偏航 · 探痙
OFF COURSE

蔡海如

​Hai-Ru Tsai

這件錄像作品，是蔡海如首度正式以政治受難者女兒身分，所進行的藝術創作。她以製作綠島新生訓導處時期集中營的擬真蠟像，所使用的無頭人形模具空殼，作為政治受難者父親的化身。她將人形模具空殼清理乾淨之後，帶著這個父親的化身，造訪（對父親而言是重返）想像中父親當年被囚行經的路徑。對藝術家本人而言，這些舉動只是「想把父親搬回來」的徒勞無功，然而，清洗的動作卻隱含著幽微而曖昧的多重意涵。清洗的動作來自於不潔的設想，「不潔」可能起因於藝術家所言「宛如擦拭年邁的身軀般清理乾淨」，也可能出自潛意識中「賤斥」（abjection）的排除反應。引發賤斥反應的，其實是對體系和秩序的擾亂，或對規則的不尊重，一如政治犯對國家意識形態的顛覆；或者，作為女兒的藝術家，成長過程中受到父親被囚引發內在恐懼，所產生的賤斥反應。蔡海如藉由造訪「回訪」父親的足跡，和自己內在的恐懼和壓抑和解，同時，也藉此重建父親「被棄」生命的主體性。

"Off Course" is the first art work created by Hai-Ru Tsai about herself being daughter of a political victim. In the video, the artist uses a headless wax figure mold to represent her father who suffered as a political dissident. The mold was used to create some of the wax statues in the gallery of the New Life Correction Center in the Green Island White Terror Memorial Park. After cleaning up the used mold, the artist takes the symbolic father on the road to his prison. It might just be a vain attempt of the artist to "take the father back." Nevertheless, the cleaning action has multiple subtle ambiguous implications. Cleaning as an action implies supposed "uncleanness," which could be a result of, as the artist said, "cleaning an old body" or a subconscious abjection response. It can be an abjection response of the system and the order to a disturbance or a set of rules to a violation, for example when the state ideology was challenged by a political dissident. It can also be the artist's abjection response to the deep childhood fear of being a prisoner's daughter. The (re)visiting of the father's footsteps allows the artist to reconcile with her inner fear and repression, and at the same time, reconstruct the subjectivity of her father's "discarded" life.