Site specific Performance on Abandoned Houses
Dust installation

2018

The performance explores the eerie and unsettling aspects of domestic spaces, particularly in Indonesia where colonial buildings are stigmatized due to the trauma of colonization. The local narratives of superstition, myth, and urban legends serve as a counter to this traumatic memory. The video is narrated by locals who recount the building’s past and their perceptions of it. The performer collects dust and her doppelganger appears, showcasing the uncanny nature of the space. The performer explores odd and unconventional spaces, seeking clues and secrets that may be buried there. The actions of the performer represent a gesture of digging up repressed memories juxtaposed against the narrator’s story and the house itself. After the performance, the dust is relocated to other spaces to re-contextualize itself within the present. This dust installation reconstructs the previous house interior and creates a passage to remember the uncanny memory within the domestic space, hidden secrets projected by current society. The abandoned Merapi and Cepu houses, both stigmatized by local narratives, are chosen as the site-specific performances. Merapi house, destroyed by a volcanic eruption, is now a ruin while the Cepu house is next to a cemetery and left behind as a tragic transformation.