灾难索引
Disaster Index
（ongoing）  

“灾难”这个词通常带有消极、沉重的倾向，容易引发强烈的情感和冲突。这是我们在探讨中试图避免的。当我们谈到“自然灾害”时，这个词强调了自然的不可控制性和破坏性。然而，我们认知当中的自然灾难/灾害，像洪水、地震或是龙卷风，是否真的可以被称灾害，还是是自然流动的一部分，是寻求他们生存空间的方式。

正如《中国国家地理》中写到的，一个民族的成长中，河流起到一种“精神对手”的作用。它不断地对流域内的人群发出挑战，而且这个挑战是有限度的、可以选择的，人类不断地去应战，由此不断地成长。

也像《未日松茸》中叙述的，森林野火是森林新陈代谢和生长的一部分，是健康的，是必须的。

当发生人为灾难时，我们如何以人道主义的视角去理解正在发生什么，又如何以个体或集体的力量面对灾难。如果灾难和创伤的界限非常模糊，那我们是否可以通过见证跨越记忆和文化的创伤来创造更多的理解通道。灾后的纪念碑行动，纪念碑小组又在对现实产生着怎样的影响？过去的灾难如何与现在和未来缠绕不分？

回应这一困境，我们启动了长期项目“灾难索引”，以重新审视在灾难光谱下的不同背景，每个月选择一个主题进行跨区域的集体写作，邀请来自不同领域和视角的人参与。来自不同背景的人往往对同一事物有着与我们想象不同的解释——这是最令人沮丧和“值得书写”的部分。“灾难索引”项目将被编入出版物，并发布在我们的网站上，成为未来跨学科研究、公共知识生产和对话的一个坚实而流动的基础设施。

"Disaster" is a word that usually possesses a negative, heavy tendency, provoking strong feeling and conflict. It is something we try to avoid happening and talking about. When we talk of "natural disaster"', the word emphasizes how incontrollable and damaging the nature can be. Yet do the natural disasters we perceive, such as floods, earthquakes or tornadoes, can really be called disasters, or are they part of the natural flow, the way they seek to survive.

As China National Geographic wrote, in the growth of a nation, the river plays a role of "spiritual rival". It constantly challenges the people in the basin, and this challenge is limited, optional, and human beings continue to encounter the challenge, and thus continue to grow.

Also as narrated in The Mushroom At the End of the World, forest wildfires are part of the metabolism and growth of the forest, which is healthy and necessary. 

Moreover, when there is a man-made disaster, how can we take a humanitarian perspective to understand what is happening, and how can we face the disaster individually or collectively? If the line between disaster and trauma is blurred, can we witness trauma across memory and culture to create more spaces of understanding. After the disaster, what does the construction or descontruction of monument affect people's memory of the disaster? How is disaster intertwined with the past, the present and the future?

Responding to this dilemma, we start the long-term project "Disaster Index" to re-examine different contexts under the spectrum of Disaster, selecting a a theme for a month of cross-regional collective writing inviting people from different fields and perspectives. People from different backgrounds often have different interpretations of the same thing than you think - this is the most frustrating and "well worth writing" part. The Disaster Index project will be organized into a publicatino and published on our website, which will become a solid and fluid infrastructure for future interdisciplinary research, public knowledge production, and dialogue.


001 Flood 洪涝

【灾难索引】的第一期主题是flood 洪涝，我们将围绕这个主题展开一个月的集体写作。

索引词语的第一步，我们会先对 flood 洪涝 的起源、概念、使用进行recontexualization（再情景化），这是参考了 Dictionry Of Now项目中的做法，他们在这个项目中整理了一些关键词语（比如“公正”、“动物”等词）的意义演变，学科背景，潜台词，神话故事等等...方便所有参与书写对于洪涝理解的参与者形成基本的共识。

接下来我们会邀请来自不同地方/不同领域背景的伙伴一起对flood进行共同写作，对这个部分最大的感触来自于我和机缘巧合认识的孟加拉朋友的对话，他提到每次洪涝后，都会有很多鱼跟随着洪水浮到岸上来，居民会纷纷开始捡鱼回家吃，他们把这视作是河流的礼物。

我们希望书写可以尽量以经验为主，避免过于强烈的观点输出。可以是一手或二手经验。一手经验可以是跟洪涝相关的记忆的场景、听到的故事、直觉感受、观察、创作、行动等等。如果是整理或转述他人的二手经验（如阅读的文献、新闻报道、看到的图片等等），希望参与者能对此进行适度的转化和再阐释，成为自己对此的理解。

我们希望能通过在灾难索引，扩展和打开大家对于“洪水”，这个经常被学术、公共新闻、政治垄断的现象的认识，并将公共话语再次和私人感受搅动在一起，更深层的理解人水关系，以及地方与地方之间的关系。

不同背景的人群对同一件事情的不同理解常常会超出想象——这是最让人头痛、也最让人觉得“写得值了”的部分。关于洪涝的共同写作会被整理为“灾难索引”项目和出版物的一部分，成为未来跨学科研究，公共知识生产，和对话的坚实而流动的基础设施。


The theme of the first issue of Disaster Index is Flood, which kicks off a month of collective writing.

First, we will first recontexualization the origin, concept and use of flood, which is a reference to the practice in Dictionry Of Now project, in which they have conducted dialogue ​on the shifts and spectrums of meanings, possible interpretations and subtexts of the terms, so that all participants involved in writing the understanding of flood can form a basic consensus.

Next, we will invite participants from different places or fields to write about flood together. The most touching part of this practice comes from the conversation with a friend from Bangladesh, whom I met by chance. He mentioned that after every flood,  fishes would float to the shore, and his family and other residents would start to pick up fish for food. They see it as a gift from the river.

We hope that the writing can be as experience-based as possible and avoid strong opinions. It can be first-hand or second-hand experience. First-hand experiences can be flood related memory scenes, stories heard, intuitive feelings, observations, creations, actions, and so on. If the writing is to organize or paraphrase other people's second-hand experience (such as reading literature, news reports, seeing pictures, etc.), we hope that participants can re-interpret and write on it to become their own understanding.

By indexing flood, we hope to expand and open people's understanding of the "flood", a phenomenon that is often monopolized by academia, public news, and politics, and to stir up public discourse and private feelings again, with a deeper understanding of the relationship between people and water, as well as the relationship between places in the world.

​People from different backgrounds often have different interpretations of the same thing than one thinks - this is the most frustrating and "well worth writing" part of artistic research and writing. The writing will organized as part of our final publication "Disaster Index", becoming the flowing and firm infrastructure of interdiciplinary knowledge, research, and dialogue.