Speaker

Wei Shan

Host

Lu Jie

Introduction

‘Awakening with Blindness , Begining with the End : Two Studies on ‘Avidyā’, or should we say from ‘Avidyā’.’ Awakening with Blindness’ is taken from Wei Shan’s MA thesis ‘Formless and Forming——a study of the visual world based on the congenital blind’. Congenitally blind individuals, devoid of any visual experience, hold a precious ‘gift’ for sighted individuals: with a complete absence of visual perception, the image to them is entirely a secret. Shan’s thesis grasps the positive and negative relationship between congenitally blind individuals and sighted individuals. From this, it gains an ‘impossible’ perspective to observe the entirety of image, delving further into the broader realm of  the mind and its shaping through language.

‘Begining with the End, a preparation for death’ is another project: Elderly people in Tibet have long been preparing for their death, gradually transitioning from life to death. This lecture will introduce the conceptualization of this project and some very preliminary thoughts after its initiation last year.