A six week Zen/art collaboration culminated in this meditative installation and performance. Still was conceived as an experiential light installation. In which, if successful, would coax the viewer to experience the 108 suspended lanterns as a suspension of time and space… a refuge in the dark environment and a juxtaposition to the ordinary busyness of life. The transformation and repurposing of empty glass vessels into a large-scale light sculpture became a metaphor for life. In the same way the evolution of our bodies and minds involves the process of building, breaking down and renewal, the containers began to have new purpose and hold new meaning based on surface alterations, shifting environments, regrouping of resources, and renewed perspective. It was a sort of hastening of life’s natural process of erosion and regeneration. And an effort to raise the question: Where does stillness belong in our frenetic modern environment where curated representation of the external has largely replaced introspection and pragmatism?

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Workshop Description

Workshop participants gathered for focused meditation which was later applied to all aspects of making, installing and performing the work. The performance itself was in a Zen dojo where participants performed a series of meditations and chanting while traditional sufi music was introduced by Persian musicians Shahab Mahadashti (also Cerro’s long time Zen master), Reza Filsoofi, and Salman Masmouei of Caravan Ensemble. Cerro orchestrated a layering of Zen and Sufi tradition over the continuous sound of OM…while the lanterns illuminated the dim space for the viewer…and finally culminated in silence, returning to the essence of the project: Still.

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The intention was one of blurring the lines between art and ritual, art experience and transcendent religious experience.