Landscape of Longing

Eva McGovern

An essay on 3 pieces by Hayati Mokhtar

This piece originally appeared in Broadsheet 39.4

© Eva McGovern, 2010

Cover still is from Near Intervisible Lines, 2006All stills are courtesy of Hayati Mokhtar

Table of ContentsNear Intervisible Lines 2Penawar 8No. 55 Main Road 11

Longing is a complex emotion. At its source are notions of lack, absence and a desire or a need to belong to someplace, something or someone. All are common feelings throughout the human experience. However, when longing is situated within a highly specific framework, how does an artist trans-late such emotions to clearly communicate intent to diverse audiences? What strategies can avoid the loss of cultural significance when work focuses on land, people and memory? Is it possible to deter the spectre of generic exoticism when exhibited out of context? Artist Hayati Mokhtar, negotiates such dilemmas through a practice that looks at the Malaysian landscape and lived experience. Creating highly conceptual and poetic por-traits of fading places and shifting peoples her video works highlight the contradictions of the Malaysian condition and the intricacies of human relationships with their immediate environments. Mokhtar’s diverse range of influences from her multi-centred background, deep interest in Malaysian local

Near Intervisible Lines, 2006

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histories, international discourse and aesthetic strategies all play out in her most recent works from the past four years. This article contributes a focused conversation about her concerns with a specific response to Near Intervisible Lines, 2006, created in collaboration with film maker Dain Is-kandar Said, and her solo projects Penawar, 2007, and No. 55 Main Road, 2010. By expanding on the philosophical threads and context-specific interpretations of these bodies of work, the aim is to reveal the interrogations of the personal, social and universal through multiple places and spaces.

Near Intervisible Lines

Near Intervisible Lines looks at the expansive landscape around Setiu, located in the Malaysian state of Terengganu.1 The effects of a shifting river on the land and human con-nection to the sea are seen through the first-hand stories of the inhabitants of this coastal community. Although visually poetic, indicative of the artists own personal attachment to site, it attempts to highlight the processes of looking through an abstracted version of landscape. Filmed in a sandspit in between a river and the South China Sea, Mokhtar and Said present a chain of four sequences. Three static, real-time panoramic shots of the land underneath an epic blue sky and distant horizon are flanked by a loose documentary on the left-hand side. The words of the aging Pak Ing, Pak Supa, Pak Ta, Wai Jin and Mak Yong Mara hypnotically flow directly into the land the artists have placed next to them. The sense of penetration, through sound and slow tracking shots of people 1 TheMalaysianstateofTerengganuissituatedinthenortheastofthepeninsu-larandisborderedbythestateofKelantanandPahangwithacoastlineontheSouthChinaSea.

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and place is an important part of communicating the relation-ships between communities and nature. At sixty minutes long it is a perplexing piece, requiring considerable commitment from audiences in order to engage with their commentaries, experiences as Mak Yong2 performers, fishermen and memo-ries of their village as it physically shifted due to the move-ments of the land. However, although filled with luscious visual passages and human storytelling Near Intervisible Lines manages to upset sentimentality and exoticism through the subtle paradoxes of emotion and reason. The film is visually beautiful and purposefully prob-lematic. The artists are aware that beauty in contemporary art is the subject of intense scrutiny and cynicism. Art should be critical, self-reflective, and intellectually rigorous. It needs to be highly dependent on visual and textual language in order to be culturally relevant. However, it is the manner in which artists honestly mediate their own needs and observations as a type of therapeutic process that connects audiences to a sense of what is meaningful. The desire to share these discoveries often makes work purposeful. The process of making Near Intervisible Lines was driven by Mokhtar and Said’s desire to reveal this striking place and people as well as connect to their location in order to transcend personal feelings of estrange-ment. When discussing the piece, Mokhtar comments:

I suppose our attraction to the place was tied up with our personal histories—the fact that our early years growing

2 AtraditionalformofdancedramaperformedinNorthernMalaysia.AlthoughbannedbythePan-MalaysianIslamicPartyin1991becauseofitsanimistandHindu-Buddhistroots,itwaslaterdeclaredbyUNESCOanimportantpartofculturalheri-tagein2005.Preservationeffortshavebeenputforward,butithasbecomeadyingartformwithlittleinteresttoyoungergenerations.

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up on the Malaysian east coast was followed by many years spent abroad: him [Said] in Egypt, me in Australia—and, for the both of us, England. This period of time away al-lowed, or perhaps necessitated, us to try out and negotiate many different selves and in the process we complicated our sense of rootedness—our relationship to “home”—to such a point that we felt that we couldn’t really lay claim to one. But, despite all this flux and the sense of estrangement, there existed a bond—one that approximated to a kind of belonging—to a particular geographical terrain; to a nar-row, humid peninsula set just above the equator where we could re-encounter the scents and textures of childhood. And, as we discovered in Setiu, there were some places that tantalized us with this promise more acutely than oth-ers—they beckoned us with a sense that we could go back “there.” It was the capacity of landscape to conjure up a strong emotional response that interested us—and, in the case of Dain and I, this response seemed to be governed by a sense of longing; a feeling brought about by the perceived proximity and distance between some prospect or outlook, currently being regarded, to one that we had experienced in our past.3

These abstract intuitions are clearly expressed through-out the work and link directly to their context since there is no actual word in Bahasa Melayu for “landscape.” Tanah ayer, literally meaning land and water is the closest which refers more to “nation” or “homeland.” In the context of Setiu, envi-ronment is something to be experienced, not framed or con-trolled. For cultures dependent on nature, the land has depth,

3 Extractfromanemailinterviewwiththeartist,March3,2010.

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an element of the sacred and has the potential for multiple understandings of self, community and the intangible, all sen-timents that Mokhtar and Said aim to express. The use of the word “intervisible” in the title, the point of mutually visible lines of one from the other, reveals these inter-textual com-plexities, albeit in the English language. Curious punctuations in the work, such as the sequence of a luxury Porsche sports utility vehicle, act as a violent disturbance to the enigmatic poetry of the work. Such a Bre-chtian anti-narrative device, a symbol of globalization and a bizarrely advertorial intrusion destabilize viewer expectations. More subtle aesthetic devices unfold through the passing of a solitary surveyor across the three frames of otherwise barren land, tracing where humans and earth intersect. The austerity of the land therefore becomes a type of site/non-site to cre-ate philosophical meeting points. Both Mokhtar and Said’s insider/outside positions aim to create numerous layers that combine many of the dualities of landscape. Their multi-centredness is informed by international discourses of film, art, geo-politics and culture, allowing for a necessary distance to create their work. What Mokhtar and Said are attempting is to create numerous layers and entry points that look at the foreground actuality (human intervention) and background potentiality of landscape (nature and environment), the differ-ences between place and space, image and representation.4 At the heart of Mokhtar’s practice is a rigorous explo-ration of landscape. Developing as a concept from the 16th century onwards in Europe, landscape emerged firstly within the context of painting. As a technical term, it literally and

4 Hirsch,E.andO’Hanlon,M.(Eds),The Anthropology of Landscape: Per-spectives on Place and Space,USA,OxfordUniversityPress,1995,p.4.

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philosophically framed the definition of the land (space, place, nature and built environment) as something picturesque and contained. Nature could be composed and its complexity simplified to colour and form. The real was reduced to a mi-metic art driven by the need for human pleasure, dominance and control by the ruling classes. As such a set of objectify-ing power relations were imposed through topographical and expansive pictorial viewings. However, the rise of landscape painting also coincided with the emergence of anthropology. As human intervention increased within the land, its under-standings became intrinsically linked to the social, political and cultural human moulding of place.5 Landscape became a process of or performative stage for human history. As Mark Dorian and Gillian Rose comment it is “a composition of man-made or man-modified spaces to serve infrastructure or 5 Dorian,M.andRoseG.,Deterritorialisations: Revisioning Landscapes and Politics,London,BlackDogPublishing,2003,p.13..

Near Intervisible Lines, 2006

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background from our collective experience.”6 What Mokhtar communicates is the potential of land-scape. For the artist, landscape is, as Lucy Lippard describes “a locus of desire” or a site for human longing.7 It becomes author, protagonist and stage for the human (individual and collective) autobiography and self-realization.8 Within the Malaysian context, this relationship to land and culture and possibility is a common theme and creatively expressed across cultural disciplines. For those like Mokhtar who have been dislocated from their country of origin for many years be-cause of family and education, the desire for home, to belong after years of being disconnected from place and identity leads to an often nostalgic view of the country when abroad. Yearn-ings for family, friends, foods and locality create a powerful desire to return. However, once back in the country, the posi-tion is often an oscillation between alienation and belonging, frustration and inspiration. Malaysia is a country filled with contradictions. The contemporary moment is a repetitive cycle of sensational poli-tics and blind economic progress, leaving the population in a constant state of exasperation. Often the past, fondly remem-bered for being more optimistic and progressive, seems like a foreign country when compared to the present. Current gov-ernment schemes for modernity ignore local needs of belong-ing and continuity. Vanity-driven projects instead traumatize the land and its communities. Expanding oil palm planta-tions corrupt bio-diversity, blind cultural restoration erases the intimacy of local history, highways segregate and prevent 6 ibid.7 Lippard,L.,The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentred Society,NewYork,TheNewPress,1997.8 ibid.

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urban cohesion and needless shopping malls monopolize public spaces, destroying heritage sites in the process. Increas-ing Islamic conservatism propagated by racially divisive gov-ernment politics has led to much anxiety, compelling many Malaysians to yearn for not only a return to the past, but the pragmatic reinvention of its halcyon days to serve the needs of the now and the future. These dreams and hopes continue to go unanswered.

Penawar

If Near Intervisible Lines looks at the epic natural land-scape and the people within it, Penawar focuses on a more intimate and familiar subject: the Malaysian family home. Much of Mokhtar’s solo practice looks at processes of memo-ry, time, erasure and removal. Through visual fragmentation and juxtapositions of absence and presence her work com-

Above and opposite: Penawar, 2007

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municates a sense of loss by fluctuating between the personal/intimate and the symbolic/epic narratives of wider historical contexts. The family home represents one such place. It is a contained, physical space saturated with lived experience. On an expanded level, it also has a place within local history through its architecture and the community it represents. The subject of Penawar is the closing down of one such house in Ayer Hitam, Penang.9 The home of wealthy businessman C.M. Hashim, it was the setting for numerous family events and it hosted various prominent Malaysian public figures. During the Japanese invasion of Malaysia in the Second World War, it also provided refuge for both extended family and friends. Despite its rich history, the family decided to sell the house upon the death of Hashim’s second wife. The day of its clearance and emptying is the focus of Mokhtar’s work. Two

9 PenangisacoastalandislandstateinMalaysia,locatedinthenorthwestofthepeninsular.

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screens present, perhaps more literally than Near Intervisible Lines, the inside/outside possibilities of place. A slow track-ing shot of the interior of the house is juxtaposed with a static exterior wide shot of the façade. At a distance, the house stands alone in the centre of frame. Unmoving, it is a testa-ment of time, of a colonial history that the government is keen to forget and a vulnerable victim to the greedy eyes of devel-opment. The piece unfolds slowly, the tracking shot on the left starts with the wall of the ground floor moving across the window to reveal the petrol station outside and the busy main road that has intruded more and more upon the grounds of the house. The wider cultural and historical significance of the decay and possible erasure of this house is something that bothers Mokhtar, who states, “If these structures do indeed provide us with vital markers to help us anchor our pasts and navigate our futures, then might not their disappearance meant that we will lose, not only a clear sense of direction, but also, ultimately, a coherent sense of who we are?”10 Such dis-appointments at the loss of human histories re-occur through-out her practice. Penawar utilizes camera movement and sound to layer different ways to experience the physical and symbolic aspects of the house. The interior tracking shots, which speed up and slow down, change direction from clockwise to anti-clock-wise, are interspersed with sounds of bird calls, voices talking in Bahasa Melayu and English. The intimacy of the interior, as the camera reveals doorways, bedrooms, hallways, and living rooms, is in stark contrast to the more official exterior version of the house. The ghosts of the people that live there are ap-

10 Homeland (Heimat),Singapore,InstituteofContemporaryArtsSingapore,LASALLECollegeoftheArts,2010,p.46.

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parent in the empty hospital beds of an elderly inhabitant, an out-of-tune piano, whose notes are played intermittently, and glimpses of family portraiture. It becomes a haunting lament of a dying home, being discarded because of the pragmatic needs to move. As the camera discovers the packers, the house is emptied. Outside, we see the arrival of a car, people, a lorry, and then the removal of furniture. Already we feel sense of decay. The house is now in the past.

No. 55 Main Road

If Near Intervisible Lines represent the macro of the land and Penawar the micro or intimacy of lived human inte-riors, then No. 55 Main Road sits somewhere in between the two. For the last piece in this trilogy of works open for dis-cussion, the artist presents the story of “Uncle” Chang whose address is the title of the piece. He resides within a wider community of increasingly uninhabited pre-war shop houses in the centre of Kampung Kepayang, south of the Malaysian

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town of Ipoh. Once more using multi-channel screens, slow tracking, sounds and the symbol of the road for encroaching erosion of place to space, Mokhtar reveals a process of deser-tion and a soon-to-be-forgotten community. Spread across three screens, a long tracking shot moves across the derelict front of the shop houses, the central screen is a static shot of Uncle Chang’s living room, open to another encroaching road (which remains out of shot) and the third screen extracts focused details of the owners possessions. Once more, behind this deconstructed narrative is a real history. The shop houses have been deemed unsafe and marked by the district council for demolition. Only one row may be saved due to the pres-ence of mosque at the end of the row opposite Uncle’s shop house. Newer developments have also shifted the locus away from this area, upsetting the centre of activity that has evolved over a century and has led to the slow desertion of people, turning this area in a ghost town. The derelict spaces that come into frame seem like mausoleums. Uncle Chang stubbornly resists the fate of his neighbours as he sits in his house cluttered with photographs and memories of a life. But government bureaucracy is am-bivalent towards his history, and his protest is futile. At 87, Uncle Chang’s passing is imminent. The fragility of his age echoes that of his crumbling environment. In the Malaysian context, these stories constantly recur in both large cities and small towns. they reference a continuing economic process of estrangement. When these areas of social history are re-moved, it alienates communities from their past, exiling them from history. Unable to return to sites of familiarity, they become strangers in their own land. A feeling very familiar to Mokhtar, whose mixed-race parentage and times spent abroad

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translate into constant feelings of belonging and dislocation. She discusses:

It might be argued that its transformation could in fact engender a metaphorical form of exile: the impossibility of my returning to the places and landmarks that hold mean-ing for me and my estrangement from what has replaced them means that I have been effectively cast out: in not be-ing recognised where I am I not only lose my bearings but also my sense of completeness and rootedness—my sense of belonging.11

These individual and social Malaysian histories which Mokhtar is so keen to preserve, or at the very least mark the passing of, will not be lost on her local audiences. However what about responses by audiences outside of Malaysia? No. 55 Main Road like Penawar and Near Intervisible Lines precariously balances in between romantic sentimen-tality and criticality. The uninformed international viewer is not invested in the very real feelings of sadness and loss of the Malaysian historical landscape. They may feel moments of connection, but one suspects the process of dismissal and irrelevance is not far behind. As such the places in Mokhtar’s work, the histories, humanity and relevancy become distorted and lost. A process of filtration takes place and viewers are left with only one choice, to get swept away by her poetic visu-als. Ironically, in one way, outside of their context, the artist unintentionally exiles her own work. Viewers are curious by unfamiliar architecture, exotic bird calls, foreign language and “rustic” faces from the land. How is it possible to convey

11 ibid,p.47.

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universal feelings that retain specificity and the humanity of her sites so that these places do not get reduced to mere exotic spaces? One antidote to such a problem is the way in which Mokhtar constructs her narratives. For all three works she fragments her sites and creates different perspectives of seeing and understanding. Multi-screen works of static and mov-ing visual shots of different speeds are layered with haunting sounds and voices that emerge and disappear from her scenes. Her use of depth, of interior, exterior and the epic wide-angle penetrate these spaces to create different layers of experience. The visual flow of images and screens next to one another in a type of disjointed, running narrative tell universal stories of the death of sites, of the complexity of communities. Mokhtar does not want to deny the poeticism in her work, she is deeply involved and affected by these situations and communities she inserts herself within. It is through her story-telling and visual construction and deconstruction that she allows her No. 55 Main Road, 2010

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subjects to remain part of lived experience. Presenting dif-ferent socio-economic realities of how people experience the world around them—living closely on/off the land, impres-sive family homes or a dying commercial community—offer different visual textures that have universal resonance. In an increasingly globalized world, as communities are uprooted and urban life populated by a mixture of peoples from many different places, we all experience these feelings of not belong-ing at some stage, of forgetting our roots, of needing to be at home or to make our own. These human stories, as dictated by natural and man-made intervention on the landscape, are the narratives Mokhtar produces. Lucy Lippard, who Mokhtar is highly influenced by, expresses such needs:

Narratives articulate the relationship between teller and told, here and there, past and present. In the absence of shared past experience in a multi-centred society, story telling and old photographs take on a heightened intensity. The place is the “heart” of story telling the imaginative act of bringing together self and earth, culture and nature, as if these were remembering one another as members of one family, binding life to life.12

Although moving images and photography have re-placed painting as the modus operandi of understanding, they still utilize the same restrictive framing of landscape and people. Technically going beyond what the human eye can see, this reproductive process creates a hyper-real and biased re-visioning. Even the most remote, untamed natural

12 Lippard,L.,The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentred Society,NewYork,TheNewPress,1997,p.50.

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sites throughout the world have not escaped from journal-ism, entertainment, travel and tourism narratives. As acts of resistance against such homogenizing forces, contemporary art attempts to destabilize these limitations and open up new possibilities of interpretation. By creating curious and prob-lematic sites of inquiry it allows audiences to consider their own personal appreciation and dismissal of space and place as well as its framing by society. Hayati Mokhtar is invested in such a process that intertwines cultural custodianship, the deconstruction of visual framing devices and her own intui-tive emotional needs to tell such glocal stories.

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EvaMcGovernistheHeadofRegionalProgrammesatValentineWillieFineArt.

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