日常宝藏 I, II, III
韩冰

我们被告知，我们正走在通往幸福的路上，从过去虚假的政治狂想中迈经济现代化的狂热中，所谓的全球化和现代化扑面而来，我们从一个世界急速奔向另一个世界，奔向一个幻象的人欲横流的虚构的中国。中国对于世界历史进程的眺望和对新生活的向往集中体现在中国及一些第三世界国家对于所谓现代性的追求上，这些国家尤其是中国对于某种特殊或特定的现代性的追求使人民的生活方式被不断打破，原有的文化价值的碎片就像“新中国”的一片片废墟的残骸一样。五千年在城市的废墟里呼啸远去，新生活的方向在漫布灰尘和水泥的天空中却怎么也看不清楚。            
 《日常宝藏》系列摄影呈现的是人们在这个拥有现代化城市化梦想的国度里的生存境遇，是关于人与日常生活中的普通物品的交往以及人们的日常生活在现代化的进程中逐渐被流放的镜像。虽然这些物品看起来很普通（例如劳动工具，建材，以及其他与日常生活有密切关系的物品），但它们却是劳动人民赖以生存的依靠。
《和家人一起向往新时代：日常宝藏第一号》是我2001年国庆节和全家人一起拍的合影照，我和家里人每人手里捧着一块红砖面对着镜头，背景是我家的新房子。砖块似乎很重，感觉里面装满了劳动的艰辛和对未来的希望和焦虑。
红砖是中国城市化初期和现在农村现代化建设中典型的建材。在80年代红砖是现代性的象征。而在90年代以后，当许多乡村人民还没有来得及从泥土坯草房或青砖房搬到红砖房的时候，红砖在都市化的建设中已沦为落后的象征。虽然城市拆迁的红砖被当作废品，但是对于跟不上“新中国”现代化的人民来说，这种都市化建设的日常垃圾却是他们的一种生活依靠，一种“日常宝藏”。
进行都市化建设的农民工来到城市打工为了在家乡能够建一个比他们在城里拆掉还“落后”的房子，《多余的残留：日常宝藏第二号》就是反映这个悖论的现实，我们看到的如梦魇般的巨大的人造工程是极为普通的中国都市化建设的缩影。我和一些盖完大厦却没有拿到工钱的农民工，双手捧着红砖，站在北京CBD中心一片废墟前面。虽然他们没有暖和的衣服也没有手套，但他们在寒冷的冬天拆了红砖楼为了盖新的钢筋混凝土大厦。天空飘着雪花模糊了远处繁华的城市，画面中没有激情，静静的只有苍白的物象——不断肢解的废墟中的家园，以及挣扎着的怪兽般的城市丛林所制造的迷茫的梦想。      
在这个急剧变化的社会生产当中人的生活被置于怎样的境地？在《不可测的月亮：日常宝藏第三号》当中，一些已经失去土地进而可能失去家园的城市郊区的农民手里端着红砖站在夜的村头，耀眼的灯光在漆黑的夜里有如不可测的月亮照耀着这些宿命的劳动者和他们未知的新生活。在这场巨大的现代化和城市化的旋涡里他们将面临怎样的抉择？

Everyday Precious and the Predicament of "Modernization"

By Han Bing
We have been informed that we are on the road to happiness, striding from the deceptive political fantasies of the past into a feverish frenzy of economic modernization. The effects of so-called globalization and modernization rain down on us like blows to the face as we hurtle from one world toward another, rushing towards the mirage of a make-believe China, bloated with decadence and grotesque with vulgar self-indulgence. The view of history and the yearning for a new life are concentrated in China's pursuit of so-called "modernity." Like the experience of other Third World countries, China's pursuit of a certain kind of special or specifically designated modernity has continuously disrupted people's ways of life. The fragments of their previously existing cultural values lie in wreckage, like the "New China's" vast expanse of city ruins. Five thousand years shriek and vanish into mountains of urban rubble, but the direction of this new life cannot be seen clearly in these concrete skies, or through the haze of dust spreading endlessly like a veil.
My photography series, "Everyday Precious," presents the existential conditions of people dreaming of modernization and urbanization. It is about the interchange between people and the ordinary objects from their daily lives, as well as a mirror of the process by which their traditional everyday lives are ruptured through modernization. Although these objects seem to be merely ordinary (objects such as tools of manual labor, construction materials, and other objects closely related to quotidian life), they are nevertheless things that working people rely on daily for survival.
"Facing the Future with My Family: Everyday Precious, No. 1," was taken on National Day in 2001 with my family. Everyone is holding a red brick in hand, facing the camera, in front of our home and family garden. The bricks seem heavy. They feel as if they are full of the arduousness of labor, and hopes and anxieties about the future.
The red brick was the quintessential building material of China's early stage of urbanization, and it is still the mainstay of rural construction. In the 80s, the red brick was the signifier of modernity. In the 90s, however, before many rural people had even moved from their old homes of gray bricks or mud and straw and into red brick buildings, in the cities, the brick had already been relegated to a symbol of "backwardness." Although bricks have been designated as refuse in the cities where such buildings are being demolished en masse, for those unable to keep up with the pace of the "New China's" modernization, this "everyday garbage" of urbanization is nevertheless a source of sustenance and survival—an "everyday treasure" that is precious, indeed.
The migrant workers undertaking the labor of urbanization come to the cities to work so that in their rural hometowns they can afford to construct homes far inferior to those they demolish in the cities.  "Superfluous Remnants of an Already Backward Modernity: Everyday Precious, No. 2," reflects this paradoxical reality.  The gargantuan humanly made edifices we see in the cities, hulking in a sleep paralysis-like state, are the exceedingly common microcosms of China's urban construction. I stand with a group of migrant peasant workers who had demolished outmoded brick masonry and built a new skyscraper in its place, but did not receive pay. Raising red bricks in our hands, we stand before a razed building in the heart of downtown Beijing's CBD (Central Business District). Although these construction workers had no warm clothes or gloves, they worked through the bitter winter tearing down red brick buildings to make way for new steel and concrete skyscrapers. Snowflakes hang in the air, blurring the flourishing metropolis in the distance. The picture is devoid of passion, and silent. There are only the pallid, lifeless forms of visible things—a homeland in the ruins, ceaselessly dismembered, and manufactured, hazy dreams in the struggling, bestial urban jungle.
What is the place of the human being in this process of modernization? In "Unpredictable Moon: Everyday Precious, No. 3," (2002), a group of peasants from Beijing's rural suburbs, who have already lost their land and are now in danger of losing their homes, stand in the dark at the entrance to their village with bricks raised in their hands. In the pitch-black nightscape, the dazzling streetlight illuminates these fatalistic laborers and their unknown new lives like an unpredictable moon. In this vortex of massive modernization and urbanization, what kind of choices will they face?

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