Performance and Audiovisual Installation (artefacts, video, 2 channel audio, map)
Developed as part of Biennale Jatim X, East Java
Performances in Nganjuk and Surabaya; audiovisual work installed at Orasis Art Space, Surabaya
Funded by British Council
Banyu Umbul is a body of work that responds to several sites in Bangle Village, Nganjuk, East Java. The work emerged through a collaboration between Bethara Lendir and Alex De Little as part of Biennale Jatim X, developed during a residency supported by the British Council.
Bethara Lendir is an experimental music, noise and performance collective formed in 2021. The group comprises four members working across sound, performance and visual practice. Rio Ari Firmansyah uses modular systems to produce looping, repetitive structures, drawing on the form and visual logic of the saron. Moch Krismon Ari Wijaya repurposes agricultural tools as sources of noise and sonic material. Bagus Abimanyu develops visual mapping using collage-based approaches, often drawing on relief imagery and principles derived from temple wimba. Rahadyan Lamijan works across voice, performance and writing, adapting macapat into new textual forms in Javanese, Indonesian and English. The collective’s work engages with folklore, spirituality, ecology and agrarian life through performance, sound and visual storytelling.
Bangle, a relatively remote village in Nganjuk province, is home to several sites of geological and historical interest, including ancient inscriptions, coral and seabed deposits, saltwater springs and volcanically active areas. These places are embedded within local folklore and spirituality; a rush of stories encircle and emanate from them, drawing together mythology, mysticism, ancient and colonial histories, and the twin climate and ecological crises. In these sites, deep geological time and the evolving climate emergency appear to collapse into the present moment. They are experienced simultaneously as material locations and as portals into a spiritual dimension beyond the embodied here and now.
The work emerged from a period of time spent in Bangle, involving processes of contemplation; feeling, smelling and listening both to the physical landscape and to the beliefs and stories embedded within it. This process of attunement formed the basis for subsequent engagement with the site, including deep listening, field recording, performance, image and video capture and conversation.
The work was performed twice, first in Nganjuk and subsequently in Surabaya. Across these performances, material gathered on site was activated through improvisation, combining field recordings, custom-built instruments and the use of coral, sand and saltwater collected from the locations themselves. The performances draw audiences into multiple layers of the sites, including agricultural practices, environmental change, folklore, colonial histories and spiritual belief, presenting these places as complex and unstable conditions.
The installation, presented at Orasis Gallery, brings together multi-channel sound, performance video, visuals, maps and artefacts. These elements draw on the same body of material to form a partial reconfiguration of the sites within the gallery space. Through the arrangement of these components, the work invokes the sites as spaces that extend beyond their immediate physical conditions, opening onto questions of memory, belief, ecology and transformation.
