I Putu Bagus Bang Sada or Gusbang (choreographer, Bali–Yogyakarta) and Natasha Gabriella Tontey (visual artist, Jakarta-Yogyakarta)
(1) The starting point of this collaborative work is Gusbang dan Tontey’s shared thematic affinity that both of them have explored in each previous works before that centres on fear and death. Both explore the narratives related to fear and death but this time they don’t rush into transcendental or spiritual frameworks or themes, nor relate these topics to certain myths of horror as they did before. Instead, they choose to visit funeral homes in Yogyakarta and talks to forensic experts in several cities to excavate stories on death, modes of dealing with it, rituals involving the family and closest comunity of the deceased. From this research, they learn how the living often imbue power on the dead behind the solemnity of burial ritual.
(2) In addition to purification rituals, decorating thebody with fragrances and giving the deceased the best final abode possible, the living insist on arranging physical gestures and postures of the deceased to fit certain ideas of physical perfection. Identity informed by normative religion and gender conformity are insisted on the dead. This is all done in the hope that the dead will not leave any unnatural impression and horror for the living. At the end, these could be read as abnormality accepted as the normal as a means to ‘neutralise’ the fear of death for the living.