Conceived as part of the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts mentored by Thalia Hoffman / Manar Zuabi. Make Art at Your Own Risk 19. – 31. 8. 24
Going on this sojourn/sabbatical amid the broken state of the world and within myself, I chose to sign up for a course co-facilitated by Thalia Hoffman and Manar Zuabi entitled "Make Art at Your Own Risk"- one that explores practices orienting resistance against socio-political hegemonies. The course was sectioned into four tributaries: Language, Boundaries, Participatory Art, and Activist Interventions in Public Space, all of which oscillate within spaces that evoke loss and violence.
I felt that the wound of mourning over Nani was still raw but I wanted desperately to use this intense two weeks as a way to unpick the layers of that grief and turn it into something beautifully comforting. I surfaced an idea of resistance built upon tenderness- I see my protest of this universal sadness using languages that are balladic, in forms ever soft and feelings melancholic.
I thought about the construct of time alot- of its borrowedness, its fleetingness- contracts of being within its interiority- therein promised, prophesized, prolonged, perforated, in which love can exist for only so long. Its detriments aside, I see a resonance in the gesture of smoking, of letting time elapse, of unseen transactions which all surround time, space and letting go- when it is time to let go. This metaphor alludes so much to memory- reigniting remembrance only to forget again. Until death.
I felt that the wound of mourning over Nani was still raw but I wanted desperately to use this intense two weeks as a way to unpick the layers of that grief and turn it into something beautifully comforting. I surfaced an idea of resistance built upon tenderness- I see my protest of this universal sadness using languages that are balladic, in forms ever soft and feelings melancholic.
I thought about the construct of time alot- of its borrowedness, its fleetingness- contracts of being within its interiority- therein promised, prophesized, prolonged, perforated, in which love can exist for only so long. Its detriments aside, I see a resonance in the gesture of smoking, of letting time elapse, of unseen transactions which all surround time, space and letting go- when it is time to let go. This metaphor alludes so much to memory- reigniting remembrance only to forget again. Until death.
Handwritten lyrics sheet of Gurindam Jima, a classical Malay ballad by Rafael Buang and R.Ismail circa 1965.
As the course traversed the notion of "language", there was a song which I caught myself humming incessantly at that particular part of the sojourn. It was a Malay classic called "Gurindam Jiwa" (trans. Parables of the Soul) which was originally sung by R. Ismail dan Rafeah Buang in a 1965 film of the same title. The music was composed by Wandly Yazid and the lyrics by Hamzah Hussien. This is a quintessential olden melody from the Nusantara, so having it biting my memory in the Western hemisphere was quite a dissonance. It felt almost like a resistance, in itself.
It too, was one of Nani's favourite melodies. We would sing the preamble and let her finish the song to test her fading memory. One of my greatest inheritances from her was her gift of tales- from the Kampong, of a time that felt familiar yet distant. I see a lot of poetry through her eyes. And voice. She was my first storyteller.
I wanted to pay homage to this tune, which is typically for a romantic lover but I have always perceived this song as an ode to longing, to a departed soul, an evermost saudade. I channeled the roh of this song that I carried within me to this ground many seas away and wanted it to bear witness.
If my kind of resistance is a language that needs no translations to understand its depths, a balladic verse that mirror my grief, this was going to be it. I put these words forth as loci of this artwork..
It too, was one of Nani's favourite melodies. We would sing the preamble and let her finish the song to test her fading memory. One of my greatest inheritances from her was her gift of tales- from the Kampong, of a time that felt familiar yet distant. I see a lot of poetry through her eyes. And voice. She was my first storyteller.
I wanted to pay homage to this tune, which is typically for a romantic lover but I have always perceived this song as an ode to longing, to a departed soul, an evermost saudade. I channeled the roh of this song that I carried within me to this ground many seas away and wanted it to bear witness.
If my kind of resistance is a language that needs no translations to understand its depths, a balladic verse that mirror my grief, this was going to be it. I put these words forth as loci of this artwork..
Still fixated on two variables, the span of smoking a cigarette as metaphor of encountering and Gurindam Jiwa as balladic undercurrent of the artwork, I began developing this desire to embark on a performative gesture to further conceptualise the cycle between time, grief and letting go.
I too, was invested in the acoustics of grief. What does it sound like, who spectates, surrenders, submits, what is transacted in this act of witnessing, what gets lost, what is left after it all?
I wanted to ritualise this act of mourning through a familial memory, by offering a song, and in turn, the collaborator offers me their being, their presence, and time - however time we have in that act of encountering. It almost feels like a contract between two souls albeit a futile one.
Belgin (@belginkanaat ), a kindred fellow of the course was kind enough to partake in this exchange. Earlier in the course, we activated a performative gesture entitled Doa Hujan (Rain Prayer) that excavates themes of nearness and distance surrounding our faith.
Here, Belgin and I sat at both ends of Nani's purple shawl before we both entered our trances-trailing songs and smoke. After the ritual, Belgin returned me the bud (the same one with the Istirja written across it), and I wrapped up the situ.
This was a mere exercise before the actual final piece but it sure felt necessary, an activation. Time really felt warped into our own, our moment drowning the hostel's ambient noises and the summer heat. It felt like the offerings grew a soul and occupied, it possessed time that was meant to elope us. We stay until we can no longer stay, and then we Return.
I too, was invested in the acoustics of grief. What does it sound like, who spectates, surrenders, submits, what is transacted in this act of witnessing, what gets lost, what is left after it all?
I wanted to ritualise this act of mourning through a familial memory, by offering a song, and in turn, the collaborator offers me their being, their presence, and time - however time we have in that act of encountering. It almost feels like a contract between two souls albeit a futile one.
Belgin (@belginkanaat ), a kindred fellow of the course was kind enough to partake in this exchange. Earlier in the course, we activated a performative gesture entitled Doa Hujan (Rain Prayer) that excavates themes of nearness and distance surrounding our faith.
Here, Belgin and I sat at both ends of Nani's purple shawl before we both entered our trances-trailing songs and smoke. After the ritual, Belgin returned me the bud (the same one with the Istirja written across it), and I wrapped up the situ.
This was a mere exercise before the actual final piece but it sure felt necessary, an activation. Time really felt warped into our own, our moment drowning the hostel's ambient noises and the summer heat. It felt like the offerings grew a soul and occupied, it possessed time that was meant to elope us. We stay until we can no longer stay, and then we Return.
And with all this urgency to manifest a tender kind of exhale through art, and after processing that performative exercise with Belgin, I figured the most appropriate way to go through this catharsis was to just be- in solitary, at one with nature. To occupy the threshold of time with just myself, Nani's shawl and the sunset as witness.
0632hours- just 15 minutes shy from the firstfall of sunrise, the day she left. Probably alone at the hospital bed. It terrifies me imagining her last moment. I wondered if it would be less frightening had there been the sun to softly usher those final moments. Maybe it would be a gentler embrace into Grace.
I thought it would be poetic justice to give those 15 minutes of could have been sunlight back to this departure. A return, an ode, a re-offering of lost time. So in the dying of light over Salzburg, I lamented Gurindam Jiwa into the air, letting the hurt (luka) waft through the open field and into the sunset behind as witness. I rage and wage beautifully, trying to blur the borders between the Here and the Hereafter.
If the course was about making art at risk, I see mine as not just a vulnerable surrendering but also a defiant act of remembering, of seeing sadness and melancholic as a form of raging. Of seeing acceptance as a radical act of remembering and forgetting. A gurindam lupa... a gurindam luka....
0632hours- just 15 minutes shy from the firstfall of sunrise, the day she left. Probably alone at the hospital bed. It terrifies me imagining her last moment. I wondered if it would be less frightening had there been the sun to softly usher those final moments. Maybe it would be a gentler embrace into Grace.
I thought it would be poetic justice to give those 15 minutes of could have been sunlight back to this departure. A return, an ode, a re-offering of lost time. So in the dying of light over Salzburg, I lamented Gurindam Jiwa into the air, letting the hurt (luka) waft through the open field and into the sunset behind as witness. I rage and wage beautifully, trying to blur the borders between the Here and the Hereafter.
If the course was about making art at risk, I see mine as not just a vulnerable surrendering but also a defiant act of remembering, of seeing sadness and melancholic as a form of raging. Of seeing acceptance as a radical act of remembering and forgetting. A gurindam lupa... a gurindam luka....
As a closure of this gestural activation, Gurindam Luka, I collaborated with the land (tanah) to keep my sadness, on my behalf. Serendipitously, after offering 15minutes of the song to the sunset, I spotted a white feather perched onto a mount of earth near where I stood. I knew at that moment, I wanted to rest this ache at that site. It almost felt like a divine intervention, marker, suggestion.
I laid the paper with the handwritten lyrics and the cigarette end from Belgin within the cavity and proceeded to bury these vestiges. There is something about spirit/semangat of feelings that I thought could possess these vessels. The intangible into tangible. This act felt like submitting conduits, a delivery of love to Nani. Almost akin to a prayer, by nature.
My faith and culture often placehold the bodily experience with so much closeness to the ground and its depths. This burial is truly becoming a rite of passage. That a song (of sadness) too, will meet its end. Until, one day, another bout unfurl. Until the next Gurindam...
I laid the paper with the handwritten lyrics and the cigarette end from Belgin within the cavity and proceeded to bury these vestiges. There is something about spirit/semangat of feelings that I thought could possess these vessels. The intangible into tangible. This act felt like submitting conduits, a delivery of love to Nani. Almost akin to a prayer, by nature.
My faith and culture often placehold the bodily experience with so much closeness to the ground and its depths. This burial is truly becoming a rite of passage. That a song (of sadness) too, will meet its end. Until, one day, another bout unfurl. Until the next Gurindam...
The aftermath of burial.
Installation view during the Open Studios at Fortress Hohensalzburg
