Daging (Meat) / Journal 1 by Hasyimah Harith

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Title: Daging (Meat in Malay)

Concept & Performance: Hasyimah Harith

Dates: 13 & 14 March 2021 (21hr@Singapore)

About Daging (Meat)

This is a Zoom performance.

In Singapore, Malay-Muslim women’s body is constantly controlled and monitored by the state and the religion. To them, we are not persons, we are just an instrument. The state sees our body as an economic and political tool to serve its nationalistic goals, while our religion reduces our body to the functions of child-bearing and care-giving.

Daging (Malay word for meat) is about the conflict that I experience with the state and religious control, as a Malay-Muslim woman. Being pregnant awakens a new-found power and potential within my own body. The ability to create life makes me realise the divine and goddess in myself. Only I can know and decide what my body needs and wants. I use my pregnancy to resist the state and religious control over my body, and find my freedom within Singapore’s nationalistic and religious context.

About the Artist

Hasyimah Harith (Singapore) is a Malay-Muslim female artist that has been trained in Malay folk dance for 15 years. She performs, choreographs and teaches traditional Malay dance repertoires, such as Asli, Inang, Joget and Zapin. She is also a visual arts educator and a co-founder of P7:1SMA, a dance company formed in 2016 that uses dance to confront and reimagine the Malay’s relationship to their identity. Using her body as the starting point, Hasyimah works with the Malay identity, traumas of colonisation and female sexuality, as a way to reclaim the agency over her body. Her working method involves strategies such as vulnerability, pleasure and confession. She believes in the power of the body to confront and overcome the conditioned shame that is often attached to Malay-Muslim female sexuality.

Credit List

https://mingapur.com/works/event/body-troubles/

Ming Poon - Producer Amaryllis Puspabening - Moderator

Norhaizad Adam - Assistant

Noah Sanubari (28 weeks) - Movement collaborator

Artist position

• Using my pregnant body as a starting point

• Flesh as material

• Piece of red meat

• Body image: Fleshy bodies

• Darah daging: kinship

Performance cue sheet for zoom performance

8.45pm-8.55pm: 10 min

• Waiting room opens

• Only let people in at 8.55pm

8.55 - 9.05pm: 10 min

• Meeting room opens

• When attendees enter meeting room, they will be automatically muted and in gallery view. (Rationale: Seeing a community of boxes/ with names / faces)

• Syimah screen is also in one of the gallery view.

• Video angle: top view looking down on bathtub. mortar on stomach. hitting the mortar and flattening meat.

Prelude: Darah daging (flesh)

• Syimah is unmute and can hear her hitting the mortar and pestle (batu lesung) and flattening meat/daging

9.05pm-9.15pm: 10 min Part 1: Lenggang perot ceremony (Pre-natal ritual, Malay customs)

• play video of surah an-nisa - 1:55

• pictures: total fertility rate of Malays is still highest in comparison to Chinese & Indians & rezeki anak

• video angle: top view laying in the bathtub

• laying of 7 diff cloth on bathtub

• syimah laying on cloth

• massage meat and oil from motar on baby bump

• run a coconut / mortar 7 times up and down. On the 7th try, let it roll to know gender.

• take both corners of cloth and swing from side to side. One by one.

9.15pm-9.20pm: 10 min Part 2: Dancing daging

• Pin Syimah's video

• play pictures of the ‘hardcore’ state policy about stop at 2 policy and talent for the future by LKY.

• Show Poll: After birthing to this baby, should I listen to the state or my religion? Option 1: Listen to the state. Stop at two, plan for small family to give my child a better chance in life. Option 2: Listen to Islam. Be a 'hardcore' mother who believes that I will receive more blessings and mercy from Allah s.w.t. by having more children.

• After showing results of poll, Syimah share screen and play video opening msg to mothers

• background song (lenggang kangkong song)

• lenggang slow to fast (3min)

• video angle: standing on the bathtub- with pregnant body, no head

9.20-9.30pm: 10 min Part 3: Makan daging (Eat meat)

• play music- ibu by pramlee (4:18)

• while eating uncooked meat

• ending visual: video angle zoomed in syimah's mouth chewing

Photos of zoom performance

Photos extracted from recording of Zoom performance on 14 March 2021

Reflections after Daging (2021):

In 2021 due to Covid-19, I attempted my own lenggang perut ritual in my bathtub with my collaborator 28 weeks baby, Noah Sanubari within me. I rocked my abdomen 7 times using 7 pieces of batik cloth. My husband waited outside the bathroom. My friends joined via zoom to witness 'daging'. Only my sister who is based overseas attended via zoom.

• Had a conversation with my grandmother about her knowledge of Lenggang Perut. My grandmother reminded me to ask permission from my husband in order to do the Lenggang Perut Ritual safely. An act of having your husband's blessings.

• As my elder sister has gone through 3 pregnancies before, I have seen her go through postnatal massage and therapy in our home. But I have little knowledge about prenatal massage.

• If this prenatal massage in Lenggang perut ceremony is a way that I can ensure my safety and baby's health, maybe I can try to do it on my own body.