Mella Jaarsma is known for artistic practices that develop around creating sophisticated costumes and playful participations. For decades, the artist has been producing works that engage with social and cultural issues in Indonesia and beyond. I have had the honor to work with Jaarsma occasionally, the one prior to this exhibition was in the Thailand Biennale, Krabi 2018. Krabi is known for its beautiful seascape of Phi Phi islands and Maya Bay. Neither was a site for the exhibition because tourists already overcrowded them.
However, other natural sites such as beaches, island, mangrove forest and waterfall were offered. Rather than working in a natural site that the national parks offered for the biennale, Jarrsma was one of a few artists that worked with local communities in Khlong Prasong subdistrict, and she was totally at home in that Kampong-like environment. Her project Silver Souls (2018) deals with the faded history and practice of making Batik in the province because of the modernization and cultural revolution during the Second World War. The production period is the monsoon season. I occasionally saw Jaarsma riding a motorbike to the town to buy supplies. Visiting her at the village also provided an escape from the business of Krabi town and Ao Nang, which are Thailand’s tourist hotspots. Entering the village, we needed to pass through a vast rice field that is famous for its local variant of rice called “Sang-yod”. The rice is specific to the island because it consumes brackish water that the area provides. The variant has been known and circulated around for centuries. To think about it again, “Size of Rice” is not an entirely new journey, but a conversation that continues where it left off. Similar to other international activities around the globe since 2020, we had been postponing this exhibition several times because of the uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Before it became long overdue, Jaarsma and I had an important discussion at the beginning of 2021. As we cannot travel and visit each other in person, we agreed to work together remotely by starting to develop the exhibition from a single concept that we were both interested in, that is “measurement”. At first glance, it seems like we opted for something universal, but our research and development create a thread between Thailand and Indonesia that may contribute to the philosophical, historical and cultural understanding of the term in the region.
Measurement provides connection between human beings and their environment. To measure is to compare, contrast and communicate. It is not a coincidence that traditional cultures around the globe share a similar unit of measurement in length when it relates to the body, especially in the category of length,as humans might have a different color of skin, but our bodies are equal in scale. For example, nue in Thai traditional system is equivalent to inch in the British imperial system. The act of measurement is thus performative, as it involves creation of movement and communication. As measurement does not end at the body, its usage extends to the most fundamental everyday object. Traditional measurement became more environmental and cultural as it includes the application of an everyday object that is specific to the shared context. The Size of Rice has taken inspiration from a grain of rice, a traditional measurement unit that is a shared agrarian heritage of Southeast Asia as a unit in a commerce. In the Thai traditional mass measurement system, rice was measured by different hand gestures: open hand, close hand and both hands; acts of measuring is in itself performative. From a grain of rice, the unit of measurement gradually scales up to the palm of a hand, one scoop of a coconut shell and one cartwheel for instance. As the unit grows, it serves other purposes beyond commerce. While scaling up, measurement is also a system of quantification for building and dwelling as appeared in asta kosala kosali, a Balinese manuscript from the sixteenth century that included measurement as a system of house construction and harmony living. In the Kingdom of Siam an area would be divided into rai (translated into a field, as in a rice field), with tiese space to agricultural seasons, offerings, and taxation. It means that measurement is also a tool in the system of administration and governance on a greater scale. Ironically, at its minimum and maximum level, the unit took philosophical and religious meanings as they were used to explaining the birth of the universe or beings themselves. This is a core understanding which would reemerge throughout the exhibition.
Traditional measurement is not a concept that is alien to Jaarsma’s artistic practice. Her early work Pralina – A Fire Altar (1993) as the first work where she created a cremation site for Munduk village in North Bali. The artist learned the system of belief and different architectural practice from the locals while navigating herself through production. In 2018, the artist revisited Balinese culture in the series Bale I, Bale II (2018) in which she created mixed technique drawings from asta kosala kosali, the principle of Balinese architecture design. In the artwork, the artist incorporated Balinese architectural components into her costume design, in which the distinction between wearing and dwelling became blurred. This visual experiment is being explored further in this exhibition. Kosala Kosali I is one of a few paintings in the exhibition. The artwork expresses the relationship between the body of a woman, and the space derived from that which is measured. By superimposing a woman’s body over the contour of the building, Jaarsma suggests a subtle relationship between two entities that is the body that lived and the built environment as an extension of the body. The creation of the residential complex from the measurement of the woman who is the head of the household ensures that the family will live in harmony. The black and white half circles measuring stick that the person holds in her two hands signifies the act of measuring that would continue to reappear throughout the series, as senses of distance, volume, and duration have overcome the domination of form and colour. Another large painting, Kosal Kosali II, shows a dissimilar approach where a body and architecture combined. The body is in a process of transformation, a metamorphosis, in which the built environment is inseparable from a living body. The series of drawings titled the Size of Rice shows other attempts to express the relationship between woman bodies and the traditional architecture. Also, the painting and drawing shows bodies in motion where architecture-costumes are opened-up, inter-act, and lived-through rather than just put-on.
However, this exhibition expanded her interest beyond Bali and architecture. In an archipelago like Indonesia, which comprises 1,340 ethnic groups, a diverse system of measurement also diversifies the process of worlding itself. The cultures of Southeast Asia underwent the process of modernisation, with the widespread adoption of the metric system that came with colonisation and standardisation. If this causal dimension is also an aesthetics dimension, our knowledge of the world that is fundamental to diverse artistic production would also cease to exist. The loss of a notion of measurement based on traditions also indicates the loss of unique senses of distance, volume, duration and so on. Taking inspiration from the significance of the size of rice in measurement as a key concept of this exhibition, Jaarsma invited four performers with diverse ethnical and cultural backgrounds in Indonesia to collaborate with her. Although most of them are performers who are trained in traditional and contemporary performance and based in Yogyakarta, they were encouraged to
think of this collaboration based on their tradition.
Adbi Karya from Makassar in Sulawesi chose measurement of length based on his Makassar’s culture that is similar to Asta Kosaka Kosali. Siska Aprisia is the only female performer in the group. She selects measurement of weight in reflection to her Minang matriarchy culture and society. Pebri Irawan who came from a coastal town in Riau Island is interested in the measurement of time, as it relates to the experience within and outside of the body; the time of one breath underwater and the time of shadow in the afternoon. Ari Dwanto who originated from Cilacap in Southern coast of Java, is interested in a concept that Jaarsma described as “Inter-space” [1] It is “a natural distance, between seeds when planting.” [2] It is a space to move in martial arts and theatre; a space between two persons, or between the performer and the viewer. After a series of discussions and interviews over weekends, Jaarsma then measured their physical bodies based on the given concept. She later created an artwork for each individual as a response. After the art objects took shape, she welcomed the performer to interact with the artwork that came into being through their own understanding of the world.
In this exhibition, Jaarsma advanced into a new territory that a costume, or an object that covers the body, gains other functions as wearable and equipment. They disclose a new set of conditions for the wearer and beholder alike. The Size of Rice I, II, III, & IV is a result of collaboration. They are not only costumes but also artworks that function as wearable and equipment. They do not merely cover the body but were designed for the body to perform certain tasks, which were enacted by performers. For example, ancient wisdom declares that our neck is stronger than our back. Minang culture believes it can withstand twice the weight twice of your back. The traditional shape of a rice container is designed with the shape of the head. Corresponding to Jaarsma’s conversation with Siska, the artist created a giant handbag-like object for the performer to put on her head instead of holding by her shoulder. The uncanniness of the objects calls for creative response from those who bore. As a result, Attributes of Measure, I, II, III, IV are an astonishing collection of videos of exchange and dialogue between the performers and their extended concepts which were converted into artworks. With each video, Jaarsma would choose a location for filming that relates to the concept. For example, Abdi’s measurement of length occurred within a complex of traditional suburban housing of Yogyakarta. Interestingly, Jaarsma did not let the performer familiarize himself with the object. The video is, in fact, a record of the first encounter between the person and his measurement. Abdi later described the encounter with the artwork as creating as an “agrarian conflict”. He recalled that he needed to prevent himself from holding the object as a long gun[3] It was a moment of realization where modern anthropocentrism was undone by artistic practice and ancient wisdom. At the same time, it is the moment that the contemporary conflict surfaced. The videos documented a rare occasion where the costume is also a non-costume, which opens up for other possibilities and brings forth correlations that have been eclipsed by modernization, a force that standardized everything.
One may ask why principles from the past are crucial to our contemporaneity. In the present, everything known to science is being measured, mined, and analysed, the unstandardised and unanthropometrised are a ripple in our experience. This element of “error” and “randomness” of the ancients were eliminated from modern science but being conserved in the arts. The Size of Rice is a threshold that led to the concealment of other potential attributes that are currently withdrawn or forgotten. With artistic research and practice, Jaarsma has disclosed the ancient “harmony” in asta kosala kosali, which conceals from our architectural practice that is dominated by modern anthropometry. The collaboration with performers has expanded this weird harmony to other concepts and mediums. The artworks and videos in the exhibition rather mark a beginning, an entrance or a threshold forward into the ancient wisdom.