Any type of struggle is familiar to those who decide to leave their country. One form of such a struggle is the struggle with one’s identity and values. As soon as one steps into the new country, one’s identity and values are confronted with those who are not of one’s own. Not surprisingly, this leads to personal disorientation. Values and identities are influencing each other. Disorientation in values leads to the disorientation of identity and vice versa.
In such a situation, one finds oneself in the state in between. As such, one finds oneself in a liminal state. Should one move to the new values, new identities? Should one grasp the old values, old identities? Delays in answering such questions leave one prolonged in the liminal state. We find ourselves often delay our answers, making sure that the decision we take is the right one. By making a decision—and the absence of it, as yet another type of decision—one shapes one’s identity, one’s value.
What would become of such a person? Would then a new identity, new values emerge? Or one keeps delaying one’s answer and embraces instead the state in between for indefinite time? In this (series) of work(s), we would like to contemplate and investigate this state in between, taking the point of view of emigrants as a symbolic embodiment of the theme. With this work, we invite the public to contemplate, empathize, and think about these issues in relation to their own personal experience.
“nur hin” comes from the contemplation that when one left one’s country, the return ticket is not bought. It is a one-way ticket and one does not know when one will be back. Even if one finally decides to go back, this is not a decision made in the beginning but rather shaped by times and the process which takes place in it.
Performance at the ACUD Theater, January 2020.
The sound piece LARA was part of the performance.
Production: soydivision (2020)
Concept: Ariel Orah, Jan Thedja, Bilawa Respati, Nindya Nareswari, Rizki Rhesa Utama, Morgan Sully
Video on pt_01: Rizki Rhesa Utama
Field recording pt_01: Bilawa Respati
Script pt_01_02_03: Ariel Orah, Jan Thedja, Nindya Nareswari, Morgan Sully
Live audio scoring pt_01: Ariel Orah
Live audio scoring pt_02: Morgan Sully
Live audio scoring pt_03: Morgan Sully & Ariel Orah
Cast/Performer pt_01: Ariel Orah, Jan Thedja, Nindya Nareswari, Morgan Sully
Cast/Performer pt_02: Ariel Orah, Jan Thedja, Nindya Nareswari, Morgan Sully
Cast/Performer pt_03: Ariel Orah, Jan Thedja, Bilawa Respati, Nindya Nareswari, Morgan Sully
Stage Manager pt_01: Ghaliz Fikri Haris
Lighting Design and Performance pt_01_02_03: Nindya Nareswari