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Sutherland, Patrick (2011) Disciples of a Crazy Saint: Photographing the Buchen of Spiti. In: Disciples of a Crazy Saint: Photographing the Buchen of Spiti, 14 February 2011, University of Cambridge.
![[img]](https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/5920/1.haslightboxThumbnailVersion/Sutherland_14022011.jpg)
Patrick Sutherland 14 February 2011. Disciples of a Crazy Saint: Photographing the Buchen of Spiti (37MB) |
| Type of Research: | Conference, Symposium or Workshop Item |
|---|---|
| Creators: | Sutherland, Patrick |
| Description: | The Buchen of Spiti in the Indian Himalayas are performers of rituals, actors and disciples of the fourteenth / fifteenth-century "crazy saint" Thang Tong Gyalpo. They are renowned for performing an elaborate exorcism called the Ceremony of Breaking the Stone. They also enact a local form of the Tibetan Opera for village audiences. These Buddhist morality plays illustrate the principles of karma and ideas of impermanence but also offer a space for uninhibited speech and earthy humour. Photographer Patrick Sutherland has been photographing the Buchen for many years. When he recently gave them some prints he was told that they were so awful that the performers had torn them up and thrown them in the fire. Disciples of a Crazy Saint describes Sutherland's further return to Spiti to investigate Buchen ideas about photography and to negotiate a form of documentation more appropriate to the Buchen self-image as specialist religious practitioners. |
| Official Website: | http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/1582/ |
| Additional Information (Publicly available): | All photographs are copyrighted by Patrick Sutherland. |
| Keywords/subjects not otherwise listed: | Western Tibet, Spiti, the Tibetan Opera, Performance, Tibetan Buddhism. Himalayas |
| Your affiliations with UAL: | Colleges > London College of Communication |
| Date: | 14 February 2011 |
| Funders: | Arts and Humanities Research Council, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (University of Cambridge) |
| Related Websites: | http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/4487, http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/4504/, http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/4493/ |
| Related Websites: | |
| Event Location: | University of Cambridge |
| Projects or Series: | A World Oral Literature Project occasional lecture |
| Date Deposited: | 24 Jun 2013 15:20 |
| Last Modified: | 26 Mar 2014 06:06 |
| Item ID: | 5920 |
| URI: | https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/5920 |
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