Mind of Tibet

In the late 1990s in Tibet a ceremonial Buddhist teaching festival was conducted. A monk was asked to take a VHS handycam through the crowd, documenting the event so that the undeniable existence of these devout people could be ‘captured’. The tape was to be an enormous family album for exiled Tibetans around the world. But it was also a witnessing document in case any misfortune befell the pilgrims. It was a subtle, pragmatic act of remembrance.

Years later, when Australian artist Sue Ford sat with eminent Buddhist scholar and teacher Geshe Sonam Thargye to view the tapes in Geelong, they felt it was extraordinarily clear that the camera had absorbed something more than a crowd at a festival. They realised that they had the makings of a meditative environment that could bear witness to the compassion that is the subject of so much Buddhist teaching. As they began to assemble the shots, they found that the sequencing of the ceremonies and teachings guided their editing decisions for the installation.

The video footage was composed of all-encompassing loops radiating around the viewer as the monk’s camera traced circle after circle through the crowd, and as the chants and ceremonies of nourishment enfolded the crowd in a compassionate assembly of learning and witnessing. To complete this concentric aesthetic, the artists suggested the array of eight screens as a way of immersing visitors within the crowd of pilgrims. Sitting within the circumambient mandala, visitors to the installation find themselves in the midst of a consciousness that knows how the past, present and future are all folded into each other, in the endlessly remembering ‘Mind of Tibet’.

Geshe Sonam Thargye is an eminent Tibetan lama serving with the Tibetan government in-exile based in Dharamsala, India. He also spends a significant portion of his time teaching in Geelong, Australia. Sue Ford was a Victorian filmmaker and one of Australia’s leading photographic portrait makers.