‘It’s too cold for the
spirits to live here.’

Artistic research on ensouled objects, displacement and dissonance of the body.

My father talked about his journey from Indonesia to the Netherlands. He fled in 1958. The family traveled a month with the ship the M.S. Sibajak before they arrived in the port of Rotterdam. He discovered that the spirits from Indonesia didn’t live in the Netherlands. He lost them on his journey. He figured it must be too cold in this place for them to survive.

dossier pdf

INTRODUCTION

I have a background in design. I work with objects, I make objects and, metaphorically and literally, I embody them. I started the master with the idea to bring objects to life through film. Sometime in the beginning of the semester I stumbled upon the word objectification, because of a personal memory. In the memory I perceived myself as an object. You will read more about it later. The principle of a human becoming an object made sense to explore further. When you perceive yourself as an object, because someone else disregards you as a human being, it does change perception. I was exploring this before in my performances when I crawled into a printer, but I never realised the experiential impact of it. When I became an object there’s a disconnection with my own idea of self. There’s a change in power dynamics and agency. I had to reestablish my connection with other beings. I think that objectification can only be perceived in the presence of others. It is something relational.

Next to a story on objectification, I collected other personal and family stories. Two great-aunts have written personal memoirs of the family history. I use the memoirs to trace back the events that took place in my fathers generation and the generation of my great-grandfather. My ‘Indonesian’ great-grandfather was adopted by a Dutch family during the colonial period around 1900. My father had to flee from Indonesia to The Netherlands in the 1950s. From these stories some research needs to be done on specific subjects. How did the family become displaced? In what way does the adoption and displacement still have impact on the mental and physical state of the body? It is the dissonance, this alienation, or sense of unbelonging that forms the base of my current research.

Reference: Mark Wolynn - It didn’t start with you
The stories led me to start reading the book ‘It didn’t start with you’ by Mark Wolynn. It’s about epigenetic traumas and how they are passed on from generation to generation. It opened my eyes to the impact that past circumstances have on the generations afterwards. I never considered this impact to be biological and traceable.

CHAPTER 1: METHODOLOGY
CHAPTER 2: STORY OVERVIEW
THE stolen SON OF THE SULTAN

Adoption
Umbrella pajung
The Nutmeg’s Curse
Decoloniality

THE JOURNEY WITH THE M.S. SIBAJAK

Death and illnesses
Loosing of spirituality - Javanese mysticism

THE BOY WHO IS A GIRL that likes girls

Schizophrenia
both male and female, both opressor and opressed

CHAPTER 3: AUDIOVISUAL DEVELOPMENT

Embodiment
Method Acting
Hypersensitivity

HANDCRAFTING TOOLS
PENCAK SILAT
BDSM
SOUNDSCAPES

CINEMA THEORY

Materiality of the screen - expended cinema
Role of the camera and body: Corporeal Image
Interobjectivity - Carnal Thoughts
Screenplay - Layers of reality and imagination

CHAPTER 4: CONCEPT OF OBJECTS

Amulets
Cabinet of objects
Interobjects
Hyperobjects

CHAPTER 5: GOALS

Find home within displacement
Continuity of life
Foundation future practice

Note:Scroll and click on the left images to see extra information and the video sketches. You may skip white lettertype writings if it takes too much time to read.

CHAPTER 1: METHODOLOGY

DEVELOPMENT ARTISTIC RESEARCH

This semester is focused on methodologies. One of the first workshops began with readings on artistic research. I became more aware of how I can conduct my research and what it could be in comparison to more scientific approaches. It was insightful to think that artistic research can also create knowledge that might not always be possible to be articulated through language. It needs to be felt, experienced.

One of my goals this semester was to develop my research more in depth. Last semester I did a research into my relationship with handcrafting tools, but I couldn’t relate it yet to broader research topics that is more connected to society and to the here and now. It was hyper personal. How could I develop my research from the personal to the collective? Also, I learned that artistic research is a form of embodied knowledge. This gave me a new perspective and I tried to implement it. Looking back at past semester I can see how my research methodology has evolved and is still developing, not fully cristallised.

This semester I embodied my research. I explored sensually, emotionally and intellectually the research I was conducting. You will see this clearly throughout my critical review. This embodied way of doing research fits with how I work and think. I noticed, I’ve become more sensitive since I started this master, as if I developed my empathic and sensorial antennae. It also connects to my subjects. Through embodying my research I can place myself in the research. I wanted to gain more insight on an empathic level, I tried to approach the subjects with the goal to learn what it means from a human perspective and from a non-human perspective, how the dilemma’s and conflicts within the subjects are experienced. In some sense it felt like method acting.

Reference: Julian Klein - What is Artistic Research?
“to have an artistic experience means to have a look from outside of a frame and simultaneously enter into it…”

“For those kind of terms being, in the end, part of a meta-language, such as knowledge, we often experience: the more we try to determine them, the more we are forced to normative judgments, which are mainly based only on what we want them to mean. And then, it is equally operable, if knowledge as a third species in addition to cognition and skill includes experience, or whether knowledge and experience stand side by side as forms of cognition - they should at least be considered equivalent.”

“Some authors require that artistic knowledge must nevertheless be verbalized and thus be comparable to declarative knowledge (e.g. Jones 1980, 2004 AHRB). Others say it is embodied in the products of art (e.g. Langer 1957, McAllister 2004, Dombois 2006, Lesage, 2009, Bippus, 2010). But ultimately it has to be acquired through sensory and emotional perception, precisely through artistic experience, from which it can not be separated. Whether silent or verbal, declarative or procedural, implicit or explicit - in any case, artistic knowledge is sensual and physical, "embodied knowledge". The knowledge that artistic research strives for, is a felt knowledge.”

A film in which three generations of savage children are faced with the restrictive systems of the extracted lands.

CHAPTER 2: STORY OVERVIEW

CURRENT FILM PROPOSAL

Three generations, three stories, all 7-year-old children:
1900 - Stolen Son of the Sultan - Muhammed Raden Nurpiah later called Joseph Charles Schift
1958 - The Journey with the M.S. Sibajak - Benjamin Glenn Schift
2002 - The boy who’s a girl who likes girls - Tosca Mechelina Schift

Stolen son of the Sultan

The story of the great-grandfather Muhammed Ali Raden Nurpiah later called Joseph Charles Schift.

// Born in Palembang, Indonesia 1893. Muhammed is the son of a Sultan. His mother is one of the head wifes (hoofdvrouwen). The sultan has multiple wives. He lives in the sultanate.

// Some arrangement is made with his father the Sultan in the Riau Archipelago to give his son at the age of seven (ish) to a Dutch trading couple in 1900.

// The son is turned from muslim to Christian and his name was officially changed when he got married at the age of twenty.

// Joseph gets children. The three oldest of his children o are raised by his adoptive Dutch mother. He’s not allowed to be a father. His children think he’s an older brother.

// Joseph doesn’t get returned to his biological family against the agreement.

The workshop of Ram Krishna Ranjan gave me an entry point into researching the colonial aspect of my story, and also talked about the principles of decolonising. I liked this term, although I don’t think I can succeed in making decolonised art. It’s complex and feels slippery. The workshop gave a lot of insight through the many examples what can empower a decolised or somewhat liberated approach to topics.

Reference: Amitav Gosh - The Nutmeg’s Curse
Reference: Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni - Why Decoloniality in the 21st century

ExcerptS from the memoirs written in 1995 by great-aunt Nita Schift.
The sister of my grandfather (English translation):

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'."

Nita Schift about her father (stolen son of sultan):

My father was a young man of 20 years old, and my mother was a beauty of 15 years old. Those two fell in love. So they had to get married…

My father had a reserved character, kept everything to himself. I only saw him very angry a few times. I think he was never really happy and always longed for his real parents and family."

Nita Schift about Mrs. Schiff (Dutch adoptive parent):

"She was so ecstatic about my parents' first child (Toet), a girl, that she completely took her in. She considered it her own child. My mother was only allowed to breastfeed the child, but otherwise had nothing to do with it. She wasn't allowed to be a mother. The same thing happened with Dee and me... We had to call my father and mother by their first names, and the Schiff family were 'daddy and mommy' to us. Mrs. Schiff talked to everyone about 'her children’.

Grandma Schiff mostly stayed at home. She was very fat, about
the stature of Queen Victoria, and behaved like all the ladies her age and widows (she must have been about 60 to 65 years old then). She could hardly move due to her obesity.

Nita Schift about her baboe Sinem (babysitter and servant):

“I couldn't imagine my childhood without her. When we were little, she washed and dressed us, took care of Grandma Schiff, and was considered a kind of serf (slave) by her.”

“Grandma Schiff began to deteriorate slowly after our return in 1926, both physically (Sinem had to clean and change her underwear regularly) and she began to suffer from dementia. Sinem had to take care of her completely.”

The Journey with the M.S. Sibajak

// Glenn Schift (uncle), Dave Schift (father) travel with the family in the period of 7th October 1958 - 13th November 1958 to The Netherlands with the ship, the M.S. Sibajak.

// They loose the spirits from Indonesia during the travel. It’s too cold for the spirits in the Netherlands to survive, to live. It’s December when they arrive. It snows and they only have tropical clothing.

// Going with the ship through the narrow Suez Canal, it looked like the ship was going through the desert itself. To my father this was an almost surreal sight. The camels were walking on both sides.

// Traders come to the ship in the harbours where it stops. People weren’t allowed to get of the ship, so the traders come to hoist the goods, food and merchandise up.

Illnesses and death on board of the ship

1958 - Dave Schift (father), Glenn Schift (uncle) and other siblings travel with the parents to the Netherlands They flee from the civil war. They are on board of the M.S. Sibajak. During their travel diseases are spread on the ship. After arrival in The Netherlands Ille (grandmother) is taken away for the first months in isolation because of the illness she got. She gives birth to Linda Schift (aunt) while in isolation. Joyce (older aunt), who is twelve at the time has to take care of the newborn child.

1946 - Nita Schift (great-aunt) flees Indonesia with the M.S. Sibajak just after the change of power. She describes that, halfway on her journey on the ship, a boy dies and then a disease spreads and a lot of people get infected. A lot of deaths and burials take place on this journey. The passengers were trapped. Nita’s eighteen-year-old roommate dies a couple of days after arriving in the Netherlands due to the disease.

1922 - Daniel Mathieu Jacob Schiff (adoptive father) is not in good health. The family decides to travel to The Netherlands for treatment. He dies during the journey on board of the S.S. Koninkrijk der Nederlanden a couple of days after departure and is buried in Singapore. The family still decides to continue their journey to The Netherlands.

How can displaced bodies regain a sense of belonging?

How does the ship operate as a vessel that carries bodies from one place to another? How can the ship become a character in a narrative and how does it relate to the people on board. In a way it is also a cage, when there is an outbreak of disease and no one is allowed to go ashore. How is the ship representative for captivity as well for the wish for freedom?
How are the spirits lost on the journey from Indonesia to The Netherlands? What makes The Netherlands cold, metaphorically? There’s research that needs to be done on Javanese mysticism. What has been lost regarding spirituality? What needs to be found back?

The boy who’s a girl who likes girls

“I am my uncle, and my uncle is me”

Some notes on the experience of objectification:

// A five year old girl watches two six year old girls reading. She herself cannot yet read and she finds it attractive that the girls are able to read. This is the first encounter with her sexual preference for girls.

// The girl who feels like a boy wants become a boy when she gets older. She lets her mother write this in the friendships books of her classmates at the section: future occupation.

// Most adults perceive the girl as a boy. Only the schizophrenic uncle sees the girl as a girl. He stares daily at the her body when he visits.

// The uncle was once a really smart boy. He just finished his Gymnasium when he first started to hear voices at the age of nineteen. Now he barely knows how to read the time.

// The eight year old girl realises she can never become a boy. She wants and needs to become a girl. She likes being seen as a girl by her uncle and sometimes purposely allows him to see her. She plays with her toys in his line of sight, so he can enjoy seeing her. She pities him.

// The uncle has glasses that reflect. Sometimes he’s occupied with the voices in his head, sometimes he’s staring. The girl often only can see the light reflect in his glasses. She’s trying to see if he’s consciously watching her.

// The uncle once touched the cousin of the girl. What happened is not revealed.

// The girl has a younger sister. The girl feels she has to distract her uncle to make him look at herself instead of her sister. She’s not able to this. Her sister is more feminine. The girl feels guilty for not protecting her sister.

// The uncle flirts with the mother. The mother laughs with him. The girls tries to figure out if her mother would leave her father for him.

// The uncle is being harassed by teenagers on the street.

// The seven year old girl climbs a swing and while pulling herself up she discovers the sensation of an orgasm for the first time.

// The girl recognises the type of excitement her uncle feels when he’s looking at her. She’s disgusted by this idea and starts finding the sensation of an orgasm disgusting.

// The uncle has made a drawing that he proudly shows to the girl. It’s a drawing of a woman with big breasts bound to a pole and blindfolded. The uncle starts laughing.

// The girls starts to compare herself with her uncle. She knows she likes girls and her uncle also likes girls. She starts to belief that she has an illness like her uncle.

// The girl grows up believing she’s disgusting.

Keywords for the characters:

The uncle - illness mental disorder schizophrenia, hearing voices, sexual deviance, pedophile brain, childish behaviour, poor self-care, cutting skin of forehead and ears with razor and knife, vulnerable, shy, cute, not able to keep his pants up, laughing maniacally.

The seven year old girl - illness lesbian, sexual deviance, virgin brain, vulnerable, unable to speak, unable to choose or make the distinction between right and wrong.

The many faces of the system - Teacher, cashier, hairdresser, mother, parents, child care worker, toys, clothes, medical doctor, television programs, social norms and values, social worker, sport instructor, social services.

PSYCHOLOGICAL ILLNESS

During the workshop of Albert Elings and Eugenie Jansen I made three audiovisual sketches on my uncle. The first one was the sketch ‘I am my Uncle’. Here, I was looking for his gaze as it was in my memory. I hadn’t seen him for eight years. The second and third sketch were made from visiting him. When I saw him he didn’t recognise me. I found that he changed as well. He lost a lot of weight and he was in some sense cute like a child. Also he still is scared of death, he always were.

How can schizophrenia have a quality and ability to see things that others cannot see? Being on another channel metaphorically, it might be possible for him to have some other abilities that are not seen and acknowledged in the normative society. This is something that Saodat Ismailova made me aware of during her workshop. How does schizophrenia relate to epigenetic trauma? Is there a relation between the displacement and the hearing of voices that others cannot see? I need to visit my uncle a couple of times to learn and understand how he relates to the past and his obsession with death. I need to research the historical medicalisation of schizophrenia to understand the system that he is in.

BEING BOTH MALE AND FEMALE

The workshop of Albert and Eugenie and the guidance of Valeria Pierdominici (psychotherapist) made me more aware of a dissonance that a person can have with their body. I feel both female and male. I also feel both the oppressor and the oppressed, I feel the victim and the villain. This ambiguous position is something that gives me space to switch sides and perspectives. It makes more sensitive to empathise without actively judging something as wrong or right. This semester I discovered that this position is something I also seek in the research and the audiovisual outputs that I create.

CHAPTER 3: AUDIOVISUAL DEVELOPMENT

EXPERIENTIAL RESEARCH
A big part of my research is conducted through embodiment. This is part of my methodology like I mentioned in the beginning. The three personal stories are accompanied by research topics like decoloniality, Javanese mysticism and schizophrenia. But I also researched them bodily by integrating the history with my own body. I adopt the displacement to channel the emotional weight and get insight into the difficult choices that had to be made. I am thinking of researching the principle of method acting.

HANDCRAFTING TOOLS

Last semester I ended with the archiving of all my tools. I have a close relation to working with my hands and materials through these objects. This semester I expanded the research to weapons in martial arts. There are certain skills necessary to use them as an extension of the body. In some ways the body and the weapon need to become one. So, the body is in control of the tool.

PENCAK SILAT - TAPAK SUCI

Next to channeling emotions, I am researching the physical resilience towards oppression. This semester I learned about Pencak Silat. This is an Indonesian martial arts that exists since 1948, and is a mix of all the different Indonesian fighting styles. Forms of Pencak Silat were practised in the colonial times to fight the Dutch. Especially in rural areas there were a lot of guerrilla groups that were skilled in this form of combat. The martial arts has rhythm in which you have to move. The practising of martial arts was also hidden from the Dutch in the form of dance. Also hand weapons are part of the martial arts. There are a lot of different machetes being used.

What strikes me is the level of commitment within the group that I’m now training with. The head of the group Johnny also has Dutch Indonesian roots. His family also came with the M.S. Sibajak the Netherlands in 1957. His cousins used to practice Silat in the backyard. They were strong and tough people. He told me, they were traumatised from the war having been KNIL military.

CINEMA THEORY

Materiality of the screen - expended cinema
Role of the camera and body - Corporeal Image by David Macdougall
Interobjectivity - Carnal Thoughts by Vivian Sobchack
Layers of reality and imagination - Screenplay

The workshop of J.P. Sniadecki has been really important for the references that I gained in terms of researching materiality within cinema. I am reading the books to learn more about the influence of the human body holding the camera, I’m learning about texture and breathing and living camera bodies. Also, Carnal Thoughts contains a chapter about interobjectifity. Also the physicallity of the film in space, within the cinemaroom is something I’m reading about. I might want to experiment with presenting the audiovisual more spatial, like expended cinema.

Reference: Vivian Sobchack - Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and moving image cultur
Reference: David Macdougall - Corporeal Image

CHAPTER 4: CONCEPT OF OBJECTS

Amulets
Cabinet of objects
Interobject
Hyperobjects

This chapter explores ways which objects can have meaning within the context of creating narratives. It is an exploration of the idea that objects can function as metaphors, as symbols, as ensouled entities, as keys that change the course of events. Also, the concept of what an object is can be expanded, like the principle of objects that are too big to be perceived like the hyperobjects from Timothy Morton. Also, we had a workshop from Saodat Ismailova. During the workshop we had to make personal definitions of the word Ritual and Amulet. This exercise opened for me a way to view objects as holders of energy that brings safety. This can be safety like the weapons of martial arts, but also spiritually and it can give a sense of familiarity. Objects create the feeling of home.

Reference: Timothy Morton - Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World

Underneath are descriptions of the personal interpretation of what a ritual and what an amulet is to me:

Ritual:

Repetitions and repetitive acts of comfort and/or devotion.
A performance of gestures that feel familiar.
The cornerstones of one’s life.

Amulet:

A physical object that’s connected to a source of energy, only perceived by its keeper.
An immortal well-wisher that, from time tot time, is given from person to person.
A shield of faith.

INTEROBJECT

Interobjects only exist in dreams. They are new creations derived from partially fused blends of other objects. It is a dream phenomenon.

Nonexistent objects that connect to the unconscious and the imagined through dreams. Possibilities for creating surreal objects that guide the narrative.

Using the surreal objects as symbols and methaphors for certain dissonant states of the human body and their relation to their surroundings, like the radio used for the video sketch: I am my uncle.

Making collages of several combined objects in physical form and then put them in green screen to recreate faded memories like remnants of a past.

Blur the boundaries: reality becomes opaque.

Connection to Schizophrenia, but in a dreamlike state?

“Disjunctive cognition is a common phenomenon in dreams, first identified by psychoanalyst Mark Blechner, in which two aspects of cognition do not match each other. The dreamer is aware of the disjunction, yet that does not prevent it from remaining. From Dr. Mark Blechner's The Dream Frontier, it states "The specifics of bizarre dream experiences may be a source of data about the different levels of perceptual processing”. By careful examination of the experiences in dreams, we may gain insight into the workings of our mind/brains. The most frequent disjunction is between appearance and identity, such as "I knew it was my mother, even though it didn't look like her.” The dreamer recognises a character's identity, even though the appearance does not match the identity.” - source wikipedia

How can dissonance turn into vigour?

CHAPTER 5: GOALS

GENERAL QUESTIONS AND GOALS OF THE RESEARCH
Subject questions and goals

I am concerned with the displacement of bodies and the alienation from our environment and society. How can displaced bodies regain a sense of belonging? How can dissonance turn into vigour? How can we reclaim space to feel at home? How can the dissonant state of our own body become an act of refusal? In line with this, what could it mean for the right to self-determination?

Intellectual goals

I want to learn and better understand the complexities of life and human experiences to create narratives that have layers within them to be uncovered. So, that both my audience and I can explore new perspectives on what it means to be human. In some ways, the research is about the continuity of life.

Artistic goals

I want to gather a lot of research material to lay out the foundation of my future artistic practice. This means I might not continue with everything I collect, but it is meant for future projects.
I want to develop a new working method in relation to how I create audiovisual works. I might want to learn to work more with other people, especially cinematographers.
Also I want to learn to work with sound more by learning Ableton. I want to make it more present in the work. Also, as a way to conduct research into the emotional, sensorial and experiential side of the work.

Lineage of Tools