As part of the Featured Night on 11 SEP, the installation ›Lu Yang | Doku: Triage‹ will open at the historic Kochhaus of the DRK Kliniken Berlin Westend.
Do you have a daily ritual that gives you structure or inspiration?
I do not have any fixed rituals or particular order to my days. I generally live and work according to whatever I feel drawn to in the moment. Nor do I perform rituals in the hope that inspiration will arrive. The more you expect something to happen, the less likely it seems to occur, and I do not think it is healthy to live in a constant state of expectation.
I enjoy solitude. I often drive alone to cliffs, coastlines, or remote natural landscapes. Rather than trying to make anything happen, I prefer to let things unfold according to their own causes and conditions.
What would you do if time, money, and other resources were no object?
I would like to have an almost invisible support team—people who could drive me, take care of all the practical matters, and help me travel around the world, while allowing me to retain the freedom and quiet of feeling as though I were travelling completely alone.
With truly unlimited resources, I would also bring together people with wisdom, compassion, and genuine professional expertise to confront problems such as war, disease, hunger, lack of education, and structural injustice—to attempt to address some of the problems the world has long been unable to solve.
But this would not mean simply distributing money. Good intentions that are not guided by wisdom can create entirely new problems. I would want to understand the particular conditions, cultures, and actual needs of each place before developing solutions capable of working in the long term. I would hope to help move the world toward a more peaceful, just, wise, and compassionate form of civilisation.
Has there been a book that fundamentally changed your perspective—and why would you recommend it?
It is difficult for me to choose only one. Almost as soon as I learned to read, I began reading the Buddhist books my grandmother kept, many of which were written for elderly lay practitioners. They formed the earliest foundation of my faith. As I grew older, I encountered many Buddhist sutras and commentaries by great masters. What changed me was not one isolated book, but an entire interconnected system of wisdom.
However, if I had to recommend one relatively accessible book to Western readers, I would probably choose ›The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying‹. It approaches life through the subject of death and considers consciousness, fear, and loss. These are not questions exclusive to Buddhists, but ones that everyone must eventually face.
What do you wish you had known earlier?
I wish I had begun earlier to understand the Buddhist union of wisdom and compassion. The Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra describes the bodhisattva path as being oriented toward all-knowing wisdom and led by great compassion. The Vimalakīrti Sūtra says: »Wisdom without skilful means is bondage; wisdom with skilful means is liberation. Skilful means without wisdom is bondage; skilful means with wisdom is liberation.« The Diamond Sutra teaches that a bodhisattva should practise giving without abiding in anything.
These teachings point toward great compassion, wisdom, and skilful means operating together rather than separately. This is something I wish I had begun studying earlier, and something I am still learning.
Where do you recharge your batteries?
I regain energy in landscapes that are immense, desolate, and even slightly oppressive: the snow-covered mountains of Switzerland; New Zealand’s volcanic plateaus, glacial valleys, jagged mountains, fjords, and vast wilderness that resemble the world of ›The Lord of the Rings‹; the black volcanic cliffs and raging sea of the Izu Peninsula; and the cold, violent coastlines of northern Europe.
I have also always wanted to visit Iceland and enter landscapes formed by black lava fields, volcanoes, glaciers, and stormy seas—places that appear to belong to another planet.
I am not drawn to comfortable resort beaches or small, gentle forests. I need nature on a scale that vastly exceeds the human body. In front of such landscapes, the sense of »I« temporarily disappears, and the accumulated noise and impurities of the mind are diluted.
Is there a work of art you would love to have in your home?
I have honestly never given it much thought. I do not spend much time studying or collecting contemporary art, and there is no famous artwork that I particularly dream of bringing home.
I am much more likely to buy toys that look slightly foolish, blank-faced, and very cute. I place them around my home, and seeing them always makes me happy.
Which exhibition venue in Berlin inspires you?
I do not yet have an answer that I could give honestly. Almost every time I have come to Berlin, it has been for one of my own exhibitions. Most of my time has been spent installing, working, and attending events, so I have ironically had very few opportunities to explore the city’s other exhibition spaces properly.
I hope that this time I will finally be able to leave some time open and discover my own answer.
What fascinates you about Berlin?
I have always been deeply grateful for the openness that Berlin audiences show toward my work. In more conservative places or cultural contexts, my work can be misunderstood, judged, or even attacked before people have actually taken the time to experience it fully.
Berlin audiences are generally more willing to enter a work and allow something unfamiliar, contradictory, or even uncomfortable to exist before gradually forming their own opinion. That openness is extremely precious to me.
There is also a more everyday reason: the Vietnamese food in Berlin is really good.
What’s one item you couldn’t live without?
Probably my computer. It is not only my creative tool; it is simultaneously my studio, canvas, editing suite, musical instrument, and gateway into virtual worlds.
Many of my works are generated from nothing inside a computer. It extends my thinking and allows worlds that previously existed only in consciousness to acquire images, sounds, and bodies. It is probably the object I would find most difficult to live without.
What keeps you going?
I do not really need to encourage myself to continue creating. There is no whip at my back, and I do not need to keep inventing goals to motivate myself. Making work feels more like a self-generating force. It is part of my nature and lies at the core of my life.
Creating is my greatest interest and almost an obsession. If I stopped entirely, I would feel that life had lost its value and would fall into a profound sense of emptiness. Rather than saying that something keeps me going, I would say that this is simply how my life operates.
Which personality would you like to have a conversation with—and what would you talk about?
The Buddha, of course. But when I think about it carefully, I do not seem to have anything in particular that I need to ask him.
The Buddha has already left behind such extensive teachings. The real issue is that I have not yet studied, understood, and practised them diligently enough. Since the wisdom is already there, whether I could meet him in person no longer feels so important. As long as the Dharma continues to guide me, I feel that I am in conversation with the Buddha every day.
What do you look forward to when your working day comes to an end?
I do not really have a clear concept of the working day ending. I usually continue until I am completely exhausted, then take a shower, sleep, wake up, and begin working again.
While I am working, the most immediate thing I might look forward to is finding out whether the takeaway food I just ordered is actually good.
But when a long project finally reaches a stopping point, I begin looking forward to setting off alone again—to cliffs, coastlines, valleys, snow-covered mountains, or glaciers—where I can disappear into immense nature for a while.