by Bilqis Hijjas

Melaka Art & Performance Festival
29 November 2009
http://www.melakafestival.com

“If the government won’t give me money,” I recently read an artist’s comment, “I just make poor theatre.” Another alternative: get money from other governments! That is what the Melaka Art & Performance Festival did recently, hitting up Multicultural Arts Victoria and the Australia Council to finance the visits of 21 artists to present a series of site-specific performances and art installations in the old part of Melaka around the remains of A Famosa, St Paul’s Church and the river.

Led by Melaka-born and Melbourne-based dancer Tony Yap, the festival featured his long-time collaborator Janette Hoe (also Malaysian-born and Melbourne-based) as well as a number of other Australians, and some people from Ireland, Indonesia, Chile, New Zealand, Vietnam and Canada. Malaysia was also represented by Kim Ng and Goh Lee Kwang, but I heard some griping that Malaysian-based artists were conspicuously absent at the festival. Then again, if Tony wants to bring all his friends home to Melaka to play, and the Australian government foots the bill, then who are we to complain? We would not otherwise have had the privilege to see the works of these artists — their appearance in Melaka should have been refreshing for the closeted Malaysian arts scene.

I say ‘should have been’, because it wasn’t, mostly because nobody knew the festival was happening. I only found out about it because I ran into Janette Hoe at a performance in KL. A week before, a notice about MAP circulated on Facebook, but it was still surrounded by silence and mystery. Even the cultural attache at the Australian High Commission only heard of it after it was over! Thanks to this promotional vacuum, the usual culture vultures did not come in for the kill – at least they didn’t on the afternoon that I was there. But fortunately the festival did not lack an audience. By coinciding with the Hari Raya Haji long weekend and with school holidays, Melaka was full of day trippers and balik kampung kids, ready to ogle at a masked woman cavorting on a hillside or a man in Javanese gear balancing on an electricity box, in between scarfing down their cendol and chicken rice balls and being toted up and down the strip on trishaws.

The art-starved masses make a curious audience. Their criteria are pragmatic rather than aesthetic. “How can she do that in the hot sun?” was an oft-heard comment. Performances had to be loud or gimmicky to get their attention. Geraldine Morey, wafting up the hillside surrounded by swarms of dragonflies, and fluttering her fingers as if conducting her insectile orchestra, was a worthy object of curiosity: white woman, long blond hair bound in ribbons, with Butoh-born self-possession, firmly observing the fourth wall. But what on earth was she doing? The audience could only gape and guess.

Mike Hornblow’s odd symbiotic performance with a pair of plastic chairs was another crowd-interesting novelty. With a display of great effort, he hoisted himself and his chairs down a reconstructed wall of laterite stone. At the bottom, he proceeded to launch himself off the ground, still connected to the chairs, and land with a crash, which unsurprisingly ended with one of the chairs breaking. I sensed some disapproval from the crowd – art is not an excuse for wanton destruction! Crazy white man.

I think Daniel Mounsey’s piece in the shade of the A Famosa ruins was the most effective. Entitled ‘Pakeha’, it explored Daniel’s ancestry of white-man imperialists. With painted-out teeth and a false moustache, looking every inch the sideshow pirate, Daniel staggered around the fort entrance, beating his chest and spitting, “Melaka! Mine! Melaka! Mine!” When a clutch of unsuspecting children emerged from the archway, he attacked them with growls and roars. The children screamed and fled, and the audience cheered appreciatively.

Eventually, with many suspicious glances behind him, and with wailing entreaties to “Mama! Jesus!”, the white male imperialist lay down in the shadow of the fort and died of tropical fever, which was a great comfort to all the Malaysians watching. The children sneaked up to see if he was really dead. Everyone clapped. Here was something that they understood, and moreover something that derived real meaning from the site Daniel had chosen. Literal, maybe; over the top, certainly; but an effective use of space and audience.

Another difficulty with the site-specific performances was the noise. The festival organisers could do nothing about it and the artists must have anticipated the problem, but while watching their performances I found the noise distracting and instrusive. The trishaws drivers were pumping mid-90s dance music, and would honk repeatedly to show their appreciation for Medea Luminea in her guise as a 17^th century high class whore who was tossing her scarf on the hillside – the desired response, perhaps? Another event taking place on the roadway near A Famosa blasted ‘Buttons’, which made an ugly contrast to Jeanette Hoe’s quiet and thoughtful solo. Car alarms went off, children blew little bird whistles bought from hawkers, and loudspeakers called parents to collect lost toddlers. The only work that came off more or less unscathed from this aural attack was Agung Gunawan’s solo. His soundscape sounded like a tame mynah bird chattering through its repertoire — “Assalamualaikum! Hello bird!” — which synched well with the surrounding noise pollution.

Up on the hill in the shade of St Paul’s Church, things were blessedly quieter. In a simple and pretty participative project, the public were invited to write their secrets, wishes and fears on coconut leaves that were strung around a large tree. Inside the church, projected videos played above installation art works. As dusk swooped down over the city, here we found the most affecting and unashamedly beautiful work at the festival: Matthew Gingold’s audiovisual installation ‘Flying Falling Floating’. Projected onto the domed chancel wall of the church, it shows dancers drifting across blackness in the motions of the work’s title. A line of bodies flies serenely earthwards, not plummeting, but driving itself with gentle wing beats straight towards the ground. In slow motion, groups of bodies tumble into view and tumble out again, like angels yoked to a giant rolling millstone of darkness. Layered bodies, larger than life, hang in the centre of the space like a great crucifixion of light. As daylight fades, the sky turns the same colour as the projected background, and in the ruined structure of St Paul’s which lacks a roof over its nave, it seems as if the chancel wall too has crumbled, to reveal the figures wheeling like constellations in the night sky.

The festival closed against this backdrop with ‘Eulogy for the Living’, in which all the performers converge in St Paul’s in their day’s characters. There is Our Lady of the Dragonflies again, and Michael Hornblow with his prosthetic chairs (a new one to replace the broken one), and Agung Gunawan in his Javanese headdress. Each performs an excerpt from their solo works, to their original soundscapes, before sinking to the stone floor in the semblance of death. In stumbles the Pakeha, still mouthing off, but he too soon falls into despondency, leaning against the gravestones of his ancestors. When corset-clad Medea Luminea enters, the Pakeha rouses slightly, gazing at her with a mixture of longing and hope, as if she is the key that can release him from the cycle of piracy and barbary. It is a rare moment of real human connection in this stylized and somewhat sterile Butoh landscape. But eventually all the characters descend into death, leaving only Tony Yap to play the penitent. He attends with solicitousness to each pilgrim body as it falls, before laying himself gently to the ground. There is silence. Then finally they all stand up to bow.

‘Eulogy for the Living’ was a nice ending, bringing together all the elements of this little weekend festival, recapping its diversity and paying individual tribute to its participants. Afterwards King Marong from Gambia and Lamin Sonko from Senegal set up with their African drumming, and got the artists, audience and organisers on their feet. Certainly they deserved a little celebration! As a mini international arts festival, assembled by a small group of dedicated people with no fanfare and minimal local government support, the Melaka Art & Performance Festival was a success. There were many people who went home from Melaka that day with colourful photographs and stories to tell of strange goings-on around the ruins, and a few people who went home knowing that they had experienced moments of meaning, tantalizing glimpses of possibilities and inspiring models for art-making which will mark our memories of Melaka for ever after.

~

This was one of several artists’ quotes displayed at Five Arts Centres’ 25^th birthday bash. I think it was attributed to Janet Pillai. Return to text…