Output details

Chöd: il sacrificio di sé (Chöd the sacrifice of the Self).

Year: 2009

(Opening date: 8-7-2009 - Closing date: 31-7-2009)

Municipality of Rome; Sovrintendenza ai Beni Culturali of Rome (Superintendence of Cultural Heritage of the City of Rome).

The main component of this output is represented by a multimedia exhibition curated by Martino Nicoletti and held in Rome in 2009 at the Sala Santa Rita, an ancient baroque church in the historic centre of Rome re-designed as an international art exhibition space.

The research was further manifested in with multimedia book with DVD (2010) and scientific article (2011). All of the outputs were funded by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the Italian National Council for Scientific Research and the Italian Research Project Ev-K2-CNR.

The book, Nicoletti M., Nomadi dell’invisibile: l’autosacrificio rituale del chöd nel Bön tibetano (Nomads of the Invisible: The Self-Sacrificial Ritual of Chöd in the Tibetan Bön Tradition), 2010, pp192, Roma: Exòrma, ISBN: 978-8895688404, is composed of texts, diary excerpts and a large selection of B/W photos.

The book is also published in an English edition: Nicoletti, M. (2013), The Nomadic Sacrifice: The Chöd Pilgrimage among the Bönpo of Dolpo (Western Nepal), Kathmandu: Vajra Publication - ISBN: 978-9937506915) – is a translation of the sacred ritual text The Secret Wisdom Dākinī (Khandro Sangba Yeshe) by Gelek Jinpa, geshe of the Bonpo monastery of Triten Norbutse in Nepal. The DVD contains a short Super-8 film by the author, as well as the liturgical chöd chant performed by the monks of the bönpo monastery Triten Norbutse in Nepal. It is a standard reference source on Tibetan pre-Buddhist religion and on visual anthropology of the Himalayan area.

As a direct extension of the exhibition in Rome and the printed multimedia work, in 2010, Nicoletti presented a scientific paper at the International Symposium: Freeze Frames: For a Combination of Photography and Film held at the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris.

The article ‘Vintage Visual Anthropology: A Himalayan Pilgrimage Narrated through 16 Black and White Photographs, 34 Pages of Field-work Journal and 6 Minutes of Super8 Film’, in Proceedings of the International Symposium: Freeze Frames. For a Combination of Photography and Film (Musée du Quai Branly, Paris – 9-10 April, 2010).

Year of publication: June 2011.

Publisher: Paris: Musée du Quai Branly (on line publication: http://www.anthropology-photo-film-symposium-edu.org/index.php/fr/participants-3/nicoletti-2)

Based on the data of field-work carried out by the curator in north-west Nepal, the exhibition was focused on a very peculiar form of pilgrimage, which is still today occasionally organised by a few rare practitioners, followers of Bön, the ancient pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet.

The central focus of the pilgrimage is the performance of a meditation ritual of self-sacrifice (chöd). The officiants, after having invited a whole host of invisible beings of varying status to gather, visualize their own body being totally dismembered by a female divinity of wisdom (dakini). The remains, are ritually transformed into pure substances, a “nectar of immortality” through the power of meditation. These are offered to the invited invisible guests during a ceremonial banquet. In this sense, the ritual, deeply rooted in the notion of Universal Compassion, is chiefly aimed at severing the practitioners’ attachment to his physical body and overcoming identification with their own illusory ego.

Founded on a rigorous scientific preliminary work and on a strict balance of aesthetic requirements and ethnographic content, the exhibition which was the first on this subject, provided a combination between anthropological and artistic language (photography, video, installation art and music).

The exhibition received reviews, including the national Italian daily: Il Tempo, Repubblica.

The article published in the form of an on-line article in the conference proceedings, explored the epistemological and aesthetical aspects related to the event and its curatorial aspects.

The research discussed how film, still photographs and other apparently heteroclite communicative languages can be harmoniously combined to give shape to a particular form of visual aesthetics. The research focussed on the experimental use of analogue visual media and the extensive use of cultural dislocation and relocation; this same aesthetics provides fertile ground for the creation of a deliberately primitivist and minimalist ‘vintage visual anthropology’.

The work focuses on a very peculiar form of pilgrimage, which is still today occasionally organised by a few rare practitioners, followers of Bön, the ancient pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet. A DVD containing a short Super-8 film by the author as well as the liturgical chöd chant performed by the monks of the bönpo monastery Triten Norbutse in Nepal. It is a standard international reference source on Tibetan pre-Buddhist religion and on visual anthropology of the Himalayan area.