The Many faces of Buddhism

We have a festival of Buddhist culture happening at the moment, a film festival at the Barbican is just starting, and I have been to a seminar on contemporary artists influenced by Buddhism. and part of a day of Buddhist dances.
The V&A have been hosting some of the events and opening a new gallery of Buddhist sculpture, sponsored by the Robert H. N. Ho family foundation that broadly supports Chinese arts and culture.
The seminar on Buddhism and contemporary art was introduced by Jacquelynn Baas, who has spent many years researching Buddhism's influence on artists both contemporary and in the past. She has produced two books on the theme Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art and Smile of the Buddha. Jacquelynn Baas writes " The appeal of Buddhism for artists is that, like art, Buddhism challenges thinking as central to knowing. What both the creation and the perception of art share with Buddhist meditation practice is that art allows us to forget ourselves and thus realize our self"
Lin Hwai-min founder and director of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre in Taiwan, spoke about his work and showed films of some of his dancers performing works. His description of their growing understanding and practice of Buddhism expressed through the medium of dance was extremely moving.

Kimsooja born in Korea, and studying and working in the States, talked about her performance art piece,A Needle Woman, that she took to a number of cities world wide and showed video clips from it. She also talked about her Bottari Truck work and using the Cloth bundle as a symbol in her work.

Sanford Biggers, from Los Angles, talked and showed films of his multi-disciplinary art, that included contemporary sand mandalas, dance pieces, and a singing bowl work made in Japan.

Meredith Monk, a composer, singer and creator of music theatre and pioneer of the extended vocal technique, showed work including exerts from Songs of Ascension. She also performed a short piece herself and her vocals sent shivers down my spine.

ST James Park and ICA

I decided to put some work into the Pastel Society open this year at the Mall Galleries and as it was a sunny day to wander into ST James park. Unfortunately they were dredging and doing work to the lake, which was fenced off. But the trees were coming into leaf and the cherry blossom particularily lovely.



I was taking photos as I walked around, noticing all the flags around too, probably because of the G20 summit. Although the fountains in Trafalgar square were also out of action due to cleaning, there was one of the new art works on the fourth plinth, A colourful design in light reflecting glass for a hotel, by Thomas Schutte, something they call a concept piece I think.
Later this year Antony Gormleys work One and other, involving hundreds of people standing on the plinth for an hour at a time will be there. You can register to be one of the people occupying the plinth for an hour here



At the ICA there was an exhibition of Sean Snyders work, Index, including video installations and photography. Downstairs was a series of images of storage media from Snyder's archive, along with experimental test prints. A video installation showed a film made from a Soviet propaganda film and an art history lecture re-edited and disrupte. It was quite thought provoking, what struck me most though was the sort of certainty that was apparant in the Soviet educator's face and attitude. What we do if we are so convinced by ideology.



Upstairs were two more video installations one Afghanistan circa 1985, is a short film showing footage from the Soviet occupations of Afghanistan. Somewhat incongruously it shows Soviet troops embracing and dancing with Afghanis while their vehicles and weapons are in the background. The other film Casio, Seiko, Sheraton, Toyoto, Mars incorporates footage from the recent American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Sean Snyders voice over tracks the brands of the title involvement with the wars and uses footage from all sorts of footage.