- Title
- Productive nothingness
- Creator
- Mand, Harpreet (Neena); Swanson Wood, Marly
- Relation
- Philosophies of Beauty on the Move p. 103-122
- Relation
- http://www.interdisciplinarypress.net/product/philosophies-of-beauty-on-the-move/
- Publisher
- Inter-Disciplinary Press
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2015
- Description
- To be awake to nothing (mu) is to be liberated in something (u). Japan’s cultural history and worldview is governed by the cyclical mode of destruction and renewal. External forces both natural and manufactured have driven this process. The Meiji Restoration (1868-1912) in Japan, a response to excursion of the West and its forced opening up of cultural boundaries, brought about a period of rapid Westernisation manifested through an emulation of Western thought. Both Japan’s desire to create its own modernity throughout this period, and the persistence of an external gaze from the West has had a profound impact upon modern Japanese culture and associated aesthetic fields. One of the most powerful influences to modern Japanese dialogue on beauty has been the impact of the external gaze and its influence on the construction of a Western hermeneutic framework within Japan. The fundamental task of finding Japanese counterparts for Western hermeneutic labels was variously addressed by Japanese intellectuals, but initially through invention of various equivalent Japanese terms such as bi (beauty), geijutsu (art), and bijutsu (fine arts). Japanese architect, Arata Isozaki curated the exhibition, ‘Ma: Space-time in Japan’, to create a space for creative action that averts the external gaze, while entering into a dialogue with the West. The various manifestations and interpretations of Ma create a framework that allows the Japanese concept of beauty to be constructed and interpreted through art, within the space of the exhibition. This chapter concludes that Isozaki addresses the external gaze through the experiential space of the exhibition as well as through relating his concept of Ma to the Japanese ontology of nothingness, and absolute nothingness becomes the filled void as the container and condition for the experience of beauty.
- Subject
- beauty; modernity; Japanese aesthetics; Ma; deconstruction; nothingness
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1316292
- Identifier
- uon:23126
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781848883789
- Language
- eng
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