谭天 TANTIAN

麦田里立着画着鱼的画，标题是水族馆、Aquarium。

水族馆 Aquarium

The Image Poet of Urban Corners

城市角落的图像诗人 PART 04

一、水族馆里没有鱼

《水族馆》画着一个女孩站在巨大的玻璃墙前，凝视着里面游动的鱼群。大大小小的鱼漂浮在蓝色的空间里，看上去像我们熟悉的水族馆。但仔细看，那些鱼其实并不是真正的鱼，而是一只只原本应该飘在天空中的鲤鱼旗。
水族馆里没有鱼。
但这并不妨碍它看上去仍然像一个水族馆。
我们似乎已经越来越习惯这样的世界。每天醒来，打开手机，无数图片、视频、文字和声音扑面而来。我们曾经还会认真追问什么是真的，什么是假的；什么真正发生过，什么只是被剪辑、包装和制造出来的景象。后来信息越来越多，速度越来越快，真实与虚拟也越来越难以分开。时间久了，我们甚至懒得再去区分。

I. There Are No Fish in the Aquarium

Aquarium depicts a girl standing before a giant glass wall, looking at what appears to be a school of fish swimming inside. Fish of different sizes float through the blue space, and at first glance, it looks like an aquarium we have all seen before. But look more closely, and none of them are actually fish. They are koinobori, carp-shaped windsocks that should be floating in the sky.
There are no fish in the aquarium.
And yet, it still looks perfectly like an aquarium.
We seem to be growing increasingly accustomed to a world like this. Every morning we open our phones and are immediately surrounded by endless images, videos, words, and voices. We used to ask what was real and what was fake, what had actually happened and what had been edited, packaged, or manufactured. But the volume keeps growing, the speed keeps accelerating, and the boundary between reality and illusion becomes harder to see. Eventually, we stop bothering to tell them apart.

二、没有麦浪的麦田

我把《水族馆》的原作带到了一片刚刚收割过的麦田。
麦子已经没有了。没有金黄色的麦浪，没有风吹过田野时熟悉的起伏，只剩下一片空旷的土地。我把画放在那里，画中的女孩依然站在玻璃墙前，看着那个并不存在真正鱼群的水族馆；而画外的我，站在一片已经没有麦子的麦田里看着她。
鱼是假的。
麦浪也消失了。
画里的空间与现实中的空间，在这一刻产生了一种奇怪的重叠。究竟哪一个更加真实，好像突然也没那么重要了。

II. A Wheat Field Without Wheat

I brought the original Aquarium to a wheat field that had just been harvested.
The wheat was already gone. There were no golden waves moving in the wind, only a vast and empty field. I placed the painting there. Inside it, the girl continued to stand before the glass wall, staring into an aquarium with no real fish. Outside the painting, I stood in a wheat field with no wheat, looking at her.
The fish were not real.
The waves of wheat were gone.
For a moment, the space inside the painting and the space around it began to overlap in a strange way. Which one was more real suddenly didn’t seem to matter very much.

三、真实与虚拟之间

我们每天生活、工作，在城市里奔波，同时又把大量时间生活在另一个由屏幕构成的世界里。新闻、短视频、社交媒体、广告、照片、故事以及别人的生活不断从眼前经过。真实的信息与虚构的信息，真实的人生与精心展示的人生，慢慢混在一起。
也许我们早已经生活在一个巨大的水族馆里。
我们知道玻璃后面的鱼可能不是真的，知道眼前看到的世界经过选择、裁剪、修饰甚至制造，但大多数时候，我们已经不再费力追问。我们只是每天这样晃晃悠悠地继续生活，在真实与虚拟不断交织的世界里，看着那些漂浮的鲤鱼旗。
它们不是真的鱼。
但这个水族馆，看上去似乎依然很美。

III. Somewhere Between
the Real and the Virtual

We live and work in the physical world, moving through cities every day, while spending more and more of our lives inside another world made of screens. News, short videos, social media, advertisements, photographs, stories, and other people’s lives constantly pass before our eyes. Real information and fabricated information, real lives and carefully presented lives, gradually merge into one another.
Perhaps we are already living inside a giant aquarium.
We know the fish behind the glass may not be real. We know that much of what we see has been selected, cropped, polished, or even manufactured. But most of the time, we no longer bother to ask.
We simply drift through our days, somewhere between the real and the virtual, watching those carp-shaped windsocks floating before us.
They are not real fish.
And yet, the aquarium still looks beautiful.