Melati Suryodarmo and art naming 奇能: An Intergenerational Conversation on Performance Art

Vivyan Yeo

Performance art is heralded as the most direct of art forms. Rather than being a hidden genius, the artist faces the audience as a human who is front and centre. Yet, it is among the most uncommon art forms to be exhibited in galleries and museums. What is it about the body that differentiates it from other mediums? How do performance artists archive their works? Do they need to train their bodies to create performance art?

To find answers to these questions, I had a Zoom conversation on 7 April 2021 with pioneering Indonesian artist Melati Suryodarmo and emerging Singaporean practitioner art naming 奇能 . In 2020, the two met in Solo, Indonesia at Cinemovement LAB VI, an annual mentorship programme that focuses on an interdisciplinary approach to dance filmmaking. There, art participated in several workshops led by Melati.

Meeting on Zoom a year later, the two artists delve into pertinent topics such as the ever-changing nature of the human body, the strange relationship between performing and documenting, the complexities of collecting performance art and the importance of kindness in the art world.

Vivyan: How did you first embark on performance art and what drew you to the medium in particular?

art: I started using my body when I performed in theatre about 10 years ago. Back then, I realised that I did not like to talk or use a script much. After a few years, I thought of trying a performance piece and very simply recreated Marina Abramovic’s ‘Rhythm 0’. It was so strange, because people in my school then were like wow, this is “performance art”. But for me, I was just trying it out for the first time, and it suddenly

became a thing. From there, I became interested in how performance art is a transient act that is happening only in the moment... I want to tell a more exciting story, which I am sure, Melati, you can.

Melati: It is a long story for me. Why I came to performance art has something to do with my fate. I was not planning to be an artist. Since I was a child, I knew Butoh, a form of Japanese dance theatre, because my dad worked with a Butoh company in my hometown. In 1992, I took a Butoh workshop and my body fell in love with it. Later in life, when I was in Germany with zero plans, I happened to meet Anzu Furukawa at Braunscheweig’s botanical gardens. We were just talking, and I was surprised to hear that she was a professor of performance art at Hochschule für Bildende Künste (HBK), and also a Butoh dancer and choreographer. You know, I am the kind of person who never really dreamt too far ahead; I am afraid of dreaming. But that moment changed my entire life. I became Furukawa’s student in the performance art programme at HBK, and soon after, Marina came to teach. Maybe I am a very lucky person. Till today, I believe that every moment is very special, and even talking to you both now on Zoom is very special.

I tried to understand the spirit of Butoh, which appeared after World War II. It emerged from a period of political activism, breaking the conventionality of dance and having grotesque visuals. I always question how art functions in our world. What change does it bring? How do we interpret our own body and connect with our social, political and cultural environments?

If we look at mankind, everything is changing all the time. The body is a live element that has this same quality of change. What makes performance art different from, for example, dance and rituals? What moves you to move? Who are you, and what are you doing? There are so many layers that performance artists should prepare.

The body is a medium that I have been learning to use since childhood. It took me a long, long time. When I think about an idea, I always look for references and materials. I learn again and read again. Maybe it takes me longer now because I am older. I am 52 years old now and I need to see my body differently. Of course, you can be old and still perform. I do not want to live as a woman who gets lost being unconfident in her body. I want to encourage other women not to worry because their spirit is still moving. I learnt that from Marina; she is 75 and I know her body is quite weak at the moment, but her spirit is amazing. I will be embarrassed if I stopped using my body to express my ideas.

art: It feels so different. You decided to do performance art quite late in your life. I am younger than you, but I feel as if I am already so old – what is happening? I feel like I am slowing down with my own work. I used to do more in the past. I do not know if it is because as I get older, there are more things to care about like my work, my body and my relationships with other people. Maybe it is also because I have higher expectations of the work I make.

I used to think that I need an audience to perform. That is generally seen as a rule for performance art, because you need someone to interact with. But for me, it has more recently become an act for myself, regardless of the audience. The audience aspect only comes much later if there is an opportunity to present a show to the public.

I am also now thinking about what you said of the relationship between body and time. I feel that someone’s spirit always stays the same and it is the body as a vessel that changes. These days, a lot of the work I do deals with the tension between the temporary nature of life and what is supposedly constant or lasting. There is also this strange relationship between performing and documenting. In my view, the documentation, which is usually seen as a separate thing, is a part of the performance too.

Melati, you write, take photos, make installations and films. Are the processes behind all these mediums the same?

Melati: I think the most important thing is how my ideas can be delivered in the best way. I do the thinking first and decide the medium later. It may be drawing, photography, video, music or performance. As for the documentation stage, I am educated in a very simple manner. If your performance is live and time-based, it has a different quality every time you repeat it. The only ways you can document it are with photography or video. Marina is the best because she has all the documentation of her works created since the 1990s.

It is a complex thing. Sometimes it is not possible to afford a camera, a photographer, or a videographer. Other times, you get the video, but you do not have the equipment to edit it. I think the younger generation must know how to deal with this issue. What happens if your performance is being captured by an audience member with a mobile phone and uploaded immediately onto their social media channels? What is the value of your work? Do you think your work is like in a museum, where people are not allowed to take photos? Sometimes, I let people use social media to capture my work, but I think there is no high value in that. It may be good for promotional purposes, but I will not use social media content as part of my own archive.

Portrait of art naming 奇能 . Photo by Julianne Thomson.

Portrait of Melati Suryodarmo.

Melati Suryodarmo performing ‘Conversation with the Black’ at Manila Contemporary, 2011. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Vivyan: I want to jump in on that point on archiving performance work. art naming, you made a piece called ‘I Am Here For You’ in 2019 and it documents several performance pieces you created in the form of a book. In it, there are texts you wrote yourself, as well as photographs taken by audience members. Could you tell us more about that?

art: My choice of making the work in this way came out of limitation. Many younger artists like me want to submit proof of our work for grants but oftentimes, we are just starting out without resources to make a professional video. Because of that, I thought about documenting without such equipment and seeing what happens. It is the same as what Melati said; you can never replicate a live performance, right? So, I do not want to do that. Some audiences see a form of documentation and feel as if they have watched the actual performance. But that is not true, because the audience was not there while it was taking place. With a different time, location and medium, the experiences generated are very different. Through a book, I am creating a separate circumstance for them to experience the work. I first thought of using a non-visual way to document my work, which is writing. Then, getting the audience to take photos was my way of letting them feel invested in the performance. I wanted them to think, “what is a good time to take a photo?” or “what can I look out for?”

Melati: I think the most important part of archiving your own work is to give respect to yourself for your own sweat, time and energy. It is basically about how you choose to preserve a moment. My focus on this topic became useful because people want to collect my work. I need money badly, of course, to survive. Performance artists are famous for being the poorest artists because they cannot earn from their work. You get paid properly at dance or theatre festivals, but museums and galleries still do not consider performance art to be created from a lot of time, energy and thinking.

Making an edition of a performance documentation is interesting and important, not only economically, but also when thinking about how people will see my work in the future. I learnt from Marina, again, who told me to never throw away my sketches. It is not about saving them for a future exhibition. It is about the time I spent on them. If you do not keep them in a proper way, it is like you are wasting your time. Some artists sell their performance itself, not the documentation, which I used to think was very dangerous. I thought that was a bit too much against the spirit of performance art and that I would rather be more careful.

But now, as I am older, I am thinking, how about the body as a living archive? How do you perform an archive? If I die, it would still be better if somebody performed my piece, not by acting or reading but with their own mind. I am open to new interpretations. And so, I tried to learn how to do it. I let one of my performance pieces be collected by the National Gallery of Australia. I made proper instructions for the person who will re-perform my work in the future. I want to provide a sense of closeness even if I am not there, and if they understand the details, they will feel close to the work too.

art: Have you started this process of training someone?

Melati: No no, I do not do that. If I sell, I let the collector choose the person who will perform my piece. But yes, so long as I am alive, maybe I can train that person or give some kind of guidance. Although they should understand their own body too. If someone does my ‘Butter Dance’, they need to learn some specific techniques but they will also have to do it their own way. People should know that their body carries an archive that requires different layers of understanding. It is not about “re-enacting”.

I am now working on a collaborative project with composers from Berlin and Hanoi to create a performance book for people to read and perform anywhere in the world. Having this medium is a kind of solution because we cannot travel during the pandemic. art, if you published your performance score in a book, would you be bothered if someone reperforms your work?

art: I do not think I would be worried. I created some performances, which I clearly indicated are inspired by other people, so, it would be incorrect for me to say “you cannot do this”. Of course, I have to think about why someone would re-perform my work but generally, it is not so worrying.

Melati: That is very interesting because I am quite strict. Many ideas from performance art are stolen for theatre productions, music videos, dances and so on. I want to educate society to respect the work of performance artists. Photographers, choreographers and filmmakers have copyright laws, but performance artists do not. There is a kind of discrimination there, and so that is why I am quite critical about this subject. But of course, you have your own kind of authorship and I think that is also quite nice.

art: I think that well, everything can change. That is what you started the conversation saying. I do not know what will happen in the future. What you said about a living archive is not something I have thought about yet. It is almost like channeling someone else’s spirit.

Melati: Yes, it is a very old idea. In traditional dance, the work is passed down from generation to generation. This process of sustaining a tradition is fantastic. A living archive is just slightly different, because the source is not anonymous.

art: From my understanding, even though the source of many traditional dances is anonymous, there is also an element of choice. You are choosing someone to pass the dance on to. It is not that just anybody can do it; they must have the body, spirit and all these things. I will be curious to see who is chosen to do your work in the future.

Melati: If someone buys a performance artwork of mine, I include a description that is as detailed as possible, including the weight and size of the body. There is also technical information on what kind of training they have to go through, how one should raise the hand...

art: Are you saying that you have to be very technical in how you approach making a work? With any piece that uses the body, there is so much attention to the everyday preparation of the body, right? Like how much you eat, how you move, and what kind of mental state you are in. I am sure there are different kinds of preparation for different works, but do you train for an action?

Melati: My body is butoh-trained or performance art-trained so I have my own techniques. I do not have to rehearse every day, but I need to test... test, not rehearse. For example, if I use an arrow, I need to walk around the space and try it out. It is technical in terms of how you manage the skill of using your body. It is like any other medium; you need technical skill to paint. Of course, everyone can do performance art as long as they have access to a basic understanding of their body. If you watch documentations by famous performance artists, you can see how aware they are. In 1975, Martha Rosler performed ‘Semiotics of the Kitchen’, and she uses her awareness of domestic life and the sweetness of “female” behaviour to explain the elements of a kitchen. Having skill doesn’t mean that you have to train in the fitness centre. It takes skill to not be “acting”.

art naming 奇能, ‘I Am Here For You’, 2019, performance documentation. Image courtesy of the artist.

art naming 奇能, collage documentation of my life from collected materials, 2020. Image courtesy of the artist.

Melati Suryodarmo performing ‘Perception of Patterns in Timeless Influence’ at Lilith Performance Studio, Malmo, Sweden, 2007. Image courtesy of the artist.

art naming 奇能, still from ‘from a d(eep)welling boredom could make moves’, 2020, video, 4 minutes 47 seconds, as part of the series ‘my moving in 台中 (taichung, taiwan)’. Image courtesy of the artist.

Vivyan: I am going to ask the last question. Both of you met at Cinemovement Lab VI in Solo, Indonesia, where Melati led quite a few workshops. art, what are some of your takeaways?

art: What actually struck me was that I got to know Melati as a person. There is a sort of vulnerability that a performance artist needs, because the work that they do is live and there are chances of unexpected things happening. But as an audience, you rarely get to interact with the artist who goes off on their own. You do not know the preparation behind their work. For me, the value was really in meeting someone who is a performance artist and seeing how she is living her life. She is just so generous. Her work is not funny, but I think she is a very funny person.

Melati: Maybe being funny is to entertain myself too, because I almost never go on holiday. But you know, I liked the idea of running a laboratory space to give younger people an opportunity to experiment, cook together and be quiet if they want to. Now during the pandemic, I open a class every Friday and Saturday. I give them everything; I even feed them three times a day. I think the worth of money lies in these kinds of actions. You know the word dharma includes giving, and I think making art is also a dharma. I am sick of how art environments can be very tough. I want to empower people to be their best, and also share my belief that artists can survive on their work.

Through my laboratory space, I have met so many interesting people like art. Our way of networking is not a commercial thing; it is more about kindness. You can see different values of life when looking at artwork. Sometimes, we are missing kindness in how we treat each other on a personal and institutional level. I am also still learning; it is a lifelong process to be kind.