Kenduri/Feast
An imagined dinner party gathering of artists and researches both dead and alive.
Presented by a group of willing volunteers who channeled the guests as part of an assessment for the Extension Unit : Extend Cultural Research Expertise delivered by Gail Russell, North Metropolitan TAFE, Perth.
Kenduri/Feast, 2022, Plywood, black candles, pears, raku-fired vessel, incense sticks, perfume from Arab Street Singapore, cup noodles, joss paper, disposable chopsticks, images of Malay food and desserts, images of guests.
Venue:
Void deck of a Housing Development Board flat, Singapore
Guests:
Gabriel Chaile (Argentine Ceramicist)
Simone Fattal (Lebanese Ceramicist)
Mike Bianco (WA Artist)
Zarina Muhammad (International Artist & Curator)
Terence Heng (Visual Sociologist, Uni Liverpool)
Catherine Bell (Ritual Studies Scholar)
The temporary altar is set in a void deck of a Housing Development Board apartment – an empty space on the ground floor, which is often rented for Chinese funeral wakes, lavish Malay weddings and community thanksgiving prayers, and in recent years, for the celebration of birthdays of members of the migrant Philipinx community.
A sacred space is created through a transient performative ritual altar in a mundane everyday space with everyday objects, Malay dishes and desserts from Nazerul’s childhood and some effigies of the guests whose spirits he conjured.
Catherine:
Funny that I should be summoned to a ritual feast after spending half my life researching and lecturing about rituals (Aslan, 2009). I can’t say I know who this person who dragged me here is.
Zarina:
That’s Naz, our host. He’s been told that his art making processes are solely based on his running around inside his own head and that he makes no consideration for other establish practitioners. But I beg to differ, I met him in September and he spoke a lot about how your theories – albeit one or two lines – from your magnum opus (Ritual Theory, Ritual Practise, 1992) have guided him in his thinking process. That, coupled with my research interest in vernacular histories, spirit ecology through an animist framework (Object, Lessons, Space, N.D.) with which he hopes to shake up Perth’s art scene with.
Catherine:
He’d probably only read a few chapters of my book, it’s a very difficult text for someone who is not a major in world religions (John-Pace, 2009). but I applaud him for trying.
Terence:
He also thought that he could use some good citations for his papers. I’ve also read some of your papers Catherine. I’m Terence by the way, currently the world authority in transient diasporic Chinese post-death rituals (Heng, 2021) and you’re currently stuck in one thanks to our host (Faculty of Humanities University of Liverpool, 2019)
Mike:
Oh, have we been summoned? Why am I dragged here without my consent? I feel like an exploited lower lifeform tossed around by a human. Oh, who am I to judge? I make people lay down on a bed with glass tubes of live bees. Live bees – no consent given by the bees. I’m sure they had better places to be than in glass tubes in PICA (PICA, 2016).
Gabriel:
Yes, I wonder where is the making in your practise, Mike. Ah, Zarina too. No, Zarina especially Your overuse of found objects, community engagement and cultural artefacts for your installations is just baffling (NTU CCA Singapore, 2020). For Simone and me, it’s clear we make art objects, we work with traditional mediums to make contemporary forms informed by and embody ancient mysteries, your work however, remains a mystery (Weisburg & Mudu, N.D.).
Terence:
In her defence - if I may speak for Singapore’s award-winning artist – Zarina (Sim, 2022) and I, both are interested in the changing meanings of sidelined cultural practises, biographies of objects and how things inherited contains within them the narratives of micro-histories of people who used to own them (Iskandar, 2019). Every object displayed in an installation, or in my case, photographically documented is a piece of history that have been sieved out of the national identity making in the case of Singapore, in favour of a homogenous, standardized and acceptable cultural narrative (Heng, 2020). That, is our making process.
Catherine:
Do you mean unscholarly accounts of vernacular history? I am totally on board. I understand the importance of gathering oral histories and various cultures’ interconnectedness with the physical world and the spirit world (Bell, 1992). Our action in communal ritual reflects the aspirations we have in the spirit world. Very much like this, this, I’m sure this is a Hungry Ghost Festival makeshift altar, considering I’m already dead. Our host’s aspiration to learn from our collective expertise summed up in a ritual feast.
Terence:
I agree, traditional western academic scholarship (which has been heavily influenced by medieval Islamic scholarship (Lyons, 2010) but never mind that for now) isn’t the only way to ensure that one’s art practise is substantial. My research involved the documentation of the exhumation of cemeteries. I took photos, I mingled with the families, I wrote new narratives to create a novel understanding of the lives of diasporic communities and how they circumnavigate state sanctioned parameters on religious use of public spaces, and, imagine how diasporas would continue after death with exhumation, reinternment, repatriation of remains and retelling of histories (Heng, 2020).
Zarina:
My works are rooted in the retelling and dissection of oral histories, myths and cultural tropes, symbolisms and visual fieldwork in the Malay archipelago (Curators International, N.D). Traditional scholarship limits our understanding of the cosmos through a rigid empirical framework and worldview. My practise considers the fantastical when dealing with the physical world – how does our understanding of the world filled with demigods and spirits can potentially create better outcomes for our management of the environment, sacred sites and marginalized sections of our communities (Tay, 2022).
Gabriel:
Ah, mystery solved. Understanding the past isn’t just the role of historians but also, that of individuals like us who have a platform from where our views (Heni, N.D.) can be aired through art.
Mike:
Back to the environment, I think we need a better way to engage with and care for the environment and communities, human or otherwise, that benefit from it. I myself gathered participants in Perth to learn the history of native and alien plant species in the city. The participants to the project roamed the city marking trees on the map and collecting data through active participation and walking the grounds (Bianco, N.D.).
Simone:
Yes, but is it art or merely a well-funded circus act? What I found to be interesting was your attempt at recreating lost histories with the help of a quack clairvoyant back in America (Bianco, N.D.). The whole thing is undoubtedly a sham but that was a rather novel and creative qualitative research method that I think piqued our host’s interest.
Mike:
Ahh, hahaha, I am respectfully ignoring the first bit of what you said Simone. Yes, piecing together stories that are lost to time and decay through speculative means is a common technique in creating a more comprehensive understanding of the past and with that, we hope, the future (Chan, 2017).
Gabriel:
Community arts, ground-up initiatives and speculative narratives, I get it now. You see my giant oven-like objects, they too embody my desire in recollecting ancestral history and knowledge (Heni, N.D.), what better way to get people together than with food? Around food, people begin to talk, plans are made, futures imagined and speaking of which, I can’t seem to pick this food up.
Simone:
I’ve been wondering the same. I thought it’s just the arthritis.
Catherine:
You’re not actually here. Just… just look at the food, my dear disembodied spirit friends. Wait till you actually join me in the afterlife.
Simone:
Piecing together… well I hate to admit it but yes, my use of Mesopotamian and other Near Eastern mythology is based on academic stitching-together the various piece meal information archaeologists and historians uncover from cuneiform tablets. Clay tablets, although well preserved, usually breaks off when the story gets exciting (Konstantopoulos, 2020). That’s where historians and artists like me, fill up the gaps with our imagination. I like to do that through shaping clay into personifications of ideas and experiences (Goldstein, 2017). I think I’m going to make a sculpture of this meet-up when I get home, just making, without the over theorizing like an undergraduate making art for their lecturers or writing long essays to accompany seemingly meaningly lumps of clay arranged randomly on the floor.
Terence:
It’s been delightful meeting you all, I’d love to stay for much longer, but I think rooster is about to crow and the first light is going to zap us out of here. I’d really love to document this meeting, I’m a visual sociologist after all (Heng, 2022), let me get my camera.
Gabriel:
Oh yes, we should take a photo together, no? Who knows when we’ll meet again?
Zarina:
In thunder, lightning or in rain? (Shakespeare, 1606, 2021, 1.1.2)
The group huddled together for a photo in front of the altar. A polaroid film falls onto the ground revealing nothing but an image of the altar covered with food, still untouched.
References
Aslan, R. (2009) ”Foreword” Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, Oxford University Press, pp. vii-viii.
Bell, C. (1992) Ritual Theory, Ritual Practise. Oxford University Press. Print.
Benhamou, J [Judith BenHamou Reports] (2022, Jan 24) Simone Fattal, artist about ceramic and contemporary art. [Video] Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qIh5JITy_c
Chan, D. (2017) Asian Futurism and the Non-other. E-Flux Journal. Retrieved from https://www.-e-flux.com/journal/81/126662/asian-futurism-and-the-non-other/Curators International (N.D.) Zarina Muhammad. Retieved from https://curatorsintl.org/about/collaborators/7919-zarina-muhammad
Faculty of Humanities, Unversity of Manchester [methodsMcr] (2019, Nov 19). Terence Heng - Doing Visual Sociology: Case Studies from the Grave Seminar [Video]. Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrur1nH1Zc0
Goldstein, A. (2017) Vitamin C – Clay and Ceramics in Contemporary Art. Phaidon Publishing, pp96-97.
Heng, T. (2020) Of Gods, Gifts and Ghosts: Spiritual Places in Urban Spaces. Routledge. Print.
Heni, L. (N.D.) Gabriel Chaile. Retrieved from https://leviathan.henicom/gabriel-chaile/
Iskandar, S., (2019) Making Space for the Ghaib (Unseen). Southeast of Now: Directions in
contemporary and modern art in asia, Vol 3, No 2, pp243 – 269.
John-Pace, D. (2009) “Foreword: Note on a Friendship” Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory Ritual
Practice. Oxford University Press, pp vii-xi.
Koh, J. (N.D.) Void Deck. National Library Board. Retreived from
https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_2015-01-27_191959.html
Konstantopoulos, G. (Contribution). (2020, Oct 16) Episode 4: A Demon Haunted World.
Thin Edge of the Wedge. [Audio Podcast]. Retrieved from http://www.wedgepod.org/episode-list/
Lyons, J. (2020) The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization. Bloomsbury Publishing. Print.
NTU CCA Singapore (2020, Dec 14) Residencies Studio Sessions: Revisiting the Penunggu* and the Demon Naga at the Threshold – Artist talk by Zarina Muhammad. [Video] Vimeo. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/490604337?embedded=true&source=video_title&owner=24432813
Object Lessons Space (2018) Creative Conversations. Zarina Muhammad on Spirit Histories,
Shape-Shifting Spaces and The Cultural Biographies of Things. Issue 11.
Retrieved from https://objectlessons.space/Zarina-Muhammad-on-Spirit-Histories-Shape-shifting-Spaces-and-The
PICA, (2016, July 28) Radical Ecologies Artist Interview: Mike Bianco [Video] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QHebxkbkpQ
Shakespeare, W. (1606, 2021). Macbeth. Shakespeare Navigators. Retrieved from
https://shakespeare-navigators.com/macbeth/T11.html
Sim, A (2022, Feb 14) Three art practitioners win Impart Art Prize, will receive $20,000 each. The Straits Times. Retreived from https://www.straitstimes.com/life/arts/three-art practitioners-win-impart-art-prize-will-receive-20000-each
Tay, L. (2022, July 27) At Singapore Art Museum, Artists Visualise the Intricate Flows of
Globalisation. Occula. Retrieved from https://ocula.com/magazine/features/lonely-vectors-singapore-art-museum/
Weisburg, M. & Mudu, S. (N.D.) Gabriel Chaile. La biennale di venezia. Retrieved from https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2022/milk-dreams/gabriel-chaile
