In this and the next video,
we will introduce the conceptualization and representation of bodies
as integrated parts of, or intimately entangled with, landscapes.
Traditional notions of nature and the cosmos hold that bodies are
interconnected with their natural environment through the vital force qi.
The encounter with Western philosophy changed and hybridized these concepts.
Contemporary eco-art creatively draws from
the ancient cosmological scriptures without fully
subscribing to their religious dogma and authority.
Now let us look at the different body-landscape connections
that were drawn in ancient Chinese cosmological thought,
Taoist maps of the inner human body,
and an even more ancient representation of the human body in its cosmic embeddedness,
Lady Dai's funeral banner.
Historically, the idea of a body-landscape continuum grew from
shamanistic ritual practice and was further developed in
ancient China's three major philosophico-religious traditions, namely
Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism,
from where it spread into literature and the arts.
Ancient cosmology holds that all under heaven is animated by the same vital force, qi,
which is a kind of self-subsistent or ur-substance
that has both material and spiritual attributes.
Depending on their qi,
which can be more or less pure or sustain more or less spiritual energy,
container objects differ from each other.
Hence, we can perceive qi as the psychophysical structure of things and phenomena.
A rock, for instance,
normally is on the lower end of the spiritual endowments scale,
whereas heaven is considered to be on top.
The unfathomable source of qi is taiji,
the supreme ultimate state from which yin and yang originate.
Everybody knows its most popular symbol, called Taiji tu,
a circle divided by a winding line into black and white,
with one dot of the opposite color contained in each of the two halves.
This taiji map shows the interdependency and constant flow of qi between the human body,
the five elements, good and evil, light and darkness,
animality, cultivated virtues, and affective states.
This diagram is from a Korean source dating from the late 14th century.
Having placed a simplified version of the taiji symbol on its flag,
modern South Korea evidently continues to
define its modern identity within this tradition.
On the flag, the taiji circle is surrounded by the symbols for Earth,
Heaven, fire, and water from the classic “Book of Changes”, the “Yijing”.
We have just heard that everything in the universe
is interconnected based on the vital force qi.
This means that the cosmos is continuously and spontaneously self-generating.
The principle of endless re-creation is called ziran in Chinese.
Ziran, which we can put awkwardly as
“self-so-ing” in a kind of literal translation, or “as-it-is-ness”,
was borrowed to become an equivalent to the term “nature” when the influx
of Western terminologies required the establishment of a modernized vocabulary.
As Tu Wei-ming puts it in his article on “The Continuity of Being“,
„nature is vital force on display.” Being continuous, holistic,
and dynamic, “its enduring pattern is union rather than disunion,
integration rather than disintegration,
and synthesis rather than separation.
The eternal flow of nature is characterized by
the concord and convergence of numerous streams of vital force.”
The continuity of cosmic qi is best explained by Neo-Confucian thinker Zhang Zai,
who states in his famous Western Inscription:
“Heaven/yang is my father and earth/yin is my mother,
and even such a small being as I finds an intimate place in their midst.
Therefore, that which fills the universe I regard as
my body and that which directs the universe I regard as my nature.
All people are my brothers and sisters,
and all things are my companions."
To illustrate how the continuous flow of qi was imagined,
Tu mentions a self-portrait by Shi Tao.
On this painting, the mountains look like frozen ocean waves
and water resembles solid natural forms.
Even the robe Shi Tao wears looks like a river,
and in its whiteness almost seamlessly
merges the human figure with the surrounding landscape.
From the outer appearance of the body-landscape continuum,
we now move to a Taoist view of the internal body as
a landscape that ideally is self-regulating like the cosmos.
According to the Taoist doctrine,
a whole state apparatus of deities and officials
is responsible for steering the bodily functions,
and the superior person can,
by exerting perfect control over his body,
maintain the balance of the cosmic forces
and thus bestow order on the human world.
An illustration of how this was achieved is the inner landscape map “Neijing tu”,
which shows how to travel through one's body in pursuit of ordering, purifying,
and preserving the organic functions of
both the individual person and, by extension, the world.
From the waterwheel in the lower body part upwards
to the spirit sitting cross-legged in the head of the embryonic body,
you see several spirits busy cultivating the various treasures that
together constitute what Kristofer Schipper calls “the interior country of the body.”
In addition to individual cultivating practices and technologies,
priests, and sometimes the emperor, as the Son of Heaven,
would perform purifying rites on top of a sacred mountain.
For this purpose, a gown embroidered with landscape elements such as waves,
clouds, mountains, beasts, birds,
and flowers was worn.
Even more ancient than these maps,
the funeral banner of Lady Dai shows a shamanistic universe,
where the deceased human body dwells among
mythical beasts and spirits in the realm of transcendence.
Her grave at the archaeological site of Mawangdui
in today's city of Changsha in Hunan province
dates from roughly 2200 years ago.
Lady Dai's coffin was covered with this unique, mythical mappa mundi.
It shows a shamanistic cosmos, composed of figures and symbols that
circulated long before the rise to dominance of China's three main religious traditions.
On the banner's top
we see Heaven with the sun and moon and some mythical creatures.
The upper middle part shows Lady Dai and her attendants,
below is her body with a group of mourners,
and the image at the bottom represents the underworld
with two giant fish or whales,
some other mythical animals, and a giant
holding a plane symbolizing the boundary between the two spheres.
The affective states of happiness and sorrow structure the world of the living,
whereas fear and awe towards the beyond can be
deducted from the kind of mythical beasts that are shown to reside there.
Death rites assume a close connection of the living body with its natural environment.
As we have seen on Lady Dai's funeral banner,
Shamanism already inspired its arrangement as an imaginary landscape.
Taoism and Buddhism came forth with elaborate descriptions of paradises
where the sages and immortals dwell.
Besides its focus on ancestor worship,
Confucianism developed a kind of
subcultural tradition catering to a strong fascination with
the impact on society of excessive affects or the neglect of virtue in human conduct.
Populated by ghosts – the embodiments of emotional imbalance –
these eccentric landscapes were depicted as haunted houses,
gardens, lakes and rivers, or graveyards.
An extremely popular theme in literature,
ghosts were rarely ever painted.
Luo Ping’s scroll “Ghost Amusement” is a famous exception.
It highlights the era of transition from pre-modern to modern visual conventions.
The painter was not particularly interested in the surroundings of the frolicking ghosts,
but rather sought to confront or simply collect different ideas about
embodied life after death stemming from Western and Chinese traditions.
In modernity, a plethora of ghost movies elaborate on
the possibility of transgressing the boundary between this world and the beyond,
due to the accumulation of specific effective intensities,
especially love and anger,
and pay a great deal of attention to
the visualization of the places and landscapes that hatch such transgressions.
In sum, the Chinese perception of a body-landscape continuity was formed in religious,
philosophical, historical, aesthetic, proto-scientific
and other sources, before the advent of modernity.
As we will see in the next video,
it prevailed in aesthetic contexts,
thus showing its resilience and cultural power even under the pressure of,
and subordination under the Western scientific separation of mind and matter.