The Seed, by Melati Suryodomo

Theatre Gallery
She walks slowly forward on the gallery pavement, carrying a white plastic sac over her shoulder, now and then she cries out phrases like: ”I remember when I was five”. She is wearing light-coloured pantyhose patterned with islands of dark grey, as it occurs to me. Eventually she stops her walk and pours out the black sesame seed content of the sac on the floor. She also starts tearing her pantyhose apart, and the pattern turns out to have been formed by the same black sesame seed. From the remains of the pantyhose sesame seed runs to the floor. The performance closes with a drum roll on a bass drum. The skin of the drum cracks. The show is over.
In this work no story is told, and the internal logic of the work is conceptual rather than narrational. The act has a intensity. It catches the attention of audience and guides it to focus on some hardly understandable visual puns. All over Asia the black sesame seed is common, but in Western Europe it is almost impossible to purchase. The patterns formed inside the pantyhose reminds the artist of lepra victims she met in her childhood. This is Performance Art by the rule book. Intuitively, as well as by judging the reaction of the audience, I can state that it is high quality.