作者: VOP

2011年冬天的一個午後，我和陳順築約好見面，我們在台北長安西路上的一家地下室咖啡館坐了下來，對面的台北當代藝術館正在舉行他的個展。話匣子打開，我們聊到夜幕低垂才離去。這段訪談後來整理並收錄在隔年一月發行的VOP第三期裡。

這兩年，陳順築發現自己罹癌，他辭去22年的教學工作專心養病。我們去看他，消瘦的身形卻讓他那雙深邃的雙眼，顯得更加巨大而清亮。他說，病後才更覺察到生命是極其有限的時間，而他或許可以放下很多事，但放不下藝術，關於創作，他還有好多想像，但可惡的時間在與他賽跑⋯⋯

2014年9月，陳順築的最後一個臉書動態，停留在照片裡的一個背影，他站得高高地，獨自面向一片粼粼波光。一個月後，他在夢中遠行，帶著他的鄉愁記憶，去一個更高的地方望海。

我們在已經絕版的雜誌中找出這篇三年多前的對話，並在本期重新刊載；同時收錄藝術家陳界仁與姚瑞中寫給順築的信，以及從他借給我們的自1989年起至近期的數本個人手札中，選錄了一些他的隨筆與塗鴉。他說，這些筆記是一個藝術家天真的私語，有些玩笑，有些認真⋯⋯

謹以此，作為我們對於陳順築的思念。

One winter afternoon in 2011, I met up with Chen Shun-Chu in a Taipei cafe on Chang-an West Road. His solo exhibition was then on-going in the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei opposite the cafe. We chatted till late in the night. The interview was later published in the 3rd issue of VOP the next year. 

Chen learnt about his cancer and quit the teaching profession that he had been in for 22 years. In these two years, he had been trying to fight the illness. We visited him and saw his frame becoming frail; his eyes seemed even deeper and larger as his body became thinner. He expressed that the illness had made him realize all the more that life is extremely short, and that he might not be able to hang on to a lot of things, but not art. He still had a lot of ideas about artistic creations, but time was against him……

His last Facebook status update in Sep 2014 was a photograph of a back shot, looking over the sea from a high fence. A month later, he passed away in his dreams,bringing with him all his memories and love of his motherland, setting off to an even greater height to gaze at the sea.

We extracted this from a conversation that is more than 3 years old which was featured in an out-of-print issue of VOP – re-published in this issue alongside letters to Chen Shun-Chu from artists Chen Chieh-Jen and Yao Jui-Chung, as well as some of his drawings and words from a huge stack of personal notebooks he’s kept  since 1989 which he lent us. He said that these memos were an artist’s dreams: some were jokes, some were serious……

In memory of Chen Shun-Chu.