THE STRUGGLE OF JACOB the-struggle-of-jacob | Page 9

Regarding my religious identity, as a Zen Buddhist monk
invited to a Catholic setting, faced with such an intense
intellectual approach to the subject of the Struggle of Jacob, I
perceived that for me no exegetical problem exists. Zen is
based upon the silence of the body, of the word and of the mind,
as a natural dimension of the awakening experience and the
basis for practicing awareness in everyday life.
Familiarity with silence renders words clear, evident, even the
sometimes enigmatic words of the Bible. On the other hand,
Christianity is founded on the word, on the text of revelation, on
the book. Normally, even praying is “to talk” with God, and
meditating is principally “to think”. Profound silence however -
as understood in the spiritual exercises of Sant'Ignatius - is just
a mystic choice, and is in fact its point of contact with Zen.
Regarding my artistic identity I realized that in effect I was not
interested in analyzing The Struggle of Jacob because “I AM
JACOB”. I do not have the problem of needing to study,
understand or interpret my own story. The artist lives at first
hand the very real problem of struggling - both internally
and externally - and of surviving.
My new proposal was therefore to incarnate, first of all, as a
first phase, The Struggle of Jacob through an action painting
performance, together with the French sculptress and
performance artist Astrid Fremin.