ Curator for both Synthetic Times: Media Art China 2008 and

Translife: Media Art China 2011, two major international triennials

organized by the National Art Museum of China. He has spoken

and written widely on media art and culture. He also holds appoint-

ments as director of TASML | Tsinghua University Art and Science

Center Media Lab and Visiting Scientist at the MIT Media Lab.

论，将政策的制定延伸到地球的救治以及星际的健康之中，同时，也对由现代理性所衍生的科学

至上和技术胜利提出质疑。“延展生命”展望了一种以二十一世纪的生物哲学为其本体论，以自然

政治为其道德权威，以直接介入为其非再现美学表述的愿景。正如拉图尔所倡导的，在这个新的

“物的议会”中，征服，不平等，权力斗争，选举和革命等旧有的政治现象将让位于物种的共栖，多

样性的正义，人类和非人类的共同责任，以及通过谈判和改革而构建的新的议会秩序。

翻译：梁舒涵

张尕是媒体艺术策展人，清华大学美术学院信息艺术系教授（北京），帕森斯设计学院媒体设计副教授（纽

约）。在他策划的众多展览中， 包括由他担任艺术总监和策展人，中国美术馆主办的大型国际媒体艺术3年

展“合成时代：媒体中国2008”以及“延展生命：媒体中国2011”等。 他编辑撰写并发表了有关媒体艺术及

文化的许多文章和演讲。张尕也是清华大学艺术与科学中心媒体实验室主任， 麻省理工学院媒体实验室访

问科学家。

23 Ibid., p. 38.

24 Latour, Politics of Nature, p. 63.

25 http://e-flux.com/journal/view/217.