The Memories of Unidentified Experience
/1. Introduction:
about an ordinary boy who live an extraordinary life/
How much can one recall the
past?
For Dito Yuwono, his past is about
fractions of memories triggered by senses-- smells and sensations of certain
scenes he cannot fully recall. One day, when I was cleaning my nail polish
using acetone, his memory flew to those unpleasant moments when a nurse applied
a generous dose of alcohol to clean a freshly cut surgical wound on his head. His
memories flashed back to the cold and tender sensation of the nurse’s touch and
white dissolving pictures of the hospital when he was sedated. He remembers the
blurry scenes of white sterile lights and shivers. Perhaps that is why he starts associating neon
bright white light with coldness and discomfort. From then on, I never clean my
nail polish near him. When he tries to remember more, he is uncertain whether
his efforts to recall these memories portrayed his real past experiences or if his
mind was playing tricks on him. Other than that, he remembers living a happy
childhood life, showered with love and attention from friends and family. As he
stated, his life was not special. It was normal. But then again, how would you
define normal?
What happened in his past was
almost like a myth. Often he wondered what could have happened since his life
is just like other people’s, liking things that other people like, and doing
things the way other people do them. Aside from his unusual visual appearance,
he is just one of a million other guys you will meet randomly on the street.
The reactions he gets from other people is what makes him curious. Because it
might be a sensitive thing to talk about, most people just stare instead of
asking him about his unusual appearance, surgery marks, and other things
regarding his past. When the question does come up, he would jokingly answer or
show an uneasy hesitation that makes people never ask again. The way people
stared, questioned, and treated him differently actually caused trauma in his
childhood and made him endlessly question his own identity
His shy and unconfident nature
is clearly linked to this grey history. But, when people first meet him, the
timid nature of Dito Yuwono does not show. He grew up having a sunny attitude
surrounded by loved ones and friends. Showered with attention and affections, his
past is buried and forgotten rather than dealt with. Only when one is close
enough with him, the inferiority that has been built years after years during
his childhood shows. That is why, having Dito Yuwono tell his story through
this photo series is even more than stripping off his clothes and leave him
naked. It becomes the threshold between what is private and what is public to
him.
In his daily life, he seldom
talks about what happened in his past; especially about his experiences facing
numerous and continuous surgeries during his childhood from age one to eleven.
Not only because he was medically declared healthy when he was eleven years old,
but also because he cannot remember it himself. It was something his body
experienced but his memories only consist of fractions of semiconscious images.
Yet, those life changing experiences become a self history that highly affects
who he is today. The realm of mind and his desire to exorcise his foggy
memories and to acknowledge his present state triggered him to create this
work. He began a systematic investigation of his own body, identity, and
self-history in this series of work.
/2. Artwork:
his quest in finding the past that is lost to him/
Dito Yuwono spent a year and a
half occupying a space driven by the intense energy of obsession to search and
try to understand the past that is lost to him. Using his own body as a point
of departure, his quest in trying to understand his unidentified experiences has
resulted in an autobiographical work about what happened years ago and where
the journey took him to in the present time, bounded with a mix of nostalgia
and irony.
The first body of work,
"Naked", consists of four self-portraits featuring different parts of
the body and their X-ray images. The process of making this series was quite
emotional. In his quest to understand what happened to him, he used his old
x-rays as a starting point. Asking for the old x-rays was like opening a
well-kept wound for his parents; perhaps even more than Dito's wounds. What for
him is a self-history, might be someone else's tragedy. There are degrees of
trauma behind this story beside those who actually experienced the pain. Most
of the time when these x-rays were made, Dito was highly sedated and remembers
only fractions of spectral images. But for his parents, these were traumatic
experiences. In the process of talking to them about it, Dito uncovered the
detailed story of his past for the first time. He then decided to materialize the
quality of those memories and his understanding of them using transparent
tracing paper taped onto neon lightboxes, reminding him of hospital x-ray lightboxes.
The self portrait becomes a
mirror of who he really is, using X-ray images as a mask to capture what is
hidden behind his unusual appearance. The x-ray images are put in front of his
body parts suggesting its position as a mask with an irony of its function: instead
of hiding what is behind the mask, it unveils what is actually hidden. Yet, these
images are unfamiliar for common people. They can only be explained by medical
experts, leaving us with more intriguing questions about what is known and what
is blurred. Which one is the mask? Which identity to hold on to? Which one
explains who he really is?
The blurry border between what
is intimate and public becomes a radical investigation of himself. It was
almost like a child play-acting a neurosurgeon. Just like when the real neurosurgeon
got him through the series of childhood surgeries years ago; Dito Yuwono uses
photography as a medium to dismantle and abstract his body through intense
examination. The cutouts of body parts and the x-ray portraits of what is
happening inside seem to achieve a self-evident autonomy as a physical and
psychological confrontation. Those fractions of body parts and their x-rays are
reconstructed in a way that is no longer connected to the original, creating an
expression of alienation instead.
Dito Yuwono's self portrait in
this body of work was never meant to self-dramatize himself in front of the
camera. And yet the nature of his appearance is inherently melodramatic. The
images are shockingly raw, displaying the old wounds and disturbing exterior of
himself; bringing an ‘in your face’ aspect to the photo. Once again, he lets
people stare.
He was searching through his
childhood home trying to find memorabilia of the past when he found a bag of
old medicine on the telephone table. He started looking for more and find
several bags of medicines prescribed for him at four locations in the house: on
the telephone table, on the key box under the staircase, on the snack table,
and in his bedroom. He started documenting the pills and wondering why he was prescribed
them in the first place. He treated the pills as found objects; memorabilia of
his past. His illnesses when he was prescribed were not exactly serious. They varied
from stomach ache, skin disease, to omega 3 fish oil that was meant to lower
his cholesterol level. These are the kinds of medicine other people received when
they visit the doctor and were quite common.
In this series of work,
“Prescribed”, Dito Yuwono presents a diaristic element of his quest. The
found-objects are photographed and numbered based on where he found them. A map
of where those objects were found is displayed like a treasure-hunt map and
numbered. Of all the bodies of work in this series, this is the only one that isn’t
printed on semi-transparent paper, suggesting that the artifacts were solid,
the past can be recalled this time, and the objects can be documented. How he differentiates the material of memories
in the other works and in this body of work shows the transparency of
consciousness and opacity of objective reality.
The last part of this work is a
simple drawing about his understanding of the chemical interaction between
pharmaceutical active ingredients of two pills and his body, contemplating the
semi-conscious state of consuming medicine. The choice of white-on-white display
of this work suggests how some people, including himself, faithfully consume the
drugs prescribed for them without thinking twice about how it might affect his
body and how one active pharmaceutical ingredient might interact with another,
creating an unknown chemical reaction inside the human body.
For this body of work, he not
only contemplates his identity through the number of chemicals he faithfully
consumed; but also how loose the medical distribution regulations are in this
country. Most of the drugs and pills he photographed in this series are sold
freely in drugstores all over the country and are often prescribed loosely by
doctors. Faithful consumers who swallow them without thinking twice about the
consequences makes the experience of consuming drugs an unidentified
experience.
Out of curiosity and inferiority,
Dito created the third body of work in this series, “Sleeping with Myself”. Even
after he was medically declared as fully recovered from the condition he had
when he was a child, what he experiences now is a sleeping problem as a result
of it. Again, this condition leaves him in a state of a series of unidentified
experiences every night. Dito Yuwono knows that he snores in his sleep- leaving
him unconfident and refusing to share his bed with other people caused by his
own anxiety about not wanting to disturb other people’s sleep. He sleeps with his eyes sometimes open and
continuously moves around trying to breathe better. This condition sometimes
leaves him exhausted in the morning because the body and mind are rarely
rested. For him, sleeping is more like a meditational state of
semi-consciousness that exists between sleeping and waking. His conscience is glimpsed,
lost, and then glimpsed again in repetition.
In this body of work, he tries
to understand a world that is lost to him. His question is simple: how
disturbing can he be in his sleep? In order to recreate the experience for
himself, he went through a process of recording himself, asking people how he
behaves in his sleep and then attempting to replicate the experience of
sleeping with himself. His self-portrait represents an impossible mirror image;
a reality that only other people can see.
The pictures of his continuous
sleeping movements are printed on semi-transparent paper, creating a ghost-like
trail of self-portraits, presented with the sound of him snoring. Rather than
trying to make people experience what he perceived was a burden to sleep with,
Dito Yuwono is trying to understand what people actually experience when sleeping
with him by creating an installation where he can actually 'sleep with
himself'. This body of work might look like a residue of a dream world, yet it
actually is meant to be the most blatant experience he wish to have. The dark
room was created as a peephole that offers a glimpse into his private space.
Aside from the three bodies of
work that represent the threshold between what is public and what is private to
him; an interview was also conducted to understand the realm of his mind, providing
snippets of whats going on inside his internal self, and serving as another
self-portrait[i]. Of
course, the question of authorship of the self portrait is not relevant anymore
in contemporary society. Does it still matter who pulls the trigger as long as
the whole direction and artistic valuation was controlled by the artist? What Dito
made is an impossible object of things he cannot see. The camera becomes
unjudgemental anonymous eye that materializes the artist’s interpretation of
his past, self-history, and identity.
/3. Closure:
reflection of the absurdity of the experience/
What Dito Yuwono experienced
is pretty absurd. Gliding between consciousness and unconsciousness most of his
life; the powerless feeling resulting from his body experiencing things his
mind failed to understand. It is understandable that he sees the necessity to
gain control over himself, forcing him to experiment beyond his personal
aesthetic. Using himself as a subject and object of his investigation is his way
to seize control of the time and space he once lost.
What Dito Yuwono remembers about
his past is what Proust defines as 'involuntary memory'[ii].
It is a subcomponent of memory that occurs when cues encountered in everyday
life evoke recollections of the past without conscious effort. For Proust, it
was a taste of petite madeleine cake soaked in a cup of tea that triggered a
childhood memory that was lost to him. The taste triggered vivid memories of
how his childhood home looked and how happy he was. For Dito, the essence of
the past was the smell of acetone that triggered his memory, bringing him back
to the white-washed glimpses of the hospital.
What he is attempting to make in
this work is the materialization of these memories. It is the binary opposite
of the involuntary memory that serve as a deliberate effort to try remembering
a moment in the past. At this point, his body was not only contain of some
notes and memorabilia of the old wound traces but also become a memory-keeping
device for his experience. His body remembers the cold gentle sensation of the
nurse's touch when sterilizing his fresh wound, and he remembers the sensation
of getting the thread out of his dried wound.
He uses his body as the starting point for the journey back to track his
past for the body is neither an internal subject nor a fully external object of
experience[iii].
The self-portraits are
presented on transparent medium, suggesting the spectral memories he is trying
to materialize. This work is a quest to
learn about his personal history and an in-depth study of the self without focusing
on the drama and tragedy. In one way or another, this work serves as a form of
expressive therapy and a reconstruction of identity. It is a way for him to come
to terms with himself and his past, and at the same time to do the one thing
that he fears the most: exposing himself to explore his unstable nature.
Historically, self-portraits
are the outward expression of inner feelings, to penetrate self analysis and
contemplation[iv].
Using x-ray images usually associated with medical purposes; he shifts their
context from documentation to art. This work can be compared to Siya Singh’s
Brain MRI 2006 (2009) work where she uses her unfathomable brain x-ray image as
a self-portrait. While Singh replace her headshot with her brain x-ray alone,
Dito Yuwono chose to use the x-ray image as a mask. The way Dito Yuwono wears
this mask exposes the physical interior instead of covering his exterior, showing
the unanswered questions that only professionals can assess and tell us what
actually went wrong inside that unusual exterior.
This whole project is an
autobiographical exploration through self portraiture, re-telling the strange
experience of having no control nor understanding of oneself as a physical
being. Through this series of work, Dito Yuwono is writing an autobiography of
himself and looking back to the things that he missed. The camera becomes his
insightful tool for self-analysis as well as being a visual record of personal
tragedy.
In a way, he is trying to see through
the eyes of children who, in innocent curiosity, often give him weird stares. He is trying to
create mirror images to see what is abnormal about himself. As a survivor, this
series of works reveals the struggle and torment that is actually a reality for
some people, while at the same time questioning the true definition of what is
normal. This condition reminds us of those oeuvres by Nan Goldin and Frida
Kahlo who celebrate their life fully using autobiographical works capturing
even the most poignant and painful moments in their lives. The way they
publicly show those wounds in rather intriguing portraits publicly reclaims
their pride and identity as self.
All and all[v],
this exhibition is about collected memories of unidentified experiences,
personal history, and how the past relates to Dito Yuwono’s present. More than that, this series is about
self-acceptance: the desire to learn about himself was meant to make him feel
more ease with who he is through revisiting the past in staged photography, and
with courage to show how he survived the gaze and the questions. He can finally
wear the wound like a trophy or a medal of bravery.
(Mira Asriningtyas)
[i] The interview was inspired by the self-investigatory work of Lucas
Samaras, "Another Autointerviews" (1971).
[ii] From the madeleine scene of Marcel Proust’s novel, “À la Recherche du
Temps Perdu” or “Remembrance of Things Past” (1900)
[iii] Generated from Marleau-Ponty’s theory of phenomenology, “Phenomenology
of Perception” (1945)
[iv] Susan Bright. “Auto Focus: the Self-Portrait in Contemporary Photography”
(2010)