Canadians have mixed reactions to Dadang's show

VANCOUVER, CANADA (JP): After the performance and while Dadang Christanto was bathing and dressing, Warren Arcan announced that the artist wished to hear the audience's reactions to his performance.

This feedback session is in the tradition of grassroots theater in Indonesia and many places around the world.

Yet it is somewhat antithetical in the West today, where people are used to being able to remain passive consumers of events (think of TV, movies, theater, art exhibitions).

Dadang returned in his dark jacket and pants to enthusiastic applause and sat down to hear what people thought. At first, they were still transfixed by the experience and shy to speak up. Slowly, one after the other, they began to relate how the performance had affected them. Some had experienced the work at an intensely individualistic and personal level, others as a moving philosophical and humanistic statement.

Yet others had sensed a clear political message. They attempted to get the artist to explain how particular features were meant to symbolize specific aspects of the current situation in Indonesia.

Some people even went on from speaking about their feelings to giving authoritative statements about what the artist had intended to convey, with little regard for the fact that the artist was right there to be asked. This was a sad comment on the high status given to criticism which ignores artistic intent altogether.

A well-known American political scientist's question about whether Dadang's smashing of five heads held particular meaning was answered with a big smile and the comment "No, there was no intentional meaning to the number".

Dadang explained that he never planned the smallest details of the performance, but improvised as he went along and as the mood inspired him. In his first performance of the piece, in New York City in connection with the first large opening of Traditions/Tensions, he had only smashed three heads. He said the exercise had been so emotionally draining that he couldn't go on.

Dadang said he would not have undressed completely if he had done the performance in Indonesia. Nudity easily becomes an issue at home, he added.

A veteran artist at Western Front said Dadang's performance was the most moving he had seen performed there.

Many questions came to people's minds as they silently sat transfixed by the drama -- was the shedding of clothing symbolic of the shedding of culture and civilization? Was the covering of the body with clay the return to a more pure, natural state of being or a symbol of death?

Was the depiction of the progression of the state of mind evidence how violence, once started, feeds on itself and lowers the consciousness to the very deepest levels? Can watching such a performance purge the violence inherent in every person who views it?

Dadang's performance lay in its masterful yet simple conception and execution, his skills as an actor and the fact that the meaning worked on many levels. One could interpret it as a statement about human evolution and the essence of civilization, or a statement about the potential for violence that lies within every individual. It also illustrated something about the addictive quality of violent action. It also, perhaps, draws on specific historical and biographical experiences.

The meaning of the work is thus rooted in a place where the philosophical and the political, the personal and the social, intersect. In this way, although the specific readings and meanings of the performances vary according to the time, place and audience concerned, Dadang's work has something to offer wherever he takes it in the world.

Chantal Pontbriand has written that performance art "is a form of art in which the reception the spectator offers to the work is integrated into the process of production. By reception, we understand the ability of the spectator to play the role of receiver, to exercise a critical function, and even to become a producer himself. Performance makes possible the reversibility of communication's terms, producer and receiver interchanging their roles".

The strength of performance art that goes beyond the narcissistic concerns of a single individual to address issues of broader relevance, like that created by Dadang and other Indonesian, Southeast Asian, Chinese, Dutch, American, Brazilian or aboriginal artists, is that it involves the spectator directly in the act of making meaning out of form and expression.

People come to the art event as viewers but they may leave with a much fuller and more satisfying experience, having been asked to be cocreators to an entire event which will never again be repeated in exactly the same way. The audience in this case left after a first-hand encounter with Indonesia's contemporary art, one of its exponents and his concerns. (Astri Wright)

The writer is an expert on Southeast Asian Arts and an associate professor at the University of Victoria, Canada.