旧物情缘 第11期

要搬家了，那条过时的裙子，扔掉；那本没看完的书，扔掉；那个幼稚的杯子，扔掉……且慢，杯子幼稚不假，可那是你成长的经历；那裙子刚刚穿上的时候啥感觉，你穿着它去过什么地方？那本书可能是某人送你的，TA为什么要送给你？你为什么没看完？你曾经拥有的每一样东西，都记录着你的故事、你的人生，也许你要三思而行。

onsidering how much we love to shop, we generally know little about exactly what it is we buy. That’s even more true of things we purchase second-hand. But think about it. Everything you buy at, say, the Salvation Army or Goodwill has at least one previous owner and some history to go along with it. Ari Daniel Shapiro tells us about one store manager in Britain who turned the history of used items into a selling point.

Ari: Oxfam is an organization committed to fighting poverty and injustice in the world. They raise money for their cause at charity shops all over the UK. In fact, there’s a big Oxfam shop in Manchester, England. It’s run by Emma Cooney.

Emma Cooney: Everything we sell is second-hand. I mean, everybody knows that people have worn the clothes before or used the items. Usually I guess people can use their imaginations or they might choose not to think about it at all. But I think it’s quite nice to know that things have had a life before and that you’re carrying them on. It all has memories.

Ari: Back in May, those memories, they came to life. Cooney was approached by Chris Speed, a digital artist at the Edinburgh College of Art.

Chris Speed: They were great actually, and they…they let us keep a research assistant in the store for a week or two, to ask people who came in and dropped objects off, to simply tell a story, into a microphone, about what the object is, and where it’s come from, what it meant to them.

Female A: I’ve donated this pink stripy 1)jumper because I had it last year and I wore it to a barbecue. I met a boy at the barbecue and he was my boyfriend for a few months but we’re not together anymore so I thought I’d donate it.

Male: I got given this 2)piggy bank by one of my good friends, Tommy. It saved the money I’d spend on drink. We used to call him a pig at school, not ’cause of his weight or anything, just ’cause he has a 3)snout.

Female B: I became friendly with the lady who owned the shop and she very kindly gave me the most delicious cup of hot chocolate. And I always associate hot chocolate with this handbag.

尽管我们非常地热爱逛街购物，可我们对自己买的东西却了解甚少。如果我们买的是二手货的话，就更是如此了。可想一下，比如说，你在救世军或者慈善商店买的每一件东西至少有一位前任主人和一段历史。阿里·丹尼尔·夏皮罗接下来将告诉我们：英国一家商店的店长把二手商品的历史变成了商品的卖点。

阿里：乐施会是一个致力于消除贫困，与世界上的不公正现象抗争的组织。他们通过分布在英国各地的慈善商店筹款来支持这项事业。确切地说，他们在英格兰的曼彻斯特就有一家大型商店，它的店长是埃玛·库尼。

埃玛·库尼：这里的所有商品都是二手货。我是说，所有人都知道这里的衣服以前被人穿过，东西被他人用过。我猜想，人们通常可以展开自己的想象力，或者根本就不去想这事儿。可是，我想，如果你知道了某样东西过去有它自己的一段生命，而你在延续这段生命，那会是很美妙的事。这些东西都承载着记忆。

阿里：五月的时候，这些记忆变得鲜活起来。爱丁堡艺术学院的数码艺术家克里斯·斯皮德找到了埃玛。

克里斯·斯皮德：他们真好。他们让我们在一两个星期的时间里，在店里安排一名研究助手，请那些到店里来捐东西的人对着麦克风讲述捐赠的是什么物品，它的来历，以及它对主人的意义。

女性甲：我来捐这件粉色条纹套衫是因为我去年穿着它去参加一次烧烤，在那里我认识了一个男孩子，我们谈了几个月的恋爱，可我们已经分手了，所以我想把它捐了。

男性：这个储钱罐是我的一位好友汤米给我的。我用它存钱来买酒喝。我们在学校里叫他“猪”，倒不是因为他的体重或其他原因，只不过是因为他长着一个很丑的大鼻子。

女性乙：我与一家店的女老板相熟，她人很好，给我喝过最香的热巧克力。因此我会把热巧克力奶与这个手袋联系在一起。

Ari: Each story was paired with its object in the Oxfam store using a couple different tags. One was a 2D bar code that shoppers could scan with their phones, and listen to the story in a rather intimate way. The other was a tiny radio frequency tag that, when tapped with a special remote control, would send the story over the loudspeakers in the store.

Chris: It was a very public story, as though suddenly someone touched an object and a whole store was woken up by this tale about where these objects had come from. What was amazing was that people wanted the damn objects. You could see them holding almost something as though it was in someone’s living room, and it changed the entire atmosphere of the shop. Everyone was fascinated, and they really didn’t want to let go of the stories, which meant they bought them. So as fast as we could get stories in, they were going out of the store like hotcakes.

Ari: Shoppers weren’t just browsing objects. They were browsing memories. Emma Cooney of Oxfam Manchester was delighted.

Emma: This was just a kind of concrete way of showing that everything that we sell has a story. There was a really nice buzz in the shop.

Chris: If we tag things with an individual code, then maybe you can find out where it was bought from, and where it ended up, and perhaps where it passed in between. The old 4)adage that a rolling stone gathers no moss, well, we’re kind of hoping it does. Every time the object gets passed from one party to a

next, it gains a bit.

阿里：每个故事都通过两个标签与乐施会商店里的物品连在一起。一个是二维条形码，顾客可以用手机扫描这个条形码，然后以很私密的方式听故事。另一个条形码是一个无线电频率小标签。如果你用一个专门的遥控器扫一下，那个故事就会在商店里的喇叭里播出。

克里斯：这一下子就变成了一个公众的故事。就好像是突然有人碰到了某个物件，随后整个商店都被物品来历的故事唤醒了。奇妙的是人们会想拥有这些东西。你会看到有人拿着某件东西的样子，那感觉就像是在自家的起居室，这一下子就让店里的气氛起了变化。所有人都被迷住了，对这些故事他们确实不想放手，也就是说他们会买下这些东西。于是，我们收集的故事一旦完成，东西马上就能卖出去，非常畅销。

阿里：店里的顾客不仅仅是在浏览物品，他们是在浏览记忆。曼彻斯特乐施会的店长埃玛·库尼为此非常高兴。

埃玛：这实实在在地表明我们卖的所有东西都有着它自己的故事，你可以感觉到店里弥漫着一股兴奋热烈的情绪。

克里斯：物品一旦有了一个独立的条形码，你就可以知道当初它是在哪里售出的，后来到了哪里，或许还有其间的故事。老话说，滚石不生苔，呃，我们则希望它能沾上点什么。这样物品每一次转手，都会有新的故事。

Ari: Manufacturers are interested in this kind of thing, to track their products. But Speed appreciates the possibilities of making visible the unseen connections between objects and people, tracking these relationships through time and space. It goes back to the project at Oxfam.

Chris: Charity shops are all about slowing down the throw-away culture. But perhaps if we can foster more value, add more value, in artifacts, then actually it might slow it down even more.

Ari: Chris Speed’s using the Internet, where information zips around, to get us to slow down, if only for a moment, to eye that handbag or teddy bear right there in front of us.

阿里：生产商对于这种跟踪产品的方法很感兴趣，但克里斯看重的是通过追踪物品与人之间在时间和空间的关系变化，以及把这种看不见的关系明朗化的可能性。这一切都源自乐施会的这个项目。

克里斯：慈善商店的意义在于减缓物品丢弃文化的速度。如果我们赋予物品更多的价值，添加更多的价值，也许它真的可以更进一步慢下来。

阿里：互联网上信息来来往往，克里斯·斯皮德想利用它让我们慢下来。哪怕只是一小会儿，去看看我们眼前的手袋或那只小熊。

文化交流站

Salvation Army 救世军，国际性基督教慈善组织，成立于1865年，以救助穷人为宗旨，经常募集捐款、衣物，也参与救灾工作。Goodwill 慈善超市起源于美国，其主要业务是接受、处理、销售市民捐赠的旧物，用销售这些物资得到的善款为残疾人、失业者、新移民等兴办各种类型的福利工厂、职业培训机构和就业安置场所。一般采用“前店后厂”模式，即前面是“慈善商店”，后面是捐赠物品的维修处理车间、工厂。

Oxfam 乐施会，1976年创立于香港。当时一群志愿人士走在一起，开设二手商品店，为世界各地的扶贫工作筹款。目前，乐施会在全球70个国家/地区开展项目。乐施会是一个独立的人道援助机构，致力于消除贫穷，以及与贫穷有关的不公平现象。