(Initial) Search

for the Self

Blaues Häusel in Maxen

A blue mosque in a town near Dresden, Germany

Source

Raden Saleh (1811-1880)

The painter in his "uniform"

Source

The Arrest of Diponegoro (1857; source)

Lingering Questions

• Saleh's contrasting position: abroad and in Java
• Framing of Saleh's work as the pioneer of modern Indonesian painting
• How similar/dissimilar am I to him?

Challenges

• Disrupted continuation of the tradition
  • Usage of language
  • Movement
• Tradition and culture
  • Tied to geospatial reality
  • Tied to time-continuum
  • Spirit of the time
• How all these affect mode of listening and expression

Strategies

• Dialectics of tradition and innovation
• Revaluation of myths
• Non-scientific investigation
• Process ontology

Sonic memories to trace future trajectory

What the body, mind, perception, emotion remembers, coming in contact with sound?

Gaung (2021)

Gamelan as Myth

• Values throughout Indonesian history
• Gamelan's change of symbolic meaning
• What does it say to me now?

Aryati (2022)

Keroncong, Aryati, & Indonesia

• Parallel lives of 3 entities
• The change of period marks the change of the self
• How the petite history moves along the grand narrative

Distant Memories of the Void (2024)

Forgetfulness

• Forgotten religion of the past
• Memories of the far future
• Body as element of humaneness
• Spirituality in the age of generative truth

Tirai (2024)

Of Longing & Fear

• Japanese occupation time in Indonesia (1942-1945)
• History as remembered by its people
• Indonesian poet & independence movement
• Japanese student drafted as suicide pilot
• Dutch women who sing in the concentration camp
• Link

Latent Sonorities (2023)

Gamelanic Music

• Samples of some gamelan instruments from Haus der Indonesischen Kulturen
• Samples as snapshots of tuning
• Sonus & sound impression that leads to creation
• Link

(Unreleased, 2025)

[...]

Investigations (selection)