Scroll on the left side and click on the images to see the films!
the beginning of the first one seems black but has sound.
the beginning of the first one seems black but has sound.
SCHIMMEN
- In the Wake of Spirits -
The continuity of life and death, of memory and becoming.
- In the Wake of Spirits -
The continuity of life and death, of memory and becoming.
Dear committee,
The publication you received is an attempt to create a spiritual archive, but even more so, to create an experience: a timeless and spaceless object that embodies the constant motion between memories from the past, present and future. Everything is connected, but floating.
The publication doesn’t give proportional access to the facts of the research. The website gives more clarity to the origin of the content. Please take a look.
The publication you received is an attempt to create a spiritual archive, but even more so, to create an experience: a timeless and spaceless object that embodies the constant motion between memories from the past, present and future. Everything is connected, but floating.
The publication doesn’t give proportional access to the facts of the research. The website gives more clarity to the origin of the content. Please take a look.
Schimmen – In the Wake of Spirits is a research into the colonial family history between the Netherlands and Indonesia, in which the researcher her self is pulled into a transformative journey - to a point of no return.
suggested questions (I’m not entirely sure):
// How does the colonial family history relate to the continuity of life and death, of memory and becoming? // How do the memories and experiences of the ancestors impact the bodies of the next generations? // In what way does migration impact the sense of belonging? // And what does it mean for the body to (dis)connect with the land? This land or the land of origin? // what’s the connection between mental illnesses, epigenetic trauma, spirituality and the ancestors?
// Is there a destination? - I don’t think so.
// Did the ship come ashore? - I’m not sure.
// Who left the ship and who stayed on it... never truly arriving? - My uncle is there on that ship.
The family is haunted by shame and guilt, the embarrassment is so great it takes my breath away. I think we lost our feeling of dignity. Maybe that’s it. And the guilt. It comes from an unpayable debt. I think we forgot who we owe our debt to.
Project title - feature filmTitle: “It’s too cold for the spirits to live here”
The title is a phrase from Tosca Schift’s father Dave Leonard Schift. On the 16th of October 1958, he fled with the family from Indonesia to The Netherlands. They traveled for a month with the ship the M.S. Sibajak. When they arrived in The Netherlands it was getting winter. Coming from the tropics it was a shock. He noticed that the spirits he lived with in Indonesia were gone. They had left him on his journey. Being an eight-year-old, he and his siblings figured it was too cold in this new place for the spirits to survive.
Short description of the research
In her research project, Tosca Schift explores the means to find the spirits her father lost when he fled from Indonesia to the Netherlands. It is an exploration to reconnect with the ancestors and to find a sense of belonging in the space between both countries. Schift’s research outcomes include the making of a film that captures the journey of the search for spirits, a publication and a performance in which the body becomes the vessel, embodying the emotional and physical impacts of displacement.
As an artist and filmmaker, Schift’s research steered a process of self-transformation that deeply shaped her own understanding of self and the world. The research brought an embodied experience that became a methodological approach to illuminate and unfold the complexities of the colonial family history that had long remained hidden, literally stowed away in biscuit tins in the attic. By unveiling the family archive - the passports, the letters, the negatives - the stories of her father and his ancestors become tangible again: vivid, immediate, and alive in the present. She interweaves these archival materials with footage from her recent journey to Indonesia, creating a layered narrative that bridges personal experience with historical displacement.
Working method
My method of researching is embodied.
Spiritual searching
During the research I developed a spiritual way of researching. I’m receptive to clues and signals that might rationally not connect to the research, but may lead me indirectly to connections that tell something about the subject, the conditions of the colonial family history, and the continuity of life. Sometimes the connections within the spiritual search taught me more than the knowledge itself.
Open body
I work with an open body, allowing the research to change and shape me. It’s a kind of metamorphosis, a continuous process of becoming. It means that my psychic structure, my worldview is open to rearrange itself. It has an open nerve that is very sensitive, but also very receptive to be able to change. It creates a distance between my former self and the changing self. Not only does the body become more sensitive to influences from the outside. Also, the knowledge that’s stored within the body is closer to the surface. The conscious mind has only access to a part of he knowledge, but being in this receptive state created access to the unconscious. My body started speaking, sharing knowledge and emotions that my rational mind couldn’t comprehend. The lineage of the ancestors is speaking through this open body. It makes me understand the colonial history from a much deeper point of view. I started to embody the hardships, the violence, the connections that were lost.
I didn’t open my body consciously. It opened itself after a panic attack in the cinema while watching a violent film. The film created an immense shortcut in my brain and body. My body got out of my control. Since then I’ve been learning to listen more closely, to make use of the open nerve. To channel the experiences of my ancestors, to tune my emotions accordingly, to align my body with the research.
Building blocks of research
Book references:
The Nutmeg’s Curse, Parables for a planet in crisis - Amitav Gosh
It didn’t start with you, How inherited family trauma shapes who we are and how to end the circle - Mark Wolynn
Sexuality Beyond Consent, Risk, race traumatophilia - Avgi Saketopoulou
A political biography of the Indonesian Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans Movement - Saskia E. Wieringa
The Lover - Marguerite Duras
Writing - Marguerite Duras
Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipel - Alb. C. Kruyt
Pustaha - unknown maker, magic book of the Batak people from North Sumatra
De Bare’e Sprekende Toradjas van midden-Celebes (deel I, II, III) - N. Adriani and Alb. C. Kruyt
De Weg van Magie tot Geloof, Leven en werk van Alb. C. Kruyt (1869-1949) Zendeling-leraar in Midden Celebes, Indonesië - Gerrit Noort
The Corporeal Image, Film ethnography and the senses - David MacDougall
Carnal Thoughts, Embodiment and moving image culture - Vivian Sobchack
Krisses, A critical Biliography - David van Duuren
The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious - C.G. Jung
Synchronicity - C.G. Jung
The Red Book - CG. Jung
Memoirs - great aunt Nita Renting - Schift
Memoirs - great aunt Toet Schift
Index - building blocks of knowledge
Memoirs written in 1995 by great aunt Nita Renting - Schift The base of my research was formed when I began to read the memoirs of my great aunt Nita. She described the life she lived in Indonesia and her journeys between The Netherlands and Indonesia. She wrote about the adoption of her father by a Dutch family. Her father (my great grandfather) was born in Palembang in 1893 and adopted around 1900. She also described the uneven power balance between her father and the adoption mother mrs. Schiff.
Excerpt on the adoption (translated to English):
The Schiff family had no children. "Grandma Schiff was a dominant woman, yet very amiable. So, when they returned to Java, she managed, through one of the noble Indonesian families, to. take their son - my father - to give him a Dutch upbringing. This must have been around the turn of the century, approximately 1900. They took him and never returned him. This was against the agreement, which stated that he would return to his own family after completing his education. They couldn't do anything about it because Europeans held the strings, and the 'natives', no matter how noble they were, had no rights (colonial rule). So, my father was somewhat of a stolen child. He never had any contact with his family again and never really felt happy. Back then, when I didn't know all of this, I never realised that he was 'displaced'."
Letters to the Queen
There are at least three letters send to the queen (between 1957 and 1958) of the Netherlands Hare Majesteit Koningin Juliana, Koningin der Nederlanden. They were send by my Dutch great grandfather Ferdy Rijken to beg for mercy to save his daughter Ille, by giving son-in-law Jean a visa to come to the Netherlands. My grandmother Ille is born in Indonesia, but officially Dutch. She could come, but with the transition towards independence my grandfather Jean (who was the son of the adopted Sultan) looses his European status. So he became Indonesian. Since my grandmother was severely ill (active tuberculosis) and they were shot at, because they were mixed blood. They had to flee the country as soon as possible.
Excerpt from a letter to the queen by Ferdy Rijken (translated to English):
“Your Majesty, it requires no further elaboration to apprise Your Majesty that, as a loving father, I am grievously burdened by the great concerns that presently surround the Schift family in Indonesia.
The longing for her parents might cause my daughter to descend into her grave; what fate would then await her four helpless children, aged 11, 9, 6, and 4, the eldest of whom are no longer afforded the opportunity to attend a suitable school? ....
This appeal, Your Majesty, is a supplication with tearful eyes directed unto you.
I therefore hope that Your Majesty may show mercy for my children and for myself, and grant my humble entreaty.... With hope and prayer, I await Your Majesty's favourable response to my petition, for which I wish to convey my heartfelt and deferential gratitude. I remain, with the highest respect,
Your Majesty’s humble
servant, .”
I have a lot of documents regarding the visa request and the travel with the M.S. Sibajak. The ship they eventually took. But also I found reservations for earlier departures they couldn’t make because Jean didn't have a visa yet.
M.S. Sibajak
I use M.S. Sibajak, the ship that carried the family to the Netherlands as a reoccuring element. A metaphor. I reimagine it as both a portal and a vessel. The ship sails not only across oceans but through time itself—where past, present, and future collapse into one another. Within this space, the lingering presence of the spirits haunts the peripheries.
Next to the metaphor, my grandfather made actual pictures during the jouney. I have digitalised the negatives. There’s one image of my grandmother sitting in a chair on board. And one of my uncle and his siblings in the reflection of one of the windows of the ship.
Also, I have a cut-out scale model of the exact ship. It shows the geometrical proportions of the ship. The ship looks like a machine, a massive metal shell that holds the fragile human bodies afloat on the endless ocean. I cannot help but associate the model with a form of confinement, especially after reading the memoirs of aunt Nita. She talks about an outbreak of disease on board after which the ship still has to sail another week. People start dying, and there’s no escape of death. You don’t know whether you will make it till the end of the journey.
The sea
The ocean is the gateway that separated my family from the spirits. I have experienced the sea as a portal of reconnection on my journey through Indonesia. I went to swim in the sea at full moon. Indonesians said to me that the ancestors will come to me. They are connected to the tides, to the moon and the ocean. I only have to listen. I got in the sea in middle of the night under moonlight. While swimming I moved to lay on my back. Then a big flog of plants got stuck under me. I cannot describe it anything else then just a big bed of plants, like a giant hand holding my full body, gentle. Floating on these plants I started to drift off into the sea. In this darkness, this open space, I experienced going through a passage, through some kind of portal. It scared me, but I had full trust in the force that was taking me. After being adrift for some time, the current changed and brought me back. After this experience I learned to see the signals and presence of the spirit world within this world. I began to see another layer of reality that’s invisible to outsiders. I became more receptive.
Snow
The family arrived late 1958 with the M.S. Sibajak in the harbour of Rotterdam. The winter was setting in. My grandfather made pictures of the first snow. He captured the beauty of the frost on the flowers. There’s something magical about those images, those negatives. Through the images, I see how he experienced the beauty of this cold when he saw it for the first time.
Uncle - A lost spirit
My uncle lives on a different frequency than most people. He is officially diagnosed with schizophrenia and has multiple personalities. He’s being drugged and diagnosed with a mental ilness. At the same time, having voices in his mind could mean he’s channeling something that we cannot see for ourselves. It can be a gift or a curse. He went with the ship to The Netherlands. From a spiritual perspective, his spirit was taken along the journey. And the voices in his head are other spirits talking through him. He’s become a channel, closely in contact with the radio, always,
Drawings uncle
My uncle drew tanks, birds, cowboys, women. In his drawings he writes:
“The Netherlands doesn’t exist”
“You draw first”
“Scary tank”
These seemingly random drawings tell me something about how he thinks, they are clues to me. I know he channels something. He has a deep fear for death, but also a closeness to it.
Tosca - The girl who likes girls, like her uncle likes girls
When she was a child she discovered that she’s attracted to girls. She had short hair. People often mistook her for a boy and called her Oscar instead of Tosca. Only the schizophrenic uncle saw the girl that she was. He came daily to the family home and stares at her. She sees that he sees her.
When the girl is seven she climbs a swing and while pulling herself up she discovers the sensation of an orgasm for the first time. She recognises the type of excitement her uncle feels when he’s looking at her. She starts to compare herself to him. She knows she likes girls and he also likes girls. She believes she’s crazy disgusting like her uncle. A coincidental connection between the two is made. The fear of being unmasked and put in a mental ward keeps hunting her. Mental illnesses run through the family.
There’s a connection between the spirits, the loss of spirituality, the colonial family history, mental ilnesses and the fear of being locked up in a mental institution from an epigenetic perspective. There’s a fine line between all of them. How far can I trust my own perception, when am I really crazy and what part of my suffering is caused by the burden of the colonial family history?
Tapak Suci - Indonesian Martial arts
Since I started the research I also started practising Indonesian martial arts, more specifically I joined a club Tapak Suci. A lot otf the members have Indonesian roots. They are sons or grandsons of soldiers who fought for the Dutch army against the Indonesians. All of them carry a love for violence, or some resignation to violence. I can see it in their eyes. I recognise the same ambiguous relationship I have with violence, that lives within me. Sometimes, I think the mix of Indonesian and Dutch blood created an inner conflict. In my body.
Keris
The keris is a special type of blade, a weapon which often has a curved shape. This weapon is magical, if made by the right blacksmith. It’s made of meteorite stone, and holds the power to summon the ancestors in times of need. One of the Tapak Suci masters teached me to clean the Keris. To maintain it with rose oil, flowers and lemon water. If the weapon is not taken care of, the ancestors might become restless and start influencing the lives of the people close to the weapon. When the weapon is used to ask for a favour, there’s always a high price to be paid. One must be humble and never ask a favour.
Tosca - The researcher on a journey to Indonesia
This summer I went to Indonesia for the first time. I brought two camera’s and traveled by myself. I had some things on my list that I needed to do, but mostly I would listen to the people that I met along the way. I would follow their advice in where to go next. This open exploration gave me a lot of new material that I have to process. Not only have I got new footage, but also it gave me a lot of profound experiences that connect deeply to my prior film proposal.
Toraja - The Land of the Spirits
I ended up in Toraja. Everything there is about life and death and the ancestors. They have a local religion named: Aluk To Dolo (the way of the ancestors). I learned a lot on death as not a direct end of a life, but as a slow transition towards an afterlife. What’s in The Netherlands considered a dead body is in Toraja considered a sick body. The bodies are kept in houses to save for a funeral with a sacrifice of Buffalo’s, etc. This region has a layer of spirituality which is very strong and present. You can literally smell it.
There was a family of which the father Budi invited me to come. He said he considered me his daughter and I got three Indonesian brothers with it. Wayan, Atok, Aya. He said he felt lighter, because I was there. I felt humbled, deeply touched and at the same time in the beginning it felt intense. I decided to fully surrender and accept to the conditions. I truly started to feel home in a very short time. i went with the mother to the church. I went with my brother on the motorcycle to see and learn Aluk to Dolo. I was allowed to eat with my hands. I’m quite home.
Baby graves in trees
Manene - dressing sick bodies
Buffalo Sacrifices
Buffalo market - ropes creating one web of connections
Kickfighting - boys taking out the violence through kickfighting practise.