zen and the 21st century In my photography and digital media work, I explore what I consider three important pillars of the 21st century: the natural environment, human societies and settlements (i.e., cities) and individual human beings. In these pillars, and their complex interactions, we can find the underpinnings of many contemporary concerns. Climate change, once the province of hippies and radicals, is now a key focus of business and government worldwide. Urban living is rapidly becoming the norm of human social organization across the globe, as the UN predicts that more than half the world will live in cities by 2010. And, of course, the role of the individual and his/her identity has shifted and been redefined by the rise of the Internet and social networking tools.
Conceptually, I’ve formally studied a number of Eastern and Western philosophical traditions, which serve as the background for my work. I’ve found that Zen thought in particular helps bring clarity to a rich number of 21st century experiences. I draw upon notions of impermance and change (anitya), true nature (tathagatha) and constructed, fluid identity (anatman), among others. These concepts, while not perfect analogues, shed light on 21st century culture at a deep level and serve as a helpful backdrop to the more contemporary concepts I explore, such as modern psychology, technological innovations and implications, and others.
Aesthetically, I borrow heavily from formalist traditions while simultaneously seeking to break new ground. As with my conceptual background, I’ve found that the Zen aesthetic approach, in its preference for simplicity of form and suggestion of content, complements the rich concepts I explore in my work. Aesthetics such as mono no aware (an awareness of the passing of things), miyabi (elegance and simplicity) and wabi-sabi (a rustic perfection) feature prominently in my work, as I practice in the tradition of mushin (no mind, no effort). At the same time, I seek to push the format of digital photography and media by marrying traditional eastern aesthetics with more modern western ones, such as Cartier-Bresson’s notion of the defining moment. I also look toward new modes of expression allowed by digital media and editing tools, especially in the realm of branded, templatized expression. It’s this cocktail of medieval, modern and my own aesthetic experimentation that excites me about my visual work.
I use my art practice, as much meditative as it is intellectual-aesthetic, to serve as a stepping stone toward understanding the 21st century and as a bridge between contemporary concerns and more universal ones. I keep a foot in the past while simultaneously walking forward, and I consider myself successful if I don’t trip all over myself in the process. I’m humbled by this opportunity to share my work and hope the statements below, which dive deeper into the particular series I’ve produced, can help my viewers understand a bit more about the thinking that went behind each piece. More about my aesthetics can also be found in my interviews with Simply Haiku journal and Tricycle magazine.
Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer… and Fall
In my explorations of nature, I look at the interaction of two primary concerns: 21st century climate change and impermanence as a general fact of existence. I have a particular interest in fleeting moments of transition in nature, and what those moments reveal about the delicate physical balance of an environment that sustains our way of life.
Whether autumn leaves, summer rain or other season elements, I’m fascinated by the transitions between seasons, that delicate period of a few weeks where it seems like more than one season is present. Part of this, of course, comes from my upbringing. Having been raised in Los Angeles and Manila, I didn’t experience seasons with as much crisp definition as New Yorkers do. The Northeastern experience of weather has always struck me as exotic and rich.
At the same time, this fascination with seasons extends toward larger themes. Zen aesthetics practically found their birth in seasonal transitions. For instance, in the haiku tradition, the notion of a kigo, or word suggesting the season, plays a critical role in the experience of the poetry. From the archetypal falling leaf, to the week-long burst of sakura blossoms, the impermanence of the seasons serves as a vehicle for a deeper understanding of impermanence and its beauty.
These delicate moments also point toward a less poetic, and more practical delicacy. In the 21st century, as we inherit the rapid growth from the Industrial Age, we are coming to understand the balance necessary to maintain our way of life, a balance that teeters by mere inches in water levels and the cumulative effect of global air travel. It’s this tension that interests me: the poetic, fleeting moments between seasons serve as a point of meditation for the impermanence of all things, but they also demonstrate a very contemporary, real-world concern.
In New York City, it is so rare to see the sky with all the skyscrapers standing in the way. For New Yorkers, and for many urban dwellers, this induces a tendency to keep one’s eyes on the ground and to ignore the natural human impulse to look upward. The act of looking upward, imbued with a sense of mystery and wonder, has traditionally served as a practical function as well. By ascertaining knowledge of the weather, human beings and other creatures have been able to determine what their day will look like.
Gods of the Sky, a photo series of actual clouds in Colorado, explores life’s essential molecule—H2O in clouds—as a microcosm for nature in both ancient mythology and contemporary environmentalism. The clouds’ power over the pre-industrial world played an important role in the development of myth. In the 21st century, we are realizing their important role in maintaining an environment necessary to our way of life. This intersection fascinates me: once reserved to long-abandoned myths, nature’s mysterious power over ancient man comes to the fore in our generation as essential to our survival.
In my explorations of urban life, I look at the intersection between urban change (gentrification, the phenomenon of exurbs, decay, etc.), impermanence, and Cartier-Bresson’s seeking of the defining moment, or moments of aesthetic unity. I explore these ideas through more conceptual work, such as my City Moon series, as well as work that borders on the documentary, such as my Coney Island Sunset series. Overall, I see cities as living, breathing entities, as much subject to the tides of change as our natural environs.
Mine is not the stereotyped life of a practitioner of traditional Japanese poetry and aesthetics. Though my ancestors worked on farms in the hills of the Philippines, I grew up in highly urbanized sections of Manila and Los Angeles, received my education in Washington, DC, and now fly back and forth between New York and Los Angeles. Mine has been a world of busy streets, pollution, filth, beauty and anything but peace and quiet.
And yet, during this time, I fell in love with the practice of kado — the Japanese way of poetry. Japanese poetry has often focused on aware and yugen — meaning “transience” and “standing in awe,” respectively. Usually, these poems center around nature and natural settings. The most famous haiku, after all, written by Matsuo Basho, concerns a frog jumping into a pond. My life, however, has rarely seen nature beyond glass aquariums and a distant view of the San Gabriel mountains. For me, kado is just that — a way. It’s a way of life and a constant sense about oneself, rather than a restriction to a certain setting.
My urban photography, then, has emerged from two highly-realist traditions: the practice of kado, and Henri Cartier-Bresson’s street photography. I took up photography because a lens can capture what a haiku cannot - an almost-exact replica of what I am seeing when I experience a “haiku moment.” I carry a camera with me everywhere, especially my lightweight Panasonic Lumix, which I take out of my purse at a moment’s notice and capture what I see with its crisp Leica lens.
For me, the way of photography never ceases. I photograph on my commute, during lunch breaks, on my way to an opening, anywhere that an image strikes me. In general, I shoot from a distance, to help the viewer step away from his or her manner of experiencing the city, which is often up close and overwhelming. I fully believe aesthetic unity can be found at any time and place if my eyes are open to it.
In my work, I specifically seek to marry the haiku concepts of aware and yugen with Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment, to at once capture the inherent transience of city life and the moments of awe in which urban dwellers sometimes find themselves. Through this marriage of aesthetics, I seek to recognize life in the worlds’ megacities as a life that, though far from idyllic hills and forests, is a life as much subject to impermanence and change as the natural environment.
I don’t think I knew true love till I saw the famed Wonder Wheel through the subway window. There it was, along with the Cyclone, framed by the gray sky of a rainy day. I knew nothing about the amusement park yet, but I’d soon learn its name – Astroland Park – in a photograph that would be one of my first and most popular published in the Brooklyn Rail just a short month later.
The first time I arrived in Coney Island was the summer of 2007, with my good friend, photographer Paul Adrian Davies. We’d just heard that the Island, a venerable icon of New York City for nearly a century, was likely going to be shut down in favor of new developments, and we realized we had to go out and see it, if only once.
Soon enough, once became twice, and twice became multiple times. Over the summer, like a lover before her man goes to war, I kept coming back with my camera, hungry to savor those precious few months. On most days, a gray sky cast a pall over the area, and even during a sunny day on the Mermaid Parade, it was the shadows and strange shapes of the late afternoon sun that drew my eye.
I’ve realized over this many-month affair with Coney Island, a two-hour trip from my home and studio in Jersey City, that it’s the perfect subject for my streethaiku series, in which I try to capture Zen aesthetics in an urban (and therefore nontraditional) setting. Before me and all around me stood this behemoth of an icon, an area filmed and photographed and fought over. It had withstood the test of time, miles from long-gentrified, post-Giuliani Manhattan, and yet in 2007, it lost its grip to the appropriately-named Thor Equities.
In my streethaiku, I express through photography two main aesthetics – aware, or transience, and yugen, or standing in awe. Coney Island is both. It’s an awe-inspiring place, as if transported to the 1950’s. Old and clearly dated, far away from the glittering skyline many subway stops away, it’s simply magnificent. Yet at the same time, it’s fading away, no more permanent than the tide.
On rainy days, on cloudy days, on sunny days and even on snowy days, I wanted to respond artistically to Coney Island. So many great photographers before me have documented it; there’s no need to repeat their important work. But for me, having grown up in a low-income neighborhood in Los Angeles now gentrified and considered “hip”, I know all too well what we both lose and gain in the cycle of urban change.
What I hope viewers understand, as they look at my series in its totality, is this dual sense of both loss and gain. I hope they ask themselves what Coney Island, and other icons of other cities, contributes to the local character. I hope they notice, as they see graffiti and trash littered in the back alleyways, what is so detrimental and depressing about the area. And I dearly hope, especially as they look at a Coney Island recently covered in snow, is that they imagine a New York without Astroland Park and historic Coney Island, but instead an extension of Manhattan, with high-rise condos and glittering amusements. What do we gain? What do we lose? What is New York without a Coney Island?
In my explorations of the individual self, I examine how the embedding of technology in daily life has heavily influenced our experience of identity. To help understand this emerging idea of self, I draw from both modern psychology and the Zen tradition of non-self, to see digital identity as its own form of identity, with unique rules and concerns. In these works, perhaps my most conceptually and aesthetically rich, I also examine gender, mental illness, culture and other ideas, while drawing heavily from digital tools.
As a photographer and portrait artist, I’m interested in the power of the human face and its expression of the person, but I’m also interested in its converse, namely, the power of a face deliberately obscured from view. Masks can often take on the semblance of power (think of SWAT operatives and samurai mempo), or even beauty (think of masquerade balls and Greek drama). However, they are often used to dehumanize and humiliate, as we saw recently, and most strikingly, in images from Abu Ghraib, but which we can also find in rubber masks used in sadomasochism.
In my Masks series, I use my own long hair as a tool to examine the idea of a self-imposed mask of shame, of the obscured human face as a symbol for, or even as an equivalent to, an obscured personal identity. Examined as a whole, the series of images comes across as grotesque and uncomfortable, with an asylum-like quality to the environment. Far from mysterious and alluring, I deny my face entirely from the viewer by long strands of unwashed hair while I frequently position my body uncomfortably. In so doing, I visually express a sense of shame, a self-imposed censure not unlike that of prisoner and captor. In this case, however, the mask-wearer is both victim and perpetrator.
I most want to explore this theme as it relates to the 21st century, both at the basic emotional level of shame and the more complex level of mental illness. Mental illness, I suspect, will take a more prominent role in contemporary discussions, especially with the recent passage of the Mental Health and Addictions Parity bill. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, mood and anxiety disorders, which frequently accompany mood disorders and vice versa, afflict nearly a third of the adult population, and depression is in fact the leading cause of disability in the United States. These numbers will likely increase as modern stresses make our lives more complex and difficult to handle.
With my Masks series, I want to challenge viewers to examine their responses to these images and to ask themselves how the physical act of obscuring one’s face relates to the emotional act of obscuring one’s identity and self-esteem. What is the role of the mask, both literal and figurative, in shame and self-disgust? What is it about mood and anxiety disorders that can be so debilitating? Why do we respond with discomfort and even revulsion to images of emotional self-harm, as opposed to the compassion often elicited by physical illness?
The True Sexual Tales of the Exotic Zoë Kitsu
Once distrusted in the 90’s as a world of shadowy anonymity, the Internet in the 21st century allows for greater interconnectivity and publicity than ever imagined. Individuals who might have once had regional renown or no renown at all can now achieve global name recognition thanks to a clever blog, a catchy YouTube video, a colorful MySpace or any other host of Internet spaces, and users are very well aware of how every word, image, video, link and Twitter they post affects others’ perceptions of them.
The True Sexual Tales of the Exotic Zoë Kitsu is an exploration of these themes, and of the larger idea of a new experience of self-identity. I’m interested in templatized expression, i.e., art and identity in an Internet-driven culture. For the work, I’ve created Zoë Kitsu, a young woman in New York exploring her sexuality. I install these blog posts as 16″x16″ pieces, with enough content for the average 5-10 second reading time that one can expect for a blog. She expresses her thoughts through pithy, reflective prose.
By installing the pieces side by side in a gallery and by showing the blogs within a blog, I want to re-create the experience of reading a blog. We come in, we read, we leave. Then we come back. The template is the same, but the content has, we hope, changed.
This is the basic idea behind Internet expression–unpredictability within predictability, depth within brevity; like a television program, each person has their own “brand” imposed upon their site, with variations in content day to day. As the Zoë Kitsu entries are withdrawn from the actual experience of clicking and browsing over the course of days and weeks, they demand an unlikely approach, perhaps a more critical eye, to the lure of blogging.
Beyond a surface-level study of public branding, Zoë Kitsu is a study in Internet-based identity. I want to challenge viewers to re-examine the blogging experience, and the mechanisms that drive digital fame and renown. I’m interested in the constructed identity of the blogger, and how the blog and other social networking sites have fueled the now-popular concept of the branded self, an idea no longer reserved for celebrities and politicians. Now, ordinary individuals find themselves juggling a public and private face in daily life.
How has templatized expression brought about a cultural shift in the 21st century of how we think about identity? What function does blogging play in the very construction of our sense of self? Why do we think we know a blogger personally when we see only this very public and controllable face? The idea I wish to present is that maybe the personal ego is no longer confined to physical and mental space but is now expanded to digital space as well. What are the properties of the digital self? How do they differ from and remain the same with our traditional concepts of self?
For any gender, the act of dressing up often reflects a major transition between public and private selves. As we shed our house clothing, don makeup and do our hair, we slowly emerge from a self more palatable to the general public. In Dress, an ongoing series, I examine dressing rituals as a means of exploring identity. I’m interested in the socialization of the individual, and how we learn to disguise aspects of ourself for the general public.
In my first of this series, a series of self-portraits, I use the square format to isolate the individual, and I adjust the shutter speed to create a sense of motion. This motion helps express the overall process of change, both in a literal sense as the subject changes clothes, but in a larger sense, as I look at identity as a flux, fluid thing that adapts for the environment and evolves through the years. I aim to continue these explorations with other individuals.
In January 2006, Western Union put to rest the telegram, the groundbreaking new technology that allowed nearly-instant intercontinental communication and enjoyed almost two centuries of communications usage. Two months later, a new medium emerged, similar in many ways: Twitter. In a world of email, AIM and cell phones, it made barely a blip, but its importance is quickly becoming clear.
I propose using the 1stfans feed to tweet in Morse code. As writer Nicholas Carr noted, the parallels are apparent–speed, brevity, and a need for acronyms–, but the purposes are almost entirely separate. Whereas telegrams were used for business and important personal communication, tweets generally act as wide broadcasts and rarely contain substantive information per se, which emails and blogs are better suited for. In other words, telegrams conveyed news of deaths, deals and diplomacy; tweets convey breakfast habits.
Through tweeting Morse code, I aim to explore instant communication’s new direction by recalling its history. Rather than important issues, I will communicate daily minutiae, such as “Brushing my teeth” and “Tired. Need coffee.” Such usage of telegraph technology would have been inconceivable in its heyday. In so doing, I want to encourage 1stfans viewers to examine the evolution of instant communication and what purpose, exactly, is served by sharing such minor details of one’s life.
Samuel Morse, in his first telegraph, asked, “What hath God wrought?” His invention changed the world, especially with its influence on politics and business. What have Twitter, and other microblogging media, wrought upon the way we connect with others? What doors have they opened in the realm of personal and business relationships, and how have they expanded our sense of identity?