Membawang I, II, III, 2022

By Dipali Gupta, Edited By Hui Lynn Wong and Eva Emmanyna, Voice by Eva, Viv Adram and Kendra the A.I

Stories inspired by conversations, readings and texts from Suzy Suleiman, Okui Lala, Sharmin P, Liza Ho, Ellen Lee, Mesita Jee Mei Jane, Lina Tan, Viv Adram, Minstrel Kuik, Sheau Yun Lim , Donna Haraway, Audre Lorde, Hito Steyerl and many more. For Ilham Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2022

Membawang I, 2022

Moving Image Collage, Digital video, color, 5.7 mins, 16:9 aspect ratio, 1920 x 1080 Full HDR

What comes to mind when we hear the word ‘gossip’? The English dictionary provides a rather neutral definition, however the implied meaning of the word usually connotes informal talk, often damaging those that are its object. While tracing the history of the word, I discovered its roots in gender oppression and a subsequent destruction of female sociality.The colonial legacy of our region carries the same denigrating connotations for gossiping women. Membawang means gossip in Malay and makcik bawang literally means ‘onion aunties’ who gather around the kitchen to prepare food and ‘gossip’. Gossip thus became an integral part of devaluation of women’s personality and work, especially domestic work which we today identify as invisible labour.

This moving image, experimental collage aims to reclaim the word ‘gossip’ as an initiator of memory creating collective identities and producer of acquired knowledges and wisdoms. Rendered through the less significant genre of poor images, Membawang attempts to subvert the patriarchal construction of female stereotypes (as malicious, envious and weak) and provide a seat at the table respecting feminine experiences and practices.

[1] During the Middle Ages, ‘gossip’ evolved to indicate female companionship with strong emotional bonds (Federici 70-85). Unfortunately by the 16th-17th centuries, all over Europe, women were losing social autonomy in the wake of capitalism and the word began to acquire a denigrating connotation (Federici). Women were discouraged from meeting their female friends and chatting during the progressing witch-hunts and laws were realized that undermined the power of women and their communal ties (Federici 100,186).

[2] The women who membawang are called “Makcik Bawang” (Aunty Onion). The origin of the word maybe comes from the moment when the women usually get around the kitchen during special occasions while peeling onions. They usually will be gossiping with each other at this moment. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Membawang

[3] https://www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/

Membawang II, 2022

Moving Image Collage, Digital video, color, 5.1 mins, 16:9 aspect ratio, 1920 x 1080 Full HDR

‘Membawang’ is my first iteration of this experimental video work which uses the tropes of ‘Gossip’ that reveals and unfolds experiences, anecdotes, rumours and regional tales that portray female subjectivity through the female gaze (The evolution of the Female Gaze). It is a collection of found footage and rudimentarily shot videos that represent women’s current realities and fictions. These so called ‘gossips’ transmit accounts of empathy, intuition, the erotic, cyborg identities, failures, experimentation and solidarity as seen through a feminine lens. It is an attempt to assemblage the intangible knowledge of feminist theory with practical occurrences. I gather these stories through my own experiences and through conversations with various female friends, artists, films, books and interviews. An endeavour to shift the invisible programming embedded in our false consciousness predominantly operating from an androcentric worldview.

Membawang III, 2022

Moving Image Collage, Digital video, color, 4.6 mins, 16:9 aspect ratio, 1920 x 1080 Full HDR

[4] The ways in which women and girls look at other females, at males, and at things in the world. This concerns the kinds of looking involved, and how these may be related to identification, objectification, subjectivity, and the performance and construction of gender.

Process Notes / Reflections

  1. Membawang is a moving image collage of gossips rendered through found footage using the genre of the poor image (footnote Steyerl’s def of poor image). I call it a collage because it is literally like putting pieces of found footage together, overlaying, cutting, sticking, removing etc.
  2. The video is an attempt to bring the idea of gossips alive through the poor image. The poor image is a less significant genre of image making. It defies commercial imagery and its capitalistic structures. The low resolutions and blurred focus subvert various hierarchies making it easy to create visual bonds and affects despite being erratic and disruptive.
  3. The footage is a combination of the media I consumed during the last two years of the pandemic and how I read these clips through a feminine lens. The isolation during the pandemic compelled me to seek solidarity in the media I was consuming.
  4. This moving image artwork is a good example of how when things get into commercial production, they start to own a polished aesthetic despite their poor image roots. It acquires an economic sheen, a clean production aesthetic.
  5. Most of the clips were less significant (supporting stories) in their original positions in their respective films. By bringing them out of context, I foreground them as relevant gossips.
  6. The video attempts to bring onto a single plane stories from the ground of the female kind and bridges the gap of what I think I understand of the feminine with what I learn from my interactions with other women. IT is an exercise of marrying critical feminist theory with our current reality. it is an attempt to explain certain concepts through a narrative voice.
  7. This iteration has three main parts…
    • About solidarity and kinships
    • About the cyborg housewife
    • About feminine creative energy
    • Other short clips that hold powerful messaging
  8. The feminine creative energy shows dance performance of the mak yong. This scene has three eyes – the first camera eye is the actual shoot of the performance, the second is the relay on YouTube and the third reshoot is a copy of the YouTube video through my female gaze acknowledging the healing practice with respect.
  9. For me, it is also an exercise in representing coexistence of women through class, geography, age and representation.
  10. My Main sources of collecting footage relied heavily on Netflix, youtube and other OTT platforms. Membawang has therefore been a reflection of the kind of feminist content available on various OTT platforms. The media we consume today is so global and tilted towards the western and one cannot deny these influences. Therefore the outcome has been a mash up of all female regional and western content.
  11. This video has been recorded and re-recorded. This process represents gossips that have travelled through time, space through devices and ears. You are seeing what someone else saw or heard from someone else. The recurring motif of the washing machine also symbolizes the circular nature of gossips. We won’t know who started it and where it will end, it just keeps going around.
  12. Membawang isn’t about the obvious issues but about the softer and subtler aspects of womanhood, of the ordinary and the everyday. The small things that cause huge impacts on women’s agency. It is about lost creative energies, about solidarity and kin networks, about embracing change and working with new age tools.
  13. This project has been a bit challenging to execute because this is my first attempt at story telling / narrative art in moving image form. Usually my work is conceptual but this artwork translates the concept to a narration.
  14. Some parts of the the editing had to be outsourced to an editor. The challenge was to find someone who could edit and dramatize the artwork without compromising on its poor image form. Also I was keen on having a female editor because I wanted someone who could understand the layered messaging and help to translate that visually as well. I tried two male editors but was disappointed with the output because they treated the footage in their typical commercial forms by cleaning it up, adding effects for the sake of adding effects. The feminine treatment was lost in their attempt to glamourize the footage. I spend RM2000 on failed edits.
  15. My artist references include Tracey Moffatt, Pipilotti Rist, Susie Wong, Laure Provoust, Hito Steyerl, Amanda Heng, Joan Jonas, Barbara Kruger, Arthur Jafa.

Research & References:

Bibliography
  1. Ong Aihwa, Peletz Michael. Bewitching Women, Pious Men : Gender and Body Politics in South East Asia. Berkley: University Of California Press, 1995.
  2. Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. New York: Autonomedia, 2003.
  3. Audre, Lorde. Sister Outsider. Berkley: The Crossing Press, 1984.
  4. Federici, Silvia. Witches, Witch-Hunting and Women. Oakland: P M Press, 2018.
  5. Getty Images. The evolution of the Female Gaze. n.d <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-08AHbHvPz4>.
  6. Mohamad, Maznah. “Sex Manuals in Malay Manuscripts as Another Transcript of Gender Relations.” MDPI (2021).
  7. Hooks, Bell. “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance.” Hooks, Bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992. 21-39.
  8. Betterton, Rosemary. “How Do Women Look? The Female Nude in the work of Suzanne Valadon.” Feminist Review (1985).
  9. Cohen, Paula Marantz. ““What Have Clothes Got to Do with It? Romantic Comedy and the Female Gaze.”.” Southwest Review 95 (2010). <https://www.jstor.org/stable/i40137429>.
  10. Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991.
The Female Gaze / Gossip
  1. https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095814800?rskey=z85loW&result=8
  2. https://nofilmschool.com/2018/08/female-gaze-cinematography
  3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh7gEuj2wCI
  4. https://jojud265nia2bj9sy4ah9b61-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/The-Female-Gaze-brochure.pdf
  5. https://inthesetimes.com/article/the-subversive-feminist-power-of-gossip
Kin Networks / Cyborg
  1. https://www.lareviewofbooks.org/article/making-kin-an-interview-with-donna-haraway/
  2. https://www.wired.com/1997/02/ffharaway/
Mak Yong Research
  1. http://www.mca.org.my/2/Content/SinglePage?_param1=08-112020-154942-11-202008&_param2=TS
  2. https://www.nst.com.my/lifestyle/sunday-vibes/2019/04/476921/mak-yong-rich-artistic-heritage
  3. https://malaysia.news.yahoo.com/kelantan-lifts-mak-yong-ban-105408195.html
  4. https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/mak-yong-theatre-00167
Art / Visual Bank / Treatment Research
  1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhkRCNeSoLE
  2. https://vimeo.com/268998032
  3. https://www.a-n.co.uk/blogs/a-n-writer-development-programme-2019-20/post/52580400/
  4. https://news.artnet.com/opinion/artificial-intelligence-robot-artist-ai-da-1566580
  5. https://moreliafilmfest.com/en/que-es-el-found-footage/
  6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtsHeXhXleo
  7. https://www.suzannelacy.com/performance-installation#/between-the-door-and-the-street/
  8. https://www.stephaniedinkins.com/secretgarden.html – Stephanie Dinkins
  9. Arthur Jafa – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKWmx0JNmqY&t=4s
  10. Tracey Moffatt, Pipilotti Rist, Susie Wong, Laure Provoust, Hito Steyerl, Amanda Heng, Joan Jonas, Barbara Kruger, Arthur Jafa.