FInal Presentation : Tibetan Buddhism : Nott Varis Niwatsakul

The following are the main interests that I’ve extracted from two researchs, one regarding architectural choreography in which I focused on the film set and its camera movements on “ You Only Live Twice (1968) a set designed by Ken Adam and the second research regarding religious of Tibetan Buddhism, its belief, political aspects and its ceremonies and rituals.

I chose to do Tibetan Buddhism because of its political issue with China and I can see an interesting link in the fact that the project will essentially be in Hong Kong which is also controlled by the chinese.

1.      Visual Displacement or Replacement (extracted from the film set and camera movements case study). In this research I’m analyzing the complex choreography of the camera movements and angle in which the sequence of a film is created.

2.      Role Playing (extracted from Tibetan Buddhism study into its ceremonies and rituals, specifically into the Cham Performance of the Hemis Festival which take place in Hemis Monastery Ladakh India. In this ceremony, an ordinary dancers, through a process of masking undergo transformation from mundane to scared. This process of role playing has transform the perception of the dancers himself as well as how he is perceived by the audience.

Also the aspect of Visual displacement and role playing are also related to Tibetan Buddhism’s political aspect with the Chinese government. In which they can’t legally practice their religious in their homeland but to do it in their “exile” community over in India. Another aspect that link to this is the process of choosing the next Dalai Lama, the political and spiritual leader of Tibet, in which the young boy is selected and is believed to be the incarnation of the ex-Dalai lama. Then the process of teaching and training begins with story telling of everything the ex-Dalai lama has done in the past. This process I see it as similar to the role playing aspect in that the boy take on the role of someone else but maybe more extreme that he hasn’t have his own self since he was taught and trained since young age so this maybe more believable than the notion of role playing and it’s eventually become his own life. Also, the notion of visual displacement linked with the core belief of Tibetan Buddhism on the concept of “awakening” that all sentient being are restricted by their desire to material objects and that the better way is to become “awaken” and focus on self and mind. Therefore the fact that my project could deal with filming people could relate to how they become awaken or aware of self.

I also have come with some criteria for choosing the site as follows.

1.      The site should attached to something that is ever growing  ( could be infrastructure)

2.      The site should have some sort of “Looping” network. Im eager to find existing loop network with in the urban context of Hong Kong. This interest in looping came from the film set study that the camera moves in loops or track. But it also have connection with spiritual meaning that everything exists in a loops, we born and die.

3.      In interested in working with semiotic on the street such as all the street signage including billboard. Because these semiotic is essentially trying to inject certain ideologies into the audience similarly to the process of choosing the next Dalai Lama and also the fact that the placement of these semiotic on different surfaces of the city has already been tought out as the best location for people to see or vise versa so it has connection to my interest in visual displacement which concerns the notion of vantage points.