up&down @ night & day

finally the exhibition is here, one week to go and things are coming together. have sound, videos, materials, a great venue, books, images, typographic elements. Have been working for 2 years on the project and for the last few months more on the production. there's an enormous amountof editing that has gone on. making a cohesive compact thing from two vast mountains and 2 enormous histories.

upcoming exhibition and festival

Just invited and approved by school to attend the 3rd Yogyakarta International Media Arts Festival, thanks to Vladimir. Excited. I get to show the recent projects of Huashan and Taishan and my GPS works. Should be an exciting week.

life and death. up and down.

Getting somewhere with this last trek up Huashan. Perhaps it was obvious from the beginning, but I don't remember picking the mountains based on location. In any case I did intuitively somehow opt for the eastern most and western most of the sacred Taoist mountains of China. Had I thought about it before I would have thought of the sun. I'm sure. Taishan was birth from the research early on, but for some reason Huashan eluded me and my research assistants. Once there it hit me. so obvious. The mountain is constantly referred to as the most dangerous in china, the dwelling place of the gods, of the five immortals, a place pilgrims go to seek immortality. Huashan is the west. the setting sun. Taishan the east, the sunrise. Taishan is birth and the bloodline and king-line of china. Huashan is death.

The trek up was gorgeous. lonely. solo. precarious. rainy, cold. by the time I reached the midpoint where the majority of the 'pilgrims' start from the cable cars, I was wet with sweat and drenched by the rain. Unlike Taishan where there are regular covered rest spots and cafes and even hotels and restaurants, Huashan was (although crowded) without a dry place to sit and get warm.



I walk fast and compete when there is a slope. I had pushed myself hard and really needed a place to dry off and warm up while I waited for my students and family. Instead I sat in the rain and my body warmth quickly turned to extreme chill. I waited for 50 minutes and by the time they arrived on the cable cars I was shaking and chattering and as close to hypothermia as I've ever been. I had to descend. It was on my cable car decline that I had the space to reflect on the nature of the mountain (Kaatje was on my lap warming me up). It was then that death and the west and the setting sun hit me. so obvious. what else is seeking immortality but a wishful attempt to avoid death? The death mountain.

Taishan Red

astrid almkhlaafy

My explorations to Thailand, Borobudur and Angkor Wat fueled on my interest in mountains. The DNA of Singapore also pulled me to China, so in the tradition of the pilgrimage — in Chinese “ch' ao-shan chin-hsian”g – or 'paying one's respect to a mountain' — with the intent of better understanding some of the cultural roots of this new home, I proposed and received a grant to research, visit, climb, document and finally exhibit my findings of the pilgrimages to Mount Tai Shan and Mount Hua Shan in China. This is a report in progress.

You must ascend a mountain
to learn your relation to matter, and so to your own body,
for it is at home there,
though you are not.

Henry David Thoreau, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 6

In July we went to Shandong province in China to climb Taishan. To pay respect to this mountain and the pilgrimage we walked, documented and mapped with GPS...all the while wearing red. In effect, we painted Taishan red by walking everywhere in red. This action made manifest the pilgrimage itself, while also conceptually conjuring up an umbilical cord, or a red bloodline.


The son of the sun
Taishan is red. it's the color of the calligraphy, the stone carving, the wish trees, the temples. From the summit, Mao claimed "From here, all of China is Red". Taishan is blood. It is the bloodline, it is the male bloodline. It is also birth, it is the east, it is mythologically from where life began.You could say that Taishan is the linga of China. It is where sons come from and where the sun first rises. It is an incredibly complex site.



So with my collaborators, we considered these thoughts and more. As women, we were most curious about gender. So many women have climbed over so many centuries to pray for male offspring. And to a goddess they prayed. How did a goddess land the top of Taishan? Taoism usually puts the female at the ground level and the male towards the sky. How did a female deity get to reign supreme with a temple at the top of a linga?


Bixia Yuanjin (pronounced BEE-cha you-on-JEEN) is the Chinese Taoist Goddess of the dawn, childbirth, and destiny. As Goddess of dawn, she attends the birth of each new day from her home high in the clouds. As Goddess of childbirth, she attends the birth of children, fixing their destiny and bringing good fortune. Dawn and childbirth are two concepts often, and quite understandably, linked in world mythology: the rising of the sun, the bringing of light to the earth, is equated with the child emerging from the darkness of the womb to the light of the world.

Tai'an City is a stretch of ancient and mystical land. Five thousand years ago here originated the brilliant Dawenkou Culture, which reflects the whole course of the transition from matriarchal society to patriarchal society and the disintegration of the primitive society.
www.asia-planet.net/china/taian.htm

While on pilgrimage, women enjoyed a degree of freedom from some of the restrictions of their daily life. They were able to travel beyond their local area, they stayed overnight outside their own home, and they met people from other regions. Although women customarily played a minor role in rituals, they were the primary or sole actors in rituals associated with the Goddess of Mount Tai (Taishan Niangniang 泰山娘娘 or Bixia Yuan-jun 碧霞元君). In addition to physical mobility, pilgrimages allowed women to exercise ritual authority and agency and to establish new identities as mothers and ritual experts.
Brian Dott, Identity Reflections: Pilgrimages to Mount Tai in Late Imperial China

Over the week that we were at the mountain we climbed altogether over 8 times. Sometimes as a group, other times solo. Most often in red. When not in red we were documenting and interviewing over a hundred pilgrims. On the final day we performed an 'ode to the pilgrimage' at the base of the mountain, outside the temple to Bixia.


In the way
The most important 'performance' piece was at the top, leading up to the gate of heaven, here is where every pilgrim passes up to the summit. At this location, i walked zig-zag down, along every step, passing by everyone walking up, being in the way of the way. This was documented with gps, video and photography as well.

In a time where we are most often in urban settings, focused on screens, communicating virtually, it is easy to forget that the grand events of the past have often been on foot, up mountains, with strangers, to pray. On a meta level, I hope that by embarking on these pilgrimages, documenting the journeys, researching and studying the locations and finally exhibiting and sharing my findings that somehow the content will inspire others to explore heritage sites and become inspired by historical and cultural wonders.

The foot of the heavenly ladder, which we have got to mount in order to reach the higher regions, has to be fixed firmly in every-day life, so that everybody may be able to climb up it along with us. When people then find that they have got climbed up higher and higher into a marvelous, magical world, they will feel that that realm, too, belongs to their ordinary, every-day life, and is, merely, the wonderful and most glorious part thereof.
— E.T.A.W. Hoffmann, The Serapion Brethren. B, vol. II, sect. 5 (1892).

So far this has been partially exhibited in Tokyo and most recently in the 2008 Fall International Digital Design Invitation Exhibit, South Korea.

kaleidoscope

One of the highlights of teaching here at ADM is the designed experiences course I get to lead every spring semester. It's a highly collaborative, experimental course that looks into the history of gatherings and allows for the students to come up with solutions that are performance based communication pieces. It's been a laboratory of experiments. We've scored, staged, documented and translated original works as well as actual festivals, like Chinese New Years.


Last year, as a warm up exercise I got the class to engage in an experience of my own. It was called kaleidoscope. I'd been teaching Graphic Design 4 at the same time, and was heavily into systems and time, and kept going back to the circle and it's metaphysical poetic nature (as a group experience). This led to a short study. The book became a study of beauty and form heavily leaning on Plato.


The great thing, is the video we worked on was invited and accepted into the MilkBar Festival.

Wat Tham Suea or 1300 steps

When I think of mountains I think of quests, of looking and climbing, of pushing and expanding horizons. The mountain started of in the metaphorical zone, getting to Singapore was a feat. Finding what I wanted — a push, getting what I needed as far as a place where I could open my horizons and expand my daughter’s views — much of the goal.

It felt like a mountain. In many ways I dealt with the task by climbing as many hills as possible while I waited in San Francisco. The walks up, laptop over shoulder and emails in limbo, breath and lungs expanding and steepness to physically confront helped in the waiting.

When we finally arrived, the hilltop grass of ADM immediately called for a Sisyphus experience. In the research around Sysiphus, Camus and the solar theory led me out of the repetitive negativity that is so often associated with his myth, and my perspective broadened and narrowed. I needed to take a first step, climb something that could expand my views further. Map it. Experience it.

The opportunity came in a visit to Krabi where a 1300 step climb to a temple of a Buddhapada ­— a footprint of Buddha ­— made sense to me as an ideal first step. With my GPS and camera and openness to the space, I climbed. What could have been an hour trek and a simple task of documentation was instead what I had hoped for. Suddenly the views opened up
and my need to research and figure out the nature of the journey inspired me.

This space, a hilltop set aside for anyone to walk up, paved with steps, jeweled with stupas, through a jungle up a steep incline, created to be experienced is a mirror on a micro level of temples and monuments, mountains and hilltops throughout Asia. The mountain as religion. The place where earth and sky meet or where earth reaches up to sky, where the two realms seem to touch has been a place of tension and speculation, legend and myth, hermit and pilgrim all around the world.

To understand the space, the pilgrim must climb. In the act of climbing, you become one of many who have climbed before, of who built, of who will climb in the future. the path becomes a thread like a timeline that you enter into and become part of. You engage in unity. You share identity. You become part of a path. The path is a metaphor to enlightenment. The climb a rite of passage, the individual part of the larger flow of humanity.

GPS map of the climb

5 km from Krabi Town is a small temple, one of the south’s most famous meditation centres, built inside a long shallow limestone cave, surrounded by natural forest. The temple has two staircases winding up a limestone cliff — 1300 steps up to a footprint of Buddha. I figured this was a good place to start my research – a first step into mapping with the gps and a first step into the experience of climbing towards something – and finally a first step into experiencing a local procession space.


Wat Tham Sua (Tiger Cave Temple) named after a rock formation resembling a tiger paw, is a forest temple in southern Thailand. The main hall inside the cave, was built for practicing meditation, while a circular path leading up from the temple, is a 300-meter high staircase of 1300 steps leading to a footprint of Buddha, a Buddhapada. Statues of Buddhas accompanying the footprint are visible from the surrounding valley. This temple complex not is a religious site for the 260 monks and nuns who live and worship there, and also an archaeological area of interest with natural caves in an overgrown jungle valley where stone tools, pottery remains and the mold for making Buddha footprints have been excavated.

The first steps

The monks and nuns follow Phra Archan Jumnean Seelasettho, who teaches the meditation technique Vipassana (insight meditation). A synonym for Vipassana is paccakkha, meaning “before the eyes,” which refers to direct experiential perception. Exactly the kind of experience trekking up a mountain of stairs might be seen as being. This type of direct perception, is directly opposed to knowledge derived from reasoning or argument.


In the spirit of Vipassana, and as an experience designer, the challenge of trekking up 1300 steps to have Buddha’s footprint before my eyes, brought me to Krabi. In order to capture and document the experience, I brought a Garmin GPS Map 60CSX w/ sensors & maps,
a still camera, and a video camera. The 60CSX can record altitude shifts, as well as global positioning. How effective will the GPS be, when used in conjunction with photography and video, in capturing the walk up the mountain?

The marks of the trek (every 13 step was marked on the GPS)

Being immersed in an experience while mapping and documenting gave me multiple levels of experiental data to examine. From the data collected I had a large amount of raw material to work with to create a translation of the experience. This project was a first step towards a series of projects. With the possibilities determined of the technology, I have gone on to map Angkor Wat, Borobodur, and other monuments created to be walked, as well as local festivals and processions, pilgrimages and historical routes.

The summit and the Buddhapada

setting bodies in motion

Convey —London College of Communication | 2006
an experience in making meaning

So the world that I've been looking into is the immersive experience — moments of collective group joy — and from the research I've tried to glean what ingredients can be deconstructed out and used for my own live art pieces. These moments have been wide ranging, from festivals to processions, from happenings to pilgrimages. I like groups of people together doing the same thing in their own way. I like setting bodies in motion. I like to be a part of the group, and to watch the group.

I say that the stage is a concrete physical place which asks to be filled,
and to be given its own concrete language to speak. I say that this
language intended for the senses and independent of speech, has
first to satisfy the senses, that there is a poetry of the senses as there
is a poetry of language, and that this concrete physical language to
which I refer is truly theatrical only to the degree that the thoughts is
expresses are beyond the reach of the spoken language.

— Artaud (1958) The Theater and its Double. p37

Naturally as a graphic designer I've had to prove that this work is within the realm of communication design. I think I have. I'll get back to that in another chapter. But for now I'd like to dwell on the idea of people as paintbrushes. On the concept of using bodies to express concepts within a time based period.

Some people use paint, I use the human body in motion to express my ideas. This started in Tokyo. as a designer promoting and branding, documenting and archiving events. For fun I threw costume parties (I'd been hosting gatherings since childhood). As the designer of an event, I controlled all aspects of the planning. The time, the location, the duration, the sequencing. I choreographed without having the performers available for rehearsal. I had to imagine and sculpt in advance — the boundaries and limits, the structure so to speak, of a thing that didn't yet exist. And the whole thing would then come to life for a brief and magical period, and then be done. This is the nature of the event. it is so very different form a performance. There are no dress rehearsals. There is no 'out there' audience (i take that back totally, the out there audience views through mediated translations. TV, web, flikr, etc). but in the moment. it is LIVE. once off. not repeatable.

I like this alchemy. Of playing with time. Of giving a space. Of structuring from nothing a group shared something. The more structured the planning, the more playful the actual experience. The limitations of location, time (sometimes of noise and number of people etc) helped to focus the events and allow for spontaneity and improvisation. The less I planned, the more open the invisible structure...often the more chaotic and less intense the experience, some spillage of energy and thinness of immersion occurred.

A theatrical piece ought to be written, presented, costumed, furnished with musical accompaniment, played and danced, by a single individual. This universal athlete does not exist. It is therefore important to replace the individual by what resembles an individual most: a friendly group.

— Cocteau, Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel

These early experiments were mainly costume parties. A Chinese opera party, an Oscar Wilde Party. 50 people. set menu, three stages. we met for champagne, were paraded through the space, led to our long tables (arranged seating preplanned by me), ate, then went up to the rooftop for dancing and music.

The communion and communication and play and theatricality of the nights were etched in memories. For not only me, but for all the participants. I like this. Setting up shared moments that are tattooed in the memory. I like stopping time. I like the magic of being silly with wonderful people. It is this interest that fueled the MFA and my current research.

For the last 6 years I've been focused in this world (5 more if you count art directing for TAC and ACCJ's events). Much more conceptually than in the past. At this point I've staged over a dozen experiences and exhibited or been asked to present in the states, uk, taiwan, tokyo and sinagpore.

To link the theater to the expressive possibilities of forms, to everything in the domain of gestures, noises, colors, movements, etc., is to restore it to its original direction, to reinstate it in its religious and metaphysical aspect, is to reconcile it with the universe.

— Artaud

What I've gleaned from the research and studies is that there are ingredients that can be used to foster the potential for synergy. Often color, movement, masks, time and place have been used. I've focused on color. By this I mean the uniforms of the participants. We share the same color. If the event is red, we all wear red. If the event is based on an object and the group is enormous, we wear black. Sameness immediately sets the groupness.

white event | risd | 2004

From there I use action. More specifically, an activity. The group is tasked with either doing something, with acting out something, or with being something. This action is expressed by the group. The individuals come up with the solution. It is spontaneous and it ends. There is a limit. In time, in stage area, in a sense of completion.

oscar wilde party — tokyo 2000

A party, like a meeting for worship, is not operating on the level of reason.... It transcends logic. It slides willingly and consciously (if it is a good party) toward a celebration of the fact of being alive. The celebrants at a party share bread and wine and reach toward a communal touching, for a moment, of an existence that is not limited by the individual ego. The sound of a party is a sound of amity, of human beings who have become for a moment, and for nonaggressive reasons, something outside themselves.

— Jessamyn West, To See the Dream, part 1 (1956).

The Banquet

The Banquet 2004 — risd
Shown at the Last Supper Film Festival | New York | 2007

We know that the earliest art works originated in the service of the ritual — first the magical. then the religious kind. It is significant that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from its ritual function. In other words, the unique value of the authentic work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value.

— Walter Benjamin

Interpretation: The Banquet is a narrative exploring the convergence of identity and chance with text from Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes this World. It was also an opportunity to commune with absurdity in the form of the last supper.