“It’s too cold for the spirits to live here”

“A mesmerising and arresting performance” - audience

Fierce and vulnerable, violent and loving: A visceral experience on life and death, the will to survive in search of home. A process of becoming. On colonial heritage and displacement. On the extraction of land, trees, life and nature. An opening wound. An experience in which the lost spirits haunt the peripheries of the space. A non-linear spiral merging the past and the future within the present. Endless.

“It’s too cold for the spirits to live here” has been developed into an expanded cinema performance of 45 minutes. A work-in-progress* version of the performance has taken place in Het Documentaire Paviljoen in the Podium space on 28th of June 2025 as part of the artistic Research Week of the Master of Film - Artisitc Research in and Through Cinema.
*The work-in-progress version is a complete performance which stands on itself. Some changes will be made in the subtitles to enhance the flow and poetic quality and the tuning of the sound levels to a 5.1. surround version still have to be done. Also the performance can be made slightly shorter or longer, depending on the program in which it will be presented.
Link to the film (with password):
https://vimeo.com/toscaschift/itstoocoldforthespiritstolivehere

Link to recording of the performance (with password):
https://vimeo.com/toscaschift/performance

Narrative

On October 16th, 1958, a family fled Indonesia. They spent a month at sea aboard the M.S. Sibajak on a voyage to The Netherlands. When they arrived, it was getting winter. Coming from the tropics, the cold was a shock. The family quickly noticed that the spirits who had always been with them in Indonesia were no longer there - they had left them along the journey.

In the ‘work-in-progress' cut of the work, the M.S. Sibajak is reimagined as both a portal and a vessel that 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. The search for spirits is a methodological approach to illuminate complexities of colonial family history that had long remained hidden, literally stowed away in biscuit tins in the attic. By unveiling the family archive, the stories of the ancestors become tangible again. Schift interweaves the archival materials with footage from her recent journey to Indonesia, creating a layered narrative that bridges personal experience with historical displacement.

Floor plan

Performance experience

The projector stands at 1.5 to 2 meters high and projects on the screen. The trees cast shadows. The audience gets seated, stands, or sits on the ground left and right of the projector.

Part 1: Radio
The performer walks towards the radio. The film begins in the dark with a soundscape, after sometime images start to appear. The performer puts the radio on and starts searching for frequencies. It begins soft and becomes louder over time. Sometimes the sound can be distinguished as music, sometimes it stays noise.

The performer turns off their radio during the moment a man (the uncle) turns off his radio in the film.

Part 2: Silence
The performer stays on the same spot, in resting position looking down. The audience focusses on the film. When the shot of drawings appear, the performer slowly moves from resting position forward. Moving close to the ground, avoiding the projection.

The performer

Part 3: Knife

Part 4: Cutting trees

part 5: Ship sailing

Installation option:

Installation version

The expanded cinema project can be shown as an installation too. After performing the work as an event, the film keep playing in loops. The space is left with the remains of the trees that are partially cut down and stripped from their leaves. This way the performance leaves a trace of the event that took place. It becomes a sight of memory, and in some ways even a graveyard. The trees that haven’t been cut will slowly get dry. Dying from the lack of water. The leaves will start hanging more, day by day. The smell of the trees will fill the space, like traces of a forest which is not there anymore.

Physical requirements

Space - 80 m2 to 130 m2, a sealing with a hight of 4 meter or more is preferred because of the hight of the trees. Also a space that relates to the colonial history of Amsterdam can add to the experience of the performance.

10-12 Unrooted trees - Tripods, grey tubes, black cloth, hanging concrete tiles, trees from undeveloped areas (braakliggende grond) in the municipality of Amsterdam, the trees have to come from a place in which they are considered as weeds.

Radio - Sony Dream Machine radio

Recorder/Microphone - Zoom recorder attached to 1 or 2 speakers on the ground that amplify the live sound of the radio. Preferably the speakers should be separate from the speakers that play the sound of the projected film.

Projector - 6000+ lumen, 16:9 with a wide angle lens

Screen - 6 to 7 meters wide

Sound system - Preferably a 5.1 or 7.1 surround system that’s already inside the space.

Background of the narrative

THE LIMINAL SPACE BETWEEN

Ship: the M.S. Sibajak
I use M.S. Sibajak, the ship that carried the family to the Netherlands as a reoccurring 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.

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 as being mentally ill. 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 during the journey. He’s never arrived, always sailing. 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 that tell about violence, manhood and the loss of innocence. I know he channels something. He has a deep fear for death, but also a closeness to it. The fear of being unmasked and put in a mental ward haunts the family. Mental illnesses run through the family which can be caused by the violent colonial history of the ancestors.

There’s a connection between the spirits, the loss of spirituality, the colonial family history, mental illnesses 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?

FAMILY HISTORY

Memoirs written in 1995 by great aunt Nita Renting - Schift
The base of my project 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'."

Great grandfather who sends 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.

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.

INDONESIA NOW

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.

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.