How can a person search for an authentic self without turning authenticity into another fixed identity?
人如何寻找真心自性,同时不把“真实”变成另一种固定身份?
WU—LIAO / 孙逊WHY WE RETURN / 为什么再次回到这组对话
The Sun Xun sequence moves among the brain and heart, animality, the NPC as a figure of programmed existence, boredom, education, artistic visibility and the authority of silence. Read together, these records do not offer a stable doctrine of the self. They stage selfhood as an unfinished practice of noticing what acts through us: desire, habit, bodily impulse, platform attention and the wish to become free of them.
Brain, heart and breath remain competing images for consciousness rather than a single settled location.
大脑、心与呼吸在这里仍是意识的多重图像,而非唯一确定的位置。
02 / RELATED ARCHIVE FRAME / 关联档案画面Night performance or field archive夜间现场
The full-body frame holds posture, costume and exposure against the darkness of the site.
全身画面把姿态、服装与身体暴露留在夜间现场的黑暗之中。
03 / RELATED ARCHIVE FRAME / 关联档案画面How Do We Use the Heart? — selected source frame孙逊 / 心与脑
The selected record stages heart and brain as working metaphors for embodied attention rather than anatomical conclusions.
重点资料把“心/脑”作为具身注意的工作隐喻,而不是解剖学结论。
04 / RELATED ARCHIVE FRAME / 关联档案画面Live performance archive现场表演
The close frame keeps the body, microphone and stage relation at the centre of the image.
近距离画面把身体、麦克风与舞台关系保留在图像中心。
05 / RELATED ARCHIVE FRAME / 关联档案画面Encounter with a field participant人物与相遇
The image holds a moment of proximity between the camera, the place and the person encountered there.
画面保留镜头、地点与现场相遇者之间的一段接近。
THREE THREADS / 三条线索
Follow the sequence, not only the quote.
沿着整个系列阅读,而不只停在一句话上。
01
Selfhood, NPC and animality
自性、NPC与动物性
The NPC names existence governed by scripts, while animality names impulses that cannot simply be removed. The search for an authentic self therefore becomes less a purification than an inquiry into which forces one can recognise, negotiate or refuse.
The brain/heart distinction initially separates planning from felt experience, but the sequence repeatedly collapses that binary. Writing, listening, meditation and learning appear as changing arrangements of analysis and presence.
Platform visibility is presented as a poor measure of intellectual or artistic value. Yet refusing visibility entirely can also remove difficult work from public life. The archive keeps this conflict open instead of resolving it through personal branding.
Searching for a true self can resist social programming, but it can also invent a pure essence that never existed outside relation.
寻找真实自我能够抵抗社会程序,却也可能虚构一个从未脱离关系而存在的纯粹本质。
02
Silence / public responsibility
沉默/公共责任
Silence may protect thought from platform simplification; circulation may be necessary for thought to enter a shared field.
沉默可以保护思想免受平台简化;传播又可能是思想进入共享场域的必要条件。
FROM OUR PRACTICE / 回到我们的实践
Our questions do not ask Sun Xun for a single definition of selfhood. They create transitions—from a bodily metaphor to education, from personal practice to platform authority—so that a philosophical problem remains mobile across ordinary examples.