Cooking Durian is a video work created from a residency in Yogyakarta in 2014. Named in some regions as the “king of fruits”, the durian is distinctive for its large size, strong odour, and thorn-covered rind. Hanging on the streets by the fruit pasar markets, I noticed this stinky fruit might become stinkier by adjusting the position for transportation from a conventional carrying situation to one which involves rigging the load to the muffler on a motorbike. I became a provocateur agent coaxing customers and stall holders of the durian to engage. I also partook in the act. Where ever I rode my motorbike, the muffler heated the fruit and a stench trail of cooked up durian followed. A mobile fart bomb service. I collaborated with Indonesian friends Hana Resila and Ahmad Afandi to capture the Durian footage. This video was exhibited at constance ARI Hobart.
Cooking Durian
A list of tricks undertaken in YOGJA 2014
A LIST OF TRICKS UNDERTAKEN IN YOGJA 2014 ( THE UNDERLINED ONES FEATURE IN COOKING DURIAN) Arrange people’s thongs outside the varied dwellings I visited. Sometimes by colour and some times by size and sometimes by left and right. Strap durians to the muffler of my motor bike and ride around town leaving a trail of a warmed up, infamous smell. This caused a clear divide in durian appreciators and haters as i pulled up to a car park or place. Later my friends and i collated footage of durians strapped to the mufflers of others. Up the pong. I got people to pose for photographs with a mock camera. sometimes the object was a broken old phone and sometimes it was a piece of cardboard. No questions asked. People posed. Recovered an ash covered, very damaged gamelan from Merapi and played it with the local coolkids. The volcano cant stop the music. I walked dogs and talked fondly to dogs in areas where people eat dogs or perceive them to be a sign of unholiness. I wired rambutans to my eyes and did a skype show to Tas. I swapped roles with a becack driver for a few hours. I rode him where he needed to go and then paid him to let me ride him to my side of town. I tried to swap roles with the laundry lady but no go. This was an hour of confusion. I made a see saw out of a plank of wood and a tree root and attempted to propel objects into the air and catch them. coconuts, boots and bags of stuff. Things with nice weights to them. This play ended up with the placement of a ceramic earn filled of water on the lowered end of the plank and me using all my force to jump onto the raised end whilst opening an umbrella to stop the splash from hitting me. But this was silly because the water vessel often never got any air as it kept toppling off to the side. I did a lot of waiting for people in town and at the shops so i practiced balancing on Styrofoam. When a Styrofoam box is placed on its short side it kind of has the height of a soap box. So, I stood looking at the box as if i were concentrating on mustering up some sort of announcement to deliver to the public but then as I stepped up the foam would just crumble under my wait. I did manage to get about 8 seconds out of one box by standing on the very edges and some kind person let me put my weight on them. I bombed my own photographs of sunsets and things with a ‘thumbs up’. I attempted to trace the shadow outline of my drawing hand. I tried to eat all the different types of sembal with out hi-cupping. I sock wrestled. I tried to clean up the plastic but there was so much plastic. These are some things that i did. |
Georgia Lucy 