I made this work when I joined the first part of the Cluster program. It was an exercise for me interpreting the main theme of the program, which was death.  I simply wanted to answer the question: what happens exactly when a (dead) person is buried under the ground. Visually, I depict it by interconnecting an individual in a box similar to the graveyards of the Torajan in Tana Toraja, South Sulawesi.  This tribe buries its dead in the gorge of the mountain, the thought of which always gives me an eerie feeling of life on the edge.

Revisiting this work after years, I made no apology for the lack of subtleties in combining the poetry within the work. Mind you, I was cast as ‘mentoree’ rather than an ‘mentor artist’ per se. And as a mentoree, I was not required to show/produce anything. I thought I was a bit naughty, because instead of just sitting down and listening to the mentor artists, I took a more pro-active approach and decided to show what I could do.

Becuase I have used Jocelyn Pook’s music in this work, I’ve decided to use screen capture of the work. Contact me if you are interested to see it, and I’ll send you the work for private viewing.

I would love to revamp this work by:

• Using more multi-cultural performers and questioning the basic idea of “how do you feel if you live in a claustrophobic place?”, and “what do you think of people who live outside your claustrophobic place?”
• Using dialogue so the performers can be talking to the outside

This work marked my first collaboration with Yumi Umiumare. Ever since we’ve been developing future projects as you’ll see elsewhere on this site.

CREDITS:

The media art is written, directed, and composed by Bambang “BB” Nurcahyadi

Performers: Yumi Umiumare, Alerio Zavarce, Corey McMahon, Xavier Samuel.
Camera: Richard Back.
Mentor: Marie Moore
Shot at The Black Box, Flinders Drama Centre, Flinders University Adelaide. Thank you to Ms Julie Holledge, the Head of Drama Centre.