If You Listen Closely

Abstract

‘To manifest simplicity’ is the literal translation of the Chinese characters for the word ‘Zen’. This phrase captures the essence of what constitutes Zen Buddhist practice, namely the process of eradicating self-centred intellectual constructions and judgements that we project onto life. These unnecessary additions to life add complexity that causes suffering for ourselves and others. Through the dissolution of our self-centred thinking, the capacity to see and live life just as it is in the experience of the present moment arises naturally and effortlessly, and our true nature reveals itself. The document If You Listen Closely is both a record–and the practice–of manifesting simplicity itself, from the perspective of the author and his Zen Buddhist training, investigating how this can be embodied by a Western artist in contemporary culture as well as his own art and design-led practice. Acknowledging that many figures and movements in the creative fields of art and design have been informed by Zen Buddhism throughout history, the author recognises that there are unresolved notions about what this influence actually consists of. In particular, the author examines a cultural misconception that the reduces this link to the aesthetic influence of traditional Japanese culture. By contrast, the author of this text attempts to disband this historical construction in a claim that this link is forged more accurately on the basis of the underlying principles of Zen Buddhist practice, from which its characterised aesthetics flow subsequently. Throughout this text, the author extrapolates these principles firstly in the historical context of traditional Japanese culture through an analysis of seminal texts including Zen and Japanese Culture (1959) by D.T. Suzuki and The Unknown Craftsmen: A Japanese Insight Into Beauty (1989) by Soetsu Yanagi. He then proceeds to examine how these principles are being consciously— and unconsciously—applied in the context of contemporary art and design. His examples are, amongst others, the artists and designers Kenya Hara (b. 1958), Naoto Fukasawa (b. 1959) and Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948), as well as related figures associated with Modernism and the Bauhaus movement. The author simultaneously applies these insights to his accompanying body of work, where he situates himself at an intersection between non-objective art and design. These principles of Zen Buddhist practice are corroborated with research into recent developments at the intersection between Buddhism, psychology and neuroscience, beginning with the influence of seminal Zen Buddhist teacher Charlotte Joko Beck (1917-2011) and her dharma heirs, many of whom, such as psychiatrist Barry Magid (author of the 2002 publication Ordinary Mind: Exploring the Common Ground of Zen and Psychoanalysis) are working in this field. The author has collaborated with Joko’s dharma heir (and his personal Zen Buddhist teacher) Geoffrey Dawson, a registered psychologist and co-founder of the Australian Association of Buddhist Counsellors and Psychotherapists (AABCAP), to validate this research. Expanding upon a text the author wrote previously, where the author conducted an interview with himself as a way of establishing the self as a materiality that was part of a much larger whole, If You Listen Closely has similarly been written in a creative format, employing first-person perspective and an autobiographical mode of writing that serves to synthesise his art practice and personal history within the context his research. In doing so, the author establishes a figurative kind of conversation that illustrates and embodies interconnectedness, weaving together hitherto unacknowledged lineages and lines of influences in his field of research. The format also enables dualities between ‘past’ and ‘present’, ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’, and ‘personal’ and ‘historical’ to be dissolved, and this process is at the heart of a practice of manifesting simplicity. Arising out of this practice and these conversations are analyses of the author’s own work, contextualised in the process by which they are brought to fruition. As the author’s work does not always take on a resolved form, and instead is often presented at a stage within a process of collection and redistribution, this contextualisation is integral in demonstrating how the work embodies impermanence and interconnectedness. The thesis uses as its title the name of one of the author’s work in which cartoon footage is appropriated to remove sound, action and characters resulting in a compilation of background scenery that depict the stillness of an empty desert landscape. The poetic nature of the title is integral to the thesis serves as a kind of Zen Buddhist Kōan, a “matter to be made clear”, and exists as a question or provocation in which the reader is asked what they are able to hear if one listens closely.