Various muses, thoughts, and writings by Sastraswara.

nur hin

Performance of TIBA during the rice cooking ritual.

Performance of TIBA during the rice cooking ritual. Source: soydivision documentation.

Any type of struggle is familiar to those who decide to leave their country. One form of such a struggle is the struggle with one’s identity and values. As soon as one steps into the new country, one’s identity and values are confronted with those who are not of one’s own. Not surprisingly, this leads to personal disorientation. Values and identities are influencing each other. Disorientation in values leads to the disorientation of identity and vice versa.

In such a situation, one finds oneself in the state in between. As such, one finds oneself in a liminal state. Should one move to the new values, new identities? Should one grasp the old values, old identities? Delays in answering such questions leave one prolonged in the liminal state. We find ourselves often delay our answers, making sure that the decision we take is the right one. By making a decision—-and the absence of it, as yet another type of decision—-one shapes one’s identity, one’s value.

What would become of such a person? Would then a new identity, new values emerge? Or one keeps delaying one’s answer and embraces instead the state in between for indefinite time? In this (series) of work(s), we would like to contemplate and investigate this state in between, taking the point of view of emigrants as a symbolic embodiment of the theme. With this work, we invite the public to contemplate, empathize, and think about these issues in relation to their own personal experience.

“nur hin” comes from the contemplation that when one left one’s country, the return ticket is not bought. It is a one-way ticket and one does not know when one will be back. Even if one finally decides to go back, this is not a decision made in the beginning but rather shaped by times and the process which takes place in it.

“nur hin” is then further divided into three chapters: Tiba (Arrival), Tinggal (Stay), and Kembali (Return). These three chapters symbolize the growth of consciousness that one experiences during one’s journey. In each of these states, one always faces the state in between. Even that state Kembali signifies not only an actual returning to one’s country but also to one’s identity, to one’s values, while at the same time not necessarily the same as the beginning identity and values one has at the start of the journey. Each of the chapters is an independent work in itself but share the same grand thematic scheme with the other chapters. The actual execution may different in each performance, making the theme as the main identification feature of the work.

In the framework of the CTM Festival, these three chapters require three different performance sites. The difference reflects the difference in consciousness states.

The work forms a total work, a result of collaboration, consists of performance, music, video and light installations, as well as offering culinary experience made by various artists-friends who share the same feeling of traveling “nur hin”. In each of the theme, using one’s medium of choice, the artist represents his or her experience/impression/interpretation on the theme at hand. The result expected is a series of works that are personal but global at the same time, for most of us would feel this state in between in different sensual forms yet sharing the same essence.

In “Nur Hin,” the ritual of rice cooking invites both the performer and the audience to a meditation. It is a meditation in appreciating and reminding oneself about the meaning of a grain of rice. For the migrated people whose story told in “Nur Hin,” cooking the rice is their connection with their motherland (Ibu Pertiwi). The grain circle drawn is their safe spiritual space in which they reconnect with their inner value, in the face of new values and life phenomenon. The process of preparing the rice, cooking and waiting, and finally serving it, is a daily life parallel of the work of a farmer: to plant (Nem), to tend the field (Sanga), and finally to harvest (Manyura). These stages, in the Javanese culture, also symbolizes the progression of the human psyche from infant to maturity. In the Wayang performance (shadow puppet play), it serves as the dramatic structure (Pathet Nem, Sanga, and Manyura). It shows how it is so essential to the symbolic life of the people. Sharing the grain of rice between the audience is our way to reminding, that we face scarcities in the face of food industrialization. By sharing it, we also would like to promote intercultural understanding and empathies. Regardless of nationality and cultural backgrounds, is it not that we all enjoy good food shared with good company?


Griebnitzsee, 16 December 2019
#essay #nurhin

Program note to nur hin—Tiba.
A multimedia performance consisting of sound, light, video installation, and culinary experience. In collaboration with Nindya Nareswari, Jan K., Ariel William Orah, OQ Utama, Morgan “Memeshift”. ACUD Theater, Berlin, 17 January 2020.