关于艺术的“陌生化”的理论和实践

陌生化几个主要翻译：

Defamiliarisation （陌生化）proposed by the Russian Formalists Viktor Shklovsky in his Art as Technique；

ostranenie---making the familiar strange;

Verfremdungseffekt (间离效果), 间离的德文是“Verfremdung”，间离效果即 "Verfremdungseffekt"；

alienation effect (疏离效应) introduced by Bertolt Brecht in his Epic Theatre

# 理论代表人物

01 Viktor Shklovsky （文学批评家）

Shklovsky：Art as technique

Art exists to help us recover the sensation of life, it exists to make us feel things, to make the stone stony. The end of art is to give a sensation of the object as seen, not as recognized. The technique of art is to make things 'unfamiliar,' to make forms obscure, so as to increase the difficulty and duration of perception.

—— Victor Schklovsky

Habitualization devours work, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war. "If the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been." And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects "unfamiliar," to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object: the object is not important... ‘

—— Art as Technique’ (1917) Viktor Shklovsky

02 Bertolt Brecht（布莱希特）德国戏剧革新家

the fourth wall

第四堵墙：史诗剧院（Brechtian剧院）打破了第四堵墙，即演员和观众之间的假想墙，使他们成为观察者。

尽管Bertolt Brecht的第一部剧本是在1920年代在德国创作的，但直到后来他才广为人知。最终，他的舞台表演理论对西方中世纪戏剧的进程产生了比任何其他个人更大的影响力。这主要是因为他提出了以斯坦尼斯拉夫斯基为导向的现实主义的主要替代方案，而斯坦尼斯拉夫斯基主义的主导主义是表演，而“精心制作的戏剧”结构则主导了剧本创作。

布莱希特的最早作品受到德国表现主义的极大影响，但正是他对马克思主义的专注以及对人与社会的理性分析才使他发展了“史诗般的戏剧”理论。布雷希特认为剧院不应吸引观众的感觉，而应吸引观众的原因。在仍然提供娱乐的同时，它应该具有很强的说教性，并能够引发社会变革。他认为，在现实的幻觉剧场中，观众倾向于与舞台上的角色认同，并在情感上与他们互动，而不是被激昂地思考自己的生活。为了鼓励观众对舞台上发生的事情采取更批判的态度，Brecht开发了他的Verfremdungs-effekt（“异化效果”），即 使用反幻觉技术来提醒观众，他们在剧院里观看的是现实的实景，而不是现实本身。此类技术包括：无论在哪里进行动作，都用刺眼的白光淹没舞台，并使舞台灯在观众的视线范围内；利用最少的道具和“指示性”风景；有意在关键时刻用歌曲打断活动，以传达重要观点或信息；并将说明性字幕投射到屏幕上或使用标语牌。从某种意义上说，布雷希特要求他的演员不要现实主义和对角色的认同，而要客观地发挥自己的演奏风格，从而使观察者变得与众不同。此类技术包括：无论在哪里进行动作，都用刺眼的白光淹没舞台，并使舞台灯在观众的视线范围内；利用最少的道具和“指示性”风景；有意在关键时刻用歌曲打断活动，以传达重要观点或信息；并将说明性字幕投射到屏幕上或使用标语牌。从某种意义上说，布雷希特要求他的演员不要现实主义和对角色的认同，而要客观地发挥自己的演奏风格，从而使观察者变得与众不同。此类技术包括：无论在哪里进行动作，都用刺眼的白光淹没舞台，并使舞台灯在观众的视线范围内；利用最少的道具和“指示性”风景；有意在关键时刻用歌曲打断活动，以传达重要观点或信息；并将说明性字幕投射到屏幕上或使用标语牌。布莱希特要求演员不要让现实主义和角色认同，而是要有客观的表演风格，从某种意义上说，要成为独立的观察者。有意在关键时刻用歌曲打断活动，以传达重要观点或信息；并将说明性字幕投射到屏幕上或使用标语牌。布莱希特要求演员不要让现实主义和角色认同，而是要有客观的表演风格，从某种意义上说，要成为独立的观察者。有意在关键时刻用歌曲打断活动，以传达重要观点或信息；并将说明性字幕投射到屏幕上或使用标语牌。布莱希特要求演员不要让现实主义和角色认同，而是要有客观的表演风格，从某种意义上说，要成为独立的观察者。

布雷希特最重要的戏剧包括莱本·德·伽利莱（《伽利略生活》），穆特·库拉伊（Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder）（母亲的勇气和她的孩子们）和德古特·门施·冯·塞赞（Der gute Mensch von Sezuan）（塞兹万的好人或塞兹万的好女人） ，写于1937年到1945年之间，当时他从纳粹政权流放，先是在斯堪的纳维亚半岛，然后在美国。应新组建的东德政府的邀请，他于1949年与妻子海伦·韦格尔（Helene Weigel）担任主要演员，一起创立了柏林歌舞团。正是在这一点上，通过他自己的戏剧作品，布雷希特赢得了20世纪剧院最重要人物之一的声誉。

当然，布雷希特对虚幻剧院的进攻直接或间接地影响了每个西方国家的剧院。在英国，这种影响在约翰·雅顿（John Arden）和爱德华·邦德（Edward Bond）等剧作家的作品中以及皇家莎士比亚剧团（Royal Shakespeare Company）的一些裸露舞台作品中都显而易见。然而，事实证明，20世纪的西方戏剧是多种风格的相互融合（布雷希特本人承认对传统东方剧院的欠债），到1950年代，其他方法也开始受到影响

方法：

• Breaking the fourth wall

This is where the wall between the audience and actors on stage is broken. Rather than allowing the audience to sit passively and get lost in the show, the actors will sometimes directly address the audience with a speech, comment or a question - breaking the fourth wall.

• Montage

Short movie clips are put together, often to show factual events. Sometimes clips are edited to juxtapose each other, and/or sometimes the montages are used to highlight the issues Brecht is trying to communicate.

• Use of song, music and dance

Some of Brecht’s work includes songs, music and dance. This helps to remind the audience that they are not watching real life. Sometimes the songs are juxtaposed ironically, with cheery upbeat music but with dark lyrics. One of the most famous song lyrics comes from Brecht’s ‘The Threepenny Opera’: ‘Who is the bigger criminal: he who robs a bank or he who founds one?’

• Narration

Narration is used to remind the audience that they are watching a story. Sometimes the narrator will tell the audience what is about to happen in the story, before it happens, because if the audience knows the outcome then they may not get as emotionally involved.

• Minimal set, costumes, props and lighting

Brecht believes the stage should be brightly lit at all times. That sets should not be realistic, just suggestive. And that actors should use minimal props, often only one per character. Also props can be used in several different ways, for example, a suitcase may become a desk.

• Coming out of character

Actors will sometimes come out character, often at heightened moments of drama, to remind the audience that it is a piece of fiction that they are watching.

• Using placards

A placard, or projection screen can be used to give the audience some extra factual information, for example, it might say how many people have died in a particular war. Placards can also be used to introduce characters in generic ways, e.g. ‘mum,’ or ‘dad.’ Placards are also used to introduce a new scene or to tell the audience when one has finished.

• Freeze frames/tableaux

The actors may go into a freeze-frame, so as to break the action. Sometimes it’s done so that the audience can stop and think critically for a moment. And sometimes it’s done so that the narrator can speak, or so that an actor can come out of character and perhaps break the fourth wall.

翻译：

• 打破第四壁

这是观众和舞台上演员之间的墙被打破的地方。演员们有时不让观众被动地坐着而迷失在表演中，反而会直接用讲话，评论或问题向观众讲话，打破了第四堵墙。

• 剪辑

短片会放在一起，通常显示事实事件。有时剪辑被编辑成彼此并置，和/或有时蒙太奇用于突出显示Brecht试图传达的问题。

• 歌曲，音乐和舞蹈的使用

布雷希特的一些作品包括歌曲，音乐和舞蹈。这有助于提醒观众他们没有看现实生活。有时，这些歌曲具有讽刺意味的并列，带有欢快的欢乐音乐，但带有深色歌词。最著名的歌曲歌词之一来自布雷希特（Brecht）的“三便士歌剧”（Triplepenny Opera）：“谁是最大的罪犯：抢劫银行或发现银行的人？”

• 叙事

旁白用于提醒观众他们正在看故事。有时，叙述者会在故事发生之前告诉观众故事中将要发生的事情，因为如果观众知道结局，那么他们可能就不会那么动情。

• 最少布置，服装，道具和灯光

布雷希特认为舞台应始终保持明亮。这些设置不应该是现实的，而只是暗示性的。而且演员应该使用最少的道具，每个角色通常只使用一个。道具也可以通过几种不同的方式使用，例如手提箱可能变成桌子。

• 脱颖而出

演员有时会出现角色，通常是在戏剧的高潮时刻，以提醒观众他们正在观看这是一部虚构的作品。

• 使用标语牌

标语牌或投影屏幕可用于向观众提供一些额外的事实信息，例如，它可以说出在特定战争中有多少人丧生。标语牌还可以用于以通用方式引入字符，例如“妈妈”或“爸爸”。标语牌还用于介绍新场景，或告诉观众何时结束。

• 冻结镜框

演员可能会陷入僵局，以破坏动作。有时这样做是为了让观众暂时停下来并认真思考。有时这样做是为了使叙述者可以说话，或者是让演员脱颖而出并可能打破第四堵墙。

# 应用的艺术家

01 荷兰平面设计师Jan van Toorn

Van Toorn’s calendars

02 Adam Curtis

在纪录片制片人亚当·柯蒂斯（Adam Curtis）的作品中，可以找到在视觉传达实践中持续采用布雷希特式除名策略的第二个例子。柯蒂斯（Curtis）将发现的录像片段编织在一起，以构造出人意料的关于著名历史文化现象和事件的叙事。他的商标技术包括剪辑剪辑的快速编辑，粗制滥造的无用文字叠加，无表情的配音以及折衷和意想不到的背景音轨的使用，结合了当代纪录片传统经验中的一种根本性突破。

1）《宛若亲吻》（英国2009）

本片为亚当柯蒂斯的一部实验作品。影片使用了大量档案胶片（包括奥萨马本拉登的青年时代，约翰肯尼迪遇刺事件和艾滋病病毒在非洲的源起等）以及美国六十年代流行音乐，围绕“权力如何在世界发挥效力”这一主题，记录了二战后的五十年来一个被施展了魔法的世界在美国霸权之下的建立过程，以及人们对这个梦幻般的世界的回应。

2）All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011)

在他的三部曲系列 All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011)《全由爱的恩典的机器》（2011）的最后一集的结尾中，柯蒂斯以一个令人难忘的序列，画出并呈现了悲剧性的历史叙事线索，描述了围绕拉旺丹种族灭绝和接下来的冲突的事件和情况。 。最初以常规方式配乐，并在新闻素材画面上逐渐形成沉思字符串。但是，这种险恶的音轨突然被切掉，并被弗洛伊德·克莱默（Floyd Cramer）1961年的热门舞厅钢琴弹奏的弹奏乐器《反弹》（On the Rebound）所取代，该剧改编了这种令人难以置信的悲剧性描述，将可怕的种族灭绝和残酷的内战当成喜剧片，只是一场游戏。

# 文章

01. Defamiliarisation, Brecht and Criticality in Graphic Design

Our lives are habitual. We habitualise what is familiar in order to be able to function day to day, and through this a vast chunk of our living becomes automatic. The process makes life easier by decreasing the confusion and tension of having to constantly develop new responses to previously encountered situations. The habitual way of thinking eases the stress of confrontation with the unknown, giving us a strategy to quickly disarm and digest it. Our default tendency is therefore to habitualise everything to the greatest extent possible.

In the essay Art as Technique (1917) the Russian formalist poet Victor Shklovsky (1893–1984) describes habitualisation as an ‘algebraic’ process. Instead of paying precise attention to each object of perception, we skip over the details and assign it a rough placeholder symbol, as X or Y symbolises a complex number in an equation. Thus, rather than having to formulate a response to the unique encounter with the object, we can bypass conscious thought and simply deploy a learned response to the familiar symbol.

Once something has become habitual and familiar, it effectively becomes an acceptable component of our perceived reality. Shklovsky’s warning however, is that we are liable to apply this tactic to situations which should never be considered normal or acceptable: things which should be known not as normal but as wonderful, or terrible. If we degrade things which are truly extraordinary by accepting them as merely ordinary, we are either denying ourselves the pleasure of appreciating the abnormally good, or wilfully subjecting ourselves to the horrors of the abnormally bad. In order to fully experience life it is necessary to recognise, appreciate and respond to the truly extraordinary things.

Designers, as creators and shapers of our social reality, are deeply involved in the operations and processes of habitualisation in contemporary life. It follows that designers must also therefore take some responsibility for the consequences of these effects, whether the impact of a design’s contribution to the social sphere is to enrich and enhance human experience of life, or merely to make it more efficient.

There is a time and a place for both these possibilities. The design of road traffic signs, for example, relies heavily on habitual recognition of familiar symbols to create a safe and efficient environment for all road users. However, design which seeks to question received wisdom, to challenge ingrained subconscious patterns of behaviour and to provoke critical thought needs to operate on precisely the opposite principle. While design can encourage patterns of habitualisation, it can also be used to shake us out of our habitual ways. Approaches to design which claim to foreground criticality would do well to pay close attention to the underlying processes which can either create and sustain, or disrupt this everyday phenomenon of habitualisation.

Automatic habitualisation of the familiar is, in general, a functional arrangement allowing us to go about our business without the exhausting impracticality of having to be constantly aware of our own activity. However, when we unexpectedly regain conscious awareness of a habitualised action or experience, the results can be quite disconcerting. Occasionally, while walking down stairs, I suddenly become aware of the subconscious movement of my feet, and as the action of walking switches from autopilot to manual I have to grab the handrail to stop myself tripping as it takes a second for my conscious mind to work out exactly what my legs are supposed to be doing. Many can identify with the moment of existential anguish communicated by the character Linus in the comic strip Peanuts on suddenly becoming aware of his own tongue:

It’s an awful feeling! Every now and then I become aware that I have a tongue inside my mouth, and then it starts to feel all lumped up… […] I can’t help it… I can’t put it out of my mind… I keep thinking about where my tongue would be if I weren’t thinking about it and then I can feel it sort of pressing against my teeth… Now it feels all lumped up again… the more I try to put it out of my mind, the more I think about it… (Schultz, 1963, np).

Defamiliarisation then, as Linus discovered, is the deeply unsettling moment of psychological disorientation experienced when something which has always appeared familiar suddenly becomes unfamiliar: the moment when something is comprehended in a new way, with amazement and astonishment, not because of any bizarre quality of the object itself but precisely because the item in question had previously been considered so ordinary and acceptable, and is now, upon re-examination, found to be truly extraordinary. Recognition of the two components of this dynamic—the significant twin powers of habitualisation and defamiliarisation—is vital to the pursuit of criticality within design, or indeed any other area of human endeavour.

The fundamental prerequisite for criticality, is not in fact the ability to criticise, but to recognise and point out problematic features in an existing situation which could be other than they are. The source of criticality’s power flows from this ability to imagine ways in which things could be different. It is only in this speculation on alternative possibilities for existence, that criticality is capable of becoming a productive social force. Where habitualisation runs uncontested, these alternatives will inevitably go unnoticed and unexplored.

Criticality that only draws attention to those areas of life which we already recognise as imperfect, is of limited value. In order to fulfil its true potential, criticality must first equip itself with the sensitivity to recognise, reveal, and expose those elements of life which are consistently and systematically overlooked: those crushing invisible burdens, injustices and oppressions which are constantly accepted by many as components of an inescapable natural reality. The ability to recognise and cut through the habitualised veneer of the everyday is therefore absolutely vital to the critical project.

The term Shklovsky proposes to describe this potentially traumatic disruption of algebraic habitualisation is “ostranenie” which is often translated as estrangement or defamiliarisation (Shklovsky, 1917). Ostranenie is not just an observable phenomenon or state of consciousness, but a process that can actively be brought into being through the application of specific methods. Shklovsky suggests that ostranenie is in fact the principal technique, purpose and identity of art:

Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects “unfamiliar”, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged (Shklovsky, 1917, p. 12).

In Shklovsky’s description of the “algebraic” habitualisation process, in order to achieve “the greatest economy of perceptive effort” (Shklovsky, 1917, p.12) we reduce the full experience of commonly encountered objects and phenomena to a single simplified symbol, an identifiable but vastly simplified rough outline. As he writes, it is as if we have wrapped the object loosely in a sack; we can still identify the shape and therefore know what this symbol means, but we no longer engage directly with the object itself. (Shklovsky, 1917, p. 11)

Shklovsky’s proposal is that art can intervene in the algebraic process, breaking the habitualised symbolic connection, thus forcing us to reengage our perceptive faculties to investigate objects and experiences afresh. The viewer must look for longer, and think harder to identify and understand something previously assumed to be known, but which has now become strangely unfamiliar. The sack which previously operated to ease the burden of perception by outlining a simplified symbolic shape, now becomes a camouflage cloak. Rather than just glancing at the sack, we must pick it up, feel it, give it a shake, perhaps even open it up and look inside in order to find out what is hidden within. This increasing of the “difficulty and length of perception” is the technique which breaks the spell of the habitual and creates the condition of defamiliarisation required to allow the proper experience of astonishment at the wonderful strangeness of the everyday object.

But what might this purposeful subversion of the default habitualising impulse which opens our eyes to recognise the extraordinary within the ordinary look like in the real world? Though Shklovsky was one of the earliest to write explicitly about methods for defamiliarisation, if one looks for practical examples of creative practices of defamiliarisation, one name stands head and shoulders above the crowd: German playwright, theatre director and poet, Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956).

For many today, their only direct experience of Brecht’s work is likely to have been exposure to the lyrics of a song he wrote as part of his 1928 play Die Dreigroschenoper [The Threepenny Opera] about the character Macheath, a murderer thief and rapist, which which was later translated and popularised (in a considerably watered down form) as the jazz standard Mack the Knife. Beyond this, Brecht is best known as an innovator and pioneer of radical methods within his theatre practice. Throughout the course of his creative career as playwright, director and poet, Brecht proposed, theorised, tested and developed a complex, sophisticated, and ever evolving practice centred around defamiliarisation.

The key method in Brecht’s practice was the Verfremdungseffekt. This was famously manifested in Brecht’s theatre practice through techniques specifically designed to bring about a condition of defamiliarisation within the audience, such as: sabotaging the illusion of reality on stage by having the actors directly address the audience and purposefully act ‘badly’; discouraging empathetic audience identification with characters by making them dislikeable; subverting suspense by displaying signs announcing the outcome of each scene before the action takes place; unexpectedly breaking up the action with musical numbers; actively making visible the stage lighting, equipment and musicians. Beneath these relatively obvious interventions lay more complex practices. The idea of Gestus (Brecht, 1964, p.198-201) proposed that an actor’s performance on the stage should not simply mimetically represent the occurrence of an event, but should be able to make visible the full range of social conditions and factors leading up to the situation the character is found in and therefore offering an insight into any decisions or actions which they may now take. The concept of Epic narrative, or Autonomization (Jameson, 1999, pp. 55–65) suggested that the scenes of the play should not build and rely upon each other in a linear fashion, but should instead remain autonomous and “fully capable of life” (Brecht, 1964, p. 70) each on their own terms even if separated. The principle of Historicization maintained that plays should not be set in the present, but in distinct historical periods in order that the narrative may be seen not as inevitable but as a culmination of circumstances each of which could have been altered. In this way, conditions in the present may in turn come to be seen not as inevitable but rather as changeable and improvable (Dickson, 1978).

The overall aim of the Verfremdungseffekt is to encourage a condition of active critical spectatorship within the audience. Crucially, this active critical spectatorship within cultural space is pursued as a necessary step towards the development of active critical citizenship in society. Often mistranslated as alienation, the word Verfremdung is a relative neologism to the German language, appropriated by Brecht to describe the internal alienation of defamiliarisation, which was central to his critical project (Bloch, 1970). In an essay discussing whether the purpose of theatre should be entertainment or instruction, Brecht compares the crucial difference between the response of the audience member in the everyday dramatic theatre, with the response he wished to provoke through his Verfremdungseffekt utilising ‘epic’ theatre:

The dramatic theatre’s spectator says: Yes I have felt like that too – Just like me – It’s only natural – It’ll never change – The sufferings of this man appal me, because they are inescapable – That’s great art; it all seems the most obvious thing in the world – I weep when they weep, I laugh when they laugh. The epic theatre’s spectator says: I’d never have thought it – That’s not the way – That’s extraordinary, hardly believable – It’s got to stop – The sufferings of this man appal me, because they are unnecessary – That’s great art: nothing obvious in it – I laugh when they weep, I weep when they laugh” (Brecht, 1964, p. 71).

According to Brecht’s thinking, in our everyday lives we lose touch with our own critical faculties as we come to accept the cultural, social, political and economic structures surrounding us as normal, natural, inevitable, ultimately unchangeable, and therefore pragmatically acceptable realities. We seek relief or escape from this experience of the inevitable everyday grind of reality through culture, art and entertainment, whereby we subject ourselves to a further distancing from our critical faculties as we slide into models of passive spectatorship that reinforce our passivity by promoting a one-way mode of cultural consumption.

Brecht famously berated the theatregoing audience of his day for “hanging its brains up in the cloakroom along with its coat” (Brecht, 1964, p. 27). Walter Benjamin quotes Brecht describing the common man’s experience of culture as: “his accustomed opiate, his mental participation in someone else’s uprising, the rise of others; the illusion which whips him up for a few hours and leaves him all the more exhausted, filled with vague memories and even vaguer hopes” (Brecht cited in Benjamin, 1999, p. 149). Continuous over-stimulation leads to desensitisation. Aesthetic overload ultimately brings about a lasting anaesthetic effect (Buwert, 2015). Patterns of habitualisation which promote passive consumption rather than active critical thinking and activity can be encouraged and maintained by cultural aesthetic means.

Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt, opposing this condition of mental anaesthetisation, is an attempt to counter the loss of criticality within the passive spectator by causing that which is familiar or habitual to become estranged and thus defamiliarised. The anaesthetic is shaken off, the illusion of normality as inevitable and unchangeable is broken and a situation of dis-equilibrium is created. Rudely awoken from their cognitive lethargy, the spectator must now struggle to come to terms with this imbalance by actively using their own mind.

The attitude Brecht wished to cultivate in his audience was not that of an emotional captive, drawn in and enthralled by the realism of the performance and empathetic identification with the heroes of the story. Instead they should remain emotionally disconnected, dispassionate, as if at leisure within their own home, smoking a cigar, reading the newspaper and weighing up the events set before them. The key principle is that rather than disappearing within the escapist spectacle of entertainment, the spectator will still be entertained, but during this entertainment will remain in possession of their own rational faculties. In this way, they might retain the capacity to make their own judgements with respect to the issues they encounter, rather than merely consuming a pre-packaged experience of that content. The goal of the Verfremdungseffekt is to achieve a productive defamiliarisation which causes the spectator to wake from their passivity to realise that the way things are, is not the way things must always be: that reality is not fixed and inevitable but constantly changing, and is therefore changeable. In this way defamiliarisation makes space for the perception of alternative possibilities, and in doing so opens up spaces for criticality. The core power of the Verfremdungseffekt is found in this ability to create space for criticality by simultaneously staging multiple conflicting ideological positions and agendas, laying them bare and offering them up for interrogation. Brecht’s work certainly had quite specific political agendas. His methods, however, are not tied to any ideology. The aim of the Verfremdungseffekt is to open a space for critical thinking in relation to all of the ideologies at play within a situation. Though many of Brecht’s plays are outrageously didactic in form, clearly telling the audience what the correct way to think should be, the genius of the method lies in constantly undermining this authoritarian stance by demanding that the spectator not be taken in by the spectacle. If the spectator wishes to do what they are told, they must make this choice on their own terms.

Despite his many detractors – and there have been many, both during his lifetime and posthumously, on account of his politics, his personality, and his work (Willett, 1984) – Brecht’s theories and practices of defamiliarisation have had great impact on critical creative practice far beyond the world of theatre. Many critical practices operate in distinctly Brechtian ways, perhaps without even knowing it. The trick up the sleeve of almost all contemporary critical speculative design, for example, is to create an uncanny sense of defamiliarisation by presenting nearly credible versions of current reality, subtly tweaked to reflect uncomfortably upon the now. However, there is a fine line to be walked here between defamiliarisation as a productive strategy for encouraging active criticality, or merely as a mildly amusing diversionary entertainment.

Looking for examples of sustained engagement with Brechtian-type strategies in the context of critical visual communication design practice, the work of two individuals immediately spring to my mind. The first is Dutch graphic designer Jan van Toorn, whose work has an unmistakably Brechtian character. In Design’s Delight (2006), Van Toorn describes his dialogic approach to visual communication design in this way:

Unlike the classic form of visual communication, the dialogic approach is a connective model of visual rhetoric with a polemic nature and polyphonic visual form. A storytelling structure that seeks to reveal the opposing elements of the message and opts for active interpretation by the spectator (Van Toorn, 2006, Acetate Insert).

While much of Van Toorn’s work, might at first glance appear to be composed of scrappy compositions of entirely unrelated images, closer consideration reveals carefully constructed intertextual and reflexive visual narrative strategies. Rather than being persuaded of the incontrovertible truth of the message’s content, the viewer is presented with a visually proposed argument. The reflexive nature of the designed form reveals the socially and ideologically constructed nature of this argument. The effect is that rather than being aesthetically manipulated and convinced to choose a predetermined position from a limited range of options offered by the design, the viewer is invited to engage in an internal mental dialogue with the presented content, through which they may develop their own position in relation to the matter in question. It is in this regard that we can begin to draw parallels between Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt and Van Toorn’s account of dialogical design. A primary aim of the Verfremdungseffekt was to use the moment of defamiliarisation to lay bare the full range of ideological forces in play within the given situation exposing them to evaluation and judgement by the critical mind of the viewer. In the same way, Van Toorn’s dialogical design subverts expectations of visual communication design, opening up a moment of defamiliarisation in which the open and slightly ambiguous nature of the visual elements presented form an unresolved sphere of debate which draws the inquisitive mind into the process of active interpretation.

Though Van Toorn offers a compelling theoretical case for the use of the dialogical approach to visual communication design in society, the practical implementation of these ideas is easier said than done, and the effectiveness of much of Van Toorn’s work in terms of actually producing such instances of dialogical communication in the real world is debatable. Van Toorn’s calendars for the printer Mart. Spruijt produced throughout the 1970s offer perhaps the strongest examples demonstrating the subtle complexity of his dialogical approach at work. The raw image content of these promotional calendars ranged thematically year by year from contemporary and historical newspaper images, to portraits of celebrities and ordinary members of the public, to flat dull images of natural and built environments. When considered as part of the weekly serial narratives of the calendars, what at first appear to be fairly random unrelated and crudely constructed compositions begin to develop into subtle but deeply complex and unresolved visual arguments on issues ranging from press mediation, to cultural diversity, to the nature of truth and reality itself.

The nature of these ‘arguments’ remains open and relatively ambiguous in character. This is not, however, to say that these arguments are unfocussed, indiscriminate or indeterminate. Van Toorn often describes his process as one of carefully calculated intertextual visual journalism. Rather than making conclusive claims and thereby shutting down dialogue on an issue, the arguments staged by the Mart. Spruijt calendars open up new spaces for debate in relation to their precisely curated subject matter. Such an approach to the design process is inherently critical and demands a degree of critical thought from the viewer as it subversively disrupts the conventional linear operations of visual communication. Van Toorn’s work, though by no means perfect, represents in this way a pioneering model of critical design practice with a distinctly Brechtian flavour.

A second example of sustained engagement with Brechtian-type defamiliarisation strategies in visual communication practice, can be found in the work of the documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis. Curtis weaves together found archive footage to construct unexpected narratives about well-known historical and cultural phenomena and events. His trademark techniques of rapidly edited montage, crudely constructed no-nonsense text overlays, deadpan voiceover, and use of eclectic and unexpected backing tracks combine to create a jarringly radical break from the conventional experience of contemporary documentary film.

It is Curtis use of these techniques to simultaneously disrupt and challenge expectations of both the documentary medium, and received wisdom within the subject matter of his films, which makes his work an outstanding example of Brechtian-type strategies at work in filmic visual storytelling.

These defamiliarisation strategies are most obvious to see in Curtis’ use of music and editing to play with pace and tone. In one memorable sequence towards the end of the final episode of his three-part series All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011), Curtis draws out and presents a tragic historical narrative thread on events and circumstances surrounding the Rawandan Genocide and ensuing conflicts. This is initially soundtracked in the conventional way with a gradual build-up of brooding strings over newsreel footage. However, this menacing soundtrack is suddenly cut, and switched out for the bouncy piano of Floyd Cramer’s 1961 hit dancehall instrumental On the Rebound which reframes this unimaginably tragic account of horrific genocide and brutal civil war as a comic caper, nothing more than a game. The pace of editing also changes simultaneously, from lingering shots to fast paced jump cuts keeping time with the upbeat music. The chaos of refugee camps and military movements is transformed into a perverse dance.

This sudden, unexpected and slightly shocking switch in tone is a textbook example of Verfremdungseffekt. In Curtis’ film this defamiliarisation brings into question our accepted knowledge of these recent historical events. Into this moment of disorientation he reintroduces parallel threads brought up earlier in the episode: the Western demand for African minerals to build consumer gadgets, and a British scientist’s failed quest to search for the origins of AIDS in chimpanzees in the Congo. The viewer, having anticipated the conventional linear documentary presentation of authoritative reality, is disoriented by the encounter with an unpredictable presentation of a complex multi-faceted narrative. While Curtis does offer an account linking these disparate threads, this is far from a fully resolved conclusion. Rather than being presented as the one true single perspective on ‘the way things really happened’, complex stories are constructed out of a messy array of found fragments of reality. These narratives are encountered as just one possible way of viewing events, and the constructed and interpreted nature of reality is exposed. In this way the viewer is invited not merely to passively accept the presented argument but rather to actively, critically engage with the content.

The examples of Van Toorn and Curtis’ practices demonstrate the potential that Brechtian-type defamiliarisation methods can bring to the critical project in contemporary design practice. Such work offers glimpses towards a more substantial and constructive model for critically oriented visual communication practice than much of that which presents itself as critical design today.

The literary critic Fredric Jameson has suggested in Brecht and Method (1999) that Brecht might have been best pleased with a legacy not of his personal genius or historical importance, but rather for his usefulness. For graphic design that seeks to be critical, Brechtian methods of defamiliarisation could prove to be very useful. Today’s visual spectators, living habitual lives in an ever increasingly visually saturated world, are no less prone to hanging their brains up with their coats as those of Brecht’s day were. Methods of defamiliarisation offer an opportunity to break through the habitual and open up spaces for genuine criticality. For this defamiliarisation, as Brecht wrote, is “the alienation that is necessary to all understanding. When something seems ‘the most obvious thing in the world’, it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up. What is ‘natural’ must have the force of what is startling” (Brecht, 1964, p. 71).

— Bibliography Benjamin, W. (1999) What is Epic Theatre? In Illuminations. London: Pimlico. pp. 144–151. Bloch, E. (1970) Entfremdung, Verfremdung: Alienation, Estrangement. The Drama Review, 15(1), pp. 120–125. Brecht, B. (1964) Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Translated by Willet, J. London: Methuen. Buwert, P. (2015) An/Aesth/Ethics: the ethical potential of design. In: Artifact, 3(3), pp. 1–11. Dickson, K. (1978) Towards Utopia: A Study of Brecht. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 58–124. Jameson, F. (1999) Brecht and Method. London: Verso. Schultz, C. (1963) Peanuts. United Feature Syndicate. Shklovsky, V. (1917) Art as Technique. In Lemon, T. & Reis, M. (Eds.), (1965). Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays. Translated by Lemon, T. & Reis, M. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. pp. 3–24. Van Toorn, J. (2006) Design’s Delight. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. Willett, J. (1984) i London: Methuen.

— Extended readings Kuijpers, E. (2013) And/or on contradiction in the work of Jan van Toorn. Rotterdam: nai 010 publishers. Obrist, H. (2012) In Conversation with Adam Curtis, Part 1. e-flux, (32), pp. 1–12. Poynor, R. (2015) Adam Curtis. Journalist. Creative Review, March 2015. pp. 38–42 Poynor R. (2008) Jan van Toorn: Critical Practice. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. Thomson, P. & Sacks, G (Eds.), (1994) The Cambridge companion to Brecht. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

— Article originally published in Modes of Criticism 2 – Critique of Method (2016).

02 几篇文章

03 Short description of a new technique of acting which produces an alienation effect

# 方法论

## Star Texts: Image and Performance in Film and Television /Jeremy G. Butler

Star Texts: Image and Performance in Film and Television 编者：Jeremy G. Butler

## Epic theatre and Brecht

如果要创建这种样式的作品，应考虑几个要素：

• 叙述必须以蒙太奇的方式进行。
• 打破第四堵墙的技巧，使观众直接意识到他们在看戏。such as: sabotaging the illusion of reality on stage by having the actors directly address the audience and purposefully act ‘badly’; discouraging empathetic audience identification with characters by making them dislikeable; subverting suspense by displaying signs announcing the outcome of each scene before the action takes place; unexpectedly breaking up the action with musical numbers; actively making visible the stage lighting, equipment and musicians.(诸如：实现Verfremdungseffekt的一些方法是，让演员扮演多个角色，重新安排观众的视野，并通过与观众交谈来“打破”第四道墙；通过使角色变得不受欢迎来阻止观众移情，对角色的认同；通过在活动发生之前通过宣布每个场景结果的标志来颠覆悬念；用舞蹈编排意外地破坏了动作；积极地使舞台灯光，设备和音乐家。)
• 叙述者的使用。因为这个角色不在角色框架之内，所以他们改变了与观众的关系。
• 使用歌曲或音乐。歌曲和舞蹈可能会激发出更为客观的观看效果，尤其是如果您正在观看的是严肃的音乐，而不是典型音乐剧中的喧嚣环境。
• 使用技术。如果您将创意以幻灯片放映的方式投影到屏幕上，或者甚至在每个场景中都具有静止图像，则可以使观众进行更彻底的分析。
• 使用标志。如果演员以标明场景的标语牌开始每个场景，或者您在每个场景的开头都有一块更换的木板，则您是在提醒观众他们正在观看戏剧的事实。
• 使用冻结帧 / 舞台造型。从这个词的简单意义上来说，这显然是不自然的，并且应该使听众想到冻结的时刻

# 案例

## 电影

01. 细数奥斯卡最佳外语片《罗马》中的三个间离

导演无数次声称这是一部自传式的电影，但它的表现手法以及叙述方式都太过冷静，以至于造成一种间离的效果，不再温情。恰恰也正是因为这份疏远，回忆的意义昭然若揭：回忆是在肉体脱离原有印象实体下的、精神上的怀念以及影像复现，实体永不再来。回忆本身就是疏离，也因疏离而成就回忆。过去回不去，就像墨西哥当下不可调和的矛盾，可也正是这一冷静的“回不去”，让阿方索·卡隆完成了自己对《罗马》的私人书写：在不断的间离下，追思往日的点点滴滴。（admin 2019年03月11日 于 图文综合资讯 发表）

这部黑白剧情片，以阿方索.卡隆的童年记忆为线索，多角度地记述了20世纪70年代初墨西哥社会风貌地方方面面，包括当年一个中产社区的典型家庭生活，原住民与白人家庭的种族与阶层隔阂，女性意识的觉醒和困境，1968年墨西哥奥运会，1968-1971年的墨西哥社会动荡等等。影片特别的一点，是导演的运镜：在拍摄中加入了许多主观性的镜头，非常规的摇镜，长镜头等，似乎刻意让观众意识到镜头的存在，从而强化那个看不见的人物的回忆感。（作者：西山；链接：https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/79937583）

02 Dancer in the dark 黑暗中的舞者

故事发生在1960年代的美国，捷克移民莎玛与独子基恩移民来到美国，住在从小镇警察比尔和她妻子琳达家租来的货车库里。莎玛在生产不锈钢水槽的工厂工作，业余时间做些小饰品赚钱。她酷爱音乐剧，常与好友凯西去看音乐剧电影，参加社区音乐剧排练。音乐是她的幸福所在，她时常沉浸在从生活中单调乏味的响声而幻想出来的音乐节奏中，她脸上常常挂着甜美而单纯的笑容。而当善良的莎玛为了安慰虚伪的比尔，说出自己的秘密时，现实的残酷却将她推向死亡。原来莎玛来美国昼夜不停的挣钱是为了在她的儿子满13岁时能得到美国先进医疗技术的帮助，治愈他身上家族遗传的眼病。而莎玛的眼睛由于这种眼病，很快就要瞎了。当莎玛由于几乎失明的眼睛造成工厂事故被解雇回家时，却发现比尔将她为了给儿子治病积攒的钱全部偷走了。当善良的莎玛只身找到比尔索要自己的钱时，却遭到了比尔的诬蔑与栽赃。莎玛在和比尔争夺钱包时，比尔的枪走火射中他自己。受伤的比尔欲借莎玛的手自杀而死握钱包，逼迫莎玛将自己杀死。莎玛因遵守诺言，能让儿子得到治疗，拒绝在法庭上说出真相，被判一级谋杀，一周内执行绞刑。朋友发现实情，想翻案的努力也未能改变莎玛为了留钱给儿子治病而宁愿自己一死的决心。最终莎玛的生命在她“that's all…”的歌声中戛然而止。

03 Battleship Potemkin-Odessa Steps

布雷希特受到电影导演谢尔盖·爱森斯坦（Sergei Eisenstein）在他1925年的电影《战舰波将金（Battleship Potemkin）》的“敖德萨阶梯”（Odessa Steps）序列中最能体现蒙太奇力量的影响。在涉及失控婴儿车的著名序列中，爱森斯坦利用蒙太奇来唤起情感并产生悬念。

## 话剧

01《思凡》（1993年）孟京

此剧根据中国明朝无名氏《思凡·双下山》及意大利薄迦丘《十日谈》有思凡思凡关章节改编。本剧共分四部分，但不分场次，连贯演出。一头一尾是中国传统戏《思凡》和《双下山》的故事，两部分中间插入意大利文艺复兴时期薄伽丘《十日谈》中的两个故事：小尼姑色空在仙桃庵内度日如年不忍寂寞，她思恋凡间生活逃下山来，路遇从碧桃寺下山和小和尚本无，两人产生了感情。两个青年在小客店过夜，半夜里一个青年去和主人的女儿同睡，主女又错把另一青年当做自己丈夫，险些闹出事来……如此并不相关的故事组成话剧《思凡》剧情。