Jason Dunne Interviewing Seoidín
O'Sullivan & Aoife Desmond @ The Lab, Dublin - 4pm, Tuesday 16th December, 2008.
J.D -
According to your reports from the time you spent at The Land Foundation
every participant is required to do a ten day Vipassana Meditation course, can
you talk about this aspect of The Land, and perhaps it's implications in a
wider sense?
S.O'S - Yes, well what is
interesting for me is that I've done a lot of meditation practice and I've done
a lot of Buddhist meditation courses, I do Yoga and I've done Aikido, which has
a form of Zen meditation within it. So in going to ‘The Land’ it was the aspect
of ‘The Land’ which most interested me. And I thought: Wow! This is great. You
know, art bringing meditation together with it and seeing the value of it,
because in my own life I see meditation as being massively valuable, just
within my everyday way of being and working with people, because meditation
works on ideas of compassion which I think are fundamental for societies to
work in better ways. So I thought; Yeah, Great, Let's go to the meditation
course! And I was really looking forward to it! But then when I was actually on
the meditation course, I left on the fifth day. So, it's a ten day course, and
a very tough course! I think it was especially tough for people who haven't
done meditation before, it's a real jump in the deep end.
J.D - Quite a shock?
S.O'S - Yes, so it involves ten
days of silence and ten days of sitting meditation with twelve hours of
practice every day.
J.D - Complete silence for the entire ten days?
S.O'S - Yes complete silence.
S.O'S - Aoife has just entered the
room, who was also at ‘The Land’ participating! . .so, do you want to fill her in on the question?
J.D - Ok,
well we were just talking about the aspect of meditation as a
pre-requisite in ‘The Land’, and I asked Seoidín to talk about her own views on
this aspect of the land and it's implications in a wider sense.
A.D - Ok.
S.O'S - I was talking about the
Goenka Meditation course. I think that it's important that it's not a
pre-requisite that participants should have to do that course before
participating in ‘The Land’.
J.D - But it remains to be that
way?
S.O'S - Yes, but they might change
it for the next one year participation.
J.D - Do you think it's important
that there's a choice? That you can choose not to do it?
S.O'S - Yeah, or I think that Kamin ( Lerdchaiprasert )
should think about a softer meditation approach.
J.D - More like a half an hour a
day?
S.O'S .. A half an hour a day that people can work with and then if
they want to do the ten day course they can. It should be open enough…I mean it
is open enough in that I can choose to leave, but with the Goenka course what
they say is that you're not allowed to go back and do the course once you've
left.
J.D - I think that a half an hour a day would be a better
education for Europeans for when they come back from ‘The Land’ to be able to
sustain a meditation practice.
A.D - Well you’re not expected after the Goenka course to do 12
hours a day, you are asked to do two hours a day, an hour in the morning and an
hour at night.
J.D - Throughout your participation?
A.D - Yes, well that's the Goenka
courses' advise they don't enforce it on ‘The Land’. While I think it's a great
idea I don't think it quite functioned in the end, I mean Alex hated it, he's
one of the other full time participants.
S.O'S - He's from America…
A.D - A lot of people who participated haven't had to go
through that process and there was no way they were going to integrate
meditation into their daily routine…
J.D - All participants are aware that they have to
meditate before they begin, so is it that some come to ‘The Land’ anyway,
regardless of not wanting to do this?
S.O'S - No, no . . no-one knows what it's going to be like and I
think people come with really open minds and are willing to try.
A.D - It's a
very extreme form of meditation course. Meditation is really pleasant when you
are doing an hour a day. I did think the course was very effective but I just
think it's extremely tough.
J.D - Ok, so
I'll ask a second question, In your (Seoidín) artists statement for ‘The Land’
foundations website you say that " Art that is driven by a positive force
of compassion is something that today's world needs". Could you explain why this is, how you
implement this approach and whether you would encourage other artists to adopt
a similar modus operandi?
S.O'S- Well I do
believe that compassion is important in my everyday way of being and I would
attempt to bring it into my art practice in ways of working with people and in
the forming of relationships. I suppose the Community Garden project in Dublin
would be an example of trying to put that in practice and put it in place. The
Community Garden is open for anyone to come and join, and it is
non-hierarchical. It's very much about trust, the actual space, so there is no
rules around what needs to be done in the space, but there is discussions had
communally with participants. It's really interesting because when you start
working that way initially you're like…a new person will come and there'll be
this thought of …ooh they're trying to take over! And you watch your thought
processes actually as a person, and I just learned so much from that experience
of who I am and how I react and the judgements that I make. I realised this
when I was working on the community garden before, when it was on the canal and
I thought it would be a really positive experience to try and open it up and
continue it, so I suppose that's one way of attempting it.
J.D - Without that focus on
compassion would another person act on those fears of someone else trying to
take over? Presumably causing arguments and debilitating the process….
S.O'S - Well it debilitates the processes… I mean within
collaboration there's always going to be difficulty, ideas are going to differ,
but if you work from a position of compassion it means that you can meet at a
point of sameness and open things up, whereas if you don't have that point of
compassion all you see is difference and for me that means that you build a
wall or you stop things from continuing, you break the flow, which would happen
if that point of compassion wasn't used.
J.D - Aoife, do you share this emphasis on compassion in your
work?
A.D - It isn't something I would put forward in a statement
but I do agree with what Seoidín is saying. I'm working collaboratively in this
project ( "Trespass" with Seoidín) but I don't often tend to work
collaboratively in my own work, so looking at compassion for me would be a more
objective way to develop a relationship with nature and the world, more through
observation
J.D - So is compassion the objective or goal of the work, to
spread compassionate views?
S.O'S - Well for me compassion is the objective of life, of
my being in the world, yes.
J.D - Okay, and do
you think it's important to…
S.O'S - I think it's essential!
J.D - But that's for you, other people may not agree so is it
important to try to convince other people?
S.O'S - No, I don't think
compassion is about getting other people to agree or not. Joy is contagious,
you know? It's like it's just something that people are attracted to, so it
moves that way. It's not about trying to make people believe in something.
J.D - If ‘The Land’ were to expand and multiply as it is
and retain it's absence of the concept of ownership and its focus on meditation
and dialogue, could it potentially rival consumerism for a better, more people
and environmentally oriented society ? Or did you experience any problems such
as arguments or breakdown of living facilities, that would presumably increase
in proportion to the expansion of ‘The Land’ and give us a society just as
problematic as the one that exists?
A.D - Well, as it's existing at the moment it's not really
sustainable. It's a really nice concept and it makes you want to participate
and be a part of it but it's not really functioning, basically its not
functioning because it's being under-utilised, so in that theory if there was
more people using it, it might function better. There is still some fundamental
problems with how its being organized. There is a lack of leadership and a
sense that no one owns it so even though you have the freedom to participate in
any way you want, there still has to be, because of this, a bit more guidance.
There is a feeling of community there but it is slightly divorced from ‘The
Land’ itself. It remains a kind of abstract concept more than an actual
tangible thing even though there's a tangible place, but what they are trying
to put into practice isn't quite tangible yet.
J.D - Why is that? What are the main problems in making it
happen?
A.D - I guess people don't want
to, the only people that live there are people like us who experiment with
living there, the local people don't really live there except for the very
organised parts of the one year programme.
J.D
- Local artists?
A.D - Yes, the
other artists who participated, they only really stay there if there is an
event, or in the early part of the project when there was organised farming
activities and meditation activities and a Thai masseur course so they would be
there when there was something very structured happening.
J.D - I have read that ‘The Land’
is not completely self sustained, and that it does rely on the community
surrounding it to a certain extent, and therefore it's success becomes a
barometer of public will rather than the will of the artists. In that it is
sustained by support from the local community.
A.D - I think
that maybe that's an important aspect of it, that its not a complete bubble.
The caretakers are local and there is an ongoing relationship with the
community so I'd see that as a positive that it's not completely divorced, and
I think that's one of the interesting things about the whole approach of trying
to mesh it with traditional culture and that's one of the reasons why
meditation is brought in, so that foreigners brought in from the outside can
understand the Buddhist consciousness .
J.D - Is it true that 80 per cent of the Goenka
course are local people? So was that the basis of forming any relationships?
S.O'S - We didn't talk to anyone!
(laughs)
J.D - Is there a major language barrier?
S.O'S - Yes, there would be a
language barrier in living in Thailand
A.D - The local people don't speak any English, but some of the
younger participants had quite good English.
S.O'S - Actually the two
participants that were there for a year had pretty good Thai by the time we
arrived
A.D - And they had to really, because to be there for a year
you really have to speak Thai, because you could just find it really
debilitating to have be asking people to help you all the time.
J.D
- Do you think that an
improvement that could be made to ‘The Land’ is that it would interact with the
community more? I mean I read about the Mobile Seed Sharing project and that
seemed like a really good way to interact with local farmers.
S.O'S - Yes, that was our idea of
the project, it was developed as a way of trying to make ‘The Land’ work or
function and break the barriers between the farmers and the artists on ‘The
Land’, but it hasn't been built
yet so maybe it would be in One Year Project Three, and as Aoife was saying,
something that needs to be figured out is how to make it more sustainable and
have more people to participate so maybe that would be one project example that
could help to bring in more participants.
J.D - I've read that one of the
main criticisms of Tiravanija's earlier work involving serving Thai curry meals
is that it really only caters for one specific social group and provides a sort
of micro-topia for that group, the New York Chelsea District art scene of
dealers and artists, so it completely excludes other social groups, whereas
other artists like Santiago Sierra would sustain that conflict between social
groups within the work. I think that one of the strengths of ‘The Land
Foundation’ seems to be that these criticisms of it can be involved in it
potentially.
S.O'S - In the learning process….
J.D - It is an ongoing project so the point of it is to
overcome these obstacles.
S.O'S - Yes, and I think that's a
really important point for artists going there to realise, that each of us are
responsible for it in a sense, in making it.
A.D - I very much thought that when I was there, that there was no
point in criticising it in terms of what it didn't offer, but more look at it
in terms of… they actually are being
very generous and offering a lot, but it's up to you to work out your
position within that and what you can offer to the project as well. And if you
have criticisms of it, you can make a rule to act on that.
S.O'S - Because the actual ‘Land Foundation’, the group of
participants are an amazing bunch of
people, they are all volunteers, there is only one person who is paid
with very little money so it really is a kind of act of generosity, good will
and energy. So there is a sense of…I mean we certainly never had anything but
encouragement when we wanted to do something. We had criticism as well but in a
supportive way.
