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Similaire à Pan Asian April 10 v2 2015
Similaire à Pan Asian April 10 v2 2015 (20)
Pan Asian April 10 v2 2015
- 1. PAN-ASIAN POTENTIALS AND PITFALLS: An Object-oriented exploration of the Thematic Imperative at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
- 2. A Pan-Asian Museum… …With a pan-Asian collection... …that does pan-Asian exhibitions
- 4. Pan-Asian Stupa Exhibit Does it reveal otherwise invisible aspects of stupas?
- 5. Best Chronological / Geographical Practice in Pala Gallery Does this catalyze an “all is one” perception for the visitor?
- 6. Thematics Geography Chronology Keys to Art Historical Method Key to pan-Asian Interpretations
- 7. Religion Specific to Traditional Cultural Contexts Local Trade And Transmission Translocal Global Contemporary Art Transcends Traditional Culture Translocal Thematic Toolbox A Diametric Conspectus Materials And Techniques Local
- 8. All is One: from the Unity of the Collective Consciousness… …to the unity of religious traditions Thematics Can Reveal Deep Structure Can Also Elide Key Differences
- 9. Thai Buddha Nelson-Atkins Transmission of Similar Forms The Message is the Movement of Morphology Perspective from the Nelson-Atkins Indian religious traditions spread throughout South and Southeast Asia. The styles of religious art change to reflect local art-making practices. This is illustrated by comparing sculptures from Java, Thailand and Cambodia. A Standing Buddha, for instance, made in Thailand sometime during the 7th or 8th century C.E., displays evidence of influence by Indian art of the Gupta and post-Gupta periods while also adopting some of the physical characteristics of Mon sculpture of the Dvaravati era Dvaravati Buddha Metropolitan Museum of Art
- 10. Transmission of Different Objects along Silk Road The Medium is the Message University of Pennsylvania Museum
- 11. The Art of Continuity: Revering our Elders examines the impact of the veneration of ancestors and lineages on the arts of Asia. In cultures informed by Confucian values, worship of family ancestors has generated countless objects for use in prescribed rituals. In other areas of Asia and the Pacific Islands, elders of prior generations are revered for their accumulated wisdom and ability to guide us through life’s transitions. The exhibition includes paintings and sculpture from East Asia and the Pacific Islands, including China, Korea and Papua New Guinea. In addition to enjoying a variety of traditions through this exhibition, visitors can share their own memories of their ancestors, highlighting the richness of Southern California’s cultural diversity. Religious Ideas as Thematic Tool
- 12. The Other Side: Chinese and Mexican Immigration to America February 7 through July 20, 2014 EXTENDED THROUGH AUGUST 17! The exhibition presents a collection of visual narratives about the Chinese and Mexican immigrant experiences. Through the works of five contemporary artists, we explore the recurring issues of immigration, border relations and labor practices that have persisted throughout U.S. history and remain timely today. The selection of works demonstrates a range of different styles and references, spanning different historic periods, geographic locations, cultural influences and gender perspectives, bound together by the common threads of memory, history, identity and humanity. Artists featured include Zhi Lin, Hung Liu, Andrea Bowers, Tony de Los Reyes and Margarita Cabrera Global Contemporary Art World Means Contemporary Issues Bridge Cultures
- 13. CALLIGRAPHIC ABSTRACTION MAY 9 – OCT 4 2015 ASIAN ART MUSEUM TATEUCHI GALLERIES Nearly a thousand years of the history of calligraphy—from the 11th century to the present day—can be experienced in this exhibition. In East Asia, calligraphy has long been treasured as a form of art. Even without knowing the meaning of the words, calligraphy continues to be admired for its beauty—the compositional structure and flow of lines. With representative works ranging from Islamic to archaic Chinese style, to contemporary artist Xu Bing’s invented writing system, and the Pacific Northwest artist Mark Tobey’s calligraphy-inspired work, the first group introduces an overview, conveying that calligraphy can be appreciated as abstract art across cultures. The striking juxtaposition of two primary categories of Japanese calligraphy—kana and kanji—is featured in the second and third groups. The elegance of kana calligraphy often lies in its line, flow, and rhythm; whereas kanji calligraphy, akin to its Chinese counterpart, emphasizes the overall composition in addition to each individual line. Abstraction in Global Contemporary Art Bridges Disparate Places, Times and Cultures
- 14. In 1931, Tobey began teaching at the experimental school Dartington Hall, in Devon, England. Between terms, he traveled abroad, visiting Baha’i shrines in Haifa, a Japanese Zen monastery in Kyoto, and his friend Teng Baiye in Shanghai. Throughout his travels, he dedicated himself to studying Arabic calligraphy, Chinese brushwork, and Zen painting, calligraphy, and poetry. Tobey returned to Seattle in early 1939 and began working with the local office of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. Global Contemporary Art Orientalism or Cosmopolitanism?
- 15. The problematics of thematic interpretation manifest to us practically in three main forms Museum Gallery Exhibit(ion)
- 16. etations with respect to the pan-Asian nature of the collection can reveal otherwise invisible patter
- 17. Japan ca. 1300 Nepal ca. 1800 Khara Khoto ca. 1200 Tibet ca. 1650
- 18. Thematic Interpretation in an Exhibition Context Employs Humanities Categories Korean Indonesian Tibetan-American Ancient Chinese
- 22. that Rely on Thematic Interpretations Can Transcend th And the Flatland of Linear Space-Time Potential of Discerning Hidden Patterns and Process
- 24. 10/11/12 5 Nested Geometries in the Mandala: The Fractal Quincunx Revealed small scale copies of itself, one inside the other, at all scales
- 25. From Vegetables to Math to California: Images Composed of Isomorphic Copies of Themselves
- 26. Explicit Exploration of Fractal Geometries at Dunhuang: Reflection with a Purpose
- 27. Eastern Sector of the Mandala The Cosmic Buddha Akshobhya The Buddha Shakyamuni The Buddha Gets Grounded and Finds his Center
- 28. Western Sector of the Mandala Pure Land of Amitabha: Eu-topia that Teaches Ou-topia
- 29. Northern Sector of the Mandala The Buddhist deity Green Tara Enlightened Awareness Fuses Male and Female Potencies
- 30. The Cosmic Buddha Vairochana – In Three Forms Center of the Mandala
Notes de l'éditeur
- First let me introduce you to a couple of aspects of the AAM, and then we’ll quickly address a terminological problem or two the conceptual and practical aspects of creating exhibitions of art created in different cultures and at different times - in particular, the problem of superimposed unities that arises whenever we use our most powerful tool for revealing integrity behind diversity - that is, thematic interpretation of art objects The mere term pan-Asian is beset with both hybridity and ambiguity. At the ideological level, pan-Asianism, the pre-ww2 Japanese ideology that all of Asia should unite against European imperialism, At the bare linguistic level, there are problems too Does it mean all of Asia, and thus constitute a kind of reification that cannot withstand even a moment’s critical scrutiny? Perhaps, but for our pragmatic purposes, this may be too much critical theory by half, Or maybe the term merely indicates that different parts of Asia are represented in the museum, the exhibition or the display, And is as such constitutes a use of ordinary language, we must answer a key question What exactly do we mean by Asia, and can this question be addressed in such a way that the old criticisms of orientalism and essentialization can be side-stepped?
- One of the charges typically and tropically leveled at the Asian has to do with issues of orientalism and essentialization of Asia, its cultures and peoples As you might expect, we are quite aware of these pitfalls and attempt to head them off at the pass We identify Asia as both a Mediterranean construct and an abstraction rather than as any sort of romanticized essence One hopes we are at least a decade past the expiration date of such controversies
- And yet in the same gallery as our cautionary alcove that both shows and says what we mean by Asia Is the AAM’s first pan-Asian exhibit It contains stupas from three very different cultural contexts The purpose is to reveal the underlying form and function of the artworks Something that might otherwise remain invisible were such artworks not displayed together And that wall panel you see goes even deeper into how stupas in general are created and used Exhibition and interpretation presented in this complementary way has proven effective when used sparingly
- Now when you leave the small stupa exhibit, you enter a region of the museum whose conception is diametrically opposite This is the Pala-period gallery, and it features a superb and superbly-documented series of world-class stone sculptures from north India It is carefully arranged according to art historical best practices – geography for sure, but also chronology and even iconography There are sufficient objects of highest artistic and philosophical quality here to suggest and maybe even answer some key academic questions In a way, it is to my mind the ideal gallery of its kind And yet many of our visitors report that this area leaves them overwhelmed with – you’ll excuse the expression – “too many Buddhas” Indeed, this display traces the developments so closely, in fact, that its has been know to create the “all is one” illusion - however ingenious and subtle the conception here may be You might call it a profoundly mis-perceived orientalism What makes for the misperception is that the exhibit’s THEMATIC component is implicit rather than foregrounded Let me show you what I mean
- So not to beat a dead horse, but we all know that geography and chronology are the traditional categories through which art historians organize their materials And the primary means of constructing a body of reliable knowledge You might think of these axes as the endo-skeleton of any museum exhibition If they are not there, you are probably dealing with an amoeba of a show Thematics are what let us link up objects and stories that are spatiotemporally distant but in semantic proximity to one another When combined with the best practice of a geo-chrono approach The resultant similarities and differences create a kind of cognitive ‘relief’ that is as essential to the museum experience as visual relief
- THEMATIC CONNECTORS The problem is that our primary tool for discerning unity in diversity - thematic interpretation It is both powerful and dangerous in a specific way Thematic interpretations - axiomatic key to well-integrated pan-Asian exhibitions - can and indeed must cherry-pick across time and space The broad palette of options can include any number of humanities or social science approaches This means that the thematic approach to interpretation has the power to reveal hidden connections and tell implicit stories Including a small but rather concentrated exhibit that we’ve done at the Asian that I’d like to tell you a little about in a minute But the thematic toolbox can also delude us into thinking we’ve found some sort of essence When in fact we’re just looking ourselves in the mirror And the approach you take, your perspective or vantage point, can almost pre-determine the nature of the objects that you see FOR EXAMPLE,
- …In archetypal thinking Where one looks for hidden order behind manifest appearances For example, Karl Jung finding the hieroglyph of all unity in the mandala Or certain mystics finding the unity behind different expressions of what Huxley called the “perennial philosophy” This approach can flatten relief and elide differences - when that’s exactly what we should be paying attention to in so many cases, if you’ll pardon the lame museum joke This might seem to cast the interpretive, space-time-context transcending approach as fundamentally flawed, or at least potentially misguided Yet there is an important place for connective tissues discussed above, even in exhibits that feature curatorial best practices Or are designed to address key historical or philosophical issues
- Perhaps the most curatorially intuitive approach to a pan-Asian exhibition involves an exploration of how similar stylistic forms disseminated over a broad spatiotemporal range This slide was inspired by Nelson Atkins commentary on its permanent collection And it is thematic only in a limited sense – the theme here being TRANSMISSION OF SIMILAR FORMS Here, the question revolves around how similar imagery found its way from one part of Asia to another Such an exhibition can lead straight back to the geo-chrono approach Along with the “rise of man” evolutionary misconception with respect to art traditions religious traditions spread throughout South and Southeast Asia. The styles of religious art change to reflect local art-making practices. This is illustrated by comparing sculptures from Java, Thailand and Cambodia. A Standing Buddha, for instance, made in Thailand sometime during the 7th or 8th century C.E., displays evidence of influence by Indian art of the Gupta and post-Gupta periods while also adopting some of the physical characteristics of Mon sculpture of the Dvaravati era
- There’s another way to look at pan-Asian TRANSMISSION as thematic glue This one does not require the precise tracing of similar iconographies, necessarily Instead, it presumes uses the theme of TRANSMISSION to organize apparently disparate artworks Perhaps Silk Road shows are the best example of such an approach A great cultural and artistic diversity
- The religious theme of ancestor worship is here used to bridge cultural divides – and create a community connection In religious studies, the idea of a reified tradition or set of traditions focused on ‘ancestor worship’ has been problematic for a hundred years It becomes less problematic when the RS theme is borrowed and used as an interpretive lens through which to see cross-cultural commonalities rather than differences USC APM even makes lemonade from lemons, “highlighting the richness of Southern California’s cultural diversity
- The contemporary context is the globalized art world, and aspects of our post-postmodern world can provide any number of thematic rubrics capable of establishing conversations between works of art distant from one another not necessarily in time, but certainly in space and culture. Here, that aspect is Immigration – and here too the USC APM does a great job of making the California cultural connection
- One specific contemporary rubric that can be useful in bridging time-space-culture is the category of “abstract art” In this SAM AAM exhibition, the idea that calligraphy can comprise an abstract art form unites “nearly a thousand years of the history of calligraphy” This one even includes the American Mark Tobey’s work In the words of the exhibition, “calligraphy can be appreciated as abstract art across cultures”
- And speaking of Mark Tobey - SAM presents another way of construing pan-Asian approaches A western artist who consciously absorbed not merely Asian modes of art production, but also pan-Asian religious traditions in which such practices are preserved If we go by the artist’s description of his work and approach, his involvement with both western and pan-Asian traditions makes this exhibition more than pan-Asian And certainly much more than an amalgam of neo-traditional approaches forged into some kind of virtual unity palatable to contemporary art tastes and trends I personally am intrigued as to why such work has not been labeled ‘orientalist’ at least in terms of conception if not formal execution After all, classical orientalism in artwork involves the imitation of Asian themes executed in a Euro-American artistic idiom And this ain’t it…
- Now to get back to the Asian and its use of thematics to transcend space-time in a sense all these approaches we’ve just explored have found more or less convincing ways to make pan-Asian something more than just “all or some of Asia” Something more than just a straw man for an postmodern excursion into the limitations of ordinary language For us at the Asian, we face the issue is a particularly pointed way Because we end up dealing with the pan-Asian question at three different levels And at each, we must strike a balance between traditional space- and time-transcending thematic approaches For the potentials and pitfalls of pan-Asian approaches appear at three different levels, each with its own challenges and problematics
- AT THE FIRST LEVEL OF THE COLLECTION, the problem is just a given, an artifact of the fact that we conserve and interpret objects from across Asia in our building This presents certain well-known critical theory problems in and of itself However, the mere fact that the AAM houses a pan-Asian collection also creates powerful possibilities for extracting implicit stories and exploring important themes But when we are talking something more concrete, something that can actually be implemented - that is, an exhibition or more permanent gallery installation Then we have space-time constraints, and choices to make – and those choices have to do with the kinds of stories we want or need to tell In other words, the extent to which we want to open our thematic toolbox and start re-inventing the art historical wheel Would we choose to take Fudo out of the Japanese galleries and put him in, let’s say in my ideal dream world not influenced by concerns of pre-existing visitor knowledge, a yoga tantra gallery? Would we pull our Cosmic Buddha out of what I hope in our re-installation will be the Chinese Mahayana Buddhism gallery, and put him in with Fudo, and perhaps our Pala Vairochana fragment, in a thematic gallery? Would cultural context be lost, and visitor confusion arise in tandem with critical contumely? As you know, we occupy an earthquake zone So these are decisions we won’t be able to easily take back once we’ve made them, so we’d better measure twice and cut once And if we are going to mess up space time to tell a great story, it had better be pretty integral So let’s take a concrete example Here in this hugely diverse collection of objects lies the story of one of the most important religious and political movements in human history The story of something called yoga tantra Now obviously these objects have been decontextualized, occupying a secular rather than their original sacred space Yet there is another lemonade from lemons opportunity here, a potential instead of a pitfall For given the pan-Asian nature of our collection, we can use the diversity we house to reveals an otherwise invisible context to which all these objects belong
- …and the result in the present case was our little exhib ETM Where we used several 14th century thangka to configure a gallery in terms of the mandala architecture they were designed to articulate This small exhibition reveals at least one potential of pan-Asian exhibitions: their capacity to reveal patterns that transcend political and even temporal boundaries And in this case the structure of the religious universe of Yoga Tantra A pan-Asian religious phenomenon manifest through creative installation of a pan-Asian collection As you can see, these objects hail from across realms Himalayan and beyond They are united by their association with a specific geometric form, as well as the meditative and philosophical systems with which it is associated To quote Paul Laffoley, a kind of geo-chrono-mechane – the mandala
- AT THE LEVEL OF THE LARGE EXHIBITION Things are less tightly controlled Now the previous yoga-tantra example was pan-Asian and ONLY pan-Asian What happens when pan-Asian extends beyond the boundaries of Asia? Whether that takes place in the context of a diaspora, the movement of Asians into western universes of life and discourse Or the Euro-American appropriation of Asian imagery and concepts, as we saw with Tobey Most conventional art historical approaches involve precise stylistic tracking of tradition, interpreted geographically and chronologically. Pan Asian exhibitions, on the other hand, are on this analysis might seem to violate the classical space-time-style paradigm. After all, the very name suggests that the academically inviolable lines of area specialization have been crossed. It’s an old problem in the humanities - the potential of interdisciplinary approaches to reveal vast dimensions and hidden vistas of imagination, perhaps contrasted with the pitfall of a perceived loss of historical rigor Nowhere is this tension more evident than in Phantoms of Asia - a thoroughly and rigorously thematic exhibition That experimented with juxtapositions of contemporary and traditional artworks, all of them focused on issues of cosmology, apocalypse, birth, death – the great themes that inform all great art Talk about a broad interpretive pallette!
- THE LEVEL OF THE GALLERY IS PERHAPS THE MOST CHALLENGING VENUE FOR PAN-ASIAN EXHIBITIONS The installation is relatively more permanent than a major traveling exhibition So mistakes are costly in time, money and visitor engagement and the interpretive palette is limited by the composition of the collection Here in the HIM gallery, issues of projecting artificial unity is a problem from the get-go A structure that is to some extent shared by all the cultures whose art we conserve As you may know, the CAA will be problematizing even the notion of “Himalaya” as a useful art-historical category We all know that reifications and circumlocutions go hand in hand like love and marriage So it’s pretty obvious that HIM is a way of talking about cultural entities with reference to geographical rather than political boundaries
- Now what happens to the gallery when we erase even these geographical boundaries And with them temporal boundaries as well The extent to which the pan-Asian begins to encompass the contemporary Or perhaps where the contemporary begins to enter the sphere of the pan-Asian might be a better place to start
- Expand the horizon even further, and time-worn distinctions between traditional and contemporary, or even Asian and Euro-American, begin to break down As do the laws of spacetime as we approach the speed of light
- Thematic approach in pan-Asian context can actually restore lost context What on its surface seems uni-dimensional is in fact multidimensional
- “fractal quincunx”: That’s quite a mouthful, so first let’s talk about a fractal: in simplest, image-oriented terms, it is a large-scale form made up of small-scale copies of itself Such that the large and the small scales have the same shape, or are ‘isomorphic’ to one another The quincunx is as simple as the five spot on a set of dice a And as profound as the center of the cosmos, which its geometries mark Combining these ideas, the best way to get a grip on the ‘fractal quincunx’ and how it relates to the mandala is to see a whole bunch of ‘em at once In this 14th century Japanese mandala, you can see multiple fractal quincunxes nested within one another It is collapsible and expandable, and resolves at any scale (Here three scales appear, each one isomorphic to the others, but theoretically the pattern continues)
- It is interesting that such a sophisticated cultural device as the mandala exhibits a fractal construction that appears in a wide variety of natural phenomena from the California coast to the Romanesca broccoli In each case, the large-scale image is comprised of small scale copies of itself So in the case of the California shoreline, aevery large scale section of the coast is isomorphic to its smaller-scale components Now that odd blue diagram you see the Mandelbrot set, perhaps the most famous and revealing visualizations of nested fractal geometries Each of its lobes is a microcosmic replica of the master form, which appears at every scale of analysis Indeed, precisely this is one of the most important aspects of mandala-oriented artwork - and something important to Saya’s work - is its emphasis on geometries nested within one another such that fractal imagery takes shape and certain transformations of awareness and being become possible
- Perhaps best known are ‘immersive’ cave environments at Dunhuang in China’s Gansu province. Here, mirrors were placed around meditators to create infinitely receding, mutually embedded perceptions of oneself in the company of infinite Buddhas, The result: the entire environment becomes a “mirror hall that bounces the reflections of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas in all directions and projects the visualizing individual’s own presence to the Buddha assemblies,” according to Harvard Buddhologist Eugene Wang (1995: 265). I bet you’re wondering what this has to do with museums, right? Well, here’s the deal - we conserve sufficient superb traditional mandala-oriented art to artificially reconstitute a mandala within our gallery space. So, for museum visitors, our question, given our embarrassment du richesse, is this: can we use traditional artworks to create a situation where visitors find themselves inside the nested geometries of the mandala, such that they experienced themselves as immersed in a fractal? We think so…
- As much visual fun as all this is, It’s probably well known to many of you that entering the mandala is kind of a journey In fact, it’s explicitly an initiatory journey Starting from the bottom, the east, it’s a spiral journey inwards In each of the quadrants, one encounters various beings This should not be surprising, for the mandala is a nondual phenomenon, an organism-in-environment, an “articulated singularity” In the top painting you see the historical Buddha Shakyamuni performing the earth-touching gesture when he defeated Mara under the bodhi tree at the location that would become the Mahabodhi temple of Bodh Gaya and the center of the Buddhist cosmos In the bottom painting, you see the equally blue Buddha Akshobhya, the blue Unshakeable One I hope it’s no omen that the Unshakeable One has refused to come to SF – he’s at Honolulu, and the cost to borrow was exorbitant So we have a virtual copy - we are turning lemons to lemonade and blowing a hi-res up big so visitors can experience the deep detailing up closer than in the historical thangka cases, which are sealed Note how blue Akshobhya touches the earth This is the same gesture that the historical Buddha makes when he defeats Mara And it’s that gesture which would prove instrumental in disseminating Buddhist thought across Southeast Asia
- Moving to the west, we arrive at a painting of the Western pure land presided over by Amitabha, whose name means ‘infinite light’ This is the painting that is missing from our five-Buddha set Here you see a stand-in, but what a stand in This is a 13th century Japanese rendition of the Western Pure Land of Amitabha If you’re familiar with the idea, the texts say that the moment you hear Amitabha’s name, you’re safe from hell and will eventually be reborn in his pure land This is all by force of his vow and visualization, the fruits and substance of which you see here Note how this painting has strong geometric gravity pulling you towards its center In this way, the Taima mandara is a visual transformation of a textual idea – Amitabha pulls you into his world the moment you encounter him Such environments represent a kind of utopia in both its homophonic senses. From what we can tell, the mandala developed in tandem with or piggybacking on the old Buddhist notion of a pure land, a perfect world for meditative development. Such heavenly pure lands were thought to flower from the vows of a supremely compassionate being, a bodhisattva. Bodhisattvas are thought to develop from an altruistic vow to save all beings from the hell of samsara before themselves entering into the heavenly bliss of nirvana. So while not explicitly created by an empathic, the mandala can be seen as the result of the action of the parallel emotive state, compassion.
- When we move into the Northern sector of the mandala, issues of gender and hybridity come to the fore The northern sector of the mandala features a small but truly incredible object from, as fate would have it, the northern reaches of the esoB world This kesi or silk tapestry of Amoghasiddhi’s compadre Green Tara is of great historical importance It comes from the lost kingdom of Xixia in northern China Destroyed in 1227 by the Mongols, the Xixia capital of Khara Khoto contained a stupa that the Mongols left untouched In the 20th century, Russian archaeologists excavated the stupa and took its contents to the Hermitage in St Petersburg This kesi does not come from that cache, but we are indeed fortunate to be able to conserve and exhibit an object of this rarity, quality and importance Philosophically, Green Tara is crucial since it is only via fusion with her that the male Buddha Amoghasiddhi can exercise his powers In other words, it is only through the hybridization of male and female potencies that the transformative capacities of both are released Which really comes into play as we enter the center and discover…
- …a still deeper level of hybridity: one between the sacred and the profane, the human and the divine To this point, we’ve been in each of the four quadrants of the mandala As we arrive at the center, we find there the Sun Buddha, Vairochana His name means simply, the one who shines In this part of the exhibition, you’ll find three very different representations of Vairochana At the top right is one of the museum’s oldest thangka, executed in the very rare Sharri or Indian style Note how the figures in this painting gaze mutually at one another and Vairochana The top left painting of Vairochana is executed in the Nepalese Beri style, with deep detailing, red pallette, and an emphasis as we shall see on shrine-like forms And the stupa – Vairochana is here too, but in a hidden manner that I’ll show you at the end of this presentation if we have time Or you can come to the museum and see it for yourself In many uncanny ways, Saya’s work dovetails with and sheds light upon some of the most important aspects of the Vajrayana. Perhaps most prominent is how both visionary spaces - the traditional Vajrayana space and the space of Saya’s Chima/TEK - feature the fractal phenomenon in their efforts to create an environment capable of successfully engineering specific kinds of experimental hybridization. For Saya, the notion of hybridity expresses the fusion of differential capacities across animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, as well as across cultural and racial boundaries. In the traditional Vajrayana context, however, the hybridization in question comes from a fusion of the human and the awakened, the individual meditator and the Buddha. Here’s how it works: After arriving at the center of the mandala, the meditator first visualizes a Buddha in front Then imaginatively identifies with that visualized image Since the iconography of the Buddha encapsulates his enlightening capacity To see oneself as having a body with those selfsame characteristics catalyzes the enlightened state The procedure is called ‘taking the goal, ie Buddhahood, as the path’ The effectiveness of these procedures is such that it can create enlightenment ‘in this very life’ Could it be partially due to the concentration produced by the fractal effect? For there is one, and actually two and three, levels of fractal iteration at work here First, let’s take a close look at the red Beri Vairochana. At first glance its background looks like a field of undifferentiated Buddhas This painting looks like it is also made up of one thing, that it is an articulated singularity But a closer look reveals still more unsuspected patterns