The Footprints of Maroon

The French word "marron" means chestnut, or the color of chestnut. Another French word related to "marron" is "marroner," meaning to escape (esp. in the case of slavery). In Signs and Wonders (2003) ⁴, it is stated that "[t]he maroons, in Jamaica and elsewhere, struggled bitterly against the colonial powers and established their own enclaves and economy." 5 Moreover, in Simon Harvey's Smuggling: Seven Centuries of Contraband (2016), it is mentioned that the word "marroner" had another meaning in the 18th century: to carry out a secret task, which usually referred to transporting books that were banned. These books included erotic literature as well as great books of thought. During the warring period of the Latin American independence movement, book smuggler Simón Bolívar provided two small offset printing machines, which became instruments that allowed thought to cross borders. Behind the action of border-crossing, there have always been sentiments of idealism propelling people to take actions that could not be avoided. As for the reasons for crossing borders, they have become extremely complicated given the hierarchy signified by forces driving specific communities within a territory, the fact that the oppressors have become unrecognizable, and even the fact that those in exile have sometimes involved in the system causing their own oppression.

Artist Tapas Roy was born in Bangladesh in 1971. His childhood memory of fleeing from the war is a major theme in his works. According to him, he already experienced the war sonically when he was a fetus in his mother's womb. In his painting series, he attempts to delineate the sounds from his memory, and portrays the war that he experienced but did not see. In this project, I use "voice" as a keyword, and invite Roy to write about the source of his painting series, which he has continued for many years. His autobiographical writing serves as a supplement to what lies behind the border crossing.

Instead of calling Mahila Zine a publication, one might instead see it as a platform of exchange for South Asian women artists. With different themes and production methods, each issue engenders a focused discussion. Being an economical, smaller-sized form of publication, the zine makes it easier to preserve the artworks by women artists in their professional fields, as well as their spontaneous creations regarding the social realities they find themselves faced with. During this project, the South Asian region was under the strong impact caused by the measure of "lockdown" due to the COVID-19 pandemic. How do women cope with the impasse arising from their attempt to break free from the restraints of traditions and the idea of "index" and their being forced to return index due to the lockdown? I invite Mahila Zine to use "lockdown" as an issue title and the keyword for the project to publish the latest issue.

"Post-humanist body" and "visuality" are the keywords proposed by art educator Mrinal Kulkarni. Using an article about cases of the new media art in India, she talks about the ideas embedded in the keywords. In the cases she mentioned, discussions and the use of the NFTs were included as well. In The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto of 1988, it is believed that crypto currency can provide the momentum to create a utopia without national borders. This ideal has been proven unachievable after several years of practice, but "the image of these rebels haunts Caribbean history as the lost hope of the past, and by analogy has become the imaginative symbol of the fugitive in our time, because the maroon can also run away to an imaginary indexland; he crosses borders and breaks out of boundaries and inhabits a place of elective affinities."



「marron」在法文中指得是栗子、栗子色，另一個相關單字「marroner」則意味著逃跑。在《標誌與奇蹟 ¹》（2003）一書中，曾說「在牙買加和其他地方的栗色人與殖民列強進行了激烈的鬥爭，並建立了自己的飛地和經濟 ²」；而在西蒙．哈維（Simon Harvey）的《走私》（2016）中，則提到marroner在18世紀時的另一個意思：從事秘密工作，通常是指暗中運送禁書。這些被禁的書籍包含了情色文學與夾藏在法律書籍裡的思想巨著；在拉丁美洲獨立戰爭時期，書籍走私商為西蒙．波利瓦（Simón Bolívar）提供了兩台小型平版印刷機作為思想跨越邊境的工具。跨越邊界的背後總是充滿了不得不為但又必須有所為的理想主義情懷，而跨越邊界的理由在經歷漫長的歷史後，已經變得複雜難解，因為疆域內對於特定族群的推力所指出的階層關係，以及迫害者面貌已經變得模糊不清，甚至有時指出的是流亡者也參與的自我壓迫系統。

藝術家塔帕斯．羅伊（Tapas Roy） 1971年出生於孟加拉，幼年時逃離戰火的記憶成為他日後作品的重要主題，據他所說，他在母親的子宮裡時便已經透過聲音經歷了戰爭。在他一系列繪畫作品當中，透過記憶中的聲音試圖描繪出這場實際經歷、但不可見的戰爭的樣貌，在這個計畫當中，我以「聲音」（Voice）作為關鍵字，邀請他寫下長達多年的繪畫系列的源頭，透過藝術家自傳式的文體，補述越界背後的樣貌。

瑪嬉拉小誌（Mahila Zine）與其說是一本出版品，毋寧說是一個南亞女性藝術家交流的平台，透過每一期不同的主題以及製作方法，凝聚起討論。小誌纖巧的特質更容易保存下女性藝術家們在專業領域的創作外及所面臨的社會現實底下的隨筆之作。在計畫進行期間，南亞正面臨了因新冠疫情產生的「封城」所帶來的強烈影響，在試圖離開傳統與「家」所帶來的侷限、卻又因為封城被迫回到家中的女性，如何面對僵局？我邀請瑪嬉拉小誌以「Lockdown」作為小誌標題與計畫關鍵字，進行最新一期的發表。

「後人文主義身體」以及「視覺性」是藝術教育工作者穆莉娜爾．庫爾卡尼（Mrinal Kulkarni）所提出的關鍵字，她以一篇文章論述印度的新媒體藝術案例並且介紹兩個關鍵字背後的概念。在她所提及的案例當中，包含了對於NFT的討論以及使用。在1988年的《加密無政府主義者宣言》中，認為加密貨幣可以為創造一個消除國家疆界的烏托邦提供助力，即便這個理想在之後數年的實踐過程中被證明難以執行，但「這些反叛者的形像作為過去失去的希望縈繞在加勒比歷史上，以此類推，成為我們這個時代逃亡者的想像符號，因為栗子色也可以逃往想像中的家園；他跨越國界，打破界限，居住到他所選擇而與其有類同的地方。」