Ashley Thompson: It’s the first time I’ve seen it on a big screen, so it’s rather emotional.

Han Mengyun: It can get even more emotional if there is a chance to see it in its full installation presentation—so much is really missing. When viewed only on the screen without the installation, that feeling—especially the sense of being surrounded, or of being in the womb again—is lost. That womb is created by Dong fabric, which is something you see throughout the process of the film, starting from the beginning with the loom weaving, and then, in the end, the textile is formed.

This Dong textile has been an incredibly important material. I was talking about my postpartum depression and my affinity for the night, and how my poetry came about because of this darkness that liberated me at night. I’ve been working as part of this Night Practice, concerning stories of womanhood and motherhood.

In recent years, I came across this incredible cloth called bright cloth (liangbu, 亮布), made by the Dong Chinese people, who mostly live in Qiandongnan (黔东南, Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture). What really inspired me about this fabric is that, when I was doing research, I learned why the fabric is black—because the Dong people worship black, and it refers to the darkness of the womb. The way they make the textile is also quite interesting. They not only dye it with indigo over and over again until it becomes pitch black—they also apply egg white onto it, then pound it repeatedly until the egg white becomes part of the fabric and the weave. I immediately resonated with it, precisely because of the symbolism of fertility embedded in the textile.

In all my Night Practice—especially in the form of installation—I always use this textile to create a sense of night and darkness, with allusions to femininity, womanhood, and fertility. In Night Sutra, I created this textile installation, but what is unique about this rendition is that I found a stick in a Dong village in the mountains, which I took to a fabricator to 3D-scan and cast in aluminium. That stick represents the traditional method of hanging and drying textiles in the Dong village, so I wanted to preserve the vernacular structure of the textile workshop, then hang the fabric on top. It’s made of two circles, and I wanted to create a womb—and it’s literally called The Womb (निशागर्भ, niśāgarbha).

AT: The dark room of a cinema also gives something of a womb-like feeling, so it is not entirely lost.

HMY: Yes, but I personally do not like the cinema, because there is so much discipline imposed on the body—you have to sit still and not move, to show respect and to be absorbed by illumination. However, especially after seeing the Sbek Thom performance in Cambodia—the shadow puppet play—I noticed that people were moving around. I have read Ashley’s writing on Sbek Thom, and how, historically, people—including the audience—would go behind the screen to see the inner workings of the performance taking place behind the stage or screen.

That was what led to the format of this installation: a video that can be viewed from both sides, designed to resemble an accordion fold, mimicking the structure of a Thai Buddhist manuscript. This is why it is important for me to talk about my Day Practice—because of my obsession with the book form, the manuscript, and both Buddhist and Islamic manuscripts—which have greatly informed the form of my art.

Similarly, in Night Sutra, I want to pay tribute to the Buddhist manuscript format, but at the same time, I also seek to betray it. During the day, the heaven—the Borgesian heaven—is the library that contains all the books of the past, present, and future. But during the night, I do not worship the book in the same way; I pay attention to what a book cannot contain, which is performance—the orality, the corporality of performance—that forms a significant part of collective cultural memory across Buddhist Asia. That is why I have to utilise the multimedia format of an installation: to re-enact this multi-medial, sensorial experience of literature from the past.

AT: First of all, thank you very much for sharing this with all of us, and thank you to Sophie for inviting us. You just spoke about bringing performance into the work, particularly in your Night Practice. At the same time, you make it quite clear in the film that you do not want to be performing. There is an image which is given, and you will not perform to that image. You are seeking authenticity, and authenticity is put up against performance.

I would frame this within a broader question: you are working with a cultural matrix that you love, engage with, respect, and explore—while, at the same time, rejecting it. Perhaps you could elaborate on that.

HMY: That is, in a way, the core of my struggle as a woman speaking with and working with tradition. I have a deep and enduring commitment to, and love for, tradition. But over the years, as I have learned more about any tradition I wish to engage with, I have realised that, in the end, I encounter only absence and void—the absence of everything, it seems.

That has a great deal to do with the kind of feminist training I have undertaken—independently—through reading a wide range of feminist theory, and particularly through becoming deeply engaged with the work of Gayatri Spivak in recent years. I have learned to read the entire canon from a feminist perspective, and what I encounter, ultimately, is absence, void, and darkness.

Then, what do I do with this incredible, profound, and formidable passion for tradition? I dwell in this void. This void can also be interpreted as a complete rejection. Perhaps this leads to the idea of performance and authenticity. I need to transform myself into a man in order to perform tradition—to understand it, to embrace it. But at the same time, this drive for authenticity puts me on hold, places me in a kind of limbo, driven by a desire for destruction at the same time.

AT: I think you express a great deal about the idea of being with darkness, rather than inverting it—rather than seeking the light and valorising only the light—but instead understanding what can be seen and even appreciating the voluptuousness of darkness. With the Dong textiles, it seems that this is what drives the movement forward.

HMY: Through psychoanalysis and reading Freud—particularly how he described women as the “dark continent”—I was led to explore, both in research and in life, what darkness means. For me, darkness is the night, which is not a void, not an absence, but a palpable presence that visits me every night and gives me the possibility to create, to write, to utter, and to live. That is when I realised: the night is a device, or a strategy, through which I can fight against these kinds of Freudian problematics—the misunderstanding of woman as void.

The night is one thing. The Dong fabric is another—something not only metaphorical but also material. I want to replace the symbolic order with the material order, and I value the presentness, the existence of something that manifests as darkness—both material and presence at the same time.

AT: Thank you. Perhaps you could say something about the term Night Sutra—the title—and what you are working with here in terms of the Sanskrit.

HMY: The Sanskrit name of Night Sutra is शर्वरीसूत्र (Śarvarīsūtra), and शर्वरी (śarvarī) in Sanskrit means both “night” and “woman.” There are many deities associated with the night in Hinduism. I was really inspired by that, and I wanted to make use of this double meaning in the word—to make that association between night and woman manifest.

It is a sutra—a Buddhist sutra—but a fictional one. I called it a sutra, but there is no such thing as the शर्वरीसूत्र (Śarvarīsūtra) in historical records. I am playing with language, tricking the viewer into believing that it is a real Buddhist sutra. The film begins with an actual Buddhist sutra and then slowly shifts. सूत्र (Sūtra) in Sanskrit means “thread,” or the act of threading, of connecting different things together. I wanted to return to the etymological origin of the word and then gradually undo it in the process of making a fictional sutra. I really like the idea of threading and connection. I am not trying to inculcate or educate as a Buddhist scholar, but rather to experiment with the possibility of connecting things, people, and ideas—and that is the intention behind using this word and title.

AT: I think you are also provoking. You have a very provocative relationship to the sutra. You are both engaging with the Buddhist sutra and challenging it. It seems to me that this is always going on at the same time.

I wonder if we could move to what, for me, is a particularly important question in the film. At the beginning, you open by saying, “There’s one woman,” and “We’re all the same.” One could approach that and say—particularly given your engagement with feminist theory, as you mentioned—there is certainly a strong critique of the notion of a universal woman, of reducing womanhood to a form of biological determinism.

I would like us to consider one particular moment in the film that, for me, raises this tension: how you are affirming “There’s one,” or “We are all one woman,” while simultaneously challenging that idea. Perhaps we could look at this part—right at the beginning—where we hear the sound of weaving, and you say, “We are… there is one woman.” I believe it occurs just about here.

If I am not mistaken, the viewer is positioned as though crouching, looking toward the loom, at the warp. It is an unusual perspective, because we are rarely afforded that view. Typically, one is positioned slightly above, or behind the weaver—or perhaps you are the weaver. But here, one is crouching down and observing something that opens and closes, repeatedly. Is it a mouth? I am guessing that there is a superimposed mouth, and the woman—you—are speaking, saying, “We are one woman.” I would like to ask you to speak about that juxtaposition between the narration—which offers analysis—and the image.

HMY: I had never thought of it as a mouth opening, but looking at it retrospectively, I think it makes sense. The beginning of the loom is the beginning of a woman’s utterance in history. And I know—as we all know—that textile has a strong association with women. It is mostly women’s work across cultures. But I do not believe I am essentialising this connection between women and textile. I want to acknowledge its importance in the material history of womanhood, particularly in relation to the production of textile. To some extent, I feel that is all we have—traces of womanhood, a language aside from the fatherly languages we speak.

It is a language beyond language, because of its structure and materiality—one that connects us to many other things and also links us to the symbolic. So, when I say, “There is only one woman in this world,” I say it out of a sense of desperation—for not being able to find an alternative to that woman, to that womanhood to which I belong. It is a feeling of disappointment following a process of deconstruction. But what else do I have? I still—or perhaps we still—have this incredibly long history of women’s verse, which is textile. Can we gain something out of what we already have, out of what we call “woman,” instead of looking at it only as a negative?

AT: Thank you. I do believe that is exactly what this work achieves. I feel that you are not rejecting but rather drawing from tradition and offering an image of the textile speaking—which is truly extraordinary. I think there is a lot of that order going on in the film. I wanted to bring up another particularly striking image—perhaps the image of the girl eating lotus flowers. Would you be interested in speaking about that image? In some ways, it seems to exist in the same context—this search for an image. Could you speak about that moment? I find it quite difficult to watch.

HMY: It is difficult to talk about as well. I am that girl, if you noticed—I am the one eating the lotus flowers. I attempted that scene at least ten times. The first time was at a lotus pond in Siem Reap in Cambodia and we were filming on a boat. It was difficult because the lotus flower tastes like printing paper. It is very hard to chew, and it cannot really be swallowed, so each attempt ended in vomiting.

What was truly remarkable about performing the scene—especially during the first two days—was an encounter with a Cambodian woman who worked and lived on the boat in the lotus pond. That is how she survives: taking tourists on the boat, picking lotus flowers, and making hats from lotus flowers and leaves. She did that for me as well, and she was completely shocked when I was simply eating the lotus flower in front of her. It was definitely a first for her in her life. But then, she was the most dedicated audience member at that time—while all the other men appeared somewhat confused. The footage, though, turned out to be a disaster, so I had to film it again the next day. I returned to the boat, and the woman was once again picking flowers for me, closely observing what I was doing.

She took great care of me—picking the best flowers, cleaning them—and when I finished the shoot, she gave me water to help me clean up. That was an incredibly moving experience. At that point, I felt—though I cannot say we truly understood one another—that there was a deep sense of connection between us. When I was eating the lotus flowers, it felt as though I was doing it for her—chewing and destroying the very lotus flowers that gave her a livelihood, but also, at the same time, imprisoned her. That may have been entirely my own projection, but it is something that has stayed with me since that trip and the filming in Cambodia.

I continued to do it, because it is extremely difficult to deliver what I wanted to express through this performance. I think part of the difficulty is that I want to create both a sense of violence and seduction in the process of eating the flowers. I want to invoke Lacan here—anything related to the mouth is a portal of desire, reality, and the symbolic. It is entirely saturated with sexuality and desire. I believe this act of eating the lotus flower holds both my love for Buddhism—my desire for purity, for the Godhead of the Buddha—and, simultaneously, my deep hatred and disappointment with the religion, especially its exclusion of womanhood. That is what I was trying to arrive at. I think the difficulty lies in expressing that strange combination of desire and violence at once.

AT: Since you mentioned psychoanalysis, I wonder if you could speak about what seems to me to be something you are celebrating here—and enabling—which is the liberating power of speaking. You are both the person under analysis—speaking and working through these questions—and you are the person who is enabling.

I’m thinking in particular of the older Cambodian woman. You’re enabling her to speak—initially as her reflection—and as, I suppose, the camera and the recorder. It seems as if there’s something you’re doing that’s around the art of listening, or the art of making heard as well.

HMY: Definitely. Especially with Night Sutra, the act of threading—sutra-ing, or suturing—is precisely for the purpose of making other women heard as well, not just myself. I’m able to speak for myself in my work, but the more I mature as a woman, the more I realise this entanglement of womanhood, and this “one-womanness” that oppresses—yet at the same time—connects all of us: the socialised and constructed woman.

I feel compelled, and carry a strong sense of responsibility, to listen to other women and their stories, and find ways to make them emerge from darkness, or to make people see darkness in the night as she is: without decoration, without projection, if possible. The mirror is one way to create this kind of bond: we see each other through our reflections; we see similarities. But we must also recognise that it is an illusion—that we are not one another. Yet, it’s very paradoxical: that we are the same, but not. I want to use the mirror as a device to make that complexity manifest.

AT: There is also something of that order occurring within the intercultural. I was interested in what you said in your opening: you described yourself as being “indigenous to a cultural void,” which is a remarkable phrase.

To be indigenous to a cultural void—and you are setting up a relationship between that cultural void, which I assume refers to the post-Cultural Revolution, and, as you described, entering a city that was yet to be created. Then there is the Khmer Rouge’s Year Zero—where everything is destroyed. We see the violence of those two situations—instances of cultural erasure. But you are also turning to them to seek the culture that is still possible—the culture that once was, that has been erased—and you are attempting to reengage with it, to bring it back.

Yet in doing so, you encounter extraordinary violence. So you are caught in this double bind: wanting to reanimate culture after the apocalypse, while also recognising that the material through which one attempts to reanimate is itself imbued with a certain kind of violence—violence that you do not want to perpetuate. That aspect of the intercultural—I would situate it with your line of thought: we are all women, yet we are also individuals. And you are working through that tension. Would you say that the intercultural operates within that same order?

HMY: Yes, and that intercultural—or transcultural—dynamism, is what I foster in my Day Practice: looking at China from the perspective of Persian poets, from the perspective of Western sinologists, and from the perspective of Indian Buddhism. I’m constantly switching my position—examining where I look at China from, and how that view is different. I am doing something similar in Night Sutra. In my Night Practice, I also shift between different women from various cultural, spiritual, and religious perspectives. That transcultural movement is deeply important for me. To invoke Buddhism, there is no fixed reality, and the so-called reality is an extremely complex matrix of everything influencing each other. I want to try and capture as many perspectives as possible.

I am also thinking about the idea of the bodhisattva. In Chinese, it is called Guanyin (观音), which literally means “listening to all voices of suffering.” The film attempts to listen, like a bodhisattva, all the voices in this world: the cries, the suffering. Night Sutra was created to inspire compassion for all suffering in this world. I made it last year while also thinking about the genocide currently taking place—the many genocides that are happening across the world—and what we can learn from those of the past to prevent future genocides and all the atrocities that are still happening. At the same time, I’m trying to understand my own violence—as a woman—against the oppression of tradition. I question whether my ideology will lead to a future genocide, or a great act of violence, like the Cultural Revolution or the Khmer Rouge.

There are many questions I am thinking about through Night Sutra, and that is why the inclusion of the Cambodian dancer Sophiline (Sophiline Cheam Shapiro) is very important. According to her, the Khmer Rouge happened out of a good cause: to make society better, more prosperous, and more equal. But with this kind of goodwill, we experienced immense trauma and destruction. What, then, leads to that? That is something I continue to question. I think for her, as an artist, thinking about the Khmer Rouge involves confronting the conflict and tension between tradition and innovation, or modernity.

I must also consider my role as a female artist, caught in this double bind between tradition and how I choose to engage with it in the future. How do I innovate tradition without creating similar tragedy? This is also a question about art-making—of doing so sensibly and ethically—as a feminist, female artist today.

HAN MENGYUN

HAN MENGYUN