kelvin atmadibrata

So my visa was approved and I am currently in Vienna for a three-months residency with PART. As if 2025 weren't stressful enough, I am at the point in life where I can no longer tolerate the usual visa application process and will be moving forward with (sadly) a bigger budget to access the premium service. Hooray to having a weak passport. Haha.

2025 was a bumpy ride. I missed a dearest friend's wedding due to a back injury the night before I was to travel, which then lasted for months though the pain was manageable; but also because of an excessive amount of not-so-legal painkillers. Paired with working 50-70 hours especially in summer, most of the time turning up still buzzing with tina and g. I had stopped working out for almost a year. I had to also switch my visa to ILR and move to a studio flat which I can very barely afford, but very thankful for my beautiful personal hibernation cave- at the same time though, interior decor was costly! The cherry on top of the already crumbling cake is falling in love within a situationship and heartbreak- at the age of 37 no less. So yeah, it was a bumpy ride, but with a beautiful stunning view and I think I have also learn to change a flat tire.

What I might have regretted is; and I do not regret really, I strive myself not to; I did not spend time with my work. I was barely in my studio, possibly less than a dozen times that I have started calling it a storage. I have only produced three works; Hard Boiled, Im sorry I'm not your godog (*) and Neuron II. I value these works very dearly, but they are all reflective to say the least. Hard Boiled revisits my relationship with my late father, Im sorry I'm not your godog (*) is the sixth work under the Good Boy series that began in 2019 and the latter is a continuation and hopefully, a conclusion to the last duet I did with my ex partner. These works in one way or another took elements from a recent past, materials that have been freshly fermented, their flavours are strong but not quite enhanced to their full capacity, and I hope the works deliver that developed taste. The idea is also developed from how I closed the year before (where I was blatantly reminded that I am in fact no longer 'young') with Nothing happened. Opening up a pandora box so to say, reclaiming all those memories back. But true enough, I was creatively vacant and absence. Nothing much really did happen.

(*) The go is to be strikethrough-ed.

So I welcome this residency and I can not thank more on how much I needed this period of rest, of recovery, of further reflection, of restarting the engine, of being back on my feet. I packed swiftly and with very fleeting and floating attention, but those works and projects did make it to the luggage, and they are here with me. I want to present them again, I want to document them properly. I want to finish them; so to speak. Salvatore Viviano, the curator of residency program who invited me to PART after encountering my work in Berlin's Schwules Museum about the mentioned pandora box and... Magikarp, has proposed for me to present a performance at the end of the residency as a public offering. While we have not sat down in greater details, I would like to propose the possibility of presenting several performances, approached through choreography and dramaturgy, almost like a theatrical evening involving act 1, 2 and so on so forth. Or almost like a remixed chorus or a self-burned CD. Like tendons attaching muscles and bones, I am interested at the prospect in presenting works (multiple) in an evening, or a day. 2 or 3 older pieces, with one that I develop here in Vienna. It is not about gluttony but a genuine interest in applying theatrical format (a scene that I have been very much part of for the past 3 years now). I hope frequent week discussions will bring fruit to this idea, or perhaps failure.

2025 was also memorable in a way that I have been (despite missing sessions A LOT) part of Posthuman Theatre company, directed by Aleksandar Isailovic. The company focuses on the practice of butoh and I performed my first ticketed dance or movement based performance back in December. Being with the company is refreshing. I have my reservation in labeling my practice as butoh and I feel despite the equal lack of understanding, I gravitate towards body weather more.I brought this up because in the midst of messy packing, my training notes did manage to unearth themselves here in my PART studio. I also found relics and notes from a butoh workshop with Yumino Seki last year as well as a performance workshop with Vest&Page. I want to keep revisiting these materials as they are pretty much within the same chain of thoughts with my visual performance practice. I want to make sense of all these ideas within a very large and convoluted mind map.

Setting up my studio was then a very fruitful first step. Once I settled in, which took pretty much almost the first ten days I am in Vienna; and all these while, there has not been a day that I have not thought and missed ... him, which I will call Pistachio Starr from now on. (It'll make sense eventually haha.) But I am eating more, I filled the fridge with exciting healthy ingredients, I built myself a simple spa situation in the studio's bathroom, laid up my projects on the studio wall, joined a gym. So I am in a good place. Emotionally rocky but structurally grounded.

While the nearest station for PART is Stadion, Krieau is just a station aka 1 minute away and that is where the gym that I have signed up is located. It is a pleasant similarity to my in game (ig) name, Keau, a name that nods to my first high school crush but also one that could be pronounced in various ways. A lot of my ig friends had asked how should they pronounce it, or more importantly, how do I say it. I always do not know.

I enjoy Koh. I revel in Q. I appreciate Keh-ah-oo, like Keanu without the n.

Found this tree whose gaze keeps following me.

Krieau is also home to harness racing, which possibly one of the most unexpected #hitsuzenstrikesagain but let me sinks that deeper in before proceeding with intentions. Haha,.

But Stadion, well, hopefully quite an apparent name, is after the Ernst-Happel-Stadion, a football stadium which I kid you not, I could sprint in less than 1 minute from my studio's doorstep. But it has been looking rather deserted and dead, although at the same time quite apparent that it is preparing for something. I would love to watch both harness racing and a football match before I leave.

The stadium is really peculiar for now. Its lack of breath is unsettling but also interestingly distanced from the erotic. This brings me into a work I hope to develop on the side here, provisionally titled Second Smallest Hand in Class. The project finally utilizes a material that has been sitting in my hard drive for almost twenty years, a spy cam video of me getting an erection in a public shower; as far as memory serves, it was in a stadium. I will list down all the works I wish to get some sort of development on my next blog post, so I'm keeping this suspense here for now.

The support from PART has also been tremendous.

The living and working studio spaces, including the exhibition space and PART's administrative office is located in the south cloister of the Prateratelier. The north cloister is home to Viennese and Austrian artists; two of them are performance makers I was told. The two pavilions are the last remaining from 1873 World's Fair here in Vienna. The historical weight can be easily felt once one steps into the compound; it is something that I am not very acquainted with. Formality as an aesthetic is one that I enjoy navigating around but formality as a privilege is a constant struggle between appreciation and expectation.

The current residence apart from me are Omar Elbaky, Karolina Jablonska, Anna Hulacova and Aaron McLaughlin. We got together with PART team and several other external guests and we did short introductions on our individual practices. Everyone's practice is so varied, as expectedly so, making it an interesting mix of neighbors. Really looking forward to be able to exchange ideas from perspectives of a sculptor cum bee farmer, a feminist painter, a curator who champions the marginalized and still on a similar chain of thought, an artist who communicates with texts.

While I am hopefully playing the part, by offering this during the breakfast.

I am also making a promise and challenge to witness more performance, to experience and to genuinely reflect on how i feel about them. Subjectively; as an attempt to reconnect my own practice and interest with the craft.

Towards mid week 2, I went to see Verena Schneider's Playgrounds of (Dis)Embodiment which was performed during the opening of Against the Playbook group exhibition at Das Weisse Haus. It was in collaboration with soft sculptures of Sarah Sternat and a sound maker whose name I did not manage to find out.

I did not quite enjoy the work, at least on the surface. As a dance piece, yes I think it was an exciting mix of movements and gestures (which was physically challenging hence the acrobatic body made sense) and with the aid of the soft sculptures, the narrative was clear but not didactic enough to be single-laned; although rather narrow ones due to the descriptive elements of the soft sculptures.

But as a performance, I question the relevance of the gestures. Some of them were fantastic as scores, like the snack packagings crumpling sounds done live by the sound artist, which then reemerged from one of the sculptures worn around the belly by the performing body. The part where they engulfed themselves in the crisp and at one point their whole entire hand was in their mouth. I sensed bravery, courage to be true, to be messy, to be ugly, to be raw. In the age of performance where there are way too many 'look at me's instead of the gestures, those moments shared warmth.

Unfortunately, they were fleeting. They disappeared just as soon as they started sipping under my skin as an audience. Their duration steals away the excitement my eyes were witnessing. I wanted more, I wanted patience . I wanted to feel that time has stopped so that I can learn how to pace myself as I return to the real world.

Because in performance, to feel and its eventual reception is more important than intention, which is why for me, performance is the anti-thesis of life. In life, i value intention because we are social beings who care for each other. Reception is individualistic and intention is communal.

In performance however, individuality is to be celebrated, both in each and every audience as well as the maker. Audience should be given enough space for them to weave their own stories, often formed by their history and the maker, while sharing theirs, should also be able to provide those spaces.

It reminds me of like watching a street acrobat. I often find myself blushing, perhaps out of respect on their ability to draw a crowd but that embarrassment soon turned into awe, because of skill display but also a ting of fear in case anything went wrong. The reaction is

often backed by context, or presumed context; which in this case, perhaps to expand possibilities, to extend the limit of the human body and capability.

But applying to the performance that I witnessed, it was not entertainment (or perhaps it was). it was not a display of ability, it was not a parade of beauty. It was about making experiences. It was serving the audience; even if it were an unpleasant one.

Performance audience in my opinion are distinct from theatrical audience. The latter is like a herd of cattle, each with rich individuality but we often attend a theatre for the same thing; because the work is set. Of most part, the choreography is memorized, the script is unchanged and the seats also the view) are also predetermined. And that is the beauty of theatre; a definitive result because the audience are expected to look at the performer for the story to be shared successfully. But performance is different; the audience is also the farmer, as much as the maker is, or both are cattles if the maker chooses that position. Everyone is equal.

The most disappointing part for me was the music, especially when accompanied by test at the very end of the piece. The text was about self-love, emotionally uplifting, encouraging and positive but that is the problem. It further highlighted the hierarchy that has been laid out by the maker; I am better than you. I was made to feel that I could not be trusted to form my won opinion and reaction towards the work, spoon-fed with love because I am lack of it. I trust my performance audience; I trust their varying opinions that I do not need to nurture them to think 'like a good person would'. I have witnessed a lot of recent performance who uses music and songs; just because. I felt second-hand embarrassement when the sound artist started producing vocal element to the piece. It was a beautiful voice, but served no purpose.

The element of sound reverberated til the very last second of the piece, as the audience clapped when the performing body re-entered the space after they left. The memory is invincibly imprinted in the space, relics of what had changed to the soft sculptures, dirt and mess as by products of the actions, all disappeared, replaced by the resurgence of the pick-me energy. There was not enough moments to digest of the remnants as well, hence giving the impression that time and space are almost unimportant.

I approached performance as my main creative output because of lack. I did not posses the skill of a painter, musician, sculptor nor dancer. Performance seemed, and seems easy. It wasn not long to realize that it was far from it, the craft is complex, to remain modest while on display is challenging, to say the least. I have never wanted to do it because I want to be seen. I remember visiting Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, Tasmania (my second most favourite museum in the world, comes close to 21_21 Design Site in Tokyo) where a performance happened in the midst of ancient relics and contemporary art (I remember Marina Abramovic's video at one point). The artist was a dancer apparent from the techniques he demonstrated. But I also remember there was not competition of attention. He blended in, but the artwork was clear.There was no advertisement, no clinking of the glass to gain attention, there was simple presence. Presence reminds me of Jade Blackstock, an artist from UK who is now a nomad in between Europe and Birmingham, occasionally London.I saw her performance twice. She just started, offered gestures and left. Quietness. Humility. But that feeling of overwhelm-ness ,of sophistication translated by me as an audience as honesty, or pure intention. And it is okay to be missed, to be unseen, to be ignored, to be soundless amongst pollution of noise. The work constructed, the idea shared and stories told is what counts.And I enjoy performances which energy remains in their relics I long to witness and experience works like that again but I have yet for a long time.

I have digressed far down many blocks from Verena's offering because my personal frustration with the current performance practice has taken over. The disappointment not targetted towards new makers but older generation that we have not been able to do more, or perhaps performance is changing, as it should be. Well, I hope to gain some lights on the subject of 'craft of performance' as the weeks unfold here in Vienna. Despite not the biggest fan of Verena's work, I'm glad it was shared and I thank the artists for making it real. Because a negative reaction is still a respond and performances still need to continuously produced and presented, to keep the craft alive.

PS: I managed to see Abramovic's exhibition at Albertina Modern and caught the last weekend of three reenactments; Imponderabilia, Luminosity and (surprise, surprise) Art Must Be Beautiful. Spoiler: I HATE IT. Haha. But I'll keep that for next blog post.

Enough rant for a post, so let's get back on a more positive note, shall we.

The days have also gotten a bit brighter, the birds have started chirping and the stadium is waking up, ever so slightly.

I have also switched my creative engine on. I proposed Hard Boiled for Fringe Arts Bath in summer, reconnected with Ivan Tan Eng Hong for a possibility to present a fragment of Vois sur ton chemin (2015) for a small show in London and messaged Tony Yap for the possibility of me joining MAPFest laster in August. Will be writing more on the development of these projects and other calls that I will be responding to in the next blog posts. But with projects laid up on the wall, I feel creatively energized. A feeling I have long lost for almost a year.

week 0-2