Representing/Śūnyatā

Performed December 4, 2020
video/lecture performance
single-channel video．5.1 surround sound．approximately 90 minutes

Introduction

The word sūnyatā in the title of this video/lecture performance is the transliteration of a Sanskrit word variously translated as “emptiness” or “voidness.” But regardless of how this concept is represented, impossibilities always arise. That is, what is meant by śūnyatā cannot be fully embodied by any word from any language, and whatever word used to represent it is not true śūnyatā. In fact, what is called śūnyatā can only be experienced, and clearly conveying the essence of this experience with either spoken or written words is impossible. It is this seemingly futile paradox of confronting impossibility, specifically that of expressing the intended meaning of the work’s title, that forms the basis of this performance, and as such, evokes all kinds of unpredictable associations.

The performance includes a single channel video projected in a continuous loop. Starting from a completely black screen, a tiny white dot appears and gradually expands to fill the entire screen, and then a tiny black dot appears to gradually fill the entire screen with black again. This cycle continues uninterrupted for ninety minutes.

Throughout the video, Chen Chieh-jen sits behind the right side of the screen and slowly relates the circumstances of the day his mother passed away and tells stories of his family as he remembers them. In other sections of the monologue, he explains the difference between the Eastern concept of māyā and Western concept of illusion.⁽¹⁾

Speaking of the time when he was young and leaving home for the first time to make his way in the world, Chen recalls his mother saying, “We are all brought into existence by conjurers, but a conjured person can also become a conjurer.” The first part of this sentence was derived from the Vimalakīrti Sūtra, in which Maňjuśrī asks Vimalakīrti, “How should the bodhisattvas view all sentient beings?,” to which Vimalakīrti answers, “As a conjurer sees a conjured person, so should bodhisattvas view sentient beings.” His mother, who was illiterate, invented the second part of her sentence.

Next, Chen talks about his older brother, who Chen says was suffering from psychosis, sold hallucinogenic drugs when he was young to make money, and was the first person to teach him about photography. From talking about his brother’s life, Chen segues to the similarities and differences between photography and hallucinogenic drugs, saying that both are chemical-based techniques for conjuring illusions, but the former can make an illusion permanent while the latter cannot. He then recalls the time his mother destroyed his brother’s drugs to demonstrate her belief that one could not be a true conjurer by relying on only imaging machines or drugs.

According to Buddhist folk beliefs in Taiwan, the deceased’s body must remain undisturbed for eight hours after death to allow the soul to thoroughly separate from the body, and only after which can family members move it.⁽²⁾ Chen tells of moving and then massaging his mother’s already rigid body with his younger brother after the waiting period elapsed. At the time, he couldn’t help but recollect how his mother would massage his brother who was paralyzed and suffered from mental disability. He explains that, as a child, he shared a room with this brother and developed a separate language to communicate with him, but at the same time in elementary school, studied grammar and precise use of Mandarin with his teachers and classmates. Everyday after returning home, Chen would use seemingly meaningless sounds to converse and play with his brother until the sixth grade, when his brother died.

Chen tells a story of twenty three years later when he fell into a period of depression and the death of his brother had long since faded in his memory. Never before had he dreamt of his brother, but suddenly a very clear but somewhat different image of him appeared in a dream at this time. In the dream, he led Chen through a very long tunnel until they arrived at a boundless wilderness where an endless stream of people in a funeral procession appeared on the horizon. As they drew nearer, Chen could see they all had some terrible disease that covered their bodies in ulcers. In the darkness of night, they all aimlessly followed a coffin hoisted high in the air. Next, Chen was flying and, like a camera, was recording what was happening below. From this vantage, he saw that the person in the coffin was himself, and at this point in the dream, his brother asked him, “Brother, do you understand now?”

Through a succession of memories, including conversations with his deceased mother, Chen guides his audience as the digital image cycles on the screen. He wanders through personal stories of imagery generated by chemicals or dreams, talks of the illusion of freedom manufactured to lure Taiwan into neoliberalism after the end of martial law, and draws conclusions step by step. Since the dawn of humanity, there have continually existed concepts of illusion and māyā, and according to Chen, the former can be seen as the lure of some distant shore offering a paradise and a conjuring strategy used to control others, and the latter is a form of śūnyatā, or a way of seeing through the illusion. New paradise is used to continually manufacture an unreachable elsewhere to control those suffering hardships in today’s world, so that they feel contentment in the anticipation of a paradise that they believe will someday arrive. It is only in this way that both the old and new caste systems can be maintained. Śūnyatā, on the other hand, reveals that the so-called distant shore is actually present in every moment, in every thought, and in everything that one does.

Toward the end of the performance, Chen continues talking about the Vimalakīrti Sūtra, in which countless bodhisattvas suffering from their sense of hierarchy, ask Vimalakīrti how a bodhisattva can enter the realm of the enlightened. Vimalakīrti answers, “Devoting oneself to the path of non-purity is the correct way for a bodhisattva to enter the realm of the enlightened.” In other words, only by eradicating the paradise control technique, which has maintained the old and new caste systems, and by destroying the concept of rank from the non-pure world can true enlightenment be reached.

Simply put, making people aware of their real connection with the world and that they can develop the śūnyatā awareness technique to oppose the paradise control technique are what art offers in the Internet age.

At the same time, his video performance counters the supposition of an opposition between absolute reality and absolute illusion in Plato’s cave allegory by claiming that in a broad sense, it is also the paradise control technique because it suggests an absolute reality actually exists elsewhere. Therefore, learning how to construct the meaning of one’s own existence and developing a śūnyatā awareness technique that breaks hierarchical relationships is a lesson that all suffering people in this world need to learn and practice constantly.

Chen mentions in his performance that when his mother’s body was covered with the dharani blanket and put into a white mortuary bag, her voice drifted through his mind again, “A conjured person can become a conjurer, and all sentient beings should view the bodhisattvas and the world as such.”

Notes

1. The Sanskrit word māyā does not carry the same meaning that “illusion” does in the Western language context. Although māyā includes the notion of a magician using deception to create an illusion, the main connotation of the word is that all things in the universe, including human beings, have no absolute essence and are in a state of constant flux, so they seem to exist like an illusion (yathā māyā). Knowing that nothing can remain unchanged, we realize the positive meaning of the concept of emptiness (śūnyatā), and the subjective agency of human beings can be truly mobilized to change the inequalities in the world.
2. This folk custom does not come from Buddhist scripture or rules, but rather gradually developed among the people after Buddhism arrived in China. Its exact origins are unknown, but one explanation has been put forward by Master Hong Yi in his article The Last of Life.
3. The producer for this project was Liu Yung-hao. The sound designer and producer was Chen Mao-chang.

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