Environment, Dependent Co-Arising and Art

Lao: In today’s conversation, I will introduce my work and, with philosopher Romaric Jannel, share some of our views on environmental issues, including the relationship between people’s changing state of mind and the environment, alongside topics such as well-being. Thank you all for coming today.

The title of the exhibition “KYOSHITSU SHOHAKU – An Empty Room Turns White For Enlightenment” refers to the words of the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi who said, “In an empty room, light shines through and naturally brightens the room. If a person empties his or her mind and is unencumbered by anything, he or she will naturally come to understand the true nature of things.”

The venue of my French exhibition, The Asian Art Museum in Nice, was designed by Kenzō Tange. The art museum floats on a lake and looks like an island of Mount Penglai in the style of “Shinden-zukuri” from the Heian period palatial architecture or “Shoin-zukuri” from the Muromachi period. It is a scene of modern architecture in harmony with the earth, which was created in the beautiful ponds of the Phoenix Park on the Côte d’Azur, and which is the result of Tange’s efforts to borrow landscapes in the creation of his garden.

There is a spiral staircase that runs through the center of the museum and serves as an axis. It is a path that connects the basement level (submerged under the lake) to the ground level and upper level. The spiral staircase represents the Diamond Realm Mandala, which represents the path to enlightenment. When I ascended to the top floor via the spiral staircase, I was moved by the cosmic perspective of the circular space cast under the light flowing through the glass triangle. I placed the 22-meter-long “Winter Pine Trees in Crescent-Shaped Landscape” (寒松三日月図) in there which is related to the Pure Land together with the ancient Buddha statues from the museum collection.

Lao: Let me explain my work. My work stems from natural phenomena, such as fog after rain. The scene is real since it is a photograph, but at the same time the fog and snow gives the viewer a sense of abstraction and emptiness (虚空). In the past, there was a phrase “the interdependence of emptiness and reality” that could express this kind of in-between state. The flow of “natural emptiness” allows our “heart” to drift to “infinity” at this moment.

Another example of this is “Winter Pine Trees in Genkai Landscape” (寒松玄海図) in the entrance of Fukuoka Ritz-Carlton Hotel. They wanted me to create a modern interpretation of “Shōrin-zu byōbu” (松林図屛風), a Japanese national treasure created by Hasegawa Tōhaku from the Azuchi-Momoyama period. Although the mediums are different, the spirit of “the interdependence of emptiness and reality” is the same.

“Shōrin-zu” is famous for its airy atmosphere, which gives people an interesting perspective of thinking the trees are levitating like ghosts. I think this feeling is also an appropriate application of “the interdependence of emptiness and reality”.

The profound atmosphere and rhyme in Muxi (Mokkei 牧谿)’s works from the Southern Song Dynasty era occasionally also resonated with the aesthetics of the “Zen” tea rooms from the Muromachi period, and Hasegawa Tōhaku has been trying to express a similar atmosphere in his work.

However, the “emptiness” of “the interdependence of emptiness and reality” is difficult to achieve via techniques alone. It is also related to the “non-self”(無自性) view of one’s own self. Hasegawa Tōhaku successfully achieved it only once in his life, which was after the death of his son and he was imprisoned, a time when he faced life and death directly.

As far as I’m concerned, In this ephemeral moment of dampness, the opposition between here (此方) and there (彼方), dissolves. The place where one stands becomes an illusion or a part of an illusion, revealing a profound world. Through “natural emptiness,” we see the world of “infinity”. In this fleeting moment, both emptiness and reality coexist.

Jannel: The source of Season Lao’s works is the encounter with natural phenomena. This natural phenomena, in all its dimensions, is none other than “dependent co-arising” (縁起) itself. To think of the relationships among all things in this way is to assert the dynamics of microcosmos, mesocosmos, and macrocosmos.

Yamauchi Tokuryū (1890-1982) philosophically reinterprets the concept of “dependent co-arising” in Buddhism and explains that causality is not limited to necessity. This allows for chance events to occur. This means that the relationship between cause and effect is not limited to what must happen but also what could happen. Yamauchi, thus gives a special place to chance encounters.

Lao: When entering the art museum, the orientation of space is patterned off of the Taoist ideology of “Four Divinities”(四神相応). One would see a glass-formed space that spreads out to the back. Looking from there towards the scenery of the pond reminds one of the sensation of looking down at the sand or raked gravel grounds from the raised floor of the academy building in a Pure Land Buddhist style garden, where the raked gravel is made to look like ocean waves.

I choose to place “KYOSHITSU SHOHAKU” on the veranda (Japanese: 縁側). The installation featured damaged trees and fallen trees that had been cut down by the forces of nature, along with the surrounding landscape (Japanese: Mitate). An anonymous figure is seated on the stump, and fog is generated from the space.

Jannel: From Western background, when we see a video recording of the “KYOSHITSU SHOHAKU” installation, we feel a kind of Eastern or Oriental feeling, but it is also a reminder of the often forgotten concept and history of “meditation” in Europe.

The process behind this installation appears to be different from that of “dependent co-arising” print. The posture of the seated figures and fog seems to be closer to conceptual art. What was the intention for the work?

Lao: The whole idea of conceptual art presupposes the existence of the contradictory concepts of “subject” and “object.” In the case of “KYOSHITSU SHOHAKU,” I believe that there is a reciprocal relationship between “subject” and “object”.

This is the initial prototype of “KYOSHITSU SHOHAKU.” Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and the inability to travel between regions, I started to conduct private experiments in a Pure Land Buddhist temple in Kyōto. The gardens at the temple reflect the worlds of “this shore” (此岸) and “the other shore” (彼岸) in Buddhism.

The fog between them forms a place where “emptiness” and “reality” exist together by blurring the boundary between “inside” and “outside”, “subject” and “object” in the viewer’s “Umwelt,” waiting for emotions to be projected.

Jannel: According to Augustin Berque, “Umwelt” refers to the particular world that is unique for each living thing. Furthermore, in contrast to the “environment” that exists only as matter, “Umwelt” is a richer concept, including the habits of certain living things and their way of grasping things.

Lao: For me, the idea of this installation further embodies the relationship between “people” and “nature” through “Umwelt.” However, the 2-D work with “natural emptiness” is something that offers more direct communication with nature.

Jannel: I think what Lao is talking about is a kind of dialectical relationship. The mediator in this relationship is the “Umwelt” itself. If we consider this relationship more deeply, we can say the following. When we encounter Lao’s work, we are made to feel as though we are included in the natural environment depicted in the work; we feel that we are part of the environment and that the environment is part of us.

I believe that this viewpoint is also linked to a fundamental part of ecological and environmental problems. Originally, from the standpoint of environmental philosophy, the environment was the object. The hard sciences (like biology and oceanography) tend to emphasize the distinction between the environment and humans as part of what makes them objective. This, naturally, excludes the subject, us, from the process of knowledge formation. In my view, our relationship to the environment is not only that we live in it, but that we are part of it. The environment is inside the human body as much as the human body is inside of the environment.

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“Emptiness” (無自性) and “Dependent Co-Arising”(縁起)

Jannel: Following a solo exhibition in France, your work will be exhibited together with that of American musician and artist John Cage. How has John Cage influenced you?

Lao: John Cage visited Gallery Shirakawa thirty years ago. I was told that he was always playful and was constantly experimenting with sounds. The first time I saw a picture of John Cage in France was of him with his head inside of a bell at a Japanese temple. He let his friend ring the bell while inside it to see what it was like. I was impressed by the expression on his face. It was a look of pure joy. In his masterpiece “4 ’33”, he did not play anything on the piano and used the sounds that exist in the environment as the piece itself. What I see here more, than in conceptual art, is an attitude of acceptance of all things.

Jannel: This position of John Cage’s, acceptance as Lao calls it, does not appear to be inevitable or random.

Lao: The “I Ching” hexagrams used by John Cage in his “Chance Operation” series originally represented the “destiny” of mankind which is beyond the control of human beings, and, depending on the smoke, can be seen in a multiple of ways. This reminds me of the fourth-dimensional elements that Marcel Duchamp expresses, such as “movement” and “time.”

John Cage said, “Art’s purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.” I have sympathy for this, I am not a student of fine art, so in the past, there was no need to express my desires and ideas through art. However, when I was around 20 years old, I got caught in a snowstorm in Hokkaido. There was both beauty and severity that left me speechless, and I was able to glimpse the limitlessness of “natural emptiness,” including myself. It is a change from within that begins with the “non-self nature”(無自性) and elevates it to a harmonious relationship in which a part of the other, other than yourself, can feel a sense of security that transcends the world.

Jannel: Seeing things from the perspective of John Cage and Lao reminds me that Yamauchi Tokuryū also thinks about the West and the East. His view was that “by including both, while distinguishing between them, we can complete a global system of thought.” I think our conversation today is not only about philosophy and art, but also about a new Humanism for the future, thank you.

Lao: Thank you, and thank you all for coming today.

English proofreading by Matt Fujimoto