06PAPER 06 / ECOLOGY25 Aug 202616 min

WU—LIAO / 无不吴聊

Childhood Is an Ecological Archive

童年是一座生态档案

Food, memory and care across our conversations with Fan Xueyi

我们与范学宜的对话:食物、记忆与照料

Wu Qian in conversation with Fan Xueyi
Fan Xueyi / 范学宜
ABSTRACT / 摘要

Eleven public records connect food, bees, flowers, wild fruit, childhood memory, parental care, desire and belief. The Fan Xueyi sequence treats nature neither as scenery nor as moral purity, but as an educational relation through which children learn dependence, risk, sweetness and loss. This paper argues that childhood memory can function as an environmental archive: not proof of a better past, but evidence that forms of ecological literacy disappear when direct relations with plants, animals and seasons are replaced by products and screens.

十一条公开资料把食物、蜜蜂、花朵、野果、童年记忆、父母照料、欲望与信念连接起来。范学宜系列不把自然视为风景或道德纯净,而是把它理解为教育关系:儿童在其中学习依赖、风险、甜蜜与失去。本文认为,童年记忆可以成为环境档案——它不是“过去更好”的证明,而是指出:当与植物、动物和季节的直接关系被商品与屏幕取代,某些生态识读能力也随之消失。

KEYWORDSchildhoodecological literacyfoodmemorycarenature education
VISUAL FIELD / 视觉现场05 IMAGES
Plant Instinct — selected source frame
01 / RELATED RESEARCH IMAGE / 关联研究图像Plant Instinct — selected source frame植物的本能 / 资料帧

The plant record opens an ecological argument about situated intelligence, adaptation and the limits of human-centred knowledge.

“植物的本能”资料开启关于在地智能、适应以及人类中心知识边界的生态论证。

Plant and drawing detail
02 / RELATED RESEARCH IMAGE / 关联研究图像Plant and drawing detail植物与绘画

Plant matter interrupts the boundary between representation and the living material represented.

植物材料打断再现与被再现生命材料之间的边界。

Encounter with the Future Feeler display
03 / RELATED RESEARCH IMAGE / 关联研究图像Encounter with the Future Feeler display展览语境

A body standing before the display turns exhibition viewing into a scale relation between image, text and visitor.

身体站在陈列前,使展览观看成为图像、文字与观看者之间的尺度关系。

Plant installation room
04 / RELATED RESEARCH IMAGE / 关联研究图像Plant installation room参与式环境

The room treats living growth, furniture and exhibition architecture as one unstable spatial system.

空间把生命生长、家具与展览建筑视为同一不稳定系统。

Field conversation beside a lake
05 / RELATED RESEARCH IMAGE / 关联研究图像Field conversation beside a lake田野与湖泊

Distance, weather and the lake enter the composition as active conditions of the encounter.

距离、天气与湖面作为相遇的主动条件进入构图。

HOW WE READ / 我们如何阅读

We follow food, flowers, insects and childhood memories as they move from intimate recollection toward wider questions of ecological dependence and care.

我们追随食物、花朵、昆虫与童年记忆,从亲密回忆进入更广泛的生态依存与照料问题。

01

A product can hide a food system

商品能够遮蔽食物系统

The caption 'we eat products, not food' directs attention beyond ingredients toward relation. Soil, pollination, seasonal risk, transport and refrigeration are compressed into a stable object. Children may learn brand recognition without learning how nourishment depends on fragile collaborations. The educational question is therefore not nostalgia for scarcity, but how concealed dependence can become perceptible again.

“我们吃的是食品,不是食物”的文案把注意从成分移向关系。土壤、授粉、季节风险、运输与冷藏被压缩为稳定物件。儿童可能学会识别品牌,却不了解营养如何依赖脆弱协作。教育问题因此不是怀念匮乏,而是如何让被遮蔽的依赖重新可感。

FILMS + CONVERSATIONS / 相关影像与对话FX-01
02

Disappearance reveals dependence

消失让依赖显形

The bee record makes extinction legible through dependency: when pollination disappears, human continuity is also disturbed. The vanished flower works at a smaller scale, joining family affection, local naming and ecological memory. In both cases, loss is not an empty space after nature; it is a change in the relations through which a world can reproduce itself.

蜜蜂资料通过依赖关系使灭绝变得可理解:授粉消失时,人类连续性也会受到扰动。消逝的“耗子花”在更小尺度上连接家庭情感、地方命名与生态记忆。两者中的失去都不是自然之后的空白,而是世界自我延续关系的改变。

FILMS + CONVERSATIONS / 相关影像与对话FX-01FX-02
03

Memory is environmental evidence

记忆是一种环境证据

The sequence asks whether children can believe a painted world that adults claim once existed. Memory here is neither objective inventory nor private sentiment. It is situated evidence of how sweetness, danger, season and play were learned through contact. The archive must preserve that specificity while resisting the fantasy that every remembered childhood was equally free or safe.

系列追问:儿童是否还能相信成人声称曾经存在、并被画下的世界?这里的记忆既不是客观清单,也不只是私人情绪,而是在接触中学习甜蜜、危险、季节与游戏的在地证据。档案需要保存这种具体性,同时拒绝把所有童年都想象成同样自由安全。

FILMS + CONVERSATIONS / 相关影像与对话FX-02
04

Care should not replace encounter

照料不应替代相遇

The image of parents waiting while a child crosses snow distinguishes care from substitution. Protection is necessary, but protection can become dispossession when adults take over the encounter. Ecological education requires calibrated risk: conditions in which a child can touch, wait, fail and respond while support remains present but does not occupy the child's place.

父母守候孩子穿过雪地的形象区分照料与替代。保护不可或缺,但当成人接管相遇时,保护也会变成剥夺。生态教育需要被校准的风险:儿童能够触摸、等待、失败与回应,支持始终在场,却不占据儿童的位置。

FILMS + CONVERSATIONS / 相关影像与对话FX-03
05

Boredom can reopen relation

无聊能够重新打开关系

A caption about unrestrained desire dying by its own hand places boredom beside the phone and the capacity to make value. The claim should not moralise individual screen use. It points toward environments engineered to convert restlessness into consumption. Our recurring attention to boredom asks whether the interval can be reclaimed for observation, making and renewed contact with a more-than-human world.

关于欲望失控的文案把无聊、手机与生产价值的能力并置。该命题不应被缩减为对个人屏幕使用的道德批评,而指向把不安持续转化为消费的环境。我们对无聊的反复关注追问:间隙能否被重新用于观察、制作,以及恢复与超越人类世界的接触?

FILMS + CONVERSATIONS / 相关影像与对话FX-03
FILMS + CONVERSATIONS / 影像与对话

Material behind this paper

这篇文章所使用的影像与对话

RELATED READING / 延伸阅读

Books and essays we place beside the conversation

我们与这组对话并置阅读的书与文章

  1. 01
    Ecology, Instinct and Adaptation / 生态、本能与适应Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World, Princeton University Press, 2015.

    Reads collaborative survival inside landscapes already damaged by capitalist extraction.

    讨论资本开采已造成损害的景观中,协作性生存如何发生。

  2. 02
    Ecology, Instinct and Adaptation / 生态、本能与适应Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, Duke University Press, 2016.

    Offers situated response and multispecies relation instead of fantasies of technological rescue.

    以在地回应和多物种关系替代技术拯救幻想。

  3. 03
    Ecology, Instinct and Adaptation / 生态、本能与适应Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, Milkweed Editions, 2013.

    Connects botanical knowledge, reciprocity and Indigenous modes of attention.

    连接植物学知识、互惠与原住民注意方式。

  4. 04
    Ecology, Instinct and Adaptation / 生态、本能与适应Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment, Routledge, 2000.

    Understands perception and skill as movement within environmental relations.

    把感知与技艺理解为环境关系中的移动。

  5. 05
    Pedagogy and Perception / 教育与感知bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, Routledge, 1994.

    Treats the classroom as a situated practice of freedom, voice and embodied presence.

    把课堂理解为自由、声音与身体在场的实践。

  6. 06
    Pedagogy and Perception / 教育与感知John Dewey, Art as Experience, Perigee/Penguin, 2005 edition.

    Locates art within patterned experience rather than isolated cultural objects.

    把艺术置于有结构的经验中,而不是孤立文化物件中。

  7. 07
    Pedagogy and Perception / 教育与感知Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Bloomsbury Academic, 2018 edition.

    Opposes banking education with dialogical, problem-posing inquiry.

    以对话式、问题化研究反对储蓄式教育。

  8. 08
    Pedagogy and Perception / 教育与感知Maxine Greene, Releasing the Imagination, Jossey-Bass, 1995.

    Connects imagination, social possibility and education through the arts.

    通过艺术连接想象、社会可能性与教育。

  9. 09
    Site, Dwelling and Memory / 地点、居住与记忆Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place, University of Minnesota Press, 1977.

    Distinguishes abstract space from place formed through experience and attachment.

    区分抽象空间与由经验、依恋生成的地点。

  10. 10
    Site, Dwelling and Memory / 地点、居住与记忆Doreen Massey, For Space, Sage, 2005.

    Defines space as multiple, relational and always under construction.

    把空间界定为多重、关系性且持续建构的过程。

  11. 11
    Site, Dwelling and Memory / 地点、居住与记忆Tim Ingold, Being Alive, Routledge, 2011.

    Connects movement, dwelling and environmental knowledge through lived paths.

    通过生活路径连接移动、居住与环境知识。

  12. 12
    Boredom, Attention and Time / 无聊、注意与时间Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, Verso, 2013.

    Critiques continuous attention economies and the erosion of nonproductive time.

    批判持续运转的注意力经济与非生产性时间的消退。

  13. 13
    Boredom, Attention and Time / 无聊、注意与时间Byung-Chul Han, The Scent of Time, Polity, 2017.

    Contrasts lingering duration with accelerated sequences of disconnected moments.

    以停留的持续时间对抗加速且断裂的瞬间序列。