P5 is the 5th project that I'm working on, and is focussed on using food as the start of research. Love goes through the stomach they say, but I think there's multiple ways of interpreting this. As far as I have experienced this, most men say this as they want to have the woman at home in the kitchen, and expecting them to make lovely food. I'm not saying that this is wrong, but it's something that this project is definitely not about. When I say "Love goes through the stomach" I talk about the love I got from my family, my parents or my sister, and they want you to eat good and healthy and therefor they make you food. When thinking about a certain food that represents love, in my memories it's definitely rice but also indomie as it has been my favorite food as a child. These are the first ones I do my research in, and it opened up more pathways into loving it more, but also created a love-hate relationship with it.
P5V1 is the project which involves instant noodles, focussing on the brand Indomie. This project started out of love, but turned into a love-hate relationship as the noodle itself is quite problematic. As there is so much information, and experience by people with this specific noodle, I decided I want to make a lecture-performance where I explain how that love-hate relationship has been established.
P5V2 is the project that deals with rice as the main ingredient to do research in. As my mom is from the mamasa/toraja area in Sulawesi, Indonesia, I got access to lots of books in Leiden Library, from the area in which the focus is mainly on rituals. Talking about death rituals mostly, I found one that is based on rice rituals. As my grandfather, and nowadays my uncles are ricefarmers, it has become a very personal project. As it deals with my family, I decided to pause this project for a bit, as I want to talk to my family myself instead of through a translator. It's not anymore about only thanking my grandfather who passed away, it's about thanking the whole lineage and the ones that are still working in the fields.
I'm still in Indonesia and plan on working further on P5V2 after may as I will go back to the village and can prepare more what I want to say, and hopefully can express myself more to my family.
Currently I'm doing an internship / artist in residency at SIKU Ruang Terpadu, based in Makassar, Sulawesi Indonesia. With the help of family, as I'll be staying with them, the help of Coralie Vogelaar through ArtScience Interfaculty, the help of KABK as they provided a study grant; I feel grateful for all the support in my artistic practice, and am grateful for whatever the future may behold.
Feedback to performance by ArtScience tutors:
The tutors are enthousiast on the sincerity of your research. We feel the journey to Indonesia can develop your project to a conceptual and artistically next level.
Be conscious in what kind of method you use for your research, be aware that the project becomes something more than only a personal story.
A lot of the tutors are still very enthousiastic on your karaoke project of last year, what worked well in this piece was how you repeated a certain tactic again and again. This makes the work really strong and still conceptual layered.
The advice is to look for one format or tactic that works well. Another tip is to try to search for contradictions you encounter in Indonesia and embrace this. Look for the aha moment. Don’t make it too complicated, make a clear choice and do not lose yourself in too much research.
Feedback to performance by teachers:
Your starting point was an ongoing research on noodles, with which you relate to through memories of your grandmother. Even though that is not typically Indonesian, you grew up eating it mixed with rice; an unexpected combination called “poor man's food”.
Through the process you decided to focus solely on rice and chose that to be this year's main project.
Your theoretical research on rice is very rich and layered which is great but can also be difficult to render into a work. Nevertheless, you were able to narrow down elements to create a performance piece combining text, sound, smell and taste. You engaged the audience through sensoriality and storytelling.
We are excited that this is still an ongoing project and are very curious to see how you will further develop it.
Selfreflecting on the performance (setup 2):
-- what was expected to occur? what were the goals?
What I want is to create a new ritual, which is a performance. As it is being presented as a performance, which will happen over-and-over again, it can be seen as a ritual. While doing the ritual, there is a repetition in metaphors, which are about thanking the grain; rice. It’s about sharing something valuable with others who are guests to my ritual.
--what really happened?
I presented, and everyone was emerged, as if they were somewhere else. It felt more like a theatre play, than a performance in my eyes. One liked to have the eyes open instead of closed. Everyone is getting hungry, and once they get the package they rather eat.
Peer-to-peer feedback, using what if method (DAS):
What if...
...you used the recorder sound, in person sound, and voice differently > could add to clarity of your writing. distracted by rice throwing. > so balance is better +1
... you use the temperature of rice > not possible to transfer the story (hotness of rice) metaphor of not able to transfer the story to someone else with a different background > tension in “it’s to hot to give it to you, but I can’t”
... you spilled rice on the audience, I want to feel it rain on me +1
... you include the smell when opening the ricecooker while the performance is happening
... you make the sounds louder on computer, also the sound of the ricecooker (think of soundscape)
-- what went wrong and why did it go wrong?
The timing of the cooking of the rice. I had to start 10 minutes later because my rice wasn’t ready yet. How to do this differently?
The reading of the phone, I’d like to do different. Maybe use participants to reiterate parts of the text with instructions. When one is doing this, you do this… (if this, then that…) << look into rituals how one action is connected to another action
People got a bit scared to participate, have to tell beforehand that I promise that I won’t do any harm.
-- what went well and why did this go well?
The speed in speech parallel to the actual time I had. I had little text, but because of an ‘grounded/earthy’ tone of voice, I was able to say it stretched out over 10 min.
The amount of people that could be in the performance. It’s only 4 strokes of plastic, but I could fit 21 people around it. Look into the Indonesian wedding of 2017 in how the ‘stage’ was build with the plastic and the bamboo.
The continue soundscape in the background.
Why do you do it? Why is it important to you?
Currently I'm researching my relationship to rice. Through the noodles, I felt emotions that connected me to the longing of my Indonesian side. My grandma who'd make it for me when my parents, sister and I, would be visiting my moms relatives high up in the mountains of Sulawesi. Through indomie (this specifik instant noodle) I started to think about rice noodles, and rice. Memories of how my grandpa was rice farmer, and how the colorfol sheets would lay on the floor, while the brown rice was being dried on top of it. MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF RICE I TELL YOU! More merories after thinking more about it, was the throwing of the rice in the air with this kind of wide basket. (rice winnowing basket). These events all happened when I was younger. I find it interesting and warming, that the oldest memories I have are actually from when I was in Indonesia, even though I was only there in summer vacations. I never actually lived there.
Therefore, I think rice is an important aspect in my life. Especially since I grew up in The Netherlands, where rice is not eaten by the white dutch people, nor by my Dutch father. But oh how much I loved eating rice when my mom would actually make it!
The grain itself is tiny, cute, pretty and shiny, so like a pearl. It's the grain that helped my family earn an income, let them have a job and gave them food to eat. On the other side, it's labour intensive.
As a descendant of my grandpa, and my grandma, who have put blood, sweat, and tears into this grain, to take care of their oldest child, my mom, who ended up in this rich country, the Netherlands, where she and my dad provided for me, their oldest child, who is able to do something that she really wants in the field of arts, is one of the biggest reasons why I feel like I have to do a work in relation to this grain; rice.
Rice is the beginning of luck in my life.
Rice will be the beginning of reflecting on a history that no-one in our family could do.
Rice is the reason why I have the time, and sources, to understand my families hardships.
In february 2023, I'll be going to Indonesia by myself, and working on this project more, but from a different location in the world. My grandparents died in the last year, which is very unfortunate, since this would be the time to actually be with them, trying to talk with them by learning the language with them, and getting to know what our family history was before them. The specifik plan for conducting the research I have no idea's in yet.
... you change the setting: the moving of audience is distracting on the tarp
... the audience would be participating in the preparation of the ritual; in the form of telling a storyexercise before the performance, so it’s a community, instead of being strangers to each other
... you let audience do parts of the performance
... you think more about the time: ritual, extended time, what rice means. that sucks one in. What comes after? +1
Since I knew that rice was at the centre of attention, I wanted to know more about rice from Indonesia, to be even more precise the island Sulawesi. As the general knowledge of Indonesia in the Netherlands is mostly build around Bali, Java and Jakarta, I wanted to know more about Sulawesi, as that is the Island where my family is from. To be even more precise in my research, I looked into the village where my mom is from, and to which district it belonged; Mamasa and Toraja. And so I rented books from the Leiden University library, and got books that are connected to the region. I started with the dissertation; Conquest of the forest, as it is describing the full ritual circle of rice. The others give more information of why certain elements are the way they are, which was helpful for giving 'reason' to the actions within a ritual.
I finished the dissertation in a week, and from that moment the only question that arose at that moment was; "What do I do with all this interesting stuff that I just read?". In the time of reading the book, my enthousiasm became bigger to the rituals, without knowing what to do with it.
As a starting point for creating, I decided to take a very literal approach. The rooster is the startingpoint of planting rice, so I created a rooster out of rice, just for the sake of practical creation.
Startingpoint of rice planting
Startingpoint of rice project
What next?
As the workshop was very energy demanding (hosting a workshop is not as easy as I thought it would be) I needed to let is rest for a bit and focussed back on P5V2 (the rice project). I think the use of workshops like these are very important in future projects, as the workshop gives a platform for other voices than the one from myself. As we talked in depth about noodles, and the use, and the connections that come with it, I found it easier to go into the next step comparing to pthe process from last year.
I'm now writing down all the + and - points about indomie, which will be transformed in a lecture performance where I'll be making noodles. The coming week I'll have I hope my first sketch of the performance ready, to show it to my peers in The Netherlands as we have collaborative short presentations where we give each other feedback using an adjusted form of the DAS-feedback method.
P5V1 got back to the surface when I landed in Indonesia. Surrounded by instant mie, it was time to resurrect the project and develop it to something more 'professional' one could say.
As I presented my research to the collective SIKU ruang terpadu, they asked the question if I might wanted to collaborate with memo.dapur in the recurrent event masak.makan.kerja. As SIKU holds every-now-and-then an open house, where difference events are being held, this would be a great opportunity to work closely with the community based in and around Makassar. I met Wilda, who's involved with memo.dapur which is an initiative made to examine and document everyday life by making the kitchen the gateway. I got the free hand of this session of masak.makan.kerja and told her how I wanted to use this workshop as a way to talk with the participants and their knowledge about instant noodles.
-- on the left you see pictures of Wilda and me talking about the structure of masak.makan.kerja and RITUS who's making the spanduk. (shoutout to Ceng)
-- below you see pictures of the table where we made the noodles, the side dishes for with the noodles, and the noodles we eventually made. (A LOT)
Pictures by Rejeky Kene, a photographer I met during my stay in Indonesia.
Subtitles were written all at once, in around 5-10 min due to time stress.
Therefor it needs to be refined.
---------
Bamisoep, indomie, noodlesoup
The meal that helps me get through shitty times.
Good memories, like how my grandma prepared it before I woke up.
Bad memories, like how I didn’t have more money for the rest of the week and so I ate it 4 days in a row.
The opinions that people had; “if you eat it with rice in it, that’s the poor mans food”
Or the opinion of other children when I was 8 and how everyone found it a ridiculous dish.
For 40 soups, you pay €14,- at least for the special chicken flavour.
At home the box is shared between my roommates who are like me, students.
Trying to collect money for materials for our works, so not that much money left for fancy cooking.
And so they take some noodles from me as well.
As polite as they are, they always ask
With these memories in mind, I’m making the instant noodles myself.
Kneading, rolling, drying, cutting, cooking, weaving, frying, stacking.
How many hours of labor have went into this, and how often have all memories been duplicated in this process?
Kneading, rolling, drying, cutting, cooking, weaving, frying, stacking.
For the amount of time I spend on work, I ask €20,- per hour.
2,5 days have passed, and finally my instant noodles are ready.
12 Hours I spend on this, dealing with multiple emotions while weaving.
I am a poor woman, who loves the poor mans food, indomie.
P5V1 is a performative installation where-in instant noodles; Indomie are the centre of attention. Through making the noodles by hand the performer deals with opinions of others from the western and eastern world and their own memories connected to the actions of making.
As previous projects dealt with the feeling of not belonging anywhere, this project is trying to find an answer to it. As we (humans) cannot live without food, and the area where one is born use to define what food you eat (due to globalisation we are able to eat what others eat at the other side of the world), that means that memories are inbedded in the food we eat as they remind of us of home.
Indomie (this one certain brand of instant noodles) is one that reminds me of home. A home which is not connected to a nation, as I exists out of two nations. Potatoes on one hand, which I grew up with for 19 years. Indomie and rice on the other hand, which was the food we ate on vacations or when my mom would cook for herself.
On a personal note; my (indonesian) grandmother passed away in 2021 and so did my (indonesian) grandfather in 2022, it is the reason why this project is more emotional to me than the previous ones. Love goes through the belly as they say, and so did my grandparents express themselves as well. Even though indomie and rice are not full on meals, the memories, the laughter connected to it, make it way better than anything else.
Like I said before; I work in terms of 'hard-data' and 'soft-data', the project is filled mostly with soft data. The difficult thing is finding the hard data. How to go forward with something that is so personal? As a start, I decided to make indomie from scratch, and write down everything that is embedded in the noodles. From childhood memories, to no-money memories, to shared memories, to the amount of hours I put into making these noodles from scratch. It is a first step into taking into account the above things, while I let it rest to pick it up in the future. It's not the right time to deal with mass-production, it's time to deal with grief and how to thank someone when they already left. It's going back to why I felt so deeply to begin with, It's the beginning of P5V2 where the search into rice began.
Special thanks to Zack Denfeld & Cathrine Kramer from Center of Genomic Gastronomy that been guiding the course "Tasteless" where P5V1 started out of.
what worked for me?
- the amount of settings in the video
- the difference in settings; intimite, me being comfortable and how others know me (in clothes that I wear daily)
- the multiple ways of how noodles are such a 'hot' topic to talk about (also after presenting this, people ate more noodles 😂)
- the sounds from the video
topics touched:
- mass production in comparison to manual labour in comparison to self-employed artist
- multiple emotions that are recalled through the weaving of the noodles. What can be shared through weaving of noodles, and what would I like to share then, should I share?
3) the eating-sticks made to make the tool for the weavingstructure of the noodles, and the noodles after they were fried within the structure
what didn't work for me?
- the subtitles that big. (try making it smaller)
- the same type of video of me weaving, I forgot the materials of the cooking of the noodles, the pulling of the noodles etc.
- the white background, white table setting; it is to de-tached from feelings.
What can props do in a performance?
What story to tell and how to tell that story?
How to sharpen the narrative in the act of making noodles?
How to sharpen the political aspect within the work?
What history is already known from noodles?
Inspirational quotes from readings:
"We thus engage in the dialectical processes of "translation," not simply from one language to another, but
from one set of life experiences to another,
from one mindset to another,
from one process of history to another,
from one social and psychological matrix to another,
from one paradigm of rationality to another."
The Social Life of Art, Peter Stupples and Jane Venis
"Eating Ancestral food is treating food as sacred, knowing the farmers and origins of the foods, knowing the paths the food has taken from the source (wild, farmed, or gardened) to the table, thanking the food, Mother Earth, and Creator."
Currently reading:
- The World as Manifestation of Spirit by Monika Brodnicka
- Cultivating the Body: Anthropology and Epistemologies of Bodily Practice and Knowledge by Margaret Lock
- Body, Vision and Movement: In the Footprints of the Ancestors by Franca Tamisari
- The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin
- Culture History of the Toalean of South Sulawesi, Indonesia by David Bulbeck, Monique Pasqua and Adrian Di Lello
- The Social Life of Art > Chapter twelve: Cultural Translation and Cross-Cultural Aesthetic Judgements by Peter Stupples and Jane Venis
- Consuming rice, branding the nation by Janine Chi
To personally look into:
- Indigenous cosmology
- toaleans (as gatherers)
- material/plants next to sweet water river in the mountains where my family is from
- material/plants next to the rice-fields
- material/plants at the maritime borders around Indonesia
- the sound of weaving
- weaving in food
- indonesian weaving
- history of weaving in Indonesia
- rice and noodles as poor mans food