‘Force//Flux//Fatality’ - A Study in Navigating The Bardo - 2017
“In bereavement, we come to appreciate at the deepest, most felt level exactly what it means to die while we are still alive. The Tibetan term ‘bardo’, or ‘intermediate state’, is not just a reference to the afterlife. It also refers more generally to these moments when gaps appear, interrupting the continuity that we otherwise project onto our lives. In American culture, we sometimes refer to this as ‘having the rug pulled out from under us’, or feeling ungrounded. These interruptions in our normal sense of certainty are what is being referred to by the term ‘bardo’. But to be precise, bardo refers to that state in which we have lost our old reality and it is no longer available to us. Anyone who has experienced this kind of loss knows what it means to be disrupted, to be entombed between death and rebirth. There is an incredible reality that opens up to us in those gaps if we just do not reject rupture. In fact, if we have some reliable idea of what is happening in that intermediate, groundless space, rupture can become rapture.”
-From “The Four Essential Points of Letting Go in the Bardo’ By PEMA KHANDRO RINPOCHE
Force//Flux//Fatality is a visual interpretation of a soul traversing the bardo of the afterlife, as inspired by “The Tibetan Book of the Dead” (published by Shambhala Pocket Classics and translated by Francesca Fremantle & Chögyam Trungpa). Each panel was inspired by a passage in this version of the book, and the viewers were encouraged to read the passages for themselves (book provided) and make their own interpretations. The works function as an altar to the dead, as well as to the living; to those who may be struggling through their own bardo. The offerings and messages initially left to the dead are from the artist’s personal altar. The viewers were encouraged to contribute to the piece by leaving their own offerings in the form of messages (paper provided), food offerings, amulets, incense, candles, and trinkets.
