The search for spirits became a methodological approach to illuminate the 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 passports, the letters, the negatives - the stories of the ancestors became tangible again: vivid, immediate, and alive in the present. I interweave these archival materials with footage from my recent journey to Indonesia, creating a layered narrative that bridges personal experience with historical displacement.
Through the work I weave fragments of footage from visits to my uncle in Enschede. My uncle is diagnosed with Schizophrenia. He hears voices that nobody else can hear. His spirit seems to be lost in a realm that I cannot enter. My uncle embodies the affects of displacement. He mirrors the fears and anxieties that haunt the family. Subjectively, I think he is still sailing on the ship that brought him to The Netherlands.
Next to fragments of my uncle, I recreate the journey with the M.S. Sibajak: the ship that carried my family to the Netherlands. Reimagined 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.
I work with an extensive family archive and in extension, I collect the personal memories of my father and uncle. I work with footage from my recent journey to Indonesia in 2024. And I work with the content from public archives. The elements (histories, memories, experiences) relate to one another in ways that go beyond a linear timeframe. There’s a synchronous relation between all elements that speak towards the future. They carry urgency in the here and now.
The title is a phrase from Tosca Schift’s father Dave 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
In the research project, I explore the means to find the spirits my 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. The research outcomes include the making of a publication and an expanded cinema performance in which the body becomes the vessel, embodying the emotional and physical impacts of displacement.
Methodology - 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 - embodied artistic approach
I work with an open body, allowing the research to change and shape me. It’s a form of metamorphosis, a continuous process of becoming. It means that my bod and spirit are open to rearrange itself. The body has an open nerve that is sensitive, but also very receptive to change. Not only does the body become more sensitive to influences from the outside. Also, the knowledge that is 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. The forgotten is becoming remembered.
Keywords: spirits, ancestors, Toraja, missionaries, animism, embodiment, synchronisity, M.S. Sibajak, collective unconscious, epigenetic trauma, Dutch colonial fantasy, green promise, pustaha, kerisses, aluk to dolo,, Christianity, Albert C. Kruyt,
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
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
Sexuality Beyond Consent, Risk, race traumatophilia - Avgi Saketopoulou
A political biography of the Indonesian Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans Movement - Saskia E. Wieringa
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?
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.
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.
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 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 got an extra home.
Alb. C. Kruyt - Converting to Christianity
The combination of Christianity with the local religion of Aluk to Dolo is no coinsidence. I. 1906 the first missionaries arrived in Toraja. They build schools to educate the children and they were trying to connect with the people to spread Christianity. They succeeded. Alb. C. Kruyt was a key figure in the documentation of this transition. He wrote extensively about the way the Torajans lost their own belief which made them more receptive to turn to god. This feeling of spiritual loss was created by the missionaries on purpose. Wayan grandfather was also forced to go to school as a child. He hid in the mountains and avoided the Dutch education. Wayan’s family and the Dutch have a connection there.
- Baby graves
- Funeral Ceremonies
- Manène - redressing of the ‘sick’ bodies
- Buffalo Sacrifices
- Tao Tao
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.