挪威明珠:奧斯陸 下一個藝術之都(1)

EVERY NORWEGIAN CHILD has stood in cross-country skis at the bottom of a snowy slope and looked up at his or her father. 'So your dad is there at the top of the hill holding a treat and he says, 'Just make it up here, and we'll take a break,' ' says Eivind Furnesvik, the owner and director of Standard (Oslo), the most successful art gallery in the country's up-and-coming scene. 'That is Norway.'

每個挪威孩子都曾踩着滑雪板，站在雪山腳下，望着自己的父親。Eivind Furnesvik說：“你的父親站在山頂上，拿着一個小禮物對你說，‘你上到這兒來我們就休息。’”Furnesvik是Standard (Oslo)藝廊的老闆以及主管，在整個奧斯陸即將崛起的藝術領域，這家藝廊最爲成功。“這就是挪威的行事之道。”

With that same mettle and hope of reward, the players of Oslo's art world have begun a steep climb to join the ranks of global elite art capitals. The treat-bearing father atop the hill is the government, waving vast largesse from the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. But the route isn't easy for those involved: Aside from subzero temperatures and months of darkness, the relatively small capital city of 600,000 was, until very recently, better known for timber exports and dried fish aged in lye than cutting-edge contemporary art.

奧斯陸(Oslo)的藝術家們在這場艱難的藝術攀登中帶着勇氣去追逐名譽，試圖將奧斯陸打造成爲全球頂尖的藝術中心之一。拿着獎品站在山頂上的父親比喻擁有全球最大主權基金的挪威政府。但這條路對於藝術家們來說並不容易：除了零下的溫度和長達數月的黑暗，這個僅有60萬人的小首都直到最近，享譽世界的都是出口的木材和泡在 液中的魚乾，而不是先鋒派當代藝術。

Just over 100 years ago, shortly after Norway gained full independence from Sweden, the regions north of Bergen counted among the poorest in Europe. In the decades since 1969, when Phillips Petroleum discovered vast oil and gas reserves in the North Sea's Ekofisk field, those same regions have become some of the continent's richest. Income from the reserves pours in through the state-controlled energy giant Statoil, and accrues in Norway's $745 billion sovereign wealth fund, the so-called Oljefondet. Norway's 12-year-old sustainability-minded handlingsregelen, or 'spending rule,' stipulates that the government can use only 4 percent of that fund in each year's national budget. Add that to the country's Scandinavian brand of social democracy, and the result is unrivaled government support for the artistic economy. Last October, Hadia Tajik, Norway's Minister of Culture, announced the country's largest-ever budget for the arts.

挪威脫離瑞典，獲得獨立，僅有一百多年的時間。在此之前，卑爾根(Bergen)以北是歐洲最貧困的地區。1969年，菲利普斯石油公司(Phillips Petroleum)在北海(North Sea)的埃科菲斯克油田(Ekofisk Field)發現了大量的石油和天然氣；此後，這一地區變成了歐洲大陸最富庶的地區之一。國家控股的能源巨頭挪威國家石油公司(Statoil)通過開採油氣田，爲挪威主權基金（Oljefondet，又稱挪威政府養老基金），累積了7,450億美元（約合46,190億人民幣）。挪威崇尚可持續發展，已有12年曆史的“花費條例”規定，政府每年納入國家開支的預算只能爲基金價值的百分之四。這無疑體現了挪威斯堪的納維亞式(Scandinavian)的社會民主，而此舉的結果就是挪威政府對藝術經濟舉世無雙的支持。去年十月，挪威文化部(Ministry of Culture)部長Hadia Tajik發佈了本國曆史上最大的藝術基金。

'It's easy to get things done in Oslo,' says singer and performance artist Nils Bech in a downtown café near the affluent shopping district surrounding the Storting, the Norwegian parliament. 'We have a really good support system, so if you get to a certain level in your career it's possible to get funding to do projects that you wouldn't be able to do elsewhere.' Next to him sits his best friend, Ida Ekblad, a painter, sculptor and conceptual artist. 'It's because Oslo's small. In New York, if you want certain kinds of materials, there are so many rules, and it's so difficult to get things done sometimes,' Ekblad says. 'Here, I'm friends with the guy that works at the scrapyard, and he's always happy when I go there.' Ekblad's recent work involves carving lines from poems she wrote into the wheels of shopping carts, coating the wheels in paint and rolling them across canvases. A former break-dancer, she is one of the flag-bearers of Norway's artistic ascendance: Her inclusion in the 'ILLUMInations' exhibition at the 2011 Venice Biennale was a rallying cry for every art student in Oslo. In April, she had a solo show at the National Museum's contemporary art wing, the Museet for Samtidskunst, where artists like Anish Kapoor, William Kentridge and Robert Smithson have also recently been shown. Stipends from the Norwegian Ministry of Culture have facilitated both Bech and Ekblad's work: He has two years of financing, and she has three. 'I must admit I did have an instinct to come back to Norway that I hadn't felt before,' says Ekblad about her recent return home while pregnant with her daughter after years living abroad in Italy.

歌手兼演員尼爾斯・貝克(Nils Bech)在市中心靠近挪威國會(Storting)的一家咖啡館說：“在奧斯陸做事很容易。我們的後勤體系很棒，所以當你達到某個階段後，你就可能得到資金來做一些其它地方沒法做的項目。”坐在他身旁的畫家、雕塑家、概念藝術家及好友艾達・艾克布萊德(Ida Ekblad)說：“這是因爲奧斯陸很小。在紐約，如果你想要某種材料，總會有條條框框限制你，所以有時辦事非常困難。但在這裏，我有朋友在廢品堆放場工作，每次我去那裏，他都很開心。”艾克布萊德最近的工作是把自己寫的詩刻在購物車的輪子上，然後將輪子塗上顏料，再將其滾過帆布。她曾是霹靂舞者，也是挪威藝術圈的旗手：她參加了2011年的威尼斯雙年展“ILLUMInation”，而這個展覽撩動了奧斯陸每個藝術生的心絃。今年四月，她在國家博物館(National Museum)的現代美術館(Museet for Samtidskunst)舉行了個人展覽。最近像安妮施・卡普爾(Anish Kapoor)，William Kendridge和羅伯特・史密森(Robert Smithson)之類的藝術家也在這裏舉行了展覽。挪威文化部提供的獎金幫助了貝克和艾克布萊德的創作：前者可得到兩年資助，後者爲三年。艾克布萊德說道：“我必須得說當時我有種回到挪威的衝動，而這種感覺原來從未有過。”她在意大利僑居多年，最近回國的時候已懷有身孕。

Another artist who's recently come home is Marius Engh, a member of Furnesvik's roster at Standard (Oslo), who moved back to Oslo after five years in Berlin. 'Sometimes you need a break from a small place like this,' he says on the phone from the home studio he's been able to rent, thanks to government subsidies-an old astronomical observatory with a view over the fjord. 'By moving back home, you come back into the possibility of renewing yourself or becoming whole,' he says. 'I started skiing again!'

最近回國的藝術家還有馬留斯・恩格(Marius Engh)。他是Standard (Oslo)的花名冊中的一員。在柏林居住五年後，他回到了奧斯陸。他在租賃的家庭工作室裏接電話時說，“有時你需要在如這裏一樣的小地方放鬆身心。回到家鄉，也給了你重新認識自己或變得更完整的可能。比如，我又開始滑雪了！”他的租金由政府補貼，這個由一座天文臺改成的工作室可以鳥瞰峽灣的美景。

Even as the city has held fast to some of its grittier elements-a heroin problem lurks in the shadows-you see emblems of its dedication to art everywhere: architectural coups like the opera house designed by the award-winning Norwegian firm Snøhetta or, nearby, along the waterfront, Renzo Piano Astrup Fearnley contemporary art museum, financed by the private wealth of a shipping family and sponsored by Swedish oil firm Lundin Petroleum . New space for the Munch Museum-currently mired in political debate over its location-is forthcoming, as is a new building for the National Museum, slated to open in 2017 and constructed to hold the institution's classical and contemporary collections.

即便這座城市嚴格防控着危險因素――比如暗地裏存在的海洛因問題――但其對藝術的奉獻還是隨處可見：由獲獎設計公司Snoehetta設計的形狀猶如歌劇院的建築；以及附近的碼頭邊，由一個航運家族企業出資修建，並得到瑞典倫丁石油公司(Lundin Petroleum)贊助的Renzo Piano AstrupFearnley當代藝術館。雖然政黨對新的蒙克博物館(Munch Museum)的選址議論不休，但其動工也指日可待，作爲國家博物館(National Museum)的一棟新建築，它將會在2017年拉開帷幕，屆時，會成爲挪威古典及當代藏品的聚集地。