11:07am so I just briefly read through the three main books my grandpa gave me and it was really valuable. I was thinking, I can’t believe these secrets of the universe and how to return to heaven is just being spelled out so clearly like this. The concepts are simple, I think first you have to believe it. I also had some realisations about the contrasting parallels of the (buddhist) concepts to my own art practice right now. I’ve been thinking deeply into the carcass, the cadaver, which is almost shameful when I read these divine ideas, which is all about light and distance from the human or animal body. There is a stark contrast in light and dark here. I feel I am feeding into the dark. Also, at the core of it all.. this deranged relationship I have with documentation contradicts the meaning of life as well - and deep down I know this - I KNOW we can’t bring our memories with us after we die, but that doesn’t mean I can’t keep them and enjoy them in this lifetime, right? I know these are only tied to my tiny existence amongst many reincarnations of life. I don’t know, I’m kind of bumping into another confrontation here. I guess I am interested in and making work about Very Human things - the taxidermy/diorama/natural history, nature in the city, documentation/record-keeping for a personal history… it is just interesting that both of these took the form of a carcass for me… as if to symbolise the very thing in those teachings… that the human experience will be left here on earth…and that the real meaningful thing here is the soul, the intangible, the indescribable, invisible (but opposite of ghost). Is the cadaver synonymous with the ghost? Looking at it this way, I feel like it is. They’re both trapped on this planet. The carcass was what once held the spirit, which, because it didn’t reach transcendence, is a ghost to be reincarnated. Im probably sprouting nonsense but there is a certain joy in establishing a fictional authority. Again, this is illusion, play-pretend, photography, record, taxidermy, carcass. A carcass is an illusion because it resembles its image, what it once had been. I think of bill viola saying in a video, that the moment his mother died, the body on the hospital bed was not his mother. It is an illusion.
-light (spiritual) (what we are trying to cultivate) - its camera capture
-hungry ghost (one of the realms below human, close to the bottom - hell)
-the disembodiment we are trying to achieve (lack of physical body, carcass)
-‘our life is first affected by our most recent memory, then the earlier…in buddhism this is called karma. Karmic obstacles / physical death is not the end but rather a new beginning - reincarnation - similar to christianity’s judgement’ ‘fame, wealth, and power are the values we strive for in our lives. At end of our lives they disappear. Therefore the true value of lifetime is to find the destination for the hereafter, so that we can be calm and feel peaceful, when we face death.’
I mentioned in my statement the tensions between life and death in the taxidermy specimens, because the dead bodies are set up as if they are alive. This is a contradiction in itself. is me looking at the dead camera body as if it were alive, a confrontation as well? Is that why I have been in such agony in the past few months? Because it embodies a conflict in my core, deluded (I am aware) obsession with documentation? Something I viewed as my life source (unhealthy) is now dead, therefore I am dead? Have I been wrestling with death in life?
I rewatched tales from earthsea since my family has never seen it the other day, which is one of my top films and one I always go back to (especially when I feel very low and feel life has no meaning and I can never climb back up again) because it always instills the belief again that, life is valuable because it ends. You follow Arren from the beginning, and usually I feel I understand him, I am him in that moment, I understand his killing of his father, it simply didn’t matter because life didn’t matter. And then he meets the confrontation of Teru who values life infinitely. And then there is the sorcerer who is trying to open life/death doors. This whole film shows you the delusion in wanting to live forever or seeing life as having no value. But after reading some of the things in those books I see it a bit differently now. Of course, it is a fictional rewrite of a fictional novel, but there is much to take from it. That is the beauty of art and one of the valuable things on this earth, I think. That you can learn from fiction, which comes from humans. To put the buddhist analogy on the story arren was definitely below human especially after he killed his father, and teru who revealed to be a dragon, was above the human. You see her in both dragon and human form. And dragons are real. My mum has seen them in her practice. She said they are incredible, colourful, beautiful. I hope I see them one day. I think teru being the dragon form is probably a metaphor for eternal life which the sorcerer has spent his entire life striving for. Its a beautiful film.
/// is the cadaver synonymous with the ghost ?
Is the copy an original?
11pm ok so today i recorded, experimented with some ‘automatic’ speaking out loud (I tried reading something i wrote today, but it sounded unnatural. Im not confident when im speaking freely, ordering words, but i think it adds this rawness to the material. So i edited that with the footage i filmed yesterday… again, im very new to video so.. It feels very rough cut and i dont know how it translates to someone who isnt in my head. Sometimes you are too close to the work to see how ridiculously bad it is. I cant tell if its embarrassing or good. Ill let it sit, maybe upload for interim show (I haven’t figured out how or what I wanna do that, will be doing that at the start ish of next week.
10.3.21 one morning in the second before gaining consciousness after sleep I made the connection of the similar (kind of, in my mind at that point) sentiment of 'is the cadaver synonymous with the ghost' and 'why is a raven like a writing desk' (the riddle proposed by mad hatter at the tea party in alice) which is quite surrealist or dada or something. it is this placing of two THINGS together and proposing all the infinite ways one thing could be another. it reminds me of the surrealist notion of objective chance: "as beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table."