Singers of Ten Thousand Lines
25 February 2023
opening Friday, 27 January
6-8pm
Michael Oppitz
Singers of Ten Thousand Lines
27 January - 25 February 2023
Titled “Singers of Ten Thousand Lines” Galerie Buchholz presents a group of photographs in conjunction with the launch of a new book. Both book and exhibited photographs focus on the extraordinary mythical traditions and ritual practices in a remote community in the Himalayan mountains which Michael Oppitz studied over a long period of field research. The book now launched is the English version of his German original, first published in 1981 by Syndikat Verlag under the title “Schamanen im Blinden Land”. That book came out in parallel to a film by the same name, today considered a classic. Now appearing in English as “Shamans of the Blind Country. A picture book from the Himalaya” the new version extends the old by more than a third with additional original documentary photographs. It traces the historical changes that have transformed this mountainous region of Nepal in the last four decades in an extensive epilogue, and it suggests a wider context of ritual healing in the Himalaya by appending a selection of early pictures of shamanism in Siberia.
While the picture book “Shamans of the Blind Country” generates a tension between words and pictures by putting both on equal footing, granting each an equal space, the exhibition “Singers of Ten Thousand Lines” relies exclusively on photographs. Each of these photos stands on its own, without any verbal support. Isolated, each photograph tells its own story, even though all of them are connected by the same social and ritual background: the religious and daily life of the Himalayan village here documented. Only some of the photographs shown display a serial quality, suggesting the continuous run of events from which they were taken. This social run of life was the common starting point for the book, the film, and the photographs, each seeking in their own way to test the possibilities of how ethnography can witness the passing of time.
Michael Oppitz was born in 1942 near Schneekoppe on the Czech-Polish border (Silesia). He grew up in Cologne and studied in Berkeley, Bonn, and Cologne. He earned his PhD in 1974 with a book on the history of structural anthropology, followed by a habilitation on cross-cousin marriage in 1986. He held visiting professorships in England, France, and the United States, and was professor of anthropology at the University of Zurich and director of the Ethnographic Museum, Zurich, from 1991 until 2008, when he retired.
He conducted fieldwork in the Himalayas among the Sherpa (1965), the Magar (1977-1984), the Naxi of Yunnan (1995-1996), and the Qiang of Sichuan (2000-2001). Studies on kinship, mythology, ritual, shamanism, visual anthropology, and material culture were released by various publishers; his most recent book, “Morphologie der Schamanentrommel”, came out in 2013. He is currently working on a study on the myth of lost writing.
His famous film “Shamans of the Blind Country” was shot among the Magar, a mountain people in northwestern Nepal, and premiered at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, in 1980. One of the voices in the English narration is William S. Burroughs.
Michael Oppitz
Initiand spotting helping spirits - successfully, 1978
silver gelatin print, 2021
60 x 40 cm
installation view
Galerie Buchholz, New York 2023
Michael Oppitz
Initiand spotting helping spirits - successfully, 1978
silver gelatin print, 2021
60 x 40 cm
Michael Oppitz
Singers of Ten Thousand Lines
installation view
Galerie Buchholz, New York 2023
Michael Oppitz
Singers of Ten Thousand Lines
installation view
Galerie Buchholz, New York 2023
Michael Oppitz
Master guru catching twig of life tree for pupil, 1978
silver gelatin print, 2021
42 x 28 cm
Michael Oppitz
Taka, capital of the northern Magar, 1984
silver gelatin print, 2021
28 x 42 cm
Michael Oppitz
Bow and arrow as exorcist tools, 1979
silver gelatin print, 2021
28 x 42 cm
Michael Oppitz
Singers of Ten Thousand Lines
installation view
Galerie Buchholz, New York 2023
Michael Oppitz
Diagnosis in sign language: nine days of danger, 1978
silver gelatin print, 2021
42 x 28 cm
Michael Oppitz
Looking for a fugitive soul under world mat, 1979
silver gelatin print, 2021
28 x 42 cm
Michael Oppitz
Approaching the border of fate, 1984
silver gelatin print, 2021
28 x 42 cm
Michael Oppitz
The Dumb Dog, genius of obscenities, 1978
silver gelatin print, 2021
42 x 28 cm
Michael Oppitz
Singers of Ten Thousand Lines
installation view
Galerie Buchholz, New York 2023
Michael Oppitz
Double-faced bridge post, 1984
silver gelatin print, 2021
42 x 28 cm
Michael Oppitz
Singers of Ten Thousand Lines
installation view
Galerie Buchholz, New York 2023
Michael Oppitz
Village guardian carved in wood, 1982
silver gelatin print, 2021
42 x 28 cm
Michael Oppitz
Log bridge over Uttar Ganga, 1984
silver gelatin print, 2021
28 x 42 cm
Michael Oppitz
On the way to the Dark Age, 1984
silver gelatin print, 2021
28 x 42 cm
Michael Oppitz
Stage point of shaman’s ritual journey, 1978
silver gelatin print, 2021
28 x 42 cm
Michael Oppitz
Fishing net protecting clan-members against spirit attack, 1978
silver gelatin print, 2021
40 x 60 cm
installation view
Galerie Buchholz, New York 2023
Michael Oppitz
Fishing net protecting clan-members against spirit attack, 1978
silver gelatin print, 2021
40 x 60 cm
Michael Oppitz
Singers of Ten Thousand Lines
installation view
Galerie Buchholz, New York 2023
Michael Oppitz
Shamans looking out for soul robbers near mat, 1984
silver gelatin print, 2021
40 x 60 cm
Michael Oppitz
Wild dance around tree of ritual birth, 1978
silver gelatin print, 2021
60 x 40 cm
Michael Oppitz
Guild of shamans abandoning neophyte for solitary ritual birth, 1981
silver gelatin print, 2021
42 x 28 cm
Michael Oppitz
Singers of Ten Thousand Lines
installation view
Galerie Buchholz, New York 2023
Michael Oppitz
Singers of Ten Thousand Lines
installation view
Galerie Buchholz, New York 2023
Shaman drumsticks and armrest
original pamphlet for screening of Michael Oppitz “Shamans
of the Blind Country” at the American Museum of Natural History, 1980
front/back
original pamphlet for a screening of Michael Oppitz “Shamans
of the Blind Country” at the University of Texas at Dallas
Michael Oppitz
“Materials on the Making of an Ethnographic Film: Shamans
of the Blind Country”, Goethe Institut, 1982
Michael Oppitz
“Materials on the Making of an Ethnographic Film: Shamans
of the Blind Country”, Goethe Institut, 1982
images of the film screening of “Shamans of the Blind Country”
Taka, October 1982
in: exhibition catalogue Michael Oppitz “Mythische Landschaften”,
Kolumba Museum, Köln 2018
Michael Oppitz
Shamans taking rest on porch of neophyte’s house, 1984
silver gelatin print, 2021
40 x 60 cm
Michael Oppitz
Neophyte with heart of ram and twig of life tree, 1978
silver gelatin print, 2021
42 x 28 cm
Michael Oppitz
Phalanx of shamans dancing to tree of life, 1978
silver gelatin print, 2021
28 x 42 cm
Michael Oppitz
Singers of Ten Thousand Lines
installation view
Galerie Buchholz, New York 2023
Michael Oppitz
Dozing shamans in long-night séance, 1984
silver gelatin print, 2021
40 x 60 cm
Michael Oppitz
Dumb Dog in his favourite role as bawdy entertainer, 1978
silver gelatin print, 2021
60 x 40 cm
Michael Oppitz
Anticipating dancer at the central post of the house, 1984
silver gelatin print, 2021
28 x 42 cm
Michael Oppitz
Frightening witches with the squeals of a pig, 1979
silver gelatin print, 2021
42 x 28 cm
Michael Oppitz
Singers of Ten Thousand Lines
installation view
Galerie Buchholz, New York 2023
Michael Oppitz
Shepherd wrapped in waterproof blanket, 1978
silver gelatin print, 2021
42 x 28 cm
Michael Oppitz
Summer migration to alpine pastures, 1981
silver gelatin print, 2021
28 x 42 cm
Michael Oppitz
Bridge of hope, 1984
silver gelatin print, 2021
28 x 42 cm
Michael Oppitz
Jogi as joker, head of itinerant dance troupe, 1981
silver gelatin print, 2021
42 x 28 cm
Michael Oppitz
Chanting a genesis myth in antiphony, 1978
silver gelatin print, 2021
42 x 28 cm
Michael Oppitz
Singers of Ten Thousand Lines
installation view
Galerie Buchholz, New York 2023
Michael Oppitz
Constructing a rope ladder against malignant spirits, 1978
silver gelatin print, 2021
28 x 42 cm
Spirit trap used in healing ritual
Michael Oppitz
Villagers returning to tree of reincarnation, 1984
silver gelatin print, 2021
20 x 30 cm
Michael Oppitz
Final initiation act in solitude: blindfolded on elevated platform, 1978
silver gelatin print, 2021
42 x 28 cm
Michael Oppitz
Kids playing shaman’s birth, 1979
silver gelatin print, 2021
30 x 20 cm