Seers and Seekers of the World, Unite

Did you ever want to be art? Not just to make or see it, but to really be it? If you’re a seeker or a seer, Lee Mingwei needs you to realize that dream.

Mingwei is an internationally recognized public artist, having exhibited solo from N.Y.C.’s Whitney to Tokyo’s M.C.A. Then why does he need your help? In collaboration with the Office for the Arts, Mingwei, this year’s Cogan Visiting Artist, is planning an installation for Harvard Yard called the “Harvard Seers Project.” To explore our curiosity about the future, Mingwei will assemble the psychics, foreseers and clairvoyants in the Harvard community and unite them with those who need their guidance.

Where did Mingwei acquire his fondness for foresight? In an interview with The Crimson last Monday, his boyish eagerness showed as he explained the origins of the project:

“Coming from Taiwan I grew up with shamans and fortune-tellers everywhere. Wherever you go there is always someone there reading your fortune. I mean with all different kinds of methods: some people use birds to pick leaves from the trees and bring them over to you; some people would use chopsticks; some people would just stare at you, to see if you have a birthmark here and there, and then they’d tell you a story. But these are just methods, vehicles. If you’re good, you know how to interact with people. How to interact among strangers.”

It is Mingwei’s hope—and his belief—that the Harvard seer will be a human mirror that reflects the participant’s existence back to himself. He says that the “backbone of Buddhism,” if not of all religions, is the question “Who is the self? Who is the self asking this question?” His 1999 “Reflections,” at Wellesley College’s Davis Museum, can be seen as a sort of intellectual precursor to the Seers Project. In the former, two people enter a chamber and sit on either side of a two-way mirror, which reflects one’s own image while blending it with that of the other person. As the identities of strangers are merged, each becomes conscious of the Other in himself.

In the Seers Project, as in Reflections, the emphasis will be on the artistry of the irreplaceable moment. Just as there was no way of planning what composite image would result from the merging faces, neither can anyone, artist included, anticipate what words will be exchanged between seer and seeker.

And what of the design itself? The plan is to find the oldest tree near the center of the campus; Mingwei and his administrative allies in the Office for the Arts are already eyeing the grove near the chapel in the Yard. He wants to “design cloth that sort of coils out, like this”—he draws a widening spiral in the air with a finger—“like an eddy.”

Each night, a different seer with a given specialty (such as tarot cards or crystal balls) will meet with about 10 to 15 seekers, one-on-one and one-by-one, by the light of a lantern. The others, meanwhile, will wait and talk in 10 Mingwei-designed chairs lined up nearby.

Mingwei is the first to admit that “Western academics” might be skeptical of his project. But for him, it’s the very invisibility of seers in the academic world that justifies the project to begin with. While pursuing his MFA at Yale, Mingwei was surprised to meet two professors—one of math, the other of statistics—who were also excellent tarot card readers. “They would never come out and say it,” he says, “because there’s something against it, like a taboo.” Doubts notwithstanding, Mingwei sees the skill of the seer as essentially creative, “coming from the same source as art and dance and music and literature.”

For Mingwei, the physical design of his projects always remains secondary to the art of social interaction. From his early years training under Ch’an Buddhist monks in Taiwan, he learned from his teachers to “leave behind no residue or trace.” As an international installation artist, Mingwei is effectively air-dropped into communities and must rely upon the people he meets once there to mold and inspire his site-specific work. In this case, that community is Harvard: its students, faculty, administrators, classes, Houses, Masters and many guests and visitors.

So if you experience flashes of extreme brilliance, study astrology, intuit like a pointer dog or just want to meet someone who does, be sure to contact Teil Silverstein at 495-8676.

The Harvard Seers Project will run for two weeks through late April and early May, 2003.