安妮
草译了一篇课上读的安妮·阿尔伯斯的文章，关于创造、材料、工业生产、自信、与独立精神。
与材料共事 WORK WITH MATERIALS
当下的生活异常扑朔迷离，我们对它没有任何全景式的理解，一如我们以往可能拥有的。 我们必须在多元的概念之间做出选择。由于共识的缺乏，我们对做出选择感到困惑。为了找寻自己，我们必须先寻回返璞归真的思考方式。只有如此，我们才能感知意义，而只有通过感知意义，我们才能形成独立见解。 Life today is very bewildering. We have no picture of it which is all-inclusive, such as former times may have had. We have to make a choice between concepts of great diversity. And as a common ground is wanting, we are baffled by them. We must find our way back to simplicity of conception in order to find ourselves. For only by simplicity can we experience meaning, and only by experiencing meaning can we become qualified for independent comprehension.
因为在短时间内需要覆盖巨大知识领域的需求，在今天的学习过程中，对权威的依赖成为了主流。 这通常会让学生在钦佩与不确定之间摇摆不定，众所周知的结果是，自卑感油然而生，无论之于个体还是整个国家。 In all learning today dependence on authority plays a large part, because of the tremendous field of knowledge to be covered in a short time. This often leaves the student oscillating between admiration and uncertainty; with the well-known result that a feeling of inferiority is today common both in individuals and in whole nations.
独立性意味着冒险精神——对自我力量的信仰， 正是这种信仰值得被推崇，在权威尚未建立的领域中探索有助于实现独立性。 我们用大量“知识”武装自我，或许表面看起来不错，但实则毫无建设性意义。 我们习惯盲目接受，而忽略了我们内在的成长冲动。因此，一点也不意外的是，精神崩溃更频繁发生在我们的文明中，而不是那些创造力在日常生活中可以被自然抒发的文明。这个事实引出了一个解决办法：我们必须从糊涂度日的云端走下，回归大地，体验最真实的存在：材料。 Independence presumes a spirit of adventurousness - a faith in one's own strength. It is this which should be promoted. Work in a field where authority has not made itself felt may help toward this goal. For we are overgrown with information, decorative maybe, but useless in any constructive sense. We have developed our receptivity and have neglected our own formative impulse. It is no accident that nervous breakdowns occur more often in our civilization than in those where creative power had a natural outlet in daily activities. And this fact leads to a suggestion: we must come down to earth from the clouds where we live in vagueness and experience the most real thing there is: material.
文明的进步似乎总将人与材料、与材料的原始形态隔离开来。加工材料的过程被分为多个单独步骤，一个人很少参与整个过程，相反，我们通常只了解最终成品。但是，如果我们想要从材料中获得直接体验，即开启一场接近世界构成的冒险，我们必须回归材料本身，回归材料的原始状态，从源头开始参与它的步步变化。 Civilization seems in general to estrange men from materials, from materials in their original form. The process of shaping these is so divided into separate steps that one person is rarely involved in the whole course of manufacture, often knowing only the finished product. But if we want to get from materials the sense of directness, the adventure of being close to the stuff the world is made of, we have to go back to the material itself, to its original state, and from there on partake in its stages of change.
当下，我们分别使用材料来满足我们的实质需求和精神需求，我们分别拥有实用的物件和美好的物件——装备和艺术品。 在早期文明发展中，是没有这种明显区分的。实用的物件可以在工匠手中变得漂亮，工匠也是制造者，他的创造性冲动并没有被苦差事所挫败，因为他不是漫长而复杂的机械过程的一部分，相反，他是一个创造者。机器的发明减少了重复的无聊，但另一方面，机器的发明只允许想象力出现在初期规划阶段。 We use materials to satisfy our substantial needs and our spiritual ones as well. We have useful things and beautiful things - equipment and works of art. In earlier civilizations there was no clear separation of this sort. The useful thing could be made beautiful in the hands of the artisan, who was also the manufacturer. His creative impulse was not thwarted by drudgery in one section of a long and complicated mechanical process. He was also a creator. Machines reduce the boredom of repetition. On the other hand they permit play of the imagination only in the planning of the product.
材料——即未成形的物质——尚是一片净土，在这里，权威对独立实验的阻碍相对较少，因此这里很适合成为发明与推测的训练场。正是在这里，即使是最害羞的初学者也可以通过成为一个创造者瞥见创造带来的悸动，与此同时，他又被材料的本质——而不是人——所制约。 Material, that is to say unformed or unshaped matter, is the field where authority blocks independent experimentation less than in many other fields, and for this reason it seems well fitted to become the training ground for invention and free speculation. It is here that even the shyest beginner can catch a glimpse of the exhilaration of creating, by being a creator while at the same time he is checked by irrevocable laws set by the nature of the material, not by man.
自由自在地尝试可以满足内心的冲动，一种想要给赋予想法以形式或使之确定的冲动，这个过程可能产生艺术，也可能产生更加技术化的创造。 但更为重要的是，这个过程鼓励一个人离开他的舒适区、离开约定俗成的通规，继而独自面对世界、成为一个自立的个体。这是一场可以渗透到一个人完整存在各个角落的冒险，自信心得以增长。在没有外在手段的情况下，个体可以在其内部收获对于悸动的渴望，因为创造其本身可以带给一个人最强烈的悸动。 Free experimentation here can result in the fulfillment of an inner urge to give form and to give permanence to ideas, that is to say, it can result in art, or it can result in the satisfaction of invention in some more technical way. But most important to one's own growth is to see oneself leave the safe ground of accepted conventions and to find oneself alone and self-dependent. It is an adventure which can permeate one's whole being. Self-confidence can grow. And a longing for excitement can be satisfied without external means, within oneself; for creating is the most intense excitement one can come to know.
所有的艺术形式——如音乐，建筑，甚至宗教和科学定律——都可以理解为转变稳定与秩序的愿望。但是，相比其他领域，艺术创作更适合被理解为与可被触碰、可被塑型的物质共事的过程，这种理解有助于探索的发展，因为材料的固有特性是重要的。这种面对巨大可行性、叫人为所欲为的自由可能会使探索者困惑，甚至退却，但是当限制出现，想象力会更加有所适从。选择依旧丰富，但不再是淹没般的无限可能。这些限制可以被理解为骨架。对于初学者来说，具有非常明确限制的材料最有帮助，有助于建立独立创作。 All art work, such as music, architecture, and even religion and the laws of science, can be understood as the transformed wish for stability and order. But art work understood as work with a substance which can be grasped and formed is more suited for the development of the taste for exploration than work in other fields, for the fact of the inherent laws of material is of importance. They introduce boundaries for a task of free imagination. This very freedom can be so bewildering to the searching person that it may lead to resignation if he is faced with the immense welter of possibilities; but within set limits the imagination can find something to hold to. There still remains a fullness of choice but one not as overwhelming as that offered by unlimited opportunities. These boundaries may be conceived as the skeleton of a structure. To the beginners a material with very definite limitations can for this reason the most helpful in the process of building up independent work.
工艺创作——通常被理解为处理材料的习惯方法——引入了另一个因素：体现固定法则的操作传统。这些法则作为工作框架可能有所帮助。但这些规则也可能引发问题： 因为它们是由人设定的，它们并不是定律，它们可能会激发我们去推翻它们。但通常来说，它们提供了纪律性，以平衡创造狂喜所带来的自我膨胀。所有工艺创造都可以起到这种制约，但有些比其他更好。材料在其外观和结构元素中越容易被攻击，它就越能激发想象力和生产力。 The crafts, understood as conventions of treating material, introduce another factor: traditions of operation which embody set laws. This may be helpful in one direction, as a frame for work. But these rules may also evoke a challenge. They are revokable, for they are set by man. They may provoke us to test ourselves against them. But always they provide a discipline which balances the hubris of creative ecstasy. All crafts are suited to this end, but some better than others. The more possibilities for attack the material offers in its appearance and in its constructional elements, the more it can call out imagination and productiveness.
编织是多面性工艺创作的一个例子。除了表面特性，如粗糙或光滑，暗淡或光泽，硬或软，它还包括颜色和其最主要的元素——纹理，这由编织的结构所致。像任何工艺一样，编织的最终目的可能生产有用的物件，也可能是成为艺术品。在教授工艺创作时，除了自由探索，也必须同时考虑实用性和艺术性。 Weaving is an example of a craft which is many-sided. Besides surface qualities, such as rough and smooth, dull and shiny, hard and soft, it also includes color, and, as the dominating element, texture, which is the result of the construction of weaves. Like any craft it may end in producing useful objects, or it may rise to the level of art. When teaching the crafts, in addition to the work of free exploring, both the useful and the artistic have to be considered.
正如我们之前所说，如今只有生产前期需要规划，如果假设当下大规模生产必须包括机器工作，一旦生产开始，就不可能再有变化产生。这意味着教学必须把重点放在重复工业生产的前期规划，创造产业模式。教学还必须试图唤起对发展的意识，甚至预测它们。因此，通过与材料密切共事所完成的工艺创造，拥有了接触到更广泛人群的可能，相比单纯的手工创造。从工业角度来看，通过与材料密切共事，机器生产将获得新的动力。工艺创作的另一个方面涉及艺术——艺术，实现一个满足合法性与持久性的希望。其他元素，如比例、空间关系、节奏，在这些实验中占主导地位，就像在其他艺术中一样。除了材料本身的限制外，没有其他限制。这不仅仅是一个主动的过程，更是倾听材料、接受其内在的规律。正是出于这个原因，我们才能确信我们是永恒秩序的一部分。 As we have said before, today only the first step in the process of producing things of need is left to free planning. No variation is possible when production is once taken up, assuming that today mass production must necessarily include machine work. This means that the teaching has to lead toward planning for industrial repetition, with emphasis on making models for industry. It also must attempt to evoke a consciousness of developments, and further perhaps a foreseeing of them. Hence the result of craft work done in direct contact with the material, can come here to have a meaning to a far wider range of people than would be the case if they remained restricted to hand work only. And from the industrial standpoint, machine production will get a fresh impetus from taking up the results of intimate work with material. The other aspect of craft work is concerned with art work, the realization of a hope for a lawful and enduring nature. Other elements, such as proportion, space relations, rhythm, predominate in these experiments, as they do in the other arts. No limitations other than the fiat of the material itself are set. More than an active process, it is a listening for the dictation of the material and a taking in of the laws of harmony. It is for this reason that we can find certitude in the belief that we are taking part in an eternal order.
1938年11月 安妮·阿尔伯斯 November, 1938 Anni Albers 黑山学院公告5号 BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE BULLETIN 5
