關於 pursuit of freedom meaning ，我們在網路上蒐集到這些相關的討論、資訊與評價

我相信相信當年死於無情槍火與坦克下的學子
想見到的不是大家每年只有哭喪著臉的悼念而無理性深切的反思
若大家只哀悼他們的死亡，而忘記他們當初所抱持的信念，這樣實在是白費了他們的犧牲

紀念六四不應只是一種點蠟燭、喊口號的儀式
紀念六四應有的態度是以八九民運的勇士為榜樣：對公義和自由有一份應有的執著，對暴政強權有奮身反抗的勇氣，對自己的家園有願意付出的精神。
同時，我們必須緊記中共的邪惡，對於這個殘暴且無恥的政權，我們絕對不能妥協退讓；對於一切向其獻媚的奸佞之徒，我們也絕對不能容忍。

所謂「愛國」或「建設民主中國」，對於港人而言只是華而不實的煽情之談，對於香港的前途毫無禆益，反而令香港的民主進程裹足不前，在地抗爭、自立尋生才是港人的出路
當然，獨立自決不能一蹴而就，除了實際參與各種抗爭行動之外，大家還可以在改變議會、捍衛言論自由、對抗洗腦教育......等議題上盡一分力：做助選義工也好，傳揚民主思想也好，就政府各政策的諮詢去信表達意見也好......有很多事情是我們可以做、應該做的
就算未能像當年的勇士般置生死於度外，至少也要犧牲一點享樂的時間為香港做點事，讓自己對得起這片土地、對得起下一代
共勉之。

愛國盡頭乃殘民赤禍 痛悟前非當自立尋生
香港大學學生會六四宣言

廿七年前的春夏之交，中國翻起巨變，人人以為民主、自由即將降臨。可惜事與願違，一場波瀾壯闊的民主運動，最後以血腥鎮壓告終，無數市民學子魂斷於國家機器之下，遭秋後算帳而身陷囹圄、痛遭刑劫者亦不計其數。學生以愛國之名掀起學潮，豈料國家卻早已遭殘民以逞的共匪竊去。墨寫的謊話，掩不住血色真相。縱然身處相對自由的國度，本着良知與公義，港人一直未有遺忘八九年的這段歷史。可惜，在一河之隔的中國人民，卻似乎早為獨裁者的巧言令色矇蔽，沉醉於暴發戶式的中國夢當中，除極少數的維權份子以外，根本無人願意直視政權之非人暴行。廿七年後再回首，六四屠城無疑標誌着中共錯失最後一個自我完善的機會。六四以後，中國與民主正式話別，民權不彰而黨政威權當道，公權力無限膨脹，貪污腐敗無所制約，優良文化日漸消亡，社會自此走上一條不歸之路。

六四屠城不獨是中國的轉捩點，更是港人主體身份建立的一個分水嶺。一方面，它扼碎了港人對中國改革開放的幻想，催生香港本位主體意識；另一方面，卻又矛盾地將港中兩地人民的命運混為一談，扼殺主體意識。多年來，維園六四集會與愛國主義互相捆縛，已成不可割裂的雙胞胎。今日，我們提出重鑑六四屠城的歷史意義，無非是要告訴各位，在愛國的囈語以外，更重要是肯定人民對自由、民主的美好追尋。而談論自由、民主，最後必然會踏上建立主體的道路，亦即今日年輕人高喊的自主自決。尤其當我們認清「黨即是國，國即是黨」之本質後，就會發覺愛國與民主兩者之間存在根本抵觸，是以「建設民主中國」斷無理由成為香港之政治議程。以愛國情懷為基調的悼念方式，亦應劃上句號。一如世界各地，中國的民主理應由在地人民爭取，港人無理要承受這份強加的責任，更不應廉價地遙距「建設民主中國」以期自保。否定港人「建設民主中國」之責任，絕不等同主張兩地公民社會斷絕來往。正如港台兩地之公民互動，香港大可與中國治下受壓迫的人民交換經驗，惟動機非出於一份不存在的「責任」。

六四，絕不只是每年一次點起燭光、哭喪哀嚎。某些政黨、政客口口聲聲說要結束一黨專政，平日卻受制於「愛國緊箍咒」，對中共政權誠惶誠恐，奉若神明，甚至為見京官而扭盡六壬，絲毫不敢挑戰中共之主權合法性。香港的政治問題從來只有一個，就是關於代價的承受。第一次前途問題時，大部分港人以至政客皆未有汲取六四教訓，欠缺對香港主體性及主體的想像，欠缺當家作主的勇氣加上誤信中共「港人治港，高度自治」的糖衣毒藥，香港民主進程因而一再耽誤。可惜歷史沒有如果，只有教訓。往日不可諫，來日猶可追，我們絕不能重蹈覆轍！

從今以後每年六四，我們遙祭六四死難者之際，請同時為被出賣的香港默哀，更要矢志為2047前途自決鞠躬盡瘁。有人說，中共奉行帝國主義，中國因素無遠弗屆，香港難以偏安一隅。今日新世代主張港人自決，決非要掩耳盜鈴，而是知其不可為而為之。面對中共壓境，香港自決與獨立運動應運而生，我們比任何潑冷水的人都要清楚當中現實考量與限制，但我們更清楚：民主必須站着爭取，而非跪着乞求。民主，從來都是自我充權、自我實現的過程，是故我們必須將身份認同轉化成抗爭武器，對抗強權壓迫，為自己、下一代謀取更大政治權利。

短短數年光景，在部份人眼中曾是無稽之談的本土思潮，今日已進入主流政治議程。的確，無人能夠斷言，本土思潮必然會引領港人走向救贖，但在時代的分岔口之上，一邊通往汪洋大海，另一邊卻是通往赤紅的地獄。對此，我們作出一個明確的抉擇：即使航向未知的前方，亦不與魔鬼打交道。同時，我們更要高聲告訴獨裁者，服從絕非毫無條件之事。香港，我們必定會拚死守護。

Patriotism only ends in hardship and panic,
We repent to misdeeds to cling on to our lives
Declaration of the Hong Kong University Students’ Union on the Tian’anmen Massacre

Twenty-seven years ago, China underwent a change in the midst of spring and summer, looking forward to the emergence of democracy and freedom. In contrary, the striking democratic movement ended only in suppression and bloodshed. Countless citizens and students deceased under the state apparatus. Those who were latterly reprised and put in jail or tortured were also hard to number. Starting the student movement in the name of patriotism, students would have never imagined their country to have been taken over by communist evil who harmed people for their own doing. Lies written in black and white can never disguise the bloody truth. Even though Hongkongers live in a slightly freer place, we, with conscience and justice, have never forgotten this history of 1989. Unfortunately, on the opposite shore of the river, the Chinese seem to have long been blinded by the dictators’ fine words and actions, drowning in the nouveau-riche Chinese dream. There is no one who combats the regime’s atrocity, except very few rights defence protesters. In retrospect twenty-seven years later, the Tian’anmen Massacre marked the last chance for the Chinese Communist to improve itself, which it had missed. After the Massacre, China bid her final goodbye to democracy. Human rights was ruined amid the heyday of the party authoritarian. While the authority expanded infinitely, corruption and collusion were out of limit. As the respectable culture was undermined, society reached a point of no return.

The Tian’anmen Massacre is not only a turning point for China, but also a watershed in Hongkongers building of sense of identity. On one hand, it destroys our fantasy towards China’s Reform and Opening Up, sparking the Hongkonger’s subjective consciousness; on the other, it, paradoxically, muddles up the destiny of Hongkongers and Chinese, knocking the subjective consciousness back down. Over the years, the Victoria Park vigil and patriotism have been chained up to be an inseparable pair of twins. Today, revisiting the historical meaning of the Massacre is to tell everyone that it is more important to recognise the pursuit for freedom and democracy, than the absurdity in patriotism. As we debate over freedom and democracy, they must lead us to a new subjectivity, which is exactly the self-determination that youngsters are now chanting for. As we have realised the truth of China being nothing but a party state, ‘patriotism’ and pursuit of democracy and freedom actually contradict one another fundamentally. ‘Building a democratic China’ shall thus not be included in Hong Kong political agenda. Commemoration based on patriotism shall also be put to an end. Similar to anywhere in the world, Chinese democracy should be fought for by no other but their own people. Hongkongers have no reason to take up such forced duty, let alone ‘building a democratic China’ from afar at such a cost in order to protect ourselves. Denial of the responsibility of ‘Hongkongers building a democratic China’ never means an end to interaction between civil societies of the two nations. Just like the interaction between citizens of Hong Kong and Taiwan, of course Hong Kong can share our experience with Chinese suppressed by the Communist. But the aim of such action must not be based on a non-existent ‘duty’.

The fourth of June should never be only about wailing and whining amid candlelight once every year. While some political parties and politicians keep on proclaiming their ideal to end the one-party dictatorship, they are yet bounded by the ‘Patriotic incantation of Golden Hoop’ day in, day out. They fear and worship the Communist regime. They do whatever it takes to meet officials from Peking, never even challenging a bit of the Communist legitimacy on our sovereignty. Hong Kong is always bothered by only one political problem. It is the cost that we can take. In face of the first Future of Hong Kong discussion, most Hongkongers and even politicians had failed to learn the lesson from the Massacre, lacking the imagination towards Hong Kong subjectivity, let alone the courage to take charge of our homeland. Together with the sugar-coated poison of ‘Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong, High degree of autonomy’, Hong Kong democratisation was only delayed. Unfortunately, there is never ‘what if’ in history, but only lessons. We may not be able to alter our past, but we still have a say in our future. We shall never make the same mistake twice.

On every 4th June since today, while mourning the deceased in the Massacre from afar, we pay our silent tribute to Hong Kong, a place which has long been betrayed, pledging our strong will for self-determination towards the future after 2047. Some may argue that the Chinese Imperialism shall only make Chinese factors ubiquitous and Hong Kong can never remain uninfluenced at this small piece of land. The new generation upholding Hongkongers’ self-determination is never an attempt to deceive, but to do something that is known to be unlikely to succeed. As a result of the Communist encroachment, revolt in self-determination and independence movement in Hong Kong begin. We are more than well-informed of the realistic considerations and limitation than anyone who only douses us with cold water. Yet, it is more than clear that: for democracy, we must stand and fight, but never kneel and beg. Democracy is always a process of self-empowerment and self-realisation. We therefore must turn our sense of identity into our weapon in protests. We must struggle against the regime and seek for the most political rights for ourselves, and our next generation.

Only a few years may have gone by, but the localist ideology which was once a farce in most people’s mind has already entered the major political agenda. Indeed no one can be sure that such localist ideology can usher Hongkongers into salvation. But at this fork of our age, one way is towards the deep blue sea, and the other is towards the bloody red hell. For this we make a clear decision: we may navigate to the uncharted, but we never mix with the evils. In the meantime, we must shout at the dictators that they must pay the cost if they wish for our compliance. Hong Kong, we must protect it with our lives.

Nobody’s Fool　　( January 2011 )

Yoshitomo Nara

Do people look to my childhood for sources of my imagery? Back then, the snow-covered fields of the north were about as far away as you could get from the rapid economic growth happening elsewhere. Both my parents worked and my brothers were much older, so the only one home to greet me when I got back from elementary school was a stray cat we’d taken in. Even so, this was the center of my world. In my lonely room, I would twist the radio dial to the American military base station and out blasted rock and roll music. One of history’s first man-made satellites revolved around me up in the night sky. There I was, in touch with the stars and radio waves.

It doesn’t take much imagination to envision how a lonely childhood in such surroundings might give rise to the sensibility in my work. In fact, I also used to believe in this connection. I would close my eyes and conjure childhood scenes, letting my imagination amplify them like the music coming from my speakers.

But now, past the age of fifty and more cool-headed, I’ve begun to wonder how big a role childhood plays in making us who we are as adults. Looking through reproductions of the countless works I’ve made between my late twenties and now, I get the feeling that childhood experiences were merely a catalyst. My art derives less from the self-centered instincts of childhood than from the day-to-day sensory experiences of an adult who has left this realm behind. And, ultimately, taking the big steps pales in importance to the daily need to keep on walking.

While I was in high school, before I had anything to do with art, I worked part-time in a rock café. There I became friends with a graduate student of mathematics who one day started telling me, in layman’s terms, about his major in topology. His explanation made the subject seem less like a branch of mathematics than some fascinating organic philosophy. My understanding is that topology offers you a way to discover the underlying sameness of countless, seemingly disparate, forms. Conversely, it explains why many people, when confronted with apparently identical things, will accept a fake as the genuine article. I later went on to study art, live in Germany, and travel around the world, and the broader perspective I’ve gained has shown me that topology has long been a subtext of my thinking. The more we add complexity, the more we obscure what is truly valuable. Perhaps the reason I began, in the mid-90s, trying to make paintings as simple as possible stems from that introduction to topology gained in my youth.

As a kid listening to U.S. armed-forces radio, I had no idea what the lyrics meant, but I loved the melody and rhythm of the music. In junior high school, my friends and I were already discussing rock and roll like credible music critics, and by the time I started high school, I was hanging out in rock coffee shops and going to live shows. We may have been a small group of social outcasts, but the older kids, who smoked cigarettes and drank, talked to us all night long about movies they’d seen or books they’d read. If the nighttime student quarter had been the school, I’m sure I would have been a straight-A student.

In the 80s, I left my hometown to attend art school, where I was anything but an honors student. There, a model student was one who brought a researcher’s focus to the work at hand. Your bookshelves were stacked with catalogues and reference materials. When you weren’t working away in your studio, you were meeting with like-minded classmates to discuss art past and present, including your own. You were hoping to set new trends in motion. Wholly lacking any grand ambition, I fell well short of this model, with most of my paintings done to satisfy class assignments. I was, however, filling every one of my notebooks, sketchbooks, and scraps of wrapping paper with crazy, graffiti-like drawings.

Looking back on my younger days—Where did where all that sparkling energy go? I used the money from part-time jobs to buy record albums instead of art supplies and catalogues. I went to movies and concerts, hung out with my girlfriend, did funky drawings on paper, and made midnight raids on friends whose boarding-room lights still happened to be on. I spent the passions of my student days outside the school studio. This is not to say I wasn’t envious of the kids who earned the teachers’ praise or who debuted their talents in early exhibitions. Maybe envy is the wrong word. I guess I had the feeling that we were living in separate worlds. Like puffs of cigarette smoke or the rock songs from my speaker, my adolescent energies all vanished in the sky.

Being outside the city and surrounded by rice fields, my art school had no art scene to speak of—I imagined the art world existing in some unknown dimension, like that of TV or the movies. At the time, art could only be discussed in a Western context, and, therefore, seemed unreal. But just as every country kid dreams of life in the big city, this shaky art-school student had visions of the dazzling, far-off realm of contemporary art. Along with this yearning was an equally strong belief that I didn’t deserve admittance to such a world. A typical provincial underachiever!

I did, however, love to draw every day and the scrawled sketches, never shown to anybody, started piling up. Like journal entries reflecting the events of each day, they sometimes intersected memories from the past. My little everyday world became a trigger for the imagination, and I learned to develop and capture the imagery that arose. I was, however, still a long way off from being able to translate those countless images from paper to canvas.

Visions come to us through daydreams and fantasies. Our emotional reaction towards these images makes them real. Listening to my record collection gave me a similar experience. Before the Internet, the precious little information that did exist was to be found in the two or three music magazines available. Most of my records were imported—no liner notes or lyric sheets in Japanese. No matter how much I liked the music, living in a non-English speaking world sadly meant limited access to the meaning of the lyrics. The music came from a land of societal, religious, and subcultural sensibilities apart from my own, where people moved their bodies to it in a different rhythm. But that didn’t stop me from loving it. I never got tired of poring over every inch of the record jackets on my 12-inch vinyl LPs. I took the sounds and verses into my body. Amidst today’s superabundance of information, choosing music is about how best to single out the right album. For me, it was about making the most use of scant information to sharpen my sensibilities, imagination, and conviction. It might be one verse, melody, guitar riff, rhythmic drum beat or bass line, or record jacket that would inspire me and conjure up fresh imagery. Then, with pencil in hand, I would draw these images on paper, one after the other. Beyond good or bad, the pictures had a will of their own, inhabiting the torn pages with freedom and friendliness.

By the time I graduated from university, my painting began to approach the independence of my drawing. As a means for me to represent a world that was mine and mine alone, the paintings may not have been as nimble as the drawings, but I did them without any preliminary sketching. Prizing feelings that arose as I worked, I just kept painting and over-painting until I gained a certain freedom and the sense, though vague at the time, that I had established a singular way of putting images onto canvas. Yet, I hadn’t reached the point where I could declare that I would paint for the rest of my life.

After receiving my undergraduate degree, I entered the graduate school of my university and got a part-time job teaching at an art yobiko—a prep school for students seeking entrance to an art college. As an instructor, training students how to look at and compose things artistically, meant that I also had to learn how to verbalize my thoughts and feelings. This significant growth experience not only allowed me to take stock of my life at the time, but also provided a refreshing opportunity to connect with teenage hearts and minds.

And idealism! Talking to groups of art students, I naturally found myself describing the ideals of an artist. A painful experience for me—I still had no sense of myself as an artist. The more the students showed their affection for me, the more I felt like a failed artist masquerading as a sensei (teacher). After completing my graduate studies, I kept working as a yobiko instructor. And in telling students about the path to becoming an artist, I began to realize that I was still a student myself, with many things yet to learn. I felt that I needed to become a true art student. I decided to study in Germany. The day I left the city where I had long lived, many of my students appeared on the platform to see me off.

Life as a student in Germany was a happy time. I originally intended to go to London, but for economic reasons chose a tuition-free, and, fortunately, academism-free German school. Personal approaches coexisted with conceptual ones, and students tried out a wide range of modes of expression. Technically speaking, we were all students, but each of us brought a creator’s spirit to the fore. The strong wills and opinions of the local students, though, were well in place before they became artists thanks to the German system of early education. As a reticent foreign student from a far-off land, I must have seemed like a mute child. I decided that I would try to make myself understood not through words, but through having people look at my pictures. When winter came and leaden clouds filled the skies, I found myself slipping back to the winters of my childhood. Forgoing attempts to speak in an unknown language, I redoubled my efforts to express myself through visions of my private world. Thinking rather than talking, then illustrating this thought process in drawings and, finally, realizing it in a painting. Instead of defeating you in an argument, I wanted to invite you inside me. Here I was, in a most unexpected place, rediscovering a value that I thought I had lost—I felt that I had finally gained the ability to learn and think, that I had become a student in the truest sense of the word.

But I still wasn’t your typical honors student. My paintings clearly didn’t look like contemporary art, and nobody would say my images fit in the context of European painting. They did, however, catch the gaze of dealers who, with their antennae out for young artists, saw my paintings as new objects that belonged less to the singular world of art and more to the realm of everyday life. Several were impressed by the freshness of my art, and before I knew it, I was invited to hold exhibitions in established galleries—a big step into a wider world.

The six years that I spent in Germany after completing my studies and before returning to Japan were golden days, both for me and my work. Every day and every night, I worked tirelessly to fix onto canvas all the visions that welled up in my head. My living space/studio was in a dreary, concrete former factory building on the outskirts of Cologne. It was the center of my world. Late at night, my surroundings were enveloped in darkness, but my studio was brightly lit. The songs of folk poets flowed out of my speakers. In that place, standing in front of the canvas sometimes felt like traveling on a solitary voyage in outer space—a lonely little spacecraft floating in the darkness of the void. My spaceship could go anywhere in this fantasy while I was painting, even to the edge of the universe.

Suddenly one day, I was flung outside—my spaceship was to be scrapped. My little vehicle turned back into an old concrete building, one that was slated for destruction because it was falling apart. Having lost the spaceship that had accompanied me on my lonely travels, and lacking the energy to look for a new studio, I immediately decided that I might as well go back to my homeland. It was painful and sad to leave the country where I had lived for twelve years and the handful of people I could call friends. But I had lost my ship. The only place I thought to land was my mother country, where long ago those teenagers had waved me goodbye and, in retrospect, whose letters to me while I was in Germany were a valuable source of fuel.

After my long space flight, I returned to Japan with the strange sense of having made a full orbit around the planet. The new studio was a little warehouse on the outskirts of Tokyo, in an area dotted with rice fields and small factories. When the wind blew, swirls of dust slipped in through the cracks, and water leaked down the walls in heavy rains. In my dilapidated warehouse, only one sheet of corrugated metal separated me from the summer heat and winter cold. Despite the funky environment, I was somehow able to keep in midnight contact with the cosmos—the beings I had drawn and painted in Germany began to mature. The emotional quality of the earlier work gave way to a new sense of composure. I worked at refining the former impulsiveness of the drawings and the monochromatic, almost reverent, backgrounds of the paintings. In my pursuit of fresh imagery, I switched from idle experimentation to a more workmanlike approach towards capturing what I saw beyond the canvas.

Children and animals—what simple motifs! Appearing on neat canvases or in ephemeral drawings, these figures are easy on the viewers’ eyes. Occasionally, they shake off my intentions and leap to the feet of their audience, never to return. Because my motifs are accessible, they are often only understood on a superficial level. Sometimes art that results from a long process of development receives only shallow general acceptance, and those who should be interpreting it fail to do so, either through a lack of knowledge or insufficient powers of expression. Take, for example, the music of a specific era. People who lived during this era will naturally appreciate the music that was then popular. Few of these listeners, however, will know, let alone value, the music produced by minor labels, by introspective musicians working under the radar, because it’s music that’s made in answer to an individual’s desire, not the desires of the times. In this way, people who say that “Nara loves rock,” or “Nara loves punk” should see my album collection. Of four thousand records there are probably fewer than fifty punk albums. I do have a lot of 60s and 70s rock and roll, but most of my music is from little labels that never saw commercial success—traditional roots music by black musicians and white musicians, and contemplative folk. The spirit of any era gives birth to trends and fashions as well as their opposite: countless introspective individual worlds. A simultaneous embrace of both has cultivated my sensibility and way of thinking. My artwork is merely the tip of the iceberg that is my self. But if you analyzed the DNA from this tip, you would probably discover a new way of looking at my art. My viewers become a true audience when they take what I’ve made and make it their own. That’s the moment the works gain their freedom, even from their maker.

After contemplative folk singers taught me about deep empathy, the punk rockers schooled me in explosive expression.

I was born on this star, and I’m still breathing. Since childhood, I’ve been a jumble of things learned and experienced and memories that can’t be forgotten. Their involuntary locomotion is my inspiration. I don’t express in words the contents of my work. I’ll only tell you my history. The countless stories living inside my work would become mere fabrications the moment I put them into words. Instead, I use my pencil to turn them into pictures. Standing before the dark abyss, here’s hoping my spaceship launches safely tonight….