The continental, imperial thinking covers the landscape. Hills and valleys are measured. Sounds and relationships are measured. But is that even possible? What happens if the landscape is mostly made up of water, if the in-between and the fluid rule life? If the currents get confused and one’s own position is constantly shifted? Can one create one’s own resistance art from this experience?
Mo’ong is a composer and instrument maker, Pepe Dayaw is a performer and fashion designer. Both of them grew up in an island country – Indonesia and the Philippines. The Philippines consists of 7102 islands, Indonesia of 17.508 islands. Both use “leftovers” as their foundation in their artforms. What is perceived as leftovers through the logic of consumption and status, turns into new media through their hands: Mo’ong creates instruments and new sounds, and Pepe transforms them into clothes, costumes and performances. With what is available, through improvisation and experimentation, they leave the “standard” behind, in order to create new bodies of sound, media of expression and resonances. The “standard” is an imperial framework, not only in Indonesia and the Philippines. Working with leftovers is politically resistant, the composition of “leftovers” and their sounds is a search for free spaces.
In Overlapping Waves J. Mo’ong Santoso Pribadi and Pepe Dayaw are collaborating together for the first time at Ballhaus Naunynstraße. Sound composition and performance art: The fluid, the archipelagic in-between is key; the encounter, the complementing from different directions. Together they create their composition from things and sounds, from artefacts and rhythms – always on the lookout for a liquification of the imperial order, for an opening to a self-determined unpredictability.
J. Mo’ong Santoso Pribadi
Pepe Dayaw
Premiere: 14-15 April 2022.