Dadang's performance mesmerizes Vancouver's art lovers<\/p>\n
By Astri Wright<\/p>\n
VANCOUVER, CANADA (JP): It was a long time coming but
\nVancouver artists and art lovers witnessed for the first time
\nrecently a live performance by Dadang Christanto, one of
\nIndonesia's foremost contemporary artists.<\/p>\n
While modern and contemporary Indonesian and Southeast Asian
\nart history have been taught at the university level in Canada
\nfor the past six years, the event marked the first direct
\nexperience of contemporary Indonesian art by the professional
\nCanadian art world.<\/p>\n
Dadang was visiting Canada early last month in connection with
\nthe opening of the exhibition Traditions, Tensions: Contemporary
\nArt in Asia. He was one of five artists from each of the
\ncountries invited to Vancouver for the opening and symposium.
\nThe other artists were Imelda CajipeqEndaya from the Philippines,
\nNavin Rawanchaikul from Thailand, Bhupen Khakar from India and
\nSoo Ja-kim from Korea.<\/p>\n
Though all the artists participated in the symposium, Dadang
\nwas the only one to perform. He had just arrived from Japan,
\nwhere his most recent installation piece Witness was displayed in
\nTokyo for the exhibition Glimpses into the Future: Art in
\nSoutheast Asia 1997.<\/p>\n
After the 10 days in Vancouver, he was headed for Germany,
\nwhere he was going to visit, work and perform before returning to
\nIndonesia in early July.<\/p>\n
Multiracial<\/p>\n
Canada as a nation was shaped by the history of the encounter
\nbetween its aboriginal peoples and successive waves of colonizing
\nand immigrating peoples from other parts of the world. As a
\nmultiracial state soon dominated by people of North European
\nancestry, Canada has in the last two decades developed a policy
\nand a language to attempt to accommodate the many different
\nracial and ethnic groups living within its borders.<\/p>\n
The idea of multiculturalism was launched here many years
\nbefore the word came into common use in the United States. Asian
\nart and Asian-Canadian art, encompassing visual art, film and
\nliterature, has had increasing exposure and gained in interest in
\nthe last 10 years.<\/p>\n
It is thus perhaps surprising that Canada only now hosted its
\nfirst Indonesian artist. This probably reflects the small number
\nof Indonesian immigrants to Canada. Although Indonesian
\nimmigrants are few, their numbers are augmented by the many
\npeople who have traveled or lived in Indonesia and who desire to
\nmaintain their interest in Indonesian culture after their return.<\/p>\n
This has contributed to the general increase in recent
\npolitical and economic developments in the Asia-Pacific region.
\nThe cultural side-effects of such change are clearly evident in a
\ncity like Vancouver, which is characterized by the presence of
\nlarge populations from various parts of Asia.<\/p>\n
Shedding self<\/p>\n
Dadang's performance was held at the Western Front in
\nVancouver, a cooperatively run artist space and gallery
\ncelebrating its 20th anniversary this year. Apart from the large
\nart space, the old renovated building houses offices, a guest
\nroom, and a library\/archive with audio and video recordings of
\nall their events, ranging from music to drama to installation.<\/p>\n
The space offers an alternative to the commercial or the
\nestablishment gallery and museum world, where artists can be
\nexperimental. Western Front pioneered many directions that later
\nbecame mainstream, like performance art, interactive art events
\nand attention to multicultural or inter-racial concerns in art
\nand expression.<\/p>\n
Asian-Canadian artists began to perform at Western Front as
\nearly as 1987, a good 10 years before the established art world
\nwas ready to embrace an exhibition like Traditions\/Tensions,
\nwhich opened at the Vancouver Art Gallery at the same time.<\/p>\n
On the night of the performance, Dadang was introduced by his
\nlocal artist host, Warren Arcan, an aboriginal Canadian artist
\nand filmmaker of Cree background. The installation piece glowed
\nsilently white in the spotlights. On the top of about 20 white
\nwooden pedestals were perched larger-than-lifesize, unfired clay
\nheads.<\/p>\n
In the center, above the pedestals and suspended from the
\nceiling, was a whitewashed baseball bat. Before the stage of
\npedestals was a small platform with a single large pan filled
\nwith wet white clay.<\/p>\n
As the lights dimmed, people stopped talking. Silence fell and
\ndeepened. No movement in the room. Growing anticipation. Time
\npassed tangibly. A woman got up and went to sit on her knees to
\nthe right of the platform, Javanese sinden singer, style. She
\nintoned a Javanese song, singing softly, intimately, in a high,
\npure voice, in part singing words, in part just humming.<\/p>\n
The audience sat between wakefulness and sleep, between dream
\nand observation, ready like clay to be shaped into a new form. We
\ndrifted on her notes away from time-specific places and lives and
\nup, into the attracted, still empty canvas of the imagination.<\/p>\n
With slow, deliberate movements, Dadang walked into the center
\nand up onto the platform. Pensive, his thoughts filled with a
\nmemory or a premonition, he began to take off his dark jacket,
\nfolding it carefully and placing it on the edge of the platform.<\/p>\n
He took off his shoes and socks. Each movement was careful,
\nmeaningful, pointing to a history none of us knew, perhaps a
\nprivate history we were not meant to know. Under his streetpants
\nwere nylon jogging pants and under his shirt was a T-shirt. The
\nlogo, Asia-Pacific Triennale, made everyone laugh before lapsing
\nback into the fullness of silent observation. As a trained and
\nprofessional actor, the laughter from the audience did not for a
\nmoment bring Dadang out of his role. Soon the artist stood there,
\nnaked but for red strips of cloth wrapped around his private
\nparts.<\/p>\n
He sat down before the bowl of clay and slowly began to
\nlather it over his entire body, beginning with his feet and
\nworking upward. The slowness, the strange transformation of the
\nskin into wet clay, the mixture of melancholy and happiness
\nremembered and held in the mind of the artist, and the smacking
\nsounds of the wet, viscous clay all mixed with the humming of the
\nfemale vocalist to create a moment of intensity and intimacy.<\/p>\n
Smashing event<\/p>\n
With only the area around his mouth and eyes uncovered, the
\nartist stood up and looked out into the darkness one last time.
\nThen he turned, moved up on the stage and, crouching with his
\nback to the audience, covered his face with his hands. When he
\nturned around again, still crouching like an animal, Dadang's
\nface was completely transformed into a white mask with the
\nreddish stare of inhuman eyes turned toward us.<\/p>\n
The artist as we had known him was no longer there. Shorn of
\nrecognizable signs of humanity, before us was a male being of an
\nunknown kind. The creature now represented something completely
\nunknown. Gone was also the human voice; the sinden had vanished.<\/p>\n
The white clay creature moved slowly among the pedestals and
\nheads with crouching movements, all human intelligence gone from
\nhis eyes. As he searched around with no plan and no goal, high
\nsounds, somewhere between grunts and whines, emitted from his
\nmouth at intervals. Encountering the bat hanging at face level,
\nhe reached up and grabbed it, breaking the string which held it.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, with a movement faster than the eye could register,
\nthe bat was raised and came crashing down on a terracotta head,
\nsmashing it to pieces. A thick, black liquid inside the head
\nsmeared the bat and splattered the body.<\/p>\n
The reaction to the violence in the movement, the sound of the
\nshattering of the hard clay and the destruction of that shape we
\nhad recognized as symbolic of a human head and face, by extension
\nourselves, was palpable in the room. People seemed to stop
\nbreathing.<\/p>\n
Eyes strained wider. Clay creature lurked on, through the
\nforest of heads, occasionally grunting. His sounds signaled no
\nmeaning or intent. These were sounds someone would make who had
\nnot yet understood the potential for exchange, negotiation and
\ncommunication inherent in the human or animal vocal chords. Words
\nlike primitive, violent and precivilization-civilization echoed
\nin my head.<\/p>\n
All at once the bat swung through the air again, we jumped in
\nour seats, and another head lay smashed to pieces on the floor.
\nOur bodies strained against the next repetitions we knew must
\nfollow: mesmerized, forty pairs of eyes followed the slow
\nprogress of the creature as its actions escalated with a sense of
\ndeepening drunkenness mixed with confusion. When confusion became
\ndominant in the creature's small-size consciousness, it slowly
\nbacked off the stage and disappeared into the dark. Silence fell
\nonce again.<\/p>",
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