8 minutes of Zen with Nam June Paik

 

I am fond of Avant garde art of all sorts. From the Russian Oberiu group which includes people like Daniil Kharms, who I wrote about before at some length in the post Dystopia, to stuff Yoko Ono has done to situationist détournement to modern dance performances and street art. Here’s a great big juicy list on Wikipedia List of avant-garde artists.

I don’t analyze art much in any sort of “art history” or “aesthetic philosophy” way, even though I took such courses once upon a time. It’s just something I like to enjoy and think about. One of my favorite websites is UbuWeb which is chock full of the stuff.

Today in UbuWeb’s Twitter stream they pointed out a short film by Nam June Paik.

Nam June Paik (1932-2006) was a Korean-American artist who has produced many interesting pieces of work, a lot of them referencing Buddhist concepts. Many other artists have been influenced by his work, as the write up for Skip Blumberg – Nam June Paik: Lessons from the video master (2006) indicates:

Nam June Paik was the first video artist and did almost everything in video art first. His work broke the rules of art, television, graphics, and, because TV can use all possible art and information, practically everything else, too.

His first video sculptures, such as a Buddha watching his own image on TV and a magnet on the side of a TV set that pulls the TV image into abstractions, were shown at the Galeria Bonino, the Howard Wise Gallery, the Rose Art Museum and many others, beginning in 1965.

Nam June Paik was interested in the intersection between humanity and technology. He said:

Our life is half natural and half technological. Half-and-half is good. You cannot deny that high-tech is progress. We need it for jobs. Yet if you make only high-tech, you make war. So we must have a strong human element to keep modesty and natural life.

Image from the installation of 1974 on Nam June Paik’s official website.

Probably his most famous work depicts a Buddha statue watching itself on closed circuit TV. The questions such a piece of art brings up are numerous.

Is this a metaphor for meditation?

Is it a metaphor for narcissism?

How is our self image mediated by technology?

What is the subject and what is the object in this configuration?

As these are all manufactured objects where is the human in them?

Is the human becoming something of a ghost in the machine?

What of this Buddha figure with it’s apparent unchanging posture and stare?

Is the statue any different than “a rice bag”? –referring to the Zen story collected in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones:

A Zen master named Gettan lived in the latter part of the Tokugawa era. He used to say: "There are three kinds of disciples: those who impart Zen to others, those who maintain the temples and shrines, and then there are the rice bags and the clothes-hangers."

Like I said lots of questions.

The film pointed out by UbuWeb, "Zen For Film" [(1962-64), 8 min, b&w, silent] is an eight-minute strip of clear 16mm film leader. Nothing really happens in it in terms of a narrative, as it’s just a white square. Yet it is quite a strange experience to watch. There is a film, or a piece of film being projected, it’s just that there’s nothing deliberately placed on that piece of film.

It’s interesting to watch the whole 8 minutes, especially if you watch it with some self-awareness (I was going to say mindfulness but blah). When I watched it I noted:

• my eyes didn’t stop moving, searching the screen for something, some kind of input
• I got a sensation of anxiety and anticipation as if I were waiting for something to happen
• the occasional passing dust mote caused me to snap to attention
• all kinds of thoughts passed “Why am I wasting my time with this?”, “What’s the point of this?”, “Is this information?”, “If not then what is it?”, and so forth.

Give it a try and see what you come up with if you’re just killing time on the Internet.

Here are screen captures of some of the highlights if 8 minutes is too arduous to endure. You can project all your own notions upon it.

Not Good Enough <rant>

 

Life creeping you out?

The cool people, the important people shutting you down?

Tedious morons trying to troll you into silence?

Pressure to be “good enough” breaking you down?

I read some things tonight and I finally just feel angry. here’s why

Somebody wasn’t going to enter her poetry in a contest because she was beset with demons about it not being “good enough”, her writing wasn’t good enough, her words weren’t good enough, her emotions weren’t good enough, her experiences weren’t good enough…she was crying as she typed her message out…weeping was her word.

Forget the analysis. I’ll just spill out what I see.

Lots of times on social media I see people lamenting that they are not “good enough” for something—a job, a relationship, a certain crowd, some institution or organization, some bullshit awards, the attention of some clique, the attention of the world, a little bit of fucking consideration or respect…

not good enough to bridge the distance

not good enough to dare to ask

not good enough to trust…themselves or anybody else

not good enough to continue to draw breath

Oh there’s a hell of a lot of suicidal ideation floating around on the Internet.

There’s no such thing as good enough.

Where’s the fucking list of “good enough” criteria?

What are the top 10 items on the “good enough” list?

Who makes the list?

Who maintains it and checks off whether you’re doing things right or wrong?

Santa’s long dead and buried once you get past the age of 5 or 6.

People getting all tormented by unending thoughts

“You’re so fucking special,
I wish I was special.”

 

Maybe you think you’re a creep or a loser. So what! Even if you were you could make art out of it and get a couple million bucks, fame and popularity. Works either way. If that’s what you’re after. If the adulation of others is so important. Is that the only thing that matters? That’s some kind of fucked up priorities.

If everything’s turned into a contest. A competition.

Oh maybe there’s an app for winning that!

For every winner there’s a hundred losers all nursing the same wounds. The judges move on. They move on fast and don’t even remember your name.

 

Nobody gets through without wounds. Nobody even gets out of here alive.

Climbing all these mountains of emotional turmoil for what? For what?

Carrying some burden of the pain of sharp words knifed in the back when you find out the world’s not what you thought it was. It’s not what was promised.

It’s not really real. Whatever the situation. Mediated by desires messaged and massaged 24/7. Oh where’s McLuhan when you need him?

Maybe it’s not that kind of competition.

Maybe it’s a lover leaving.

Thinking the scent of somebody else’s sweat will be somehow more intoxicating, will be a better trip, for a while longer.

Maybe even your best friend has grabbed the goods while you weren’t looking

…there’s never going to be a world without the Jolenes in it.

 

Was it because you weren’t beautiful enough. What is beautiful enough?

Do we need reasons to be beautiful? Why?

“And they said in the end…you’d get better just like them..”

 

The only way to be different is to be the same.

All those beautiful lonely people…an accomplishment?

Everybody’s looking for a place with a sign that says “Come as you are” Bring your wounds, bring your pain and your insecurities, bring something honest and real…

When you lay it down on the table they all turn away because of the reminder…

…of everything that they sold to be where they are.

But there’s no neon flashing in the distance, there’s no rest stop along the dark highways

There’s no place to land

There is a flash of the truth every now and then but it’s gone before it can be captured, before it can stop your world from being upended.

The people you love say they don’t have a gun, either literally or metaphorically, but you walk around feeling like you’ve been shot with something anyways.

Yet how can you walk so wounded?

How can you carry a lead filled heart that weighs so much?

How can what you dream of be so daunting and impossible?

Maybe you’re not seeing it clearly.

It’s all been dreamed before. A billion billion times.

It’s all a fucked up Californication…a spectacle that sucks up what’s left of humanity in people and turns it into fast cash and flashy pictures. Hurray for fucking Hollywood that tells us if we’re “good enough” the world is just and we will all get what we deserve because…

…God or gods, karma, the universe, justice, fairness or some hero will fly in to save the day?

Nothing is promised when your head emerges into this world and you take your first breath.

“What a bitch! Taking away all the hope and promises.”

Whatevs babe. That’s the way it goes.

We can sit around and wait to be deemed “good enough”. We’ll be waiting til we die because nobody’s ever “good enough” by everybody, all the time, or for long.

So I say to that poet, that musician, that artist, that scholar, that person who wants something out of the funhouse, who craves a place at that banquet table…go for it, but remember

it’s not about you, it’s not even about your words or your song or anything like that. It’s not personal. It’s about what the market will bear, about tastes and trends, about who a few people think are in charge, about desire and craving, it’s about being insatiable, it’s about dissatisfaction and regret, it’s about arbitrary lists that change on a daily basis, it’s about ratings and profit, it’s about fake and faker, it’s about an enactment, a pretend sort of life that emulates human thought and desire, imposters playing imposter games…

but it’s not about you, or what you are really worth. If you can keep that in mind, go for it, grab some of the goodies, and be prepared to walk away when the time comes.

"Californication"

Psychic spies from China
Try to steal your mind’s elation
Little girls from Sweden
Dream of silver screen quotations
And if you want these kind of dreams
It’s Californication
It’s the edge of the world
And all of western civilization
The sun may rise in the East
At least it settles in the final location
It’s understood that Hollywood
sells Californication
Pay your surgeon very well
To break the spell of aging
Celebrity skin is this your chin
Or is that war you’re waging
[Chorus:]
First born unicorn
Hard core soft porn
Dream of Californication
Dream of Californication
Marry me girl be my fairy to the world
Be my very own constellation
A teenage bride with a baby inside
Getting high on information
And buy me a star on the boulevard
It’s Californication
Space may be the final frontier
But it’s made in a Hollywood basement
Cobain can you hear the spheres
Singing songs off Station to Station
And Alderon’s not far away
It’s Californication
Born and raised by those who praise
Control of population everybody’s been there
and I don’t mean on vacation
[Chorus]
Destruction leads to a very rough road
But it also breeds creation
And earthquakes are to a girl’s guitar
They’re just another good vibration
And tidal waves couldn’t save the world
From Californication
Pay your surgeon very well
To break the spell of aging
Sicker than the rest
There is no test
But this is what you’re craving

On Trauma Counseling and Intra-generational PTSD

 

Am going to start including more on PTSD in this blog since many people seem to land here via that search term and I run across quite a few articles about it.

This affects you even if you have never encountered trauma or don’t think you know anyone who has.

One-off Trauma Debriefing

Psychologist Vaughn Bell, has written a piece for the Guardian, Minds traumatised by disaster heal themselves without therapy:Aid agencies that promote one-off counselling sessions after major traumas only prolong victims’ suffering and done a little follow up on his excellent Mind Hacks blog (in which he objects to the Guardian’s headline on his article as being somewhat misleading) Disaster response psychology needs to change

In his blog addendum he summarizes the article and corrects the headline:

Unfortunately, the article has been given a rather misleading headline (‘Minds traumatised by disaster heal themselves without therapy’) which suggests that mental health services are not needed. This is not the case and this is not what the article says.

What it does say is that the common idea of disaster response is that everyone affected by the tragedy will need help from mental health professionals when only a minority will.

It also says that aid agencies often use single-session counselling sessions which have been found to raise the risk of long-term mental health problems. This stems from a understandable desire to ‘do something’ but this motivation is not enough to actually help.

Disaster, war, violence and conflict, raise the number of mental health problems in the affected population. The appropriate response is to build or enhance high-quality, long-term, culturally relevant mental health services – not parachuting in counsellors to do single counselling sessions.

The World Health Organizations textbook Psychological First Aid:Guide for Field Workers [PDF] outlines best practices for assisting in trauma situations. They are against the “debriefing” methods:

WHO (2010) and Sphere (2011) describe psychological debriefing as promoting ventilation by asking a person to briefly but systematically recount their perceptions, thoughts and emotional reactions during a recent stressful event. This intervention is not recommended. This is distinct from routine operational debriefing of aid workers used by some organizations at the end of a mission or work task. (p. 3 footnote)

In the future we are all going to be “Field Workers” dealing with people experiencing trauma so that’s a good read to get some information. We’ve only just begun to recognize the effects of trauma. Additionally the likelihood of a relative or friend experiencing some kind of trauma is rather high. If that sounds a bit dire read on.

Intra-generational PTSD

Mother Jones had an article not too long ago on the effects of PTSD on the family. Is PTSD Contagious? It’s rampant among returning vets—and now their spouses and kids are starting to show the same symptoms.

If you have lived with anyone who has PTSD you know it has profound effects on relationships. You also know that some of the symptoms are “contagious”. For example if a person is constantly hyper-vigilant there is a tendency for others to start experiencing anxiety and having it manifest in similar hyper-vigilence. As well there is STSD-secondary traumatic stress disorder sometimes called Compassion Fatigue and/or Burnout, although I think both are serious misnomers and are too generic for specific STSD. Compassion fatigue and burnout are generally related to people who work with those who have PTSD or have been otherwise traumatized. STSD is not necessarily related to work and is more oriented to continuing relationships. Here’s a webpage about STSD in relation to veterans. Additionally there is a good page there on what is termed Secondary Wounding. Secondary Wounding occurs when people around don’t understand trauma and it’s effects. Mostly it’s due to people’s ignorance and wish to distance themselves from anything unpleasant. This is one reason we should all be “Field Workers” as I mentioned above.

There are certainly overlaps between all of these terms but I think there needs to be much better delineation in the psychological literature and much better explanations available to the public.

The effects of trauma are extended a number of ways. Dr. Joy DeGruy has begun research on the continuing effects that slavery has had on African-American populations. Here is one presentation of hers:

 

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome can be categorized under both Historical trauma and Transgenerational trauma

This approach holds true, I believe, for other populations as well. Children of refugees and children of war for example. Or children of Holocaust victims and survivors. Or people who have been wrongly convicted or people who have been political prisoners or people who have been marginalized and scapegoated by their societies…it doesn’t end.

We cannot compartmentalize trauma to the directly affected victims only. This is a mistake many treatment modalities make. It affects everyone to some degree. Even if one is not a direct descendent nor had a family member involved in a traumatic situation (that’s getting ever more rare these days) we all interact with those who have experienced trauma so it is important that we become familiar with the effects of trauma and what we can do, in the first instance to mitigate that, and secondly to curtail the types of circumstances that brought about the trauma.