Public performance in Bodh Gaya (India) with Buddha sculptures, sump oil, milk, mustard seeds & glass
Assistant: Ajitvar Kumar Douglas
This performance is based upon the creation of an organic machine that connect a number of materials (milk, oil, mustard seed, glass, sculptures) with a number of physical bodies (the artist, the assistant, the participant). In this way a series of intimate, repetitive actions and material tensions generate a circuit of energy. In turn, this circuit allows for the transformation of the various discrete elements (materials, bodies, actions) into a singular organism.
In order to accomplish this, members of the public were invited to pour sump oil and milk (in that order) into the artist’s open hands. Attached to each of his hands was a small Buddha sculpture: on the right the emaciated, almost skeletal, black Buddha; on the left, the white ‘post-enlightened’ Buddha. The performance assistant would then guide the volunteer to take their position in front of the artist, who would open his eyes and focus his attention only on them. Finally the artist would bow and say “thank you”. Soon this evolved into a situation where the participants would do the same.
The assistant would then invite another member of the public to participate.
Throughout the duration of the performance two channels cut into the tilted glass base worked to guide the flow of the spilled oil and milk towards the front of the base. Eventually the materials formed a large puddle that all the volunteers walked through whilst participating in the performance.
The performance was complete once all the materials were finished.
Some personal reflections on the work, J. Thom, 2011
From past experience of doing these kinds of public performances, I have become aware that they are accompanied by an incredible release of energy, both mental and physical. The exact shape and force of this energy is highly dependent on the audience as they form an intimate part of the work: one rarely if ever performs only for your own benefit.
As regards the experience of doing the work itself I feel it may be interesting for others to know how their participation impacted upon me during the performance. As the artist statement makes clear, the work was meant to function as an organic machine that could link us all in a single circuit. Of course my role in this circuit was different to that of the public and I could not claim to know how the performance impacted on them.
As my eyes were closed for the larger part of the work I mostly had to rely on the sensations of hearing and feeling to make sense of the event. On one hand its quite disorientating for a sighted person to make sense of another human beings presence without physically seeing them. But seeing someone has many dimensions of which the assumed clarity of visual apprehension and recognition actually forms only a very small part.
As living, organic beings we touch, smell, hear and generally feel each other’s energy in a variety of non-visual and sometimes, seemingly non-rational ways. For one thing, how do we explain our strong instinctive reactions to people or even animals we meet for the first time? For me this has to do with the fact that we are all material creatures: as human beings we are made from flesh and bone and actually resemble something a like a combination of chemicals, cells and atoms that constantly produce and consume energy. One might say we are not just disembodied minds that temporarily take up residence in the otherwise empty vessels known as our bodies. We are our bodies too and these bodies enable and shape our thoughts. And, as Darwin teaches us, we are shaped by our environment, our interaction with each other and other species with whom we share our territory. Thus we are never just individuals and always form a part of a larger community.
Once I had fully entered the mental space of the performance I suddenly discovered that there was a plethora of sensory and psychological (or if you like ‘spiritual’) information made available through it. Members of the public that participated in the piece did so in their own unique manner. For example, the exact manner in which they poured the liquids onto my hands varied slightly from person to person. Some poured hastily, others took more time. (Here I also constantly felt the oil was warm whereas the milk was cool and soothing). Through the sound of their movement I could discern something of the participant’s personal rhythm, which was of course somewhat tempered by the assistants guiding presence. And then finally as I opened my eyes I physically saw the participant for a brief but intense moment. For me this final part was a moment of mutual acknowledgement through which we paid our respects to the uniqueness of the moment and to each other.
Interestingly I felt that through the process leading up to the final bow, a kind of mental picture of each of the participants had begun to form in my mind. Even as I kept my eyes closed I felt each person’s material presence take on another more ethereal form. The best way I could explain this is by saying that, in my mind, some abstract, non-visual likeness of the person seemed to exist for the duration of their participation. Sometimes this form was weighty, as in it felt older or more solid; At other times this energy appeared lighter, like a soft breeze or a gentle presence that felt unencumbered by the seriousness of moving about on the great stage of life, though no less involved for it. Language fails me here: metaphors such as ‘solid’, ‘old’, ‘light’ and so on really do not accurately describe and convey this experience to a disembodied reader. Besides I am aware of the fact that sceptics may easily dismiss such insights as being mere speculation. But my primary intent here is to be faithful to the experience and not to decide what exactly separates fact from fiction.
When I opened my eyes I was often surprised to attach a real face to this non-visual experience of the person. I remember two instances particularly well exactly because the participants made such a huge impression on me. Once I had the experience of encountering someone of great knowledge and time – like an presence that has been a part of this world for a very long time. When I opened my eyes I found a rather unassuming, middle-aged man, possibly a labourer staring into my eyes. In everyday life one may pass by him without a moment’s notice but in the context of the performance I really felt that he was someone very special. On another occasion I felt the most intense bright presence suddenly surround me. It was not a young or light presence but rather more like a powerful, unstoppable radiant force. When I opened my eyes I looked into the face of a young female child perhaps five or six years old. I would say that my experience of her presence was not based upon some idealised notion of childhood innocence or purity. For example, I later heard from Douglas (the performance assistant) that she had apparently begged her reluctant parents to participate in the performance. Finally Douglas suggested that if they would consent, he would carry her and help her complete the task. Children are indeed complex, vital beings that we may dismiss at our own peril.
In previous performances I felt the power of this kind of non-visual presence or energy. I would perhaps explain this by saying that groups of people almost always generate some kind of energy between them: Whether we think of the crowds at a sports event or the large number of people that come together to pray or meditate at holy spaces such as the many temples of Bodh Gaya. Often if one is part of such a group you can feel this energy flowing through you. Certainly something like crowd behaviour/ psychology exists and from what little I know of it, it continues to form the basis of much speculation in the social sciences and humanities. But we do know that it exists and that given the opportunity the kind of power divested within it can easily be channelled into a variety of pathways, both good and bad. From football matches, religious cults, political propaganda, protest marches and even public riots, these activities all tacitly bespeak the kind of schizophrenic loss of self that accompany one’s participation in the activities of a focussed crowd activity (yes, even a riot is a focussed activity).
Of course I am an artist and my interests here are shaped by the concerns of art, life and given the nature of the project, of World Peace too. Oddly I found Bodh Gaya to be incredibly ‘noisy’: not simply as in the physical noise of the city (which is considerable to say the least) but also in terms of the sheer amount of voices that are constantly clamouring for one’s attention throughout the city and its history. Like the ancient Hindu temples that jot the cityscape of Gaya some of these voices truly are old, some new(er) perhaps like the Mahabodhi temple, and some are just the kinds of primal barely audible sounds that one might possible associate with that made by an unborn calf still living, breathing and kicking in its mothers belly. It is very difficult to say which is which, but my guess is that like the unborn calf, our post-modern society with all its technology is yet to fully come into this world. Perhaps it never will. Many European philosophers have already claimed this post-modern, post-industrial society as the end of history. To them I say, get out more and discover the complexity of the real world. Grand human ideas about the present moment will always end up on the rubbish dump of history.
It was into this noisy, somewhat chaotic space of Bodh gaya that I wished to insert a moment of introspection and silence. On one hand I wanted to compress and reframe the context – to take a little bit of its madness, its many voices and make them sensible if even for a single moment. But I was also certain that I would encounter these many voices old and new, animal and human, real and mythological, in the people of Bodh Gaya. For the entire duration of the project I strongly felt a clear link between the archetypes that populate our various human/ animal and spiritual mythologies, and the actual people that I encountered there. Basically I felt that the properties we commonly ascribe to our holy deities such as intoxication, peace, love and even violence are very much present in the real human beings and animals that surround us on a daily basis.
Of course there is the reality of India that is shaped by a constant intermingling of animals and humans, technology and the human, the present and the past. One need only think of the cows and dogs that constantly weave through traffic on the streets, markets and residential areas. There is a completely different understanding of the boundaries between people, animals, technology, faith and everyday life at stake here. This is always case with different contexts around the world and I really suspect that one must take account of it if we are to have any hope whatsoever of ever understanding each other at all. We must constantly open ourselves to radically different world-views in which our own personal and societal boundaries are challenged and possibly reformulated. In doing so one enters into real dialogue with a place, people, animals and so on.
On a final note, due to the nature of this particular work, I knew that I need a rather special assistant to invite and then to guide the public in their participation. I had come to know Douglas (one of the project co-ordinators) particularly well during my time in Bodh Gaya and had watched him help make ‘miracles’ occur almost on a daily basis. My feeling is that he is a natural guide – not in a tourist sense but in the more mythological sense where some people just seem to have the capacity to help others find the exact thing they are searching for. I would be seriously amiss if I said that his role in the final performance was any less important than mine. The same would hold true for the generous public of Bodh Gaya that gave themselves so unreservedly during their participation in the work:
Each of them made a difference without which the performance would have been something else entirely. Thank you.
(This essay was first published in a shortened form in the Catalogue for the Buddha Enlightened -2 Be project).
