Hans Georg Berger is a photographer and writer. He was born in 1951 in Trier, Germany, and he presently divides his time between Germany, Iran, Italy, and Luang Prabang, Laos. Berger studied comparative religion and drama in Germany and the United States. In 1975, he collaborated for the first time with the German artist Joseph Beuys, whose art would greatly influence his development of his conception of photography and "community involvement" described below. He was the director of the Munich Theater Festival from 1977 to 1983 and the co-founder of the Münchner Biennale music theater festival. Since 1977, he has been involved in rebuilding a former Catholic monastery on the island of Elba, Italy, which he has developed into a place where artists and scientists can share their ideas with one another.
Since 1988, Berger has produced a series of long-term photography projects involving world religions, including Theravada Buddhism in Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand, as well as Shiite Islam in Iran. These projects embody his conception of "community involvement." The photographer, who is an outsider, seeks to blend in with the community he seeks to photograph to avoid disturbing the unfolding of the activities to which the community has granted him access. Toward this end, the photographer brackets his own artistic vision by inviting the community to teach him where to look, what to portray, and how to portray it.
From 1994 to 1998, Berger developed a photography project in Luang Prabang that reflected his conception of community involvement. With the assistance and involvement of the city's people, he documented Luang Prabang's sacred rituals and monastic life in a series of black-and-white photographs. One group consists of documentary images of architecture, ritual objects, and festivals, such as the annual New Year celebrations and boat races. Another group consists of posed portraits of monks, nuns, and novices, often taken during important moments of religious life. Collectively, the photographs document the role of spirituality in the everyday life of Luang Prabang's people. The project culminated with the installation of some of the photographs in nine of the city's sacred sites in 1998 and the publication of the book Het Bun Dai Bun: Laos, Sacred Rituals of Luang Prabang, in 2000.
In 2004 and 2005, Berger will develop a photography and video project that will document the forms and methods of study in Shiite Islam in selected Iranian Koran schools in the cities of Mashad, Qom, and Isfahan—places of study that as a rule are closed entirely to non-Muslims. He prepared for this project with three working visits to Iran in 1996, 2002, and 2003, as well as an ongoing discussion process with Iranian and international academics, spiritual leaders, and intellectuals. Just as in his earlier photography project in Luang Prabang, in this project the Koran school students and teachers will assume an active role within an artistic process that questions forms of thought and communication, visual representation, and cultural translation. The underlying principle of this project, and of all Berger's work, is a readiness to engage in dialogue and mutual understanding that is free of cultural stereotypes and preconceptions and that acknowledges the religious context of the subject matter.
THE QUIET IN THE LAND ART AND EDUCATION PROJECT
NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2004
SEARCHING THE NATURAL MIND
The Renewal of Buddhist Meditation in Luang Prabang
By Hans Georg Berger
In December 2004, I had the unique and extraordinary privilege to assist, as a Western artist, a meditation retreat for several hundred Lao monks and novices, organized by the Buddhist Sangha of Luang Prabang. The retreat took place from December 2 to December 23, 2004, at Vat Pa Phon Phao, in the outskirts of the city of Luang Prabang. There, an imposing gilded Stupa, set on top of a hill in the middle of a forest, became the focal point for a unique cultural and religious experience which is of greatest significance for the development of Lao Buddhism. My place in this experience was that of an artist-documentarist who, with his particular method and through photography and videography, accompanied the actions and life of the community of monks, their teaching and everyday life. The invitation for me to take part in this experience came from the Sangha of Luang Prabang and is the result of a previous working experience centered on the sacred ceremonies of Luang Prabang, organized with the help and support of the Sangha from 1994 to 1999 in the context of a Lao-German project of cultural cooperation. My participation in the meditation retreat of December 2004 took place in the context of The Quiet in the Land, an art project organized by France Morin.
Within the cultures of Southeast Asia, Laos has developed its own characteristic forms and contents. Lao art has its own distinctive qualities; Lao literature, Lao ceremonies, and Lao cultural traditions are different from those of the neighboring countries. This is often overlooked, for a lack of knowledge in the West, or for reasons of cultural dominance exercised by some of these neighbors. Lao people, though, are very aware of their cultural particularity. It is fortunate that, in recent years, the action of local authorities and the national government for the support of cultural traditions has been manifold and in many cases successful; one example is the Preservation of Lao Manuscripts Programme. Also, Lao Buddhism is different from Buddhism in Thailand, Myanmar, or Vietnam. And Lao monks have developed, over more than seven centuries of religious practice and teaching of the Dhamma, a very special form of meditation. The revival of this Lao tradition of meditation was at the center of the retreat organized in December 2004, and is the focal point of my artwork.
The meditation retreat at Vat Pa Phon Phao, Luang Prabang, was the first large-scale attempt to reintroduce the knowledge of Vipassana meditation in Luang Prabang since 1975. Over almost thirty years, the practice of Vipassana has been scarce in Luang Prabang, and has been upheld only by a small number of learned monks who had few followers. Phra Saisamut, Phra Khamchanh Virachittathera, Phra Chantarinh, and Phra Onekeo Sitthivong were among the abbots who had preserved the knowledge that permitted the organization of the retreat. They were helped by a group of six learned senior monks from Vientiane, led by Phra Achan Veth, the abbot of Vat Si Saket in Vientiane. The retreat aimed at the teaching of Vipassana techniques and thought to a large group of young people who had no previous experience with meditation. It had to start from basic exercises, and also stressed teaching Buddhist thought and discipline. More and more, in the course of the retreat, participants entered into meditation practices, always led and helped by senior monks.
My work consisted of the observation and documentation of this process, starting from its preparation during the month of November, observation of Parivassakam and the following Vipassana exercises, until its conclusion on December 23. A rule for my work was to follow the advice and wishes of the monks as closely as possible. They, rather than myself as an outsider, know the meaning and importance of their actions; it is they who may judge the accuracy or the mistakes of any image that is coming out of my work. During the retreat, a total of about five thousand photographs were taken in this way. The final selection process with the monks is in process and, at the time of writing, has yet to be concluded.
This collaboration process with the participants of the meditation retreat constitutes a further application of my method to the life and spiritual practice of the Sangha, and the culture of Laos by means of photography.
The project's collective goal is not only to document meticulously the particularity of Luang Prabang's meditation tradition, but also to empower all participants and their spiritual practice through the photographic process.
One important aim of the retreat was to create a moment of spiritual tranquility and concentration for a large number of novices and young monks educated in the monasteries of Luang Prabang, and confronted there with the everyday life of the city, tourism, and modern-day consumerism. In recent years, life in some of the monasteries has become more and more disturbed by the influx of exterior influences. The teaching of the Dhamma in the monasteries today very much needs regular support through a large collective effort in a place of tranquility and concentration. The retreat at Vat Pa Phon Phao, in my judgment, did this with extraordinary success. It is to be wished that this experience will continue in the future.
The result of my work can be used in different ways. First of all, it constitutes a thorough documentation of the first major meditation retreat of the Lao Buddhist Sangha organized since the revolution of 1975. Together with France Morin, we are planning and preparing several publications both in the English and Lao languages. One of the Lao publications is a compilation of texts used in Vipassana that will be illustrated with color photographs taken during the retreat. Another one is a new schoolbook explaining concentration exercises for the use of novices and young monks.
In the judgment of all participants, the 2004 meditation retreat has been extraordinarily successful. It is certainly a major way to teach the Dhamma to the numerous novices of Luang Prabang, to promote their knowledge of Buddhist practice, and to lead these young people to concentration and discipline. It is to be hoped that this experience will continue on a regular basis in the coming months and years. It is obviously most interesting to me to continue the art and photography project linked to the retreat, in order to observe its changes and its continuity. It is such continuity that will guarantee the unique quality of the art project, transforming a work of photo-documentation into the crystallization of a process of community involvement, in which the participating monks and novices will teach the artist what is important to represent, and ideally become artists themselves.
(April 2005, written for The Quiet in the Land)
For more information on Hans Georg Berger's work in Laos and Luang Prabang, and a biography, see: http://www.hansgeorgberger.de
Contact: eremo@gmx.net