Until you posted the earlier photo, I had never heard of these 'hanging coffins' in Gongxian County, Sichuan Province, nor the mysterious Bo people who inhabited that area and left these relics for us to marvel over. I have since looked into their history, and what strange, resilient people these 'Subjugators of the Sky' were. Choosing to sit by fires and to wear heavy leather clothing in the heat of the summer and wear only a single sweat garment while fanning themselves in the cold of winter!
This practise of literally elevating of the venerable dead by supporting them on stakes, high up and out of reach, yet visible, seems to me as appropriate and fitting as any other response to the ending of an individual's life, in comparison with the way we, in this present time of relative overpopulation, dispose of our dead. On witnessing these centuries old coffins, we are obliged (forced even) to consider the truth of our own mortality.
I guess that's your self portrait in the leafy foreground of the cliff, or maybe your companion took it. Good one.
Do you think the stone was cut into by the Bo to create that sheltering, overhanging roof? The coffins there remind me of roosting bats.
Very poignant and thought provoking; the photo of the three boys... their joy of life as they know it to be...
I made a mistake. I meant to attach the preceding comment with the coffins photo. This 'faced hat' is itself full of resonance for me and is already causing my neurons to dance and interact.
Thanks Sean， and the welcoming! the carefully studies on the Bo culture into its content, the hanging coffins are the fiction elements on my journey to Chongqing,other than the mystique，provoking indeed! One moment i wonder who are they in these coffins and what's their relation according to the sequences from the upper to lower one. Yes, i took the photo myself(by timing), at the kids presences after we climbing the rocks. It is a quiet village, lovely school kids, beautiful mountains and this ancient legacy! I too, taking the journey through time and space to there, and the kids are real, i am real, the coffins are reall. Life and death, the individual immortal, well, such a trick!
The e-space lab project is exploring how internet connections between people in diverse urban and international contexts can enable a dialogue that helps make more meaningful a reciprocal representation of what the conditions of actual everyday life in different places really are. Many of the ideas, illusions and misrepresentations that shape our understanding of where and how other people live in places different from our own can fall away in this kind of dialogue, and also be replaced by a live and ongoing pattern of multiple alternative representations. The forms that we use range from the human voice (by Skype or phone), text, text messages, and images produced by digital cameras and mobile phones, video of course, and even to web pages and podcasts. We like to engage with these forms in a process of dialogue and exchange, using whatever resources are available, and exploring the potential of new tools as they come on stream, especially streaming video. As artists we are especially interested in the role the arts play in valuing practices and the human qualities that shape everyday life in the different places we find ourselves.
a 'contemporary' art
3 comments:
Hello sHaw
Welcome back.
Until you posted the earlier photo, I had never heard of these 'hanging coffins' in Gongxian County, Sichuan Province, nor the mysterious Bo people who inhabited that area and left these relics for us to marvel over. I have since looked into their history, and what strange, resilient people these 'Subjugators of the Sky' were. Choosing to sit by fires and to wear heavy leather clothing in the heat of the summer and wear only a single sweat garment while fanning themselves in the cold of winter!
This practise of literally elevating of the venerable dead by supporting them on stakes, high up and out of reach, yet visible, seems to me as appropriate and fitting as any other response to the ending of an individual's life, in comparison with the way we, in this present time of relative overpopulation, dispose of our dead. On witnessing these centuries old coffins, we are obliged (forced even) to consider the truth of our own mortality.
I guess that's your self portrait in the leafy foreground of the cliff, or maybe your companion took it. Good one.
Do you think the stone was cut into by the Bo to create that sheltering, overhanging roof? The coffins there remind me of roosting bats.
Very poignant and thought provoking; the photo of the three boys... their joy of life as they know it to be...
Sean
I made a mistake. I meant to attach the preceding comment with the coffins photo. This 'faced hat' is itself full of resonance for me and is already causing my neurons to dance and interact.
Thanks Sean，
and the welcoming!
the carefully studies on the Bo culture into its content, the hanging coffins are the fiction elements on my journey to Chongqing,other than the mystique，provoking indeed!
One moment i wonder who are they in these coffins and what's their relation according to the sequences from the upper to lower one.
Yes, i took the photo myself(by timing), at the kids presences after we climbing the rocks.
It is a quiet village, lovely school kids, beautiful mountains and this ancient legacy!
I too, taking the journey through time and space to there, and the kids are real, i am real, the coffins are reall.
Life and death, the individual immortal, well, such a trick!
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