Bringing back Afghan Buddhas, with light

“If there is a way to do it so there is no environmental impact, we would support it as it would boost tourism and the images would remind us of what (the cliffs) once looked like,” Sarobi said.

Low environmental impact
Letters obtained by The Associated Press, sent to Yamagata from physics and chemistry experts at the University of Antwerp, and Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, noted that the beams will not affect the cliffs because of low power levels cast from a safe distance of between six and eight miles.

Zahir Aziz, Afghan ambassador to UNESCO, said he would strongly recommend Yamagata’s lasers if they went through UNESCO. He also confirmed that a Swiss plan to rebuild the Buddhas at $30 million a statue is no longer in the works.

Meanwhile, Yamagata, who estimates his project’s cost at up to $9 million, has been busy amassing funds, materials and workers for his vision from his home-base at an industrial warehouse in suburban Torrance, Calif.

The warehouse walls are adorned with colorful photographs and sketches of the Bamiyan and other upcoming projects, including a display in the Fiji Islands where he will create a huge holographic Mylar cube suspended on top of one of the islands. Smaller-scale versions of his most famous conceptual works — including the house-sized holographic cubes exhibited at Bilbao’s Guggenheim and other places throughout the world — are scattered around the studio.

Giving something back
Shortly after his 2003 meeting with Afghan officials in Tokyo, Yamagata visited Bamiyan and was moved by its orphaned children, squalid living conditions and lack of electricity. He decided then that his artwork should also give something back to the war-torn region.

Of the roughly 140 4,000-kilowatt windmills he plans to ship into Afghanistan for the Bamiyan project, Yamagata said that 100 of them would provide power for surrounding villages. He also wants to hire 40 local young men, typically jobless, to dig foundations for the windmills, starting in March 2006. Completion of the project is set for June 2007.

Yamagata, a longtime Los Angeles resident who was born in Japan, said he has already secured co-sponsorship from Mercedes-Benz and will choose a windmill company in December.

“Many people say, ‘My art will heal the people.’ I always avoid ‘heal the people,”’ Yamagata said. “Of course, I help people, but it’s more about not harming people. An artist to me is more about inner matter.”

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