single channel video, HD, color, stereo, 8:15min., 2018-2020
Muju, 2018-2020, still
Staying is accompanied by non-staying. Not staying anywhere - Muju(무주, 無住) in Zen-Buddhism directs to leave all forms of obsession, and at the same time to change without sticking to oneself. With the narration explores the connotation of ‘habitat’ reflecting studies of mind as well as socio-cultural context, the video induces meditative appreciation with the ambiguity of natural-artificial image and time.
Digital meditation culture has paradoxical ontologies - it is fed by depression and anxiety of digital spectacles while negating own nature; allows boredom, daydreaming, and stillness. It alters the sense of time in various directions, constantly negotiating with superficiality. Having contemplated on this, Muju takes desert as a symbolic liminal space, attempts to mediate its materiality and immateriality, center and periphery, Eastern and Western philosophy. The question of Muju remains in between temporality and the continuity of the wandering mind within different technical images.
Installation view / Living/Leaving, Kunstraum potsdamerstraße, 2018
Installation view / Examining the Edge - Peripheries of the mind and the city, Schloss Biesdof, 2018
Muju, excerpt 88’’
Back from the desert
Publication - Come back from the desert, Being Muju
Published in 2018
︎︎︎What is Muju?
Staying is accompanied by non-staying. Not staying anywhere - Muju(무주, 無住) in Zen-Buddhism means to leave all forms of obsession, and at the same time to change without sticking to oneself.1 Muju does not mean wandering in the desert. Rather, like a grain of sand in the desert, it does not claim the ownership of the desert. Hakim Bey named T.A.Z(the Temporary Autonomous Zone) as a form of temporary spaces that elude formal structures of control.2 The idea of Muju places the Zone of T.A.Z to Mu(無, Nothingness), thus, psychic nomadism entails the process of emptying. Nomadism without emptying is merely moving, which carries its burden of life each time. Muju is being a guest in your house, whether it is in the desert or in the mind. We are guests of our house, guests of our country, and guests of this planet. Being a guest is temporary. In that sense, T.A.M(Temporary Autonomous Muju) is a continuation of temporality(Zeitlichkeit).
Muju people, all of whom are guests, do not need their masters. Likewise, a non-resident mind does not need a 'subjective mind'. The mind of Muju is not wandering from the subject but is just a trait that does not stay anywhere. This trait is also temporary, however in Muju, which is free from the desire to be continued, the boundary between the temporality and the continuity becomes meaningless.
1Byung-Chul Han, Philosophie des Zen-Buddhismus (Reclam, 2017), 82
2Hakim Bey, T.A.Z. The temporary autonomous zone, ontological anarchy, poetic terrorism (Autonomedia, 1991), 104