“The Eight Winds” is a 4 minute, six monitor, six channel video installation set up as a tower or totem. It’s a series of eight portraits of eight different men reflecting on a moment in which they faced one of the Eight Winds. In Nicherin Buddhism, the Eight Winds are prosperity, decline, disgrace, honor, praise, censure, suffering and pleasure. For each portrait, the individual’s experience was broken down into the five components of life. They are: form, perception, conception, volition and consciousness and are said to temporarily combine as an individual living being. The top, sixth monitor, was left free of text. As with the Ten Worlds, this piece is more about how we respond to a potentially life changing moment, rather than the cause of that moment or any specific circumstances. “The Eight Winds” marked the artist’s first use of text in video.
“The Eight Winds” was presented at White Columns in New York in 1990, sponsored by Mitsubishi Electric.
