Begegnung mit Kunst
Donnerstag, 24. August 2006, ab 19:00 Uhr
Anläßlich einer Vortragsreise nach Europa gastiert und arbeitet Alok Hsu Kwang-han für drei Tage in Köln in den Räumlichkeiten des forum ki shin tai. Zum Abschluss seiner Arbeit ist ein Zusammenkommen von Kalligraphie und Aikido geplant, zu dem jeder herzlich eingeladen ist teilzunehmen, ob als Aikidoka im offenen Training oder als Zuschauer des Geschehens.
Alok Hsu Kwang-han ist ein international gefeierter und höchst origineller Zen-Kalligraph aus China. Seine Arbeit ist eine aufsehenerregende neue Synthese der Schönheit chinesischer Kalligraphie, der Spontaneität des Zen und der Evolution der westlichen Psychotherapie. Seine Malerei ist nicht nur ausgefallen und bestechend durch ihre Schönheit, sie vermittelt uns die Einladung einzutreten. Friedlich die Malerei durchwandernd, kommen wir nach Haus zu uns selbst.
Mit ein paar spontanen Pinselstrichen malt Alok egal welch Thema sich Ihm in diesem Moment bietet - gefühlvolle Musik, japanische Haiku, das Wesen eines bestimmten Individuum's, Sprüche von erleuchteten Meistern, ein Gebet für das Heil der Welt oder sein Lieblingsspruch, "The heart always breaks!"...
Alok Hsu Kwang-han
Weitere Informationen über den Künstler mit vielen Bildern seiner von Kunst finden sich auf der Website von Alok: www.zencalligraphy.com
Wir freuen uns sehr auf Seinen und Euren Besuch!
Nachtrag
"Ein gelungenes Zusammenspiel, in guter Atmosphäre!"
Aikido war die Eröffnung dieser Begegnung zweier Kunstformen, Anlass der Übungen solle Gelassenheit sein. Nach halbstündiger Körperarbeit übernahm Alok eben diese Idee und führte sie weiter in seiner Kunst. Es entsand Aufmerksamkeit und Stille, eine unglaublich dichte Atmosphäre. Aus diesem Moment heraus, urplötzlich, lies Alok eine Zen-Kalligraphie entstehen, Summe des Geschehens, Austausch von "Do". Das war´s.
Fast ein bisschen überrascht von der Einfachheit dieser Handlung haben alle Freude, alsauch Spaß gehabt. Danke für Euer Kommen.
Fotos der Veranstaltung
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THE CREATIVITY OF NON-DOING an Interview with Alok Hsu Kwang-han by Suryo Gardner for NEW TIMES, Seattle, April 2003 "I could see images over people's heads": Suryo: How did you begin painting? Alok: It's a very amazing beginning, actually. I was a graduate student writing my Ph.D. thesis at UC Berkeley on "The Chinese Cultural Revolution as a Religious Movement." During this time I discovered if I really looked, I could see images over people's heads. Suryo: Wow. Alok: I told this to a professional psychic friend named Ruth. She had me read everybody at a party and thought what I saw was very accurate. Ruth then went into a trance. Coming out, |
Suryo: Aha.
Alok: I said, "Oh, past lives." I was a Marxist at that time and it didn't make any sense to me at all. The next day I tried it with a little brush and ink set I had bought at a garage sale for $5. It seemed to work. Occasionally I used to go to psychic fairs and play around. Or I would set up a small table on Telegraph Avenue and pile my hair on top of my head looking really Chinese. I had fun. That's how I got started.
Suryo: So Alok, is your art a manifestation of your inner process? Did you follow it on the inside or did you follow it on the outside?
Alok: I didn't follow it on the outside, meaning I didn't get trained, I didn't study, I didn't have a teacher. Following it on the inside had a long gestation period. I started painting in 1974. Then I went to India to meditate. One day in the Spring of 1976, my psychic space just exploded and all I heard was the sound of wind and sand. I realized it was time to look at myself rather than at other people, so I stopped for fifteen years. I had become a little bit too cute with the ability to tune in to people and paint their psychic images.
Suryo: I like that. You became too cute.
Alok: I think this art is supported by the maturation of the inner process. What I've come to appreciate is when the self is not intruding, when one is resting in emptiness, available, playful and not knowing, then what is greater than ourselves and includes ourselves can manifest through us. We are not separate beings. Our being is the inter-being of all existence. And that's much more powerful and wise and humorous and creative than my inner process. So, I would say this art is not a manifestation of my inner process, but a gracious expression of the inter-being of existence.
The Creativity of Non-doing:
Suryo: The Seattle Asian Art Museum has invited you to give your workshop, "The Creativity of Non-doing." The title is a wonderful juxtaposition of two concepts. What is the creativity of non-doing?
Alok: I begin with "non-doing." It is a translation of the Chinese term "wuwei." On the literal level "wu" means "no" and "wei" means "intention" or "motivation." Human "doing" is motivated action, thus the translation "non-doing." We all have intentions and motivations. It's impossible not to have them. So how could "wuwei" mean "no intention" or "no motivation"?
In the Zen tradition, "wu" could also mean "nothingness." I have come to understand "wuwei" as the "nothingness of motivation" or the "emptiness of intention." Not that we negate or deny our intentions or motivations, but we hold our intentions and motivations in emptiness, with deep acceptance and understanding of them, allowing them their natural energy, but with no attachment to them, no investment in what might happen, no claim for what it might mean for the self. My rendering of "wu wei" is "Resting in presence and moving from emptiness."
Suryo: Where does the creativity come in?
Alok: Creativity comes in on its own! It happens when you give up trying to do it! Just being present, available, playful, not knowing-the intelligence, wisdom, and creativity of existence can "inter-happen" with you and through you. What an adventure!
Suryo: "Resting in presence and moving from emptiness." How are you going to evoke that in people in your workshop on May 10th and 11th?
Alok: In the workshop I will lead us in Qigong exercises, so our energy can become relaxed and spontaneous, full and flowing through the brush. We will also engage in simple meditation exercises, or sing impromptu songs, such as what became theme song of our last workshop in Sweden-"Yes, we have no bananas. We have only loose screws today!" Or we might pair off and you paint the energy of your partner acting like a wild animal…. Being so light-hearted, you fall into a gap, where thoughts, emotions or intentions don't take up much space and we relax into just being. The purity of just being is emptiness.
Suryo: Please say more.
Alok: This emptiness is an absence but it's also a powerful presence. At this level, the opposites become complementary. Resting in this presence and moving from this emptiness is the heart of this workshop and to me, the art of life. We play with exquisite Chinese calligraphy brushes, ink and xuan paper to invite this experience to happen. And it does happen at some point to everybody! It's exhilarating and very healing because when we come home to the Source, it is healing. So I don't know whether to call this a painting workshop or a being workshop.
Suryo: If a person has never experienced emptiness, will he/she fail in your workshop?
Alok: Hmm, even the busiest minds have experienced some gap and just be-ed. Being is the gift of life! not something one can achieve. so how can one fail being? Also I will show you simple effective exercises to accept and not to identify with the selves that intrude, such as the self who's fearful of failure or the ambitious self. Then you are back to emptiness, the purity of just being.
Suryo: Who comes to this workshop?
Alok: All kinds of people come to this workshop -- accomplished artists, competent designers, many psychotherapists, individuals who were told they couldn't paint in grade school, or regular folks just interested in playing with Chinese calligraphy tools…. Yet they all have a sense of being confined by what they know and what they could do and they want to go beyond that confinement. Miraculously in two days, they become so thrilled that through them, right in front of them, all these incredible forms arise from formlessness this moment!
Calligraphic Portraits:
Suryo: I think this is a beautiful moment to invite the readers to come to their inter-being with existence and play with Alok on May 10 and 11.
Alok, you mentioned that in graduate school you had a certain skill, a certain sensitivity of reading people, and now I understand that you are painting calligraphic portraits of people. Exactly what do you mean by "calligraphic portrait"?
Alok: I love painting calligraphic portraits for individuals, couples and organizations! What exactly it is, is difficult to say because what happens is below words. When I first began in '74, I would try to read people and tune into people and allow that energy to come through my heart, down my arms, through the brush, onto the paper, which is a very beautiful way. Now I do much less. I don't try to see the images. I don't even look. I'm just present, available to existence and to who's in front of me. Then, one spontaneous movement after another, I allow the painting to happen. If I get an idea of how to paint (I'm trained in psychotherapy and pick up things about people), I always put these aside because I love the intimacy with the unknown. I trust and respect the moment so much that I don't want to be a Zerox machine of my ideas or my visions. So, this moment, right now, happening, is the creativity.
Suryo: "The Power of Now"!
Alok: Amazingly, the painting always shows you what you have deeply longed for or needed to see of yourself-your essence, your beauty, your courage, your issues cast in a new light. Occasionally I look at a painting and my mind comes in and say, "Boy, Alok, you've really screwed up this time!" Then as we explore the painting together, it turns out it's exactly, exactly what the person or the couple needed to see. So after having done a thousand or so of these around the world, I'm relaxed with painting from emptiness.
Suryo: It seems like our deepest knowing of ourselves comes through metaphor and symbol. And so I would imagine that when your clients look at their calligraphic portrait something is touched in them that is profound.
Alok: Yes, the people become very connected to themselves through the painting. In Sedona a German woman came up to me and said, "12 years ago you did a calligraphic portrait for me. It's still hanging in my bedroom and I look at it everyday." I am reminded of "wei wu wei" -- doing through not doing or knowing through not knowing. It's a wonderful interplay between what is hidden and what is revealed.
Suryo: This work feels vast, Alok. I feel very touched by what you've said.
Alok: What's wonderful about it is that this vastness can be touched or contacted through something very simple like one stroke of the brush or a particular ink blotting on the xuan paper. It occurs to me this work is a fresh synthesis of the beauty of Chinese calligraphy, the spontaneity of Zen, and the evolution of Western psychotherapy.
Suryo: What a combination! Are you the only one in the world that does this work?
Alok: As far as I know at this point, notwithstanding what happened in past lives!
Suryo: As you are talking, I am thinking about all the people that have psychic abilities, how they would be so inspired to connect with something even deeper than psychic abilities. Is your work open to everybody?
Alok: Sure, it's open and available (both laugh).
Suryo: You've just cast a big net (both laugh).
Alok:Not casting, just being open and available.
"The Creativity of Non Doing" workshop
info & registration: please contact Suryo Gardner
Telephone: (206) 985-8147 Email: suryo@mindspring.com
You are also welcome to contact Alok:
Telephone: 1 888 831-8850
Email: alok@zencalligraphy.com
Website: www.zencalligraphy.com