My strongest reaction was to Lingis’ description of his personal experiencevisiting Easter Island and his idea that the art/statues were inherentlyconnected to the landscape they were developed in (“It was inconceivablethat this kind of work, these giant stone statues, could been erected in therain forests, or in the temperature latitudes in the middle ofcontinents.”). I related to Lingis’ idea of art primarily as experience -when he describes the wall of Buddha statues as not having arepresentational function, but as a direct channel for experience. Thatyes, analyses, deciphering, and the history of the island and the statuesare interesting and important, and he spends the majority of the chapterdiscussing just that - but that is looking at the task at hand from afar, itis examining the statues as art *objects, *and not works intrinsicallyconnected to the environment/place they were created in. I am interested inthe folding of boundaries between external and internal that Lingis is getting at here. The external place stirs emotions and creates a particularexperience within the inner state of the artist who then externalizes thisthrough the creation of the statues (and accompanying ceremony/tradition ofthe birdmen). External>Internal>External that hopefully heightens theexperience of the location for the next person that experiences it.
I had a similar experience when I visited the ancient site of Newgrange inIreland a few years ago. The site is a mound/tomb, covered in rocksarranged in patterns . The top is covered in grass and the entrance isframed by giant stones covered in megalithic etchings of swirls. When I wasfirst approaching, and viewing it from the outside I found myself in themindset of trying to figure it out. How did they make this, how did theyhave the ability to plan the intricate rock patterns, to carry all thesupplies up this hill? Why make this structure, what was it functionally?I was analyzing and not experiencing. There is a thin passageway which youare allowed to enter by crouching and maneuvering your way through. When Iwent inside I stopped actively pursuing answers to my questions and insteadnoticed my psychological and biological reaction to the environment. It wascold inside the rocks. I was very aware of myself and my body as I tried tosafely navigate the passage. When you reach the center of the tomb there isa small circular area. The tour guides explain to you that the opening youjust climbed through aligns with the sun on the Winter Solstice. Theancient people who created the tomb would climb inside it on the Solsticeand sit and wait in the pitch darkness until the sun crossed over theentryway at the end of the passage and briefly illuminated the circle inwhich we were standing. The sound inside this area was very insulated andit was a strange kind of quietness I had not heard before. The tour guidesthen recreated the experience for the group by switching off the small lampsthat are there for safety. You wait in the cold, quiet, darkness until anartificial light mimics the movement of the sun. I felt like my mind wastransported to a primal state, similar to Lingus’ description, “what thesevanished people had felt was clear, palpable, as though i were walking amongtheir very ghosts.” I understood the need for such a monument as the tombin this particular place. Going through the ritual (even in its touristyform) that the ghosts of this place had also experienced, I felt that I wasconnected to their emotions - that there was something almost magical aboutexperiencing the same inner state in the same place that had beenexperienced by people for thousands of years.