Golden Temple (this is part of my reprieve for not blogging regularly for so long)
Greetings from the InSEA conference in Japan. The other day I went to Kyoto and walked around some of the major sites and saw the Golden Temple. It's just stunning and seems timeless. The interesting thing is that it is not really original and many of the other important monuments are not either. What this is (according to Frommer's) is a 1955 reconstruction of the temple built in the 1390s and the gold leaf was re-done in 1987.
So, what does this do to the concepts of originality, authenticity, and creativity. I find that many of my students are entranced with the ideas (I would call them cultural myths) of childhood complete creative and originality. According to a lecture yesterday by Brent Wilson, he is questioning if child art ever did exist. What does that do to our field? Why does it matter if children make art that is 'untouched' by adult concepts? Why do we even care? Children grow up in our world and are influenced by what they see, hear, taste, touch, smell, etc. (I believe this is in both their 'real life' and in their 'virtual life' too.)
So, can we say that the current version of the Golden Temple is authentic? If so, how is it related to the one that stood at the site that was destroyed in 1950? How does the existence of a replica (the current strucutre) change the original structure? Would it matter if the original structure were not destroyed?
Ok, enough of that for now. I've still got jetlag and cannot sleep past 4am, so this is getting a bit too philosophical for me in my current state.