a meditation on decay and renewal
The performance festival took place on the grounds of a beautifully designed and maintained dance and meditation center, Padepokan Lemah Putih. For the location of my durational performance I chose a hillside where the teak leaves were discarded early each morning by the young men taking care of the grounds. The day before the festival, half of the mound had been partially burned.
I sat between the new leaves and the charred remains of older ones. I took a leaf from the recent arrivals, and folded it carefully into a small packet, and then buried it in the ashes. Some leaves had not yet turned to brown, and were really quite beautiful in their colorings. I suspended them around me, so that they danced in the breeze, as if they were still alive. But even those were eventually returned to the pile.