"Civil Twilight" 是一个摄影作品系列，通过一系列动人而引人思考的图像，剖析了自然的矛盾魅力。通过聚焦宁静而危险的海洋滩的悖论，这个项目邀请观者踏上一条脆弱的线，体验大自然的壮美和固有危险之间的平衡。
艺术家借着童年时在中国海边度过的记忆，探索自然力量的悲剧现实，这个真实通过一个朋友的父亲在汹涌的海洋中失踪而变得令人心生敬畏。这个项目通过讲述关于海洋滩附近失踪人员的故事，与个体记忆产生共鸣，同时与集体意识相连。
受到一张令人心碎的寻人启事和随后的新闻揭露的启发，深入探讨围绕海滩的悲剧和未解之谜。摄影师根据当地新闻报道精心再现场景，融合了文献记录和艺术解读的元素。这样做的目的有两个：一是揭示隐藏在自然迷人外表下的危险，二是研究生活中看似微不足道的细节如何演变成深刻的叙事。
项目中的每一张图像都是在其命名的过渡时期拍摄的，有意地聚焦周围环境与人的互动，营造出神秘的氛围。尽管摄影作品没有太阳的存在，但它们巧妙地捕捉到太阳光线在波浪上的反射，暗示着梦幻般的黄昏色调。这个艺术决策不仅突显了黄昏海洋的欺骗性美丽，也加强了希望的持久力量。尽管这些故事都充满了悲剧，但对一些失踪人员可能还活着的希望依然存在。
"Civil Twilight" 是自然美和威胁的巧妙对比，捕捉了存在与消失之间的飘渺时刻，并在包围的绝望中点燃了希望之光。
在算法统治的新的技术社会关系下，如何重新表述对于文化、工作、再生产及大量科技劳动力的期望？宋婷的创作在寻找“现实——虚拟”二元关系之外的新的融合语言。唐娜·哈拉维（Donna Haraway）的《赛博格宣言》生发于二十世纪晚期的“人-动物”、“有机体-机器”、“身体-非身体”的科技文化、政治身份的边界崩塌之际；如今，在无处不在却又不可见的微电子芯片“AI时代”构建的统治关系下，宋婷的《逆赛博格启示录进行时》以女性主义作为实践方法、将在现实社会中长期被客体化、边缘化的群体与文化，在区块链及数字空间中“复活”、留存及延展；亦是尝试揭示在赛博格社会的未来中主体性认知的跬步。
宋婷用蝴蝶、花朵、女性等象征，编织诗歌、戏剧，以多重隐喻的梦境与神话，从具体的意象中重组、编码出关于身份政治、主体性、以及宇宙学的新的意识空间，并启示关于赛博时代中的文化与生态空间的另一种非技术话语式的想象力。在作品《海沙与沫》中，艺术家用AI生成了图像，对于科技殖民和原住民问题做出叙事诗般的回应。《悉达多》将极具代表性的宗教哲学故事映射、转译至虚拟世界，“重生”为数字空间中关于“真实”与“完美”的新寓言。而《缠绕的编经》将少数民族及东南亚的以女性及未成年劳动为主的纺织、染印等传统手工艺技术进行区块链上档案建立和代码复原、再创作。
宋婷的《逆赛博格启示录进行时》邀请观众探索技术与人性的交汇点，亦试图探索连接”现实”与”虚拟”的某种共生的、融合式的方案。这不仅仅是关于技术的一种想象，更是关于我们自身的一种想象；亦不仅是关于算法时代的认知和“登陆”，也关于如何探索编码文本构成的“矩阵”时代之外的可能性。
How can the expectations of culture, work, reproduction, and mass technological labor be re-articulated in the context of the new techno-social relations governed by algorithms? The works of Song Ting is in quest of an alternative integrating language to the binary "reality-virtual" relationship. Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto was born out of the late twentieth-century collapse of the boundaries of "human-animal," "organism-machine," "body-non-body,” which echoed concerns about technological culture and political identity. Now, under the domination relationship constructed by the ubiquitous but invisible microelectronic chip "AI era", Song Ting's "Reverse Cyborg Apocalypse in Progress" uses feminism as a practical method to retain, recover, and recreate the groups and cultures that have long been objectified and marginalized in the real society in the blockchain and digital space. It is also an attempt to explore the pratical sequential process involved in subjective cognition in the Cyborg civilization of the future.
Song Ting creates poems and plays with multiple metaphors of dreams and myths using images like butterflies, flowers, and women. By reorganizing and encoding these spaces of consciousness from concrete imagery, Song Ting reveals another non-technological discourse of imagination about culture and ecological space in the cyber era. In work “SEA, SAND, AND FOAM” , Song Ting uses AI-generated graphics to generate a narrated response to the connection between tech colonization and Aboriginal topics. ‘’Ciddhartha" maps and translates representative religious and philosophical stories into the virtual world, and is reborn as a new fable about "truth" and "perfection" in the digital space. "Entangnals" creates a blockchain archive for recovering and re-creating traditional handicrafts like weaving, dyeing, and printing. These crafts are mainly practiced by women and underage laborers in ethnic minority groups in Southeast Asia.
Song Ting's "Reverse Cyborg Apocalypse in Progress" invites viewers to explore the intersection of technology and humanity, while also attempting to explore a symbiotic, fusion-based solution that connects "reality" and "virtuality". This is not just a technological fantasy; it is also an enigma about who we are. It is not just an imagination about “on-boarding” and cognition in the age of algorithms; it is also a vision about how to explore the possibilities outside of the Apocalypse of the "Matrix" made up of coded words.
Work by
Ting Song 宋婷
Curated by
Claire