Category: Selected Works

Foolish Land-Clearers
a 45 km long landscape performance
• May 26th – June 1st 2023 •
• Tamsweg – Zederhaus, Salzburg Lungau •
• Supergau Festival 2023 •

this performance plays with the position of ownership under the power influence of personal, communal, and nature itself. we – three foolish land clearers — will walk from Tamsweg to Zederhaus to talk with the public, negotiate with nature, gaze at and react to culture, power, history, exclusivity and markets. we invite you to participate in our performance and encounter Lungau’s landscape, which we have intervened with movements, archives, and mantras.

we are bringing news about hillocks in Jember, which are about to be demolished. borrowing Samson’s superpowers for us to bring back home. exchanging parts of hillock’s ecosystem with your stories about Lungau’s landscape. we planted the corpses on tops of hillocks, do tourists leave smoke on your snow? we can be pots of bonsai for you to display on your lavish apartment. my ancestors were land clearers. we are bringing your mountains which got bald, ran over by snowboards. hello, market, can I sell hillocks here?

once upon a time, 2000 years ago, on the far east of Java Island,
the Gadung Mountain was heavily pregnant. the nature rumbled.
the cry of Gadung is the cry of 22 cracked bones.
a baby was ejected, 60 km to the west. the hillocks were born.

then,
the bodies of hillocks were slashed,
the hearts were labelled with ownerships,
the faces became cassavas and bamboos,
the feet turned into paddy fields,
and, on the tops of their heads,
corpses were planted.

Supported by Land Salzburg, Supergau Festival, Consina, and Bedadoeng Project

Work In Progress

In a year when the economic crisis is very much latent, the Indonesian government is aggressively allocating its funds to the food estate program. In short, it is a food storage heralded as the country’s food supply in the case of crisis. However, in practice, the aroma of colonialism a la cultuurstelsel, which was done by the Dutch during its occupancy of Indonesia, shows its traces. “Forced” renting and planting are reintroduced. The president asked thousands of village heads to negotiate with farmers and land owners, which pressured them not to refuse, “for the sake of the homeland”. Exasperatingly, instead of the farmers themselves, the military is appointed to cultivate the agricultural lands.

Corn, to the Indonesian people, is the symbol of survival amidst poverty – a symbol of hunger. Corn was once a political tool for several previous Indonesian presidents used to alleviate people’s tension over an ongoing crisis. 

Prior to the Green Revolution of Indonesia, paddy rice was an expensive and exclusive crop. Most of the people who resided in the eastern part of Indonesia consumed corn instead of paddy rice. Corn rice is the staple food of the poor here, especially in areas where the terrains are too dry and not suitable for paddy.

The biofuel practice is like opening the door to continuous social inequality. Third-world countries will only be an evergreen land for the rich to invest their money, while hunger is never really solved here. 

Observing the phenomenon of biofuels – the combustion of corn and driving cars – leads us to re-evaluate the welfare of humans and nature. Has mobility become much more valuable than hunger? Is mobility created only through the act of combustion? In fact, the mobility of the minds of the poor (historical materialism) to process corn into staple food has brought us a better standard of living. The corn we eat makes us move our bones and joints.

Based on Afrizal Malna’s writing, there are seven performative reconstruction videos produced in Studio Klampisan’s dapur imajinasi mama program. the kitchen as an imagination reflects images of family life, family dreams, hopes, failures and suffering. this imagination can turn into a kind of magical and thrilling adventure, because some of these workers are not equipped with sufficient knowledge about the language, skills and local culture in which they work. the use of 360 camera technology in the making of this performative reconstructive video, can add to the dramatic elements of this thrilling adventure and is potentially dangerous.

The practice of diversion and exchange in the seven videos has indeed shifted the experience of female as migrant workers into a public event. viewers become more aware of the complexities faced by migrant workers; and how they fight for their rights to get proper wages, working hours and days off. rights that were never explicitly stated when they worked as house helpers in Indonesia, because in Indonesia their position was disguised by viewing them as part of the household.

Video 360

Exchange is a digital-based platform for culture, identity, and trauma exchange. exchanges are triggered through fashion / appearance / traditional attire in post-traumatic and post-identity efforts.

team / collaborator:

1. Dayu Prisma – Producer

2. Abi ML – Facilitator / Director

3. Afrizal Malna – Curator

4. Arung Wardhana – Dramaturg

5. Dwi Febrianti – Front End Developer

6. Khoirul Umam – Back End Developer

7. Kafana Fityah – Translator

speakers:

1. Arindah Arimoerti – Psychologist

2. Annisa Febby – Traditional Attire Designer

3. Deddy Endarto – Historian

4. Dwi Cahyono – Historian / Archaeologist

Supported By :

Noise Architecture is the dynamic oral literature of Java Street—Jember from the pre-reformation to the contemporary era.

This interdisciplinary work elaborates:

– oral literature

– archives market

– site specific performance

– documentary performance

– participatory architecture

Performer:

– Pak Ali (Elder of Jawa VII)

– Pak Jalal / Pak Teng-teng (Elder of Jawa VI)

– Pak Busar (Coordinator of Jalan Jawa street food association)

– Pak Samson (Parking attendant from the Transportation Department)

– Pak Johan (Gorengan seller at SMA 2)

– Bang Andi Azis (private parking attendant)

– Bang Ali (private parking attendant)

– Female Seller of Warung Lesehan

Team:

– Abi Muhammad Latif (Producer and Director)

– Dayu Prisma (Project Manager)

– Putra Yuda (Researcher and Artistic Designer)

– Aditya Prasta (Researcher, Lighting and Sound Designer)

– Ahmad Ulul Arham (Performer and Audience Coordinator)

– Fajar Dwi J (Lighting and Sound Team)

– Bangkit Adi (Artistic Team)

– Adib Mbah (Artistic Team)

– Jody (Coordinator Assistant of Performer and Audience)

– Muhammad Rosyid (Video Documentation)

Performance Observer:

– Dr. Ikwan Setiawan, S.S., M.A.

– Dwi Pranoto

Supported by the Indonesian Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology, Jakarta Arts Council Literature Committee, Jakarta International Literary Festival 2022, and Jember University.

A most crisis situation in a country during a pandemic. Where state authority is abused to accelerate the end of the plague (and society). The country has no more funds to deal with the plague, so they can only sell a dream: 2000 selected people will be sent all over the country to become the country’s saviours.

Text & Directing : Abi Muhammad Latif

Actor : Dayu Prisma

This work was selected as the eight best monologues of Jejak Virtual Aktor.

Supported by the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia

Talking with my-selves is a performance that is in the universe of power and identity issues. the performance that borrows the participatory-interrogative working mode, plays with the possibilities of presentation, representation, and those in between.

we invite several participants to input their personal data in the identity input space. the performer interacts with the plural self (performer and participant) as an attempt to reconsider issues that are singular and original, that bind and are unionized.

Working Team

Project Manager &  Performer : Dayu Prisma

Text dan Director : Abi Muhammad Latif

Publication : Andina R. I

Technical Team : Andina R. I, Sri Widodo, Elle, Firda

August 8, 2020

at Hore Kopi dan Apresiasi, Banyuwangi

Funded by Prita Kemal Gani

Supported by IDEAL, Hore Kopi dan Apresiasi

xati/xuicide is the third chapter after Suicide Demonstration (Lintas Media, Teater Kecil, Jakarta) and #bluewhalechallenge (Cabaret Chairil, Teater Garasi, Yogyakarta). in this chapter, we requestion the current suicide phenomenon through sati/mesatya/pati obong that happened on October 13, 1691 in the Kingdom of Blambangan. 270 of the 400 wives of Tawang Alun were offered themselves to the death of the king. we propose sati as a redefinition system of the principle of suicide.

Director and Performer: Abi Muhammad Latif

Performer: Dayu Prisma