The Seed @ Melati Suryodarmo. 2008

- SURYODARMO Melati, Seed, 2008

performed at the St. Jacobi Church, Zoom Festival, Hildesheim, 2008

‘‘Melati Suryodarmo is remembering some moments of salvation, the power of life, truth and love and their destructions of illusions as deaths.’’

I remember the moment when this body is swollen

I remember the moment when the time becomes slow

I remember the moment when the leaves are falling from the tree in autumn

I remember the moment when a drop of rain water fell on my face

I remember the taste of a rainwater

I remember the moment when my heart beat stops for a while during my sleep

I remember when I was 5 years old

I remember when I was starving

...

Sometimes, I feel like the seeds that cannot be planted…

(performed at:

‘‘Friktioner’’, at City Gallery, Upssala Art Museum, Uppsala, Sweden

‘‘Asiatopia 10-International performance art festival’’, Bangkok

‘‘ZOOM’’ performance Art Festival, IPAH, St. Jacobi Kirsche, Hildesheim

‘‘Pathological Aesthetic’’ symposium at HAN, Nijmegen, Holland

‘‘The Seed by Melati Suryodarmo

She walks slowly forward on the gallery pavement, carrying a white plastic sac over her shoulder, now and then she cries out phrases like: ‘‘I remember when I was five’’. She is wearing light-coloured pantyhose patterned with Islands of dark grey, as it occurs to me. Eventually she stops her walk and pours out the black sesame seed content of the sac on the floor. She also starts tearing her pantyhose apart, and the pattern turns out to have been formed by the same black sesame seed. From the remains of the pantyhose sesame seed runs to the floor. The performance closes with a drum roll on a bass frum. The skin of the drum cracks. The show is over.

In this work no story is told, and the internal logic of the work is conceptual rather than narrational. The act has an intensity. It catches the attention of audience and guides it to focus on some hardly understandable visual puns. All over Asia the black sesame seed is common, but in Western Europe it is almost impossible to purchase. The patterns formed inside the pantyhose reminds the artist of lepra victims she met in her childhood. This is Performance Art by the rule book. Intuitively, as well as by judging the reaction of the audience, I can state that it is high quality.’’ (written by Kurt Wolmar Nyberg)