Conversation overheard between a rock (R) and a hard place (HP).


R: Help, I’m a rock.

HP: Hello, who goes there?  Humbug or horticulturalist?

R: Ventriloquist, more like.

HP: Ah… the magnum opus of the ventriloquist’s art, to gift a stone a belly to speak of!  Is this the Riddle of the Rocks — the Ventriloquists’ Stone?

R: You seem to take the materiality of the Stone quite literally.

HP: But not the metaphor of ventriloquy.

R: Let me contribute with this fresh riddle.  What Time Is It There?

When Oz, the ‘Great and Terrible Wizard’ is revealed to be nothing more than a terrible humbug, he is nonetheless revealed to be a great ventriloquist, who can throw the sound of his voice wherever he wishes, or imitate any kind of bird or beast.  In this way, the tale of Oz presents us with another kind of magic, the magic of imagination over the magic of incantation.  As Oz himself observes:  “How can I help being a humbug, when all these people make me do things that everybody knows cannot be done?  It was easy to make the Scarecrow and the Lion and the Woodman happy, because they imagined I could do anything.”

Ventriloquists’ Stone takes as its cue the ‘Magic Art of the Great Humbug’.  It is an exercise in misdirection and misplacement, a secret in plain view, a crucible of ruin and regeneration, a porous theatre of cohabitation.  It owes as much to the ingenuity of mini-golf courses as it does to classical garden designs.  It equates, with a wilful disregard for our everyday sense of scale, urban building typologies with circuit board components, giant monsters with merry munchkins.

There are no directions for visitors to follow other than the ‘Grey Concrete Path’.

This space will undergo a series of transformations over the coming months (with restricted access on Mondays). Stay tuned to scheduled performance updates at: vntrlq.info

無意中聽到石頭 (石) 和牆壁(壁) 之間的對話。

石：幫幫忙，我是一塊石頭。

壁：你好，請問尊姓大名？是騙子還是園藝家？

石：正確來說是腹語師。

壁：啊……腹語師的藝術大作，賦予石頭一個會說話的肚  子！腹語師之石——這便是眾石之謎嗎？

石：你似乎是從字面上理解石頭的本質。

壁：對腹語的比喻卻不是。

石：讓我送出這道新謎語。在那邊幾點？


當「偉大而可怕的巫師」奧茲被拆穿不過是一個可怕的騙子時， 他仍然是一個偉大的腹語師，可以隨心所欲地在任何地方發出自己的聲音，或者模仿任何一種鳥獸的聲音。就這樣，奧茲的故事向我們展示了另一種魔法：想像的魔法勝過咒語的魔法。正如奧茲自己觀察到：「我怎能不成為一個騙子呢？所有這些人都要求我做一些人人都知道不可能的事。要讓稻草人、獅子和鐵皮人快樂是很容易的，因為在他們的想像中，我是無所不能的。」

「幻石」以「大騙子的魔法藝術」作為線索。它是一種誤導與錯置的習題、一個清晰可見的秘密、一座毀滅與重生的熔爐、一部多孔同演的劇場。它啟發自迷你高爾夫球場的獨創性，以及傳統園林的文化。故意無視我們日常生活的比例感知，它把城市建築地貌等同於電路板組件，把巨型怪物等同於快樂的小矮人。

除了「灰色混凝土路徑」，並沒有其他觀眾可循的指示。

在接下來的幾個月裡，這個空間將進行多次變形（每週一限制訪問)。 請留意於網站更新的表演時間表: vntrlq.info