- 1998: Der Sekendentraum (Having a dream in one second), World Haus TV, Weimar, Germany
This work was made just after Melati gave birth. Since arriving in Germany in 1994, she had spent every weekend at flea markets collecting cheap clothing—obsessively trying to be accepted into society and find an identity. The result was 300 pieces of clothing, used as a symbolic act of constructing and destroying a life.
In this one-hour performance, she begins by folding all the clothes, then slowly puts on each piece one by one. The layers build until she is overcome by a sense of claustrophobia and pressure, until she literally cannot move anymore.
- 2000: Exergie – Butter Dance, Hebbel Theatre, Berlin
How do we use the body at its most minimal? Melati reduced her ideas down to a single act: dancing on butter. Fear was the motivation. She was questioning her own existence and where to go next.
The economic climate in Europe was difficult at the time. Marina had challenged her students to create a work using only 10 euros. It was not just about money, but about confronting economic precarity head on. As a performance artist working with the body, rather than lamenting the lack of budget for production or choreography, the point was clear: "You have your body." And it should be enough.
“Why was I so worried to express myself in this outfit in Germany?"
The actions in the piece symbolise a transgression against prejudice towards Asian women married to German men, and towards Taiwanese, Filipino and Asian women more broadly. “I do respect women who have the courage to change, no matter what.”
The 20-minute soundtrack is from Makassar in South Sulawesi—a ceremonial piece played continuously for seven days, hosted by a transgender shaman.
“The aim of making this work is to get up. You can fail, but you do it anyway. You seldom expose how to get up when you fail.”
The piece was performed 21 times across different cultural contexts. Men would laugh; women took it seriously.
- 2001: Lullaby for the Ancestors, LOT Theatre, Braunchweig
This piece brought together traditional and contemporary performance. It was inspired by the Tarang Kepang from East Java—a ritual created by shaman artists using a woven bamboo horse as an object of protest against the king who controlled society at the time.
The performance incorporated elements of trance, torture, anecdote, and demonic symbolism. Melati took this messy ritual and distilled it into three clean actions: submerging her head in a bucket of water, repeatedly cracking a whip, and walking the horse around the stage. Simplicity and repetition. The sound of the whip ruptured the atmosphere, so she took the time to learn how to use a large leather Western whip, which produced a more powerful crack.
Traditionally, this dance is performed by men. Melati's choice to wear a dress and high heels was a deliberate act of protest—a statement that after hundreds of years, this tradition had changed only insofar as it now featured women dancing prettily on the horse for tourists.
Chloe Chotrani: Did you do fieldwork to study the shamans' dance?
Melati: No, I grew up around these trance rituals, observing them as a child. In the 1970s, I would witness people in trance eating glass bulbs; sometimes men were whipped. They wore large masks with peacock feathers and performed trance dances. This carried on as I grew up, and left big questions that stayed with me for 30 years. It was frightening to see people bleeding, and because children were small, they were placed at the front. If I had never left Indonesia, I wouldn't have found it shocking. It changed my perspective on children, culture, and education. Only recently did I think to myself—that was actually scary.
“Art is my spiritual process.”
The nature of performance art is that you commit to a repetitive action over a sustained period. Melati prepares her body and her work by constructing her thoughts around offering the work to the public. “As soon as my work is shown to the public, I don't own it. I reserve all obsessiveness of being seen, of understanding, of meaning, of all inner obsession. With this, art is also my spiritual process. To share your work with the public is not to control their minds. Let people interpret with their own mind and feeling.”
