撰文：羅潔尹(高美館研究發展部主任)
刻劃老城市的歷史迴圈


Sharon Zukin在《裸城：純正都市地方的生與死》(Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places)書中昭示了一個城市(她以紐約為例)的變遷宿命，往往是一個「不可逆」的過程 。當你生活周遭的景象快速在腦海中覆蓋、取代或刪除，甚至被「都更」到眼前一片「重開機」時，你該如何記憶這些成長過的世界？

選舉期間，曾聽到人們為了高雄「又老又窮」這句話爭辯不休；身為高雄人的我，並沒有跟著激動不已，因為一直在想，這城市「老」，不好嗎？

城市「老」跟「窮」沒直接關係，畢竟世界上許多古老城市風韻迷人，是旅客觀光旅程的唯一指標，為老城帶來了珍貴的觀光資財。

「窮」不「窮」，取決於人們精神上能否獲得富足；畢竟「歷史感」才是人類靈魂最可靠的養分；城市有多「老」，便代表了她的歷史年輪刻上了多少迴圈，隨歲月增生的文化厚度有多厚，當然，更代表了這個城市可供傳頌的故事之豐富程度。

無人傳唱故事的城市，在地平線消長、地景不斷更迭的過程中，人群最後只能落得集體失憶，呈現出另一種心靈上的「窮」；即使到處流竄著「愛」或「LOVE」之類的催眠符號，都只能是短暫的自我麻醉，無法解心靈上的渴。

不斷移轉中的城市地貌

高雄在各個不同的時代中，因為建設模式與管理者的不同常常呈顯出兩極化的性格，因此也有著不同的代表符號。就像外地人所無法理解，明明旁邊就是海，但高雄的「海洋意象」為何如此內隱？其實長年被戒嚴與海岸線軍防區隔離開來的高雄，亦是直至近20多年前才在市府主導下，透過海邊活動或舊港區倉庫群改造等「介入」，港務局逐步釋放海岸管制權後，人們才能穿梭與貼近著這條蜿蜒的海岸線，並擴大了「看海」的眼界。

但對藝術家來說，政治控制一直都無法封閉他們的心靈想像。自高美館藏品中可歸納出各不同世代的寫生框景排行榜，其中以從不同角度俯望有「撒拉森頭」(Saracen Head)暱稱的旗後山，可說是絕大多畫家取景的首選；那方蘊含了古人「旗山夕照」的絕佳畫面，堪稱「高雄」意象最具代表性的完整視角。

這個城市的命脈「愛河」也不遑多讓。早年沿河哪來的橋樑、豪宅或貢多拉啊？早期的河岸分布了沼澤、泥灘、鹽湖等，長滿紅樹林、林投、刺竹等植物，常見漁民捕撈魚蝦的「繒筏」航行其上；當時筏上高高撐起的弧型竹架，可謂是河上最優美的線條，而河邊有著供漁民儲放晒乾漁網的草寮，才是「河景第一排」；後來當這條河流轉變成運送木材至貯木池的路徑時，則又出現了另一種時代景觀。

高雄早期的鄉土書寫者照史(本名林曙光)在他所著《高雄人物評述》(第二輯)乙書 中，描述了無數饒富趣味的老高雄風雲人物(包括前輩畫家劉啟祥與張啟華)，以及與他們相關的時代軼事；這些都是我們間接閱讀過去地景變遷細節的參考。

其中，他在〈高雄西醫濫觴莊媽江．李炳森〉乙文中描述了愛河早年的「釘子戶」；那是在「打狗川」時期，河中浮洲上方有著前金人許豬拒絕配合疏濬工程遷離的房舍，後來在殖民政府築港部利用四周挖濬讓浮洲自垮而消失的過程。

這些都再再記錄著今不可考的地景傳說，但也告訴了我們，無論多麼雄偉的建築地標，有朝一日終將成為地圖上一方抹除的標記。


逐一揭開記憶的篇章


從100年前的「打狗」走到今日的「高雄」，這個被大眾認知以工業起家、亟欲尋求產業轉型的城市，總被高溫、煩躁的艷陽煙塵覆蓋。

過去揮汗如雨的勞工族群，撐起了在地產業的一片天，而路上來去的卡車與貨櫃，是這個城市最顯眼的產業意象，因此才會出現「鋼雕藝術節」或「貨櫃藝術節」之類的代表性活動；但如果以為這就是所謂的「高雄」，那你就想得太淺了！

或許人們一直糾結在高雄港於世界商港的排名，但這個由潟湖、漁村建設開挖築港而成的大商港，過去滋養出城市豐富的人文與產業，讓城市有著多元的歷史面容。日治時期的哈瑪星臨港線鐵路，運載了大量物資出口的昔日榮景，亦非今日在鐵軌遺跡上放風箏、野餐、拍照，或在駁二、棧二庫中穿梭於時尚潮店的年輕人可以想像。

二次大戰時，高雄港被日軍自沉艦船以防敵艦(美軍)進入補給，戰後的打撈清淤意外地造就了後來高雄「拆船王國」的一時榮景 ；當年這些歷程帶給紅毛港居民商機，卻也留下難以刨除的傷痛(海域汙染與船體爆炸的危險)。如今遷村後轉型成觀光場域的紅毛港文化園區，再也看不見這些繁盛過往，大家也只能在鹽埕區落寞的五金街上，感受公園路身為全國最大二手機械五金交易市集的傳奇過往；或許，當港區觀光設施逐一完成，地價上揚後，這條老街便會走入歷史了。

然而高雄不只是個工業硬漢，過去清領時期的「鳳山八景」 或是日治時期「高雄八景」 ，這些對高雄風景的「認證」，在描述中還包括了時人對在地特有景觀的驚艷，包括大氣變化與自然生態等生動感受，可謂「沉浸式」的全身心詮釋；這些都讓後人可以感受到當時高雄迷人的氣息。

時序遷移，今日西灣夕照、澄湖煙波、蓮潭垂柳成為高雄最為大眾記得的少數「神情」；這些有如歷盡滄桑一美人般耐人尋味的景色，我們無法在熙來攘往的遊客人龍中溫柔感受，只能在沉靜的繪畫或攝影中細品慢嚐，而美術館的典藏，便是這些記憶篇章的揭角。

館內一幅前輩畫家張萬傳混用了泛印象派手法描繪的〈高雄教堂〉，揭出了位於五福路上離愛河口不遠處的玫瑰天主堂之過往。

每逢聖誕節，人們就興奮地擠入這間小小教堂中，但少有人意識到教堂下方竟曾是與河連成一體的河川地，當時在教友們有土搬土、有力出力的累積下，才填出後來興建教堂的一片地基。 雖然畫作不像泛黃繪葉書(明信片)般寫真，卻讓我們起心動念，想去一探那荒蕪年代中，克服不可能任務去「移山」填地的人們。

所以路上正在寫生或是攝影的人們，可能都正在紀錄我們即將過去的今天；藝術家在不同年代中詮釋著他們看到的世界，為這個城市留下「我曾在」的證明，並深刻地帶我們回味了歷史、人文緊密交疊著的時空軌跡。


擷取城市的恆常圖像

雖說歷史類博物館中，大多藏有大量具「自明性」、能生動演繹歷史「劇情」的攝影作品，然而美術館典藏從「詮釋」的獨特性出發，收藏的大多是自成一格、有畫外之音的繪畫或影像，在不斷移動、起伏的時代價值中，為我們凝視了某一段時空中的「恆常」。

每張風景圖像都像是個壓縮過的時空故事匣，只有當觀者逐步「解壓縮」時，才能釋放出更多的訊息；當城市「地平線」不斷起落，時光恍惚流逝，熟悉的景象逐一被瓦解或遮蔽，你將會愛上這個「恆常」。

為了不讓高雄人在「家鄉」活得「漂浮」，高美館以圖像為人們接力傳唱一則則的城市歌謠；想追尋地方的共同記憶，怎能無視這些與地景變遷息息相關的藝術圖證？

展覽伴隨著高市文化中心吸睛的「石鼓光廊」以及《藝遊未盡》風景桌遊，為人們共組一個穿越時空、虛實相映、可瞭望高雄風景與人文變遷的「桌上旅行團」。然而，圖像畢竟是圖像，我們更期待大家能來趟「城市一日遊」的輕旅行，帶著「懷舊」的心情，實地踏查並深刻記住這個城市。

所以，穿上布鞋、揹上背包、打開地圖，繞進高雄的大街小巷來閱讀各區地景變遷，感受空氣中稀薄但迷人的舊聚落風情，看看歷史建物上優雅的窗花、牌匾，吃吃古早味、聞聞老味道；這些都是你無法google到的真實情感。

所以，藝術家旅行必須，寫生必須，而我們對於過去，好奇必須。(202007)



Opening the Story Box of Time and Space for You

Nita Lo (Head of Department of Research and Development, KMFA)

The Year Circles of an Old City
In her Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places, Sharon Zukin indicated that the changes of a city (using New York as an example) is often an “irreversible” process. When the world around you is no longer the one you remember for it has been quickly overridden, replaced, or deleted by new architectures and things brought by “Urban Renewal Projects” as if everything is “rebooted” like a computer, how can you remember the world where you grew up?

During the election season, I heard many heated debates about the description of Kaohsiung as “an old and poor city”. As a local of Kaohsiung, I did not feel agitated by this description for I was thinking—What is wrong with Kaohsiung being an old city?

An “old” city is not necessarily a “poor” city. After all, there are many old cities around the world that are enjoying invaluable tourism wealth for they are ultimate destinations attracting tourists with their fascinating historical heritage.

Whether a city is “poor” or not should also be decided by the spiritual wealth of people living in it. After all, the history of a city is the most reliable source of nutrition for the well-being of human souls. The age of a city is like the year circles of a tree. The older a city is, the more year circles it grows with a larger accumulation of heritage and a richer collection of stories to be told.

In a city where there is no story passed down from generation to generation and where the cityscape is always changing with new buildings replacing old ones, people will eventually end up with collective forgetting. It represents a kind of spiritual “poverty”. Even though the city is decorated here and there with hypnotizing symbols or signs that read “Ai” (Chinese word for “love”) or “LOVE”, it is nothing but temporary self-delusion without really filling the void inside people living in the city.

Constantly Changing Cityscape

Because of all the different development models and administration methods throughout different periods of time, Kaohsiung seems to exhibit two extremes in its nature. For example, it is located next to the ocean but its “marine image” has been latent for quite a long time. How come? This history is mind-boggling to people from outside the city. Actually, most of the coastal areas of Kaohsiung have long been reserved for military use since the period of Martial Law. It is not until nearly 20 years ago that, thanks to the guidance of the city government through “interference measures” such as holding activities on the seashore and renovating warehouses in the old district of Kaohsiung Port, the authority in charge of all the ports in Taiwan started to gradually release its control over the coastal areas of Kaohsiung, allowing the general public to travel freely along the winding coastline here and broaden their “view” of the ocean.

For artists, their imagination has never been confined by political control. Among the scenes depicted in the paintings and photographic works by different generations of artists collected by KMFA, one of the most frequent choices is Mt. Chihou. Nicknamed “Saracen Head”, this mountain is one of the top choices for most artists to paint from different perspectives in Kaohsiung. The breathtaking scene of “Sunset at Mt. Chihou” highly acclaimed since many years ago is probably one of the most representative images of Kaohsiung.

Another site equally popular among artists is the Love River, one of the arteries of this city. All the bridges, mansions or gondolas along this river were nowhere to be seen in much earlier years. Back then, on both sides of the river, there were only swamps, mudflats, and saline ponds overgrown with mangrove, pandanus, thorny bamboo and other vegetation. Bamboo rafts of local fishmen were frequently seen sailing along the river. On each raft, the bamboo frames used to hang and release the fishing net added elegance to the river view with their beautiful arc shapes. The straw huts where local fishermen sundried and stored their fishing nets were the “mansions in the front row of river view”. When the river was later used for transportation of wood logs to the log basin downstream, these views along the river were replaced by different views of a new time.

In his Comments on Figures in Kaohsiung (Book II) , Chao Shih (originally known as Lin Shu-guang) described the lives of many intriguing influential Kaohsiung natives (including senior artists) and anecdotes of their times, providing us references to indirectly appreciate in detail how the landscape and society in Kaohsiung have changed.

Among the articles in this book, the one titled “Trailblazers of Western Medicine in Kaohsiung: Chuang Ma-chiang & Li Ping-sen” told the anecdote about a “nail resident” (resident who refused to accept any compensation and relocate for a development project) during the Japanese colonization period. Back then the Love River was called the “Takao River” and Hsu Chu, one of the residents on a sandbar in the river, adamantly refused to move for a river dredging project. The colonial government then dug deep ditches surrounding the sandbar to make it collapse amidst the erosion of river currents.

This anecdote, along with others, are now unverifiable stories about the cityscape transitions of Kaohsiung. They also remind us that all the architectural landmarks in a city, no matter how magnificent, will eventually disappear from the map someday.

Reading through the Chapters of Memory

Kaohsiung has evolved from the “Takao” a century ago to what it is today. Known for its industrial development and eagerly seeking industrial upgrading and transformation, this city is often shrouded by scorching heat and fumes that make people feel fretted.

Thanks to its bullet-sweating labor force, Kaohsiung has been enjoying significant industrial prosperity. The trucks carrying containers and running on the road constitute the most noticeable industrial image of this city, which accordingly gives rise to such representative activities of Kaohsiung as the “Steel and Iron Sculpture Festival” and the “Container Arts Festival”. If you think these are what “Kaohsiung” is all about, then you will have to think again!

Even though the history of Kaohsiung Port among the top commercial ports in the world is something worthy of dwelling upon, its development from a fishing village nearby a lagoon to a major commercial port has not only enriched an abundance of social, cultural, and industrial characteristics but also brought this city diverse historical facets. The historical prosperity along the Hamasen Railway that was used to transport exports from downtown to Kaohsiung Port during the Japanese colonization period is now something beyond the imagination of those young people flying kites, having picnics, and taking pictures in the Hamasen Railway Cultural Park or visiting one chic store after another at the Pier-2 Art Center and KW2.

During WWII, the Japanese navy intentionally sank many large-size ships at Kaohsiung Port to block the US navy from entering for supply replenishment. The wreckage clearing of these ships after the war brought Kaohsiung unexpected prosperity of its “ship dismantling kingdom”. However, this part of history not only brought people living in Hongmaogang industrial development but also left some damage difficult to undo (pollution of the ocean and danger of ship explosion). As people living in Hongmaogang moved out and their village was replaced by Hongmaogang Cultural Park, the local industrial prosperity is now no longer seen. The legendary history of Gongyuan Road in Yancheng District as the largest hub of second-hand machinery and hardware trade in Taiwan can now only be faintly felt through a visit to the cluster of not-so-busy hardware stores on the Hardware Street, the remnants of Guongyuan Road. Maybe, after all the tourism facilities are in place in the Kaohsiung Port Area, these hardware stores will be closed amidst rising land prices and this old street will also become another part of history.

However, Kaohsiung is more than an industrial stronghold city. It was also known for beautiful scenery such as the “Eight Scenes of Fengshan” during the Qing Dynasty or the “Eight Scenes of Kaohsiung” during the Japanese colonization period. These “recognition” titles of Kaohsiung’s landscape convey how physically and mentally “immersed” people back then were in the unique local scenery under different climatic and ecological conditions. Through these titles, people of later generations can have a vicarious feel of Kaohsiung’s glamor back then.

As time goes by, most people nowadays associate the landscape of Kaohsiung with only a few of its representative “looks” such as the sunset at Xizhi Bay, Chengcing Lake veiled by a fog, Lotus Pond with swaying willow branches. The other scenes among the above-mentioned titles have gradually faded like the beauty of a fine lady in her elder years after all the vicissitudes of life. The beauty of these forgotten scenes is no longer carefully and slowly savored by busy tourists but by viewers of paintings and/or photographic works depicting these places. Through the collections of art museums, viewers can read through all the chapters of memory about this city.

Among the collections of KMFA, Church in Kaohsiung, a painting by Chang Wan-chuan, gives a pan-impressionist depiction of Kaohsiung Rose Basilica and also reveals the past of this catholic church located on Wufu Road close to the estuary of Love River.

During each Christmas season, many people excitedly rush into this small cathedral with only few of them knowing that it was built on a patch of land reclaimed from the Love River by its members strenuously carrying sand and soil over themselves to fill the lot. Even though Chang’s painting is not a realistic rendition of the cathedral like a postcard, it can still inspire us to go back to those days to meet those believers who overcame what seemed impossible and built the church like the legendary Yugong (literally meaning “the old fool”) and his descendants who moved away the mountains in front of their house bit by bit.

Those who are painting from life or taking pictures on the street are probably also recording our present time that will soon become the past. Artists of different generations give us their interpretations of the world in their eyes, leaving evidence of “what was once there” for this city and taking us on a profound journey across time and space back to the past where history and culture was closely intertwined.

Extracting “Eternal” Images of the City

Different from the sizable collections of “self-evident” photographic works at history museums that can vividly retell historical “stories” of the past like a TV drama or movie, the paintings or images in the collections of art museums are unique in their interpretations, telling stories of the past beyond the images and allowing us to gaze at the “eternity” of a certain space or time despite the constantly changing and undulating values of different times.

Each painted or photographed image of the cityscape is like a story box of compressed time and space. Only when gradually “decompressed” by viewers, more stories will be extracted from it. As the skyline of this city is constantly changing amidst the fast passage of time and all the familiar sights are either destroyed or replaced, you will fall in love with this kind of “eternity”.

To make sure that local citizens of Kaohsiung will not feel “rootless” in their “hometown”, KMFA is holding this exhibition to relays the stories of this city through images. It is impossible to start a pursuit of collective memory about a place like Kaohsiung without artist records, such as works collected by KMFA, of its landscape changes, isn’t it?

Together with the eye-catching “Corridor of Landscape on Stone-drum Lightboxes” at the Kaohsiung Cultural Center and the board game of “Kaohsiung Landscape in Transition: Exploring the Museum Collection through Art Game”, this exhibition can serve as a “2D tour group”, taking viewers through time and space, through reality and virtuality, to better appreciate the scenic and social transitions of Kaohsiung. However, images are just images. It is hoped that each of you will have your own “one-day excursion in the city” to different places of this city with a heart filled with “nostalgia” to better remember this city in person.

Therefore, put on your sneakers and backpack and then use a map to navigate your way around in the streets and alleys of Kaohsiung, exploring the changes of its skyline and the subtle glamor of its history in the air, observing the elegant designs of windows and plaques of historical architectures, and savoring traditional delicacies and local atmosphere. These are all the real-life sensations you cannot find on Google.

As traveling around and painting from life is a must for an artist, so is having curiosity about the past for all of us. (202007)