YUGEN (幽玄)

Audiovisual Installation
Running time: 34 mins
Date: 2020

Yūgen is a video and sound installation I created in collaboration with filmmaker Stephanie Pochet during our joint artist residency at Studio Kura in rural Japan.

Meditative and poetic fragments of video and sounds that explore and expose the essence of the Japanese word ‘Yūgen’.
In Japanese aesthetics, “yūgen” refers to an awareness of the profound grace and subtlety of the universe — an awareness which evokes feelings that are inexplicably deep and too mysterious for words.

Zeami Motokiyo described portals to yūgen as such:
“To watch the sun sink behind a flower clad hill. To wander on in a huge forest without thought of return. To stand upon the shore and gaze after a boat that disappears behind distant islands. To contemplate the flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds. And, subtle shadows of bamboo on bamboo.”

During our creative process, we aimed to explore and embody yūgen using our intuition as our only guide and leaving our expectations and preconceptions behind while immersing ourselves in the unknown setting and allowing things to be their true nature.

Alan Watts described yūgen as "the feeling one has when they look across Mt. Tamalpais, and they have never been to the other side, and they see the sky beyond. They don’t go over there to look and see what’s on the other side. You let the other side be the other side, and it invokes something in your imagination, but you don’t attempt to define it or to pin it down."