Children in the Forest (Photo Exhibition Review)

A tree in the forest

There are leaves, flowers and fruits

Birds come to feed, bees come to build nests

Little squirrel sleeping under the leaves

Early morning and evening windy and rainy

A tree in the forest

You don't need to know that you are a tree.

A tree in the forest

You don't need to know that you are a tree.

1. Alive

The Sanskrit name अリण्य, transliterated as Aranya, originally means forest, which is extended to mean "a quiet place", "far away from the hustle and bustle", "a place to avoid the hustle and bustle of the world", and in a broad sense refers to a quiet place for ascetics to meditate.

In Southeast Asia, where trees sway in the shadows of the sky, the Buddhist calendar’s April 16th to July 15th is the summer retreat, when monks rest in their respective Aranyas until the end of summer to avoid harming sensitive sentient beings.

I first heard the song “A Tree in the Forest” when I visited the “Power of Walking” exhibition at Taikoo Li Beijing in 2016. I didn’t quite understand the meaning of the last line of the lyrics (from the Sayings of Zen Master Ajahn Chah).

Later I gradually realized that it is a philosophy of life similar to the Dionysian spirit.

Just like all living things in nature - flowers, trees, small animals, they all naturally know how to pursue the ultimate of life, bloom and extend the limit of the possibility of the most "latter wave" in all evolution...

Nature just lives to its heart’s content, not how it lives, and does not need to live in a defined/disciplined way within the framework of knowing “who I am”. Therefore, they always seem to be happy—a happiness that comes from true freedom.

As I understand it, this state is also the essence of art and the source of all creative vitality: art is only responsible for sincere and extreme expression, not for defining its own expression;

On the contrary, when artists constantly self-censor and are censored, or deliberately cater to the market and profit, their creations will lose originality and vitality.

We often use words like "thoroughly" and "very engaging" to praise a wonderful performance, and this is the reason - at this moment the performer is living out his or her life to the fullest, with no distractions in his or her mind.

There is no need to worry about who you are, as long as you live your truest self, you can live happily. Live artistically, regard life as a kind of creation, a song, not for any results, just to enjoy the present process, your life will become light and free, just like a tree, a flower, or a small animal in the forest.

This is generally the case with things in the world.

2 Photography Exhibition

After the harsh winter of the COVID-19 pandemic, people look tired.

Recently I participated in a photography exhibition called “ Kids In The Forest ”. The fresh green injected vitality into our stagnant lives.

Perhaps it is because green gives people a refreshing and comfortable feeling, "forest" has always been a hot word for literary youths to check in, and literary works such as "Norwegian Forest", "Chongqing Forest" and "Little Forest" are well-known. To use a slogan of the Wanjing Oil advertisement: "There is a forest in everyone's heart."

This forest photography exhibition also featured a stunning art installation, a lifelike "forest" that filled the entire room, just like the magical realist scene in the movie "Jumanji": as soon as you open the door of your bedroom, you enter a tropical rainforest, and the next second, strange birds and beasts jump out from behind the bushes.

Of course, there are no real exotic animals in this forest installation, only the whispers of Chinese and foreign gays coming from the corners, telling their stories about coming out, falling in love, and confessing their love.

Yes, the Kids in the title refers to the LGBTQ...sexual and gender diverse community.

3 In the forest

I often have a magical impression: Guangzhou itself is a dense forest.

This city is full of mountains and rivers, with lush vegetation and everything growing. You can see all kinds of flowers on the roadside and smell the rich fragrance. The aerial roots of the banyan tree are like time and space torn into pieces, growing quietly, trying to reach and connect the thick soil of historical memory from the soaring sky...

The climate here is changeable, often shrouded in clouds and fog. The reinforced concrete buildings and elevated roads have formed an artificial jungle. The huge white noise on the road, the motor vehicles rushing in and whizzing past, and the annoying shared bicycle bells coming from behind in the hustle and bustle are the exotic birds and beasts shuttling through this jungle.

People of all nationalities and races live here, and just like the small animals in the forest, they depend on it to thrive and reproduce.

Yes, the forest is a microcosm of human society, and society is a complete ecosystem.

In the context of niche communities, the image of the forest also has the connotation of shelter .

At the end of the last century, Zhang Beichuan, Li Yinhe and other sociologists found that due to the lack of public space, gay men would spontaneously form gay strongholds in various cities, commonly known as "fishing grounds", such as Beijing's Dongdan Park/Peony Garden, a place in Shanghai People's Park, Jinan Black Tiger Spring Woods, Xi'an Big Wild Goose Pagoda next to the grove, Wenzhou Huagaishan Park, Hong Kong Kowloon Park, Taipei New Park (February 28 Memorial Park)... The common characteristics of these "fishing grounds" are that they all have trees, are mostly on the edge of public places such as parks, and have folded time (usually active at night)... All to ensure a certain "privacy". In addition, gays have developed a unique fishing ground culture, such as code words such as "what time" and "borrow a light". This also includes negative impressions that are criticized and misunderstood by the public, such as intercourse in public toilets and tentative sexual harassment of straight men - which reflects from a deep level that in the era of underdeveloped Internet, the public space of gays was squeezed, resulting in a distorted and twisted way of expression.

After entering the new century, with the country's rapidly developing economy and the situation of globalization, capitalism and the Internet have allowed the "forest" of gays to truly move into the concrete jungle. At the level of physical space, it can be roughly divided into two categories: consumption places (bars, gay saunas) and public welfare spaces (LGBT activity spaces, gay centers).

As gay social networking sites, especially mobile ones, continue to flourish, our forest has entered everyone's computer and mobile phone. Yes, the small forest that the "old wave" of the last century longed for has moved into our pockets in the era of the new wave, and it seems to be within easy reach. Due to the privacy of mobile phones and the Internet, the gay community has been greatly visualized in the "forest" of the virtual world.

However, this small forest is not perfect. For online dating, the problem that needs to be solved is to eliminate the information asymmetry between online dating/online love and real life, and how to make friends safely . On the other hand, the censorship of sexual minority content in the online public space is still strict. Long-term external censorship has also led to serious self-censorship , and the relationship within the community has become tense.

Our forests are becoming smaller and more fragmented, like pieces of moss growing eutrophically in our apps, but unfortunately, due to the lack of education and the lack of institutional recognition, forests have never been well integrated into the public domain. Ironically, due to the need for public infectious disease prevention, official agencies such as the National Health Commission and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention have to cooperate with these "forests" to achieve broad testing indicators. This is also why our LGBT public welfare organizations often have to register and operate in the name of "AIDS prevention"... In the end, it has led to the public's stereotype of homosexuality often slipping into a synonym for HIV and STD.

4. Children

In literary works, the image of a child is often used to describe things that are pure, innocent, beautiful, and uncontaminated (socially constructed and disciplined), such as The Catcher in the Rye. And I think it is the most appropriate to use it to describe the LGBTQ community. In the previous article " Human Sense ", I talked about my understanding of diverse sexual orientations, which is like "a tree in the forest" - there is no need to know what you are to live, just exist naturally. Homophobic morality is unnatural.

In a terrifying, cruel and oppressive jungle law system , no one can be a good child or a good person. This is the origin of the concept of "Dark Forest" in "The Three-Body Problem" , a zero-sum game mentality that is trapped in the "Hobbes Trap" and cannot extricate itself.

I can often feel this "dark forest" in some of the current gay dating apps... People are afraid of being seen, but want to see and trap others in the dark. Users have evolved into a tense hunting relationship . When you open the list of people nearby, you find that they are all "shrimp men" (no faces, only bodies). Some even use fake photos to create a "chain of suspicion", which makes me wonder if this is a dating or mating app?

Children are natural, but also the most vulnerable. A healthy society should provide "children" with a more civilized and diverse forest, so that children do not have to hide themselves and can grow freely in the forest.

5 Art and social movements

In the afternoon of the exhibition day, in addition to the exhibition author Li Songsheng's personal tour guide, the organizer also arranged a discussion on "Art and Movement". The members who signed up for the exhibition included psychologists, public welfare workers, media people, infectious disease doctors, cross-dressing artists, and Ashan, the compiler of "Oral History of Elderly Gays".

Li Songsheng said that the relationship between children (LGBTQ) and the forest (society/shelter) is often like " hide and seek ", which touched me a lot. Because he is still studying and needs financial support, he has not come out to his family. Therefore, when he accompanied his mother to visit his first exhibition on the opening day (which was also Mother's Day), he showed her a castrated version (the author's original words) of the exhibition... It's helpless. This seems to be the general ecology of this generation of front-line people. As a child who is not financially independent, it is difficult to gain a sense of security in coming out to his family - the essence of all closets (including marriages of convenience and fraudulent marriages) is also a kind of spiritual castration. In an unhealthy society, everyone faces the fate of "castration", because everyone naturally has different faces and it is impossible to exist in only one voice!

Art is the softest and most powerful form of expression - its power comes from the fact that it touches the softest part of human hearts by telling the truth. Therefore, art is a flower that blooms in the soil of life, and this flower is the "fallen petal" that germinates the seeds of social movements.

6 Fairy 🧚🏻‍♀️

Of all the events I’ve attended, the “Fairy Party” organized by Radical Faeries is the most special one. The parties are held in an environment close to nature, which is nourishing and healing for people’s body and mind. At this time, communication between people becomes relaxed, emotional, and deeply connected. So I found that everyone looks like an “elf/fairy”, unique, yet so natural and beautiful.

When the fairy gathering ended, we returned to the original social jungle, just like the "dark forest" that rushed in front of us, and the fairy spirit disappeared instantly. The streets and subways were crowded with people, and people had no expression on their faces, avoided looking at each other, and were full of hostility. We could not feel each other's existence and gradually became indifferent...

Where will our forest lead to? A cruel jungle with strange animals running around, or a Garden of Eden with fairies flying around?

I think that expressing as much as possible like an artist and trying to inspire civic awareness is a good way to make the forest suitable for our lives. Cultivate a sense of ownership, care about and participate in social co-construction, treat others' affairs as your own, and have the courage to take responsibility for making the situation and yourself better. Be Water!

To use a simple saying, your forest is what you are. The forest is in the heart of each of us.

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