Viskin created "TEMPLE OF (Heaven and) DESTINY" as part of ABC Art Baja’s PATIO series, and the work remained in the Sculpture Garden until it was reactivated a few months later.
TEMPLE OF (Heaven and) DESTINY
Lying down in the hammock, at a time when the sun’s position allows you to gaze at the sky, is a prayer. The swaying of the hammock sets the rhythm; your mind, the prayer. We begin, as always, with unpaid debts, with debts left uncollected. Some pending paperwork, a looming lawsuit, a divorce, money lost, stolen, or confiscated. The betrayed friend appears, the sacrificed dream. Ah! The crossroads! Her or her. Him or her. Canada or Mérida. To have it or not to have it. To give up or to wait. To flee or to resign oneself. UNAM or Ibero. To participate or to stay on the sidelines.
You sigh, and right through that sigh you see the sky. You see the sky, and you see it looking back at you. If you manage to hold its gaze,the true prayer begins. But that’s another story.
It’s curious that temples have roofs. As if they wanted to protect us from seeing the sky. Some—the Sistine Chapel leading the way—paint the ceiling. They want to replace the sky but only end up giving us a stiff neck; too bad they don’t hang hammocks.
I once had a girlfriend who loved the I Ching. Every night we’d toss the three coins and search for the answers that neither the hammock nor the sky could give us. I miss some passages from that thick book. Standing before the court of bearded Buddhist sages who, using words like “cart,” “river,” and “dragon,” advised us on unpaid or uncollected debts. On the friend who had betrayed us. On UNAM or Ibero. Over time, the “carts,” “rivers,” and “dragons” aligned to drive us apart.
Wikipedia states: The I Ching describes or interprets the present situation of the person consulting it and advises on how the future can be resolved if the correct stance is adopted toward it. And further on: The I Ching describes a universe in which creative energy comes from the heavens.
I wanted to create a ceiling that looks up at the sky—one that distracts from seeing it but at the same time invites you to look at it. I recalled the sixty-four hexagrams that make up the I Ching and their long or short vertical lines. Each one: a letter from a strange alphabet. On the one hand, an ancestral symbol with deep roots; on the other, a nondescript microchip of binary pillars.
We lay down in the hammock and looked up at the ceiling of symbols. We sensed that the message with the correct answer was there. That’s what we have to do! Then, we’ll look up at the sky. But that’s another story.
Boris Viskin
