Penang Art Interview 3: Adiwijaya Iskandar

SAMPLE INTERVIEW 2 Adiwijaya Iskandar

 

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1.  Begin by telling us a little about yourself, your work, and choice of medium. How would you describe yourself as an arts practitioner? What do you do, and how long have you been doing this?

• Real name - Ahadi, but I go by Adiwijaya Iskandar, 37, I like games, driving down roads aimlessly and fried chicken. What type of artist - writer who also does comics. Been doing this since 2008.Beginner. I’m always learning.

2. Can you name a specific site significant to you in your journey as an arts practitioner?

• My bedroom in my parent’s house in Sungai Petani, Kedah, next to my window. 

3. Could you give us a brief physical, formal description of this site, with an emphasis on what is – for you – its most memorable features – begin with the exterior, and then move to the interior. What does it look like, its shape or colour, what material is it made of? What is its texture?

• It’s a semi-d double storey house, next to a super busy road facing a military camp. White walls, red roof, lush garden in the front, my room faces the south, Mt Jerai in the background can be seen from my window, the sunset over Penang island somewhere beyond can be sensed in the West. Shape – rectangle, faded orange walls. It’s always dark inside the house, but my room is very sunny, always full of light. 

4.  Could you similarly give us a brief formal description of the area surrounding the site, and again, with an emphasis on what is – for you – its most memorable features? What are the buildings next to it, what sort of neighbourhood is it located in, are there trees, plants?

• When I look outside my window, immediately underneath is my neighbour’s lawn, there’s always a dog rolling around in the grass there. Then beyond that is the junction, that’s always busy and noisy, and beyond that is the gates to a military camp. I can see Mt. Jerai in the far off background. Clouds always circling the crest.

5.  Could you tell us a little about the history of this site? When was it built? What were the circumstances that led to its construction? What previously occupied the space? Could you tell us the history of the area surrounding the site as well?

• It’s one of the earliest neighbourhoods in this side of Sungai Petani, it’s on the edge of what is considered the more developed town and where the rural parts begin. Developed in 2000 - 2001. Previously was only older houses and the junction and the military camp. And rubber estates before that.

6.  Could you now tell us a little about your personal history with this site? How did you first encounter it? What led you there? What are your earliest memories of it?

• My parents went to school about 1km away, they met at the police station nearby when they were 16 and had been together until my father’s death in 2013. I was born about three kms away from here, in my family’s first house that they bought before leaving for Australia. I’ve never been here (note: he means he’s not explored the surrounding neighbourhood, while they were living there in the house, as he was too young), specifically, but I’ve lived nearby for the first four years of my life. We moved back here in 2001 from Penang [interviewee asked for some statements to be removed, due to privacy concerns]. Had my first episodes of mental breakdown in this very room. 

7.   What is your present relationship with this site? Do you still go there? Do you find yourself thinking about it, regularly, occasionally, or perhaps hardly ever at all?

• This site is like a very personal life partner to me who has seen me at my best and my worst. It has been an incubator to great ideas, a shelter from haunting thoughts and always a point of reference to the complex identity that I have for the rest of my life. I think about this room fairly regularly, it inhabits my dreams about once a month or so, more frequently during the pandemic when I could not come back. When I come back here, it is both a place of solace and turmoil, reminding me I am somewhere I can relax but also reminding me that I have to get the fuck out of here. 

8.  How would you describe the physical sensation of being in the site? What does the space feel like for you, and what are the bodily sensations that it evokes in you? What emotions, or mood, do these sensations then correspond to? Are there any sensations in particular, evoked by being in this site, which are especially memorable or significant for you?

• Heat. Sunshine in the evening coming in through the windows. The feeling of not wanting to do much, languidness. Physical sensation shifts according to the time, at late night I feel anxiety because somewhere down the road I can always hear some woman yelling, and I wonder is it a happy cry or is it danger, most of the time it’s just the people at the gerai opposite the road having a laugh. Rumble of traffic, dog barking. The 20 year old carpet under my feet, the bristles.Void of smells, maybe its just my nose. No, i associate it with this place always being clean, because my mum always cleans it. Din of the airconditioner. The carpet reminds me of being a familiar sense of discomfort. 

9.  Could you similarly describe the physical sensation of being in the wider area surrounding this site, what is outside of it – the neighborhood, the buildings and structures next to it, trees and plants, etc.? How does being out there compare to the sensation of being in the site you named above? Do they evoke similar bodily sensations – the site and the surrounding area – are these spaces cohesive – or is there a contrast, do they feel different?

• Physical sensation - tightness in chest, not feeling safe, hypervigilant, hyperaware of my Queerness, non-Islamic self. Cacophony from the stalls nearby, assault of aromas from kuey teow goreng, satay, and all the other food smells. The military gates, the soldiers. Doesn’t feel the same as how I feel when I’m inside. At all. 

10. At the very beginning of your creative process, how do ideas typically surface for you? Specifically, when searching for inspiration, or when conceptualizing a new work, is there a particular sense perception that you tend towards, whether sight, sound, touch, or perhaps even a combination of these? Is it an image, that just pops into your head from nowhere, is it derived from something you see, in real life, and then perhaps that morphs in your imagination, and sparks more images? Is it auditory, snippets of dialogue, or perhaps even not sensory at all, but instead, cerebral, logical, a question that occupies you?

• Depending on the piece of writing I’m working on, it can either be a sentence fully formed that runs towards me and I have to rush and write it down. It is also sometimes a dialogue between half formed characters, and I’m invading the scene all of the sudden while I’m walking around the house. With some works, it’s after hearing of what has happened to the local weird person in town, or some other kind of injustice being gossiped by my relatives who come to visit my parents from time to time. I sometimes pick up on literal conversations from the group of people down the road, an argument etc. 

11. After that initial spark, how do you bring your ideas to full manifestation? What is your creative process like, from start to end? What we are particularly interested in hearing about is, the physicality of this process, what medium you work with, throughout the course of this process, and if it changes – do you start drafting with pencil and paper, a notebook, or just scraps of paper, do you work immediately on the computer, with a virtual medium, do you find you need to verbally discuss it, do you take recordings of yourself talking?

• I leave the ideas to ferment in the recess of my mind, I abandon it and if it is something that really, really, really wants to be manifested it will pester me to no end. When that happens, if it is a story of some sort, I invite the character to sit with me to tell their tale. I see them, bit by bit as they talk to me about some random thing. I listen to the cadence in their voice, I suss out the flaws, the neurosis, their sexuality etc. And eventually if it really wants to be written, I head to either my Evernote (specifically) or any notebook I have lying around. What is more important is the physicality of either typing on the keyboard or writing freeform with a fountain pen. It has to be a fountain pen because I write very fast and furious and it can take the speed and violence of the writing strokes. And on the ride back from Kedah to KL, when the world of the story is in my head, I record myself talking about it on my phone and then when I’m there, I talk to any of my selected friends/partner to see if the idea survives that final purge. IF, after talking about it exhaustively, it still has feet and is wanting to run, I start with the technical shit. 

12. Can you tell us about a work that was either facilitated by you being in the site, or perhaps, inspired by the memories you have of being in the site? This could include the initial conceptualization, perhaps you had an idea for a new piece while you were there, or while you were thinking of, and revisiting memories of the site, or was it someplace you regularly went to, to work, rehearse, or rest?

• For one of my short plays, Allah, I was in this room in anger because of the hypocrisy of one of my coursemates from my time doing Postgrad. It was his bigotry and hamsapness despite being super alim that got to me, time and time again. It was the feeling of tracksuit pants rubbing against my hands, that I took out of the wardrobe that triggered it all, the tracksuit pant is a very reliable go-to item of conservative malay men to go to the surau when I was a child in school. I hate the texture so much because, objectively it is an offensive fabric, but also in that moment, holding it there, it’s the memory of all the shit I was surrounded in, within this community which is the shittiest of areas geographically when you want to talk about fundamentalism, racism and that particular brand of Malay supremacy. With his image in mind, I started writing Allah. 

13. When you do creative work, do sensory elements such as temperature, airflow, lighting, background sounds and scents, the texture of the ground, for example, affect your process? Is this something you actively consider? Do you look for specific combinations of elements to help you focus, or put you in a particular state of mind?

• The story informs what sensory elements I choose to filter in. For the fantasy and horror short stories I write, the world building usually happens faster when I am looking at Gunung Jerai, because of the mythology and legends that are attached to it. I look a lot to the paddy fields for my stage space. As in, it becomes a stage to me. I believe in ley lines and for sure Gunung Jerai with the ancient civilisation there has to be one of them. For the more… usual stage drama shit, it’s music, specific albums. Like for Mixtape for Maz it was the alternative rock music from the 90s. So it depends. Yeah but most of the time for theatre space it’s either i’m imagining it in the paddy fields or different rooms in this house is where different scenes take place. 

14. We’ve talked about how the site inspires or facilitates your creative process and your works. Would you say you draw from the surrounding area as well? Do you take short breaks, walks around the neighborhood? Does the surrounding area inspire you in a similar way as the site, or do they affect you in different ways? Do you play off these contrasts against one another – work in the site, for example then go out and rest, and search for more inspiration? Or is the surrounding area simply a distraction, part of the mundane reality you seek to escape, by retreating into the site?

• The space is both a place of work and also a place to escape when I want to work. For example, there is this long ass road behind my house that’s super expansive and scenic, again with the paddy fields, and that is my respite when the space is too cloying to my senses, when I need that openness, I go into that nature. I take drives to the foot of mt jerai too. But i don’t always have the luxury to come back to kedah to write. So I have this place in mind even when I’m in kl too, although i have another space there that i frequent, but it’s potency and power is a different quality compared to here, where I’m closer to my roots and Source. When i have peace of mind and I want to be angry about society, I go to the local malls and look at the people there and listen to them talk about stuff. 

15. Was there an arts community on the site, or nearby (who were not directly involved in your project)? Did other practitioners frequent the site, did you interact with them? Were you inspired by other works on this site? Did these engagements shape your work in any way?

• Not directly, but when my father was alive, he did woodworking and carpentry as a hobby, and hearing him downstairs working always gave me a strange sense of comfort because he’s occupied with something else and we’re not gonna be confronting each other and arguing. And my mother also does a lot of paperwork in the home office opposite my room, and when I see her writing or working on her research it gives me some sense of strength to be diligent with mine. I respect both their work ethics i guess.  

16. When putting together a work, apart from the theme or narrative, do you also consciously consider, attempt to transmit a specific physical sensation to the viewer, to evoke a particular bodily reaction in them – by utilizing specific technical methods? Claustrophobia, goosebumps, and muscle tension, through lights, and sound, or perhaps airiness, languor.

• In dialogue I use rhythm and the modulation of the dialogue to evoke a closeness, claustrophobia and also a sense of expansiveness, working a lot with sound. Absence of sound or presence, that sort of thing. In writing prose, i can afford to evoke more texture and weather, so like, rainy, muddy, slick, gritty stuff. I draw a lot of physical sensations that you get from the forests and the paddy fields into my work. 

17. Does this site or the surrounding area reappear, literally, in your works? Do you mention it by name, or did it inspire a fictional site? Have you created a work that is site-specific?

• My old house in Penang appears in one work specifically, but other than that, I take a lot from the paddy fields and jungles/ forests. Obsessed with them and the grossness/sacredness dynamic. Comes up a lot more in my drawings/sketches but also in my horror and fantasy work. 

18. Does the physical, bodily sensation evoked by being in the site reappear in your works then, whether sound, the background chatter of people speaking in a particular rhythm, accent, or perhaps the lighting, the way the sunlight streams through the leaves, or window bars, or perhaps the texture of the walls, the solidity of a table? If they do reappear in your works, do these sense memories you have cross mediums, does a particular sound become transformed into something visual instead, does it become something you can touch?

• Yes, the sensations of oppression and fear, the Otherness is present in my body as a tightness of the chest. This quality follows me into my work when I write about the experience of being Queer in this country, especially away from Central Malaysia/KL, where I feel I can be more myself. There’s a strain in the cadence of the speech of some characters that is a similar tenseness that I employ in my work for some characters which comes straight from this oppressive energy. OTher than that, it’s also the quality of light, whether twilight, or sunrise or the afternoon of a hot, windy day during the season… it’s the one that the rest of Malaysia doesn’t experience, but Kedah does, being close to the thai border, where there’s a distinct fall season where leaves shed. It’s that quality. Death, ending but in a cheerful, bright, high definition kind of way. I try to borrow from that in my writing, in terms of the style.  

19. Would you say this site (and the work inspired by or produced in it) is shaped by its wider surroundings – is it a unique product of its location and historical circumstances –how so? Or could it have just as easily been located elsewhere? Vice versa, would you say the surrounding area, and community is changed by this site (and the work produced within it)?

• I wouldn’t have the desperation, anger and sense of urgency to write if it weren’t for being stuck here. It has shaped the themes I choose to touch and what I write about in a very direct way. I draw a lot from this idea of energy of the Source place where you begin working in and this particular place, especially the land surrounding it, Mt Jerai etc is very much a part of my work in different ways.It is a unique product of its location, particularly because I use Northern Malay accent in my work all the time and I come back here to familiarise myself with it every time. No the surrounding community is not affected by this site, but it’s that unremarkableness that helps me work here in a way that I can observe others instead of being at a point of interest. 

20. How has this site, the surrounding area, and the community changed throughout the years, since you first encountered, or engaged, with it? How have you and your work changed since? Would you say these changes are parallel, or related in any way?

• Yes, the surroundings have changed. Although there is development, we have gone through different political parties taking over and the community has gone through different waves of Islamism. When I first started writing here, there were more Malay muslim women walking about without their headscarves on. When I started writing Allah in 2009, there were much less. In the 2010s, there were black ISIS flags around the area. Now, there is a spike in Palestinian flags everywhere, the signboards are mostly in jawi and there are less and less non-Malays here. The gunung jerai area is facing horrible floodings almost every month in the past few months. This has all rekindled this sense of anger that I have about a changing landscape and society and the futility of wanting to write about it but unable to because of my fear of some impending doom.

 

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