Bill Viola + Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

The pioneering video artist Bill Viola engages with leading Tibetan-American Buddhist teacher and artist Ponlop Rinpoche in a free-form discussion of emptiness drawn from their differing experiences of Buddhism.
For 40 years Bill Viola has created architectural video installations, video films, sound environments, electronic music performances, flat panel video pieces, and works for television broadcast, as well as music concerts, opera, and sacred spaces. His works are shown in museums and galleries worldwide and are found in many distinguished collections. His single channel videotapes have been widely distributed on DVD, while his writings have been extensively published and translated for international readers. He is the recipient of many honors and awards, the most recent is the XXI Catalonia International Prize from the Government of Catalonia, 2009. Bill Viola lives and works in Long Beach, California with Kira Perov, his wife and long-time collaborator.
Based in Seattle, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche is a leading Buddhist teacher in North America. An advocate of American and Western Buddhism, he devotes much of his energy to developing a vision of a genuine Western Buddhism that is free from the cultural hang-ups that distract us from the Buddha’s essential message of wakefulness. Rinpoche is a poet, an avid photographer, an accomplished calligrapher and visual artist, with a great love of music, art and urban culture. Born in 1965 in northeast India, Rinpoche was trained in the meditative and intellectual disciplines of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism under the guidance of many of the greatest masters from Tibet’s final pre-exile generation. He is the founder and president of Nalandabodhi, an international network of Buddhist study and meditation centers, and of Nitartha International, a non-profit educational corporation dedicated to preserving the contemplative literature of East Asia. Rinpoche will sign copies of his new book Rebel Buddha: On the Road to Freedom after the program.