Melati Suryodarmo - Dissecting Time
In continuation of the Marina Abramović analysis I did a few weeks ago, today we will be discussing one of her students, and one of the most reknown performance artists in Indonesia, Melati Suryodarmo.
Suryodarmo moved to Braunschweig, Germany in 1994 after completing her first degree in international relations. She met Anzu Furukawa by chance, a reknown Japanese butoh dancer and choreographer. Suryodarmo then enrolled into Furukawa's performance art program at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (HBK). Suryodarmo now considers Furukawa to be one of her most important influences.
She continued the program even after Furukawa left the faculty, which led her to meet Marina Abramović. She recounted her first meeting with the reknown artist---“Marina asked everyone why they would like to be in her class. When she turned to me, I said, ‘I want to continue my studies where the last professor left off.’ She looked unimpressed and asked me again. This time I replied, ‘I think you’re very beautiful and I believe I can trust you’—a very silly answer. But that got her to laugh and to accept me in her class.”
Suryodarmo was not only Abramović's student, but also her assistant. While Furukawa taught her how to run productions, Abramović focused on durational solo works, where the concept of time is emphasised, challenging both the artist and viewers and transforming perceptions of space.
Most of Suryodarmo's performances are durational pieces, repeating actions to create tension or to emphasise the concept of the work.
MY FINGERS ARE THE TRIGGERS, 2007
In this work, Suryodarmo connected her ten fingers to rubber ropes which are attached to the ceiling. She moved in concentrated gestures, sticking to low positions to maintain the ropes stretched. The work is inspired by the psychological pressures, such as emotional disorders, that in turn influence the physical conditions. As the ropes are pulled and tension builds up, the artist must maintain a connection between her body, her ropes, and the ceiling.
(Unfortunately I couldn't find a video for this, so pictures will have to do.)
EXERGIE - BUTTER DANCE, 2000
(The video is a 2010 remake.)
Perhaps her most famous work, the Butter Dance is somewhat of an internet meme. Suryodarmo performed a traditional dance piece on 20 blocks of butter, accompanied by Makassar drums. As the dance progressed, Suryodarmo slipped numerous times, often falling flat on her face. And each time, she got back up. The performance pushed the boundaries of time, especially the biological, psychological and physical time we have come to know. As humans, we eventually grow accustomed to the biological time (aging) and physical time (minutes, hours, years). However, in this piece, Suryodarmo explored a whole new dimension of time---that is, the specific moment when she knows she is going to fall, when her uncontrolled reactions took over her consciousness. Everytime Suryodarmo is about to fall, you can see the momentary fear in her eyes and the constrained gestures of her body in futile attempt to maintain control. Essentially, it is about the losing control, and letting gravity and raw instincts take over.
A poem she wrote about the performance:
There are moments
Which I never expect to be happened Which are exploded when I loose my view Which remain empty when I want to fulfil
Accident is just one moment Silence is just one moment
Happiness is just one moment This is just one moment Of being caught by the moment
Braunschweig, January 2000
I AM A GHOST IN MY OWN HOUSE, 2012
In this twelve-hour performance, Suryodarmo crushed and grinded hundreds of kilograms of charcoal on a grinding table amid a pool of charcoal. To the artist, charcoal represented the energy of life, but she has experienced how life can fade away and energy can tire. Charcoals have the potential to create and destroy, it is an instrument of art, yet coal was the key to the Industrial Revolution that started a mass pollution. To Suryodarmo, grinded charcoal will only lose these potentials, but her thoughts have been turned to coal by the "system", in her own words, "if they pass through the processes of liberation, catharsis, and death... maybe they will once again grow into something new."
The key to Suryodarmo's performances is the element of time. Whether it be the main topic or a moving force, time plays a dominant role in performances such as the Butter Dance (where one's body is pushed to experience the interaction between the conscious and subconscious in time), I Am a Ghost In My Own House (where time is seen as both a destructive and constructive force), and other works such as The Komodo Files and Cruise Control. Time is also a crucial element for my AIP2 final project, since it'll explore the development of artistic behaviour as time goes by. I am hoping to create an artwork, which I'll proceed to cover up or destroy, and repaint over, and destroy, again and again. As time goes by, the actions will become more violent, to reflect on the different perspective I have gained in my journey, beginning from the first program. However, I have yet to narrow down my focus---right now I'm thinking of taking the development of art throughout history as the main topic (as it is also what AIP2 is about), reflecting how, as the times change, art becomes more abstract---more expressive yet less cohesive.
My viewpoint on this matter is undecided. I value the diverse expression that comes from the freedom, yet at the same time it makes me question if there is any real value to art. If anything can be art, what defines it, then? If everything is art, then nothing is art, because in order to create a concept there must be an opposite. Take the idea of good and evil. If we never knew evil, then we'd never know what good is, because for us to identify good there must be things that are non-good. Likewise, if anything can be art, then nothing is truly art, for without the idea of non-art, the concept loses its meaning.
I think this is the key concept to my final project---the sense of loss, misdirection, and emptiness caused by the declining cohesiveness of what is considered "art". As I plunge deeper into the realm of fine arts and graphic design, I feel myself becoming more cynical towards words such as "artistic", "rebel", "intelligent", "deep", even "beautiful". To me, these words have lost their meaning, or are close to. Intelligence, I find, is no longer about hammering upon existing ideas and building from them, but more about knowing which scholar said so-and-so. "Artistic" is used to describe things you don't understand but pretend to, for the sake of appearances.
In the end, it creates a paradoxical situation. I love what I do, but it is nigh impossible to determine what is art and what isn't. The more I draw and paint and read, the more I am challenged to question these definitions. And that is what I'd like to explore in this final project---the development of my feelings and thoughts towards art, the creation and destruction of meaning.