Wearing a white smock, a woman stands on a field of charcoal lumps. All day, Indonesian artist Melati Suryodarmo has been crushing charcoal to dust with a heavy, stone rolling pin, leaning over a stone block mounted on an iron table. The whole scene is black and white and grey under the gallery lights. She’s made no discernible inroads, though the black dust soils her smock and hangs in the air as it spills to the floor. The residue has blackened her hands and arms. It smears her face and clogs her hair. Thin black rivulets run from her nostrils. The artist began performing – if performance it is – at 10am, and continues for 12 hours, with no intermissions, no toilet breaks, no water, as she goes about her task. She doesn’t wear a mask. Suryodarmo’s I’m a Ghost in My Own House, which she has been performing since 2012, is compelling, though the work she’s doing is horrible and hazardous.
The audience comes and goes through the long day. Some stay, willing Suryodarmo on, or waiting for her to drop. We watch in silence, to the sound of crushing and sifting, the noise of her feet crunching over the charcoal, the repeated stamp of the roller as she breaks up the bigger, fist-sized lumps. I’m struck by how close it is to hard labour, the futile, soul-breaking punishment tasks given to Victorian prisoners – climbing the treadmill, turning the crank, moving rocks from one side of a room to the other, then back again. I feel like a voyeur.
