The World Memory Theatre::A Mythopoetic Environment

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T H E M Y T H O P O E T I C E N V I R O N M E N T

The twelve contiguous sets comprising the World Memory Theatre are rich in multi-cultural color and texture, immersing the visitor in an eclectic environment of regional architecture and folk motifs. Display areas are defined by a variety of traditional arches, alcoves, niches, platforms and other design elements that together will give clear physical continuity to our walk-through ‘theater-in-the-round’.

Placed along walls or clearstanding, the cabinets, painted chests, decorative shelf-units and carved tables also serve to display immovable artifacts. These furnishings may be from Portugal or Persia, from Sri Lanka or Saudi Arabia, from the Malabar Coast or Morocco.

Traditional folkstyles will include wooden and tiled wainscoting from many regions, decorative cornices, fluted pillars, leaf-corbels and floral festoons; a cupola, a moon-window, a shoji screen or a fusuma. Original graphics consist of photographs, woodcuts, origami, watercolors, illuminated panels and miniatures.

The following description of graphics, sculpture, masks, totems, icons, ritual objects, musical instruments, textiles, carpets and pottery is intended to give a sense of the flow and juxtaposition of the art as it might be configured

Beneath an illuminated Sri Yantra from India we might see a Shona sculpture from Zimbabwe next to a Hopi kachina doll from Arizona; a barong mask from Bali on a Quechua tapestry from the Peruvian Andes may be hanging above a carved Kashmiri rosewood chest; a Russian icon from Vladimir would be seen next to a pair of Anatolian onyx candelabra from Bergama and a ceremonial pointing-stick from the Solomon Islands. Nearby is a woven leather quiver and hunting bow from the Cameroons skirted by a pair of Chinese ceramic horses from Suzhou. Above them a Mahakala thanka from Tibet is hanging across from an Aztec calendar from Mexico.

In front of an image of the Australian monolith Uluru (Ayer’s Rock), we might see a bronze Shiva Nataraj from Tanjore dancing near a stone sculpture of the Mayan Chacmool; both are seen on an inlaid mother-of-pearl Moorish chest from the Phillipines.

Along the same wall is an Inuit lithograph from Labrador next to an Egyptian winged Isis on crafted papyrus. Below these is a painted Finnish wedding chest with an Indian sitar and a wicker-covered rain-stick from the Amazon. In a niche next to the sitar is a Thai standing golden Buddha from Ayuthya. Across from the niche is a Judaic menorah from Safed, Israel, and a Hindu temple conch from Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu, South India; these two ritual objects are placed on a Syrian brass tray from Aleppo, on an hexagonal Yemeni arabesque table. Nearby are some leather Tuareg cushions from the Algerian Sahara together with tribal rugs from Baluchistan arranged along a small platform skirted by a decorated Ndebele clay wall from South Africa. Behind the platform we may look through four Venetian stone arches onto an Italian Renaissance garden. Spread across the rugs are several Uygur brass ewers from Chinese Turkestan.

As the visitor, aided by an audio headset and a laser pointer, examines in detail each of the twelve sets, opening drawers and cupboards, moving across carpets, around furnishings and through arches, viewing the eighty to one hundred objects on each set, there is a sense of exploring the rooms of a global ‘folkstyle palace.’ A dramatic visual poem continually unfolds as color and form, texture and density, light and shadow, create the ideal story-telling environment of both harmony and mystery.

F O L K A R T S E L E C T I O N

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B O R O B U D U R

This introduction to Borobodur was written by Peter Oldfield for the UNESCO World Heritage Web Site. It is an example of a cross-culturally referenced archetype, and it is also an archaic form of memory theater.

The world’s largest Buddhist monument, in Central Java, mysteriously abandoned nearly a thousand years ago, offered a symbolic story-image of the Cosmic Mountain rising out of a Primordial Sea. Such stories have occurred again and again in many cultural settings, invariably representing the creation itself and also the relationship of human existence to it. These two fundamental ideas have figured in much of human history, be it as the Ziggurat (Pinnacle) of Sumerian Ur, or as the ritual adaptation of Mount Fuji in the Shinto tradition of Japan; as the mythopoetic Mount Meru of today’s India, or as the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, known as ‘China’s Navel’, and also as the Incan city of Cuzco in Peru, known as ‘the Navel of the World.’ In each of these, the same distinct function of the creative ‘Center of the World’ is implied.

Borobudur is a gigantic stupa or reliquary in the form of a sacred mandala. It is therefore a symbol of unity and wholeness. The graphic form of the mandala served as a visual device for focusing the attention. Using a traditional symbology, it denoted metaphysical ideas and illustrated spiritual teachings. The stupa was laid out according to the traditional Buddhist canon of sacred proportions. As a mandala it symbolized the Axis Mundi in the form of a ‘world pillar,’ risen from the Waters of Chaos.

Conceived as an open-air 'illustrated text', it is a complex, multi-tiered structure in three architectural sections: the square base, the hemispheric inverted bowl and the crowning spire. These denoted the three grand divisions of the universe: the material world, the subtle world of thought forms, and the ‘causal’ world of cosmic or spiritual order.

The form of the reliquary was seen to unite magnitude and simplicity, while reflecting the fundamental conditions of human existence, that is to say, birth and death. This theme of mortality is, of course, common to the entire humanity, touching our deepest roots and our universal sense of ‘the human predicament'.

It was the custom to walk around the monument, going from one level to the next, along the broad ambulatory galleries displaying sculptured tableaux from the Jataka, the stories of the Buddha’s former lives, together with many details of life in ancient Java. The pilgrims would arrive at last at the foot of the central spire, perhaps now prepared for an epiphany of the spirit.

This same circumambulatory approach to the center is to be found in the spiritual culture of many peoples: it was seen in the annual ceremonial dance practiced by the Aztecs around an axial sacred tree, the Xocotl, and the subsequent challenge for the young men to climb it. Another ‘indirect’ approach is found in the Christian maze, in Chartres Cathedral, with its slow movement from the visible outer to the invisible center, the Cosmic City, or ‘Jerusalem.’ A similar practice is seen in the periodic gathering of thousands of worshipers joining in prayerful movement around the Holy Ka’aba at Mecca. A pre-Christian ‘rite of spring’ can be seen to this day in villages throughout the British Isles at the annual dance around the Maypole.

As long as human communities have gathered together thoughtfully, for celebration or in reverence, symbolic rites similar to these have survived worldwide, in many forms.

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