Melati Suryodarmo Interview by Mark Rappolt Performing to Resist 60 ArtReview Asia Born in Solo, a historic royal capital of Java, back to my hometown, Solo. The studio is just Melati Suryodarmo has, over the past decade, a house I rent, but it has a 5,000sqm garden with established a reputation as one of Southeast a lot of thick trees. I built an open-air platform Asia’s leading performance artists. She is stage with very simple rigging for the lights. particularly feted for her durational works, We organise Undisclosed Territory, an annual which might involve crushing and grinding festival of performance art, and host a ‘labora- hundreds of kilograms of charcoal over a tory’ for performance art, as well as a ‘dance 12-hour period (I’m a ghost in my own house, 2012) laboratory’ for young choreographers in the or dancing on butter until she collapses and region. Every two months, we support young leaves, exhausted (Exergie – Butter Dance, 2000). choreographers or composers who develop per- For almost 20 years she lived and worked formances for a small theatre in collaboration in Germany. While her performances cross with the art centre. It’s all very simple. But cultures, her body, and by extension the I need to do this, and as long as it’s still possi- female body, remain a constant. This month ble to do it in Indonesia, I’m going to continue. she opens a major solo exhibition at Museum I love it, it’s totally independent. , Jakarta. Is this in response to the fact that there aren’t such spaces in Indonesia in general? What’s it been like to develop the They don’t teach performance art here. exhibition for ? The institutions are limited, so I love the idea of supporting an ecosystem of performance art We’ve been working and independent artists. In doing so, I under- on it for three months and I feel a constant déjà stand what is happening in my surroundings. vu. Seeing all the objects and the documentation I think artists cannot be separated from the art again, and trying to remember what happened community, the art environment. If you don’t at those times in my life. It’s like performing my support your environment, you become more archive: although some of those performances alienated from that society. will be performed by others, and some I’ll pre- facing page Transaction of Hollows (2016): sent myself. Dressed in a white suit, the artist notches a bamboo arrow into a gendawa (tradi- Do you have to go into training to do those, or do Suryodarmo obtained a degree in interna- tional Javanese bow) and shoots it into you just take the condition you’re in as a given? tional relations at Padjajaran University the gallery wall. She repeats this action in Indonesia before moving to Germany in 800 times over four hours. There are various methods of training. 1994, where she studied under Butoh dancer For a long durational performance that lasts Lilith Performance Studio, Anzu Furukawa and later Marina Abramovic, Malmö, 2016. Photo: Petter Petterson 12 hours, I really need at least two or three days graduating with a masters in performance of total quietness, but also physical space, and art from the Hochschule für Bildende Künste physical training for endurance. This show Braunschweig in 2002. This shift to dance includes a very tough piece called The Black and performance isn’t without precedence: Ball [first performed in 2005 at the Van Gogh Suryodarmo’s mother was a practitioner Museum, Amsterdam], where I sit in a chair of traditional Javanese dance. Her father, for eight hours a day for four days. The chair Suprapto Suryodarmo, was a dance artist is installed up on the wall more than two and choreographer who founded the Lemah metres from the floor. That’s it. No move- Putih art centre in central Java and taught ment, no nothing. That will be challenging dance for over five decades, developing his own for me to do again. Not a challenge in the method of freeform movement called Amerta. sense of The Guinness Book of Records of course, but I’m afraid that people will consider it that way. In Indonesia they love that sort of thing. You mentioned earlier that your work is a form But I guess people will mostly think, ‘Why of resistance – resistance against what? do you torture yourself by doing this?’ The idea of using the body as my main Why do you torture yourself by doing this? medium is about presenting the life aspect It’s not torture, it’s a resistance. My faith of the person who is making the art. I like in performance art derives from the spirit the idea that the artwork is a ‘lifework’. It’s of resistance. Even after more than 20 years not like the conventional performing arts. of practising performance art – starting in the This is not acting or dance. When I move, underground scene in Berlin, and now perform- it’s not necessarily choreographed. ing in museums, galleries, art fairs – I still do But is it still related to choreography? grassroots activities in my hometown. Initially I was going back and forth between Germany It’s slightly di®erent. Maybe seven decades and Indonesia. Then, in 2012, I decided to move ago, during the boom of performance art, it was Spring 2020 61 facing page, top Exergie – Butter Dance (2000): like that, but not now. Now we have a totally exhibitions within the Singapore Art Museum The artist walks into a space, heading di®erent environment with the addition of and the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra; towards 20 bricks of butter that are the digital world in visual art, where everything the exhibition at Museum is her first prepared on a square dance mat. She stands with her back to the public. looks super-high-pixel and hyperreal. I’m not institutional solo exhibition. She turns around and steps on the butter. scared of this, but we need more energy that is She dances and lets herself fall over if she direct. I think there is a space for the artist and slips on the butter. The artist gets up and the audience to experience something that is You use traditional forms and engage with continues to dance. This action is repeated revealed at that time and in that space, impres- tradition in your work. Is that to change them until she loses her energy. It takes around 20 minutes. The artist takes o® her shoes, sions that are left in the memory of the audience or to respect them? stands up slowly and leaves the space. and the performer themselves that are very For me, tradition has the potential for trans- subtle and very specific. It’s not like a self- VideoBrasil, São Paulo, 2005 (first formation. Tradition has a quality of change healing experience or anything. I hate that performed at Hebbel Theater, Berlin, and exchange. To see tradition as a solid form is 2000). Photo: Isabel Matthaeus – performance of self-healing is not my thing. not correct. Institutions love to make traditions Never? fixed things. But take Javanese dance: many of the traditional Javanese dances have no author. Never. Maybe the only time was for The facing page, bottom Sweet Dreams Sweet There are specific dances that are created for the Promise performance [2002, Landesvertretungs- (2013): Performers in white outfits arrive palace, mostly by the king. But most of the art is in pairs, walk, sit and lie down in the haus Niedersachsen, Berlin], when I was created anonymously. There’s no original creator performance area. They dip their feet into thinking about the subject of femininity and because the dances also change over time. liquid that dyes their stockings blue. Over of my mother, who su®ered from cancer – but two hours, 28 female performers gradu- I love the idea of how traditions are main- then I thought, many people su®er from cancer ally occupy the performance area. tained, but also how traditions can change. too. I try not to present my private stories in Jakarta Biennale, 2013. Traditional knowledge is so rich. I’m slowly my performances. I let go of my personal back- Photo: Sayekti Lawu realising how rich, for example, Javanese ground. Because in many cases, these lead to mysticism is. works that are whiny: ‘I’m a su®ering female, so I scream, and I want to fight for my rights, Were you interested in that connection, and that overleaf, left I Love You (2007): For so I open my shirt and go naked’. I’m a bit grounding within Javanese culture, when you decided between three and six hours, the artist worried about this method. Of course, people to go to Europe? moves around an entirely red perfor- can express these sentiments in whatever way mance area holding onto a sheet of glass My dad had a big influence on me. He (90 × 200 × 1 cm). She repeats the phrase they like, but it’s just not my way. was an artist who developed his own method ‘I love you’. She describes this as a mantra that, ‘depending on the recipients, the A lot of your work concerns gender and the role of dance and movement. He didn’t just create meaning of the phrase becomes blurred. of women. Do you feel like you have to moderate that dance for the stage, but dance for the people. Language is expressed, but it is sometimes for a local audience? He would do di®erent kinds of ritual perfor- not representative of what we think.