Dreams, illusion, bubbles and shadows_a doctoral PLR research project

 The work of today was reviewing. Rather than questioning myself what kind of works I want to create, I started question the idea of 'facing', a contrasting position of ego and objects. The idea of thinking without duality (Nagatomo, 2000), occurred to me. Regarding this, I stopped thinking about the staring eyes, and discarded the think of duality, but to take a position as both a creator of an artwork and an audience of this work. Thus, I started to question myself what I want to look at rather than what I want to show. In other words, the non-duality position for me is: audience = creator (artist) What was written on the left side of this paper: As an audience: 1. I want to understand something that interests me. Something I have never known before. Something that opens my eyes or deepens my understanding. 2. If I don't know the Diamond Sutra (868), what do I want to explore?  a. Its content. How does the book look like?  b. Why such an ancient work still mat...

the last page of the Diamond Sutra （868）from the idp website The last page of the Diamond Sutra (868) contains a date when this book was printed. The Chinese characters "咸通九年四月十五日王玠为 二亲敬造普施" indicate that this sutra was printed in the late Tang Dynasty on the 15th of April(on lunar calendar, equalling to the 11th May, 868) for the patron's parents. When copying the date, I recalled again the date paintings by On Kawara. His date paintings was related to the 'present' of him, showcase the 'today' and potential movement of his own. However, the other way to form and mark a date, indicates dissimilar understandings of time and space. In other words, to write about a date entails unique perceptions of one's own.  The date of each day, as are uniform today, once has had the potential to tell another story. They are not merely numbers.      On Kawara-Guggenheim Museum  a copy of the date The date when the sutra was made carved on a woodblock, in original Chi...

Question of the day: What does staring inform? How is it be related to the Diamond Sutra, my main research material? How does it related to the non-linear temporal structure? The other questions: What this work is about? How will the work be completed as? an installation? a new media immersive work? On the analysis of the Diamond Sutra, Nagatomo (2000) questions the conventional idea of duality and proposes the 'neither nor' think pattern (deny every thought) rather than the pattern of 'either or' ( one correct, the other is incorrect). It is an interesting statement when he made a 'space' between the deem of oneself and the othering of the other beings: In the everyday standpoint of the `foolish, ordinary people’ when they assume the `natural standpoint’, a subject stands `here’, while a material thing exists `out there’ as an object, wherein a spatial distance separates them. In coming to know a material thing, the subject must objectify it and thus distance i...

"Is there in our conceptual scheme something that compels us to make this judgement?" (Nagatomo, 2000) Chinese character '相', mainly means appearances The Chinese character ‘相’is made up by the symbol of a tree/ a piece of wood and an eye. It is so powerful when the shape of an eye is seen in an epigraphic calligraphy ( in China, these kind of characters were mainly found on ancient bronze). Carving before the study of this Chinese character   1. Nagatomo, S. (2000). "The logic of the Diamond Sutra: A is not A, therefore it is A." Asian Philosophy 10(3): 213-244.

silkscreen print of a photo of myself Fabricated Dialogue of the day:    Xu: Red is strong, powerful and creative Wang: Appearance. First trail on the woodblock, but the red color is not printable on paper. Appearance and the corresponding Chinese character were printed before printed on the black paper above, the word and the Chinese character were printed on the other paper for a test, and resulted a strange but power image  

 

   Made through processing The making of the video is based on understanding of lines. Lines, as it is clear and simple, is also a sophisticate container of time and memories. During the last week, I have been trying to understand the lines resulted from time on the Diamond Sutra (868), imitating 'marks' left by thousand years of damaging, and the recent magnificent carful repairing. I also draw the lines from the e-dunhuang  website, where the panorama of several most astonishing caves are shown, including the 017th cave that the Diamond Sutra (868) was found.   By 'looking up' through the panorama,  the 'marks' of time reminds me of a translation from the IDP website of the Diamond Sutra, translating the Chinese character '相' into 'marks'. The sentence then reads "Everything that has marks is deceptive and false. If all marks are not seen as marks, then this is perceiving the Tathāgata."  At first I traced some marks left on the Diamo...