Pulau Something
Pulau Something is a collaboration in the making of a nusantara archives.
I attempted the role of an annotator, as a voice alongside the fragments.
Introductory essay
Notes on Annotating
I think I was a teenager when I first met nek tok. She was a quite a figure, dressed in full kebaya and batik, her white hair pulled into a bun, seated one leg folded up on the chair, chewing betel nut that smeared red all over her lips, accentuated by her milky skin the other grand-aunts called tepung (flour). She would occasionally spit into the metal container she placed beside her and would cast a signature jeling of the eye to anyone who lingered too long in conversation with her. I learned from my mom that she is a granny from my maternal side and that she is Bugis. This was the first time I learned that Bugis was a people and that I was part Bugis, that I wasn’t just ‘Indian’ as documented on my I.C. We do not know the actual name of nek tok. I am sure someone does, but it was never recounted to my mother nor my aunts and so, she remains in image as the betel nut chewing lady, whom I would sit and observe from afar, enthralled by her mannerisms and hoping someone would linger too long in conversation so I could catch a glimpse of her jeling. The Bugis are sea folks, I’m told. I wonder if that is why I often have recurring dreams of the sea.
Does the land remember it’s an island if it has forgotten the sea?
That soft tango between methods of classification and storytelling have always intrigued me as one cannot do without the other. In thinking about the ways we approach knowledge and information, I would often distinguish the two: the former being like air, found everywhere, eddying into breathes that utter space, stories, sayang; the latter, a documented form, a book that can be transmitted to the masses. Whilst both knowledge and information can be easily subjected to both classification and storytelling, its point of encounter resides in different domains. Pairing storytelling alongside classification ensures we do not reify categories of ‘race’, ‘other’, ‘orient’, ‘native’, ‘wild’, created to cast outliers from a perceived centre. Stories allow for ways of correcting categories, as interludes that open boundaries of the geographical, spiritual, mental. It reminds us that, like air, many flow from crevices of memory and ancestry, residing in tongues and limbs who mimic their words, but who might be met with ‘unknown’ when forced into classification. The importance of infusing storytelling into and against classification has thus become the approach undertaken in this attempt to document the nusantara, a space, stories, sayang that many feel on their skin, but have not the words to speak into form. Annotating thus became my way of breathing air alongside the fragments.
When I first decided to play the role of the archivist to this project, I had in mind a task of weaving together pieces of information across the various fragments to create an archive that would contain all the necessary information needed to navigate our nusantara. Upon my encounter with each fragment, thoughtfully mediated by their respective interlocutors, I began to realise how counter-intuitive it was to hope for any sort of a nusantara archive for the nature of the nusantara flowed against the state and form of the archive, which works to contain and classify for some sense of preservation. As an experience that transcends geographical and historical boundaries and categories, conceptualising the nusantara as an archive would render it a complete form. Instead, like history, it cannot be so. An annotation is thus an incomplete venture. It does not want to be called an archive for it does not aim to exist as a depository of knowledge. It is never meant to offer one a full picture of anything. In fact, it employs instinct as its source of articulation alongside other stories. To a certain extent, annotation exists as a refuge for the bits of knowledge, memory, and expressions we could not or do not want to translate into information, for it remains to be understood by those who can, and witnessed by those who sense value in them.
Notes on Annotating
I think I was a teenager when I first met nek tok. She was a quite a figure, dressed in full kebaya and batik, her white hair pulled into a bun, seated one leg folded up on the chair, chewing betel nut that smeared red all over her lips, accentuated by her milky skin the other grand-aunts called tepung (flour). She would occasionally spit into the metal container she placed beside her and would cast a signature jeling of the eye to anyone who lingered too long in conversation with her. I learned from my mom that she is a granny from my maternal side and that she is Bugis. This was the first time I learned that Bugis was a people and that I was part Bugis, that I wasn’t just ‘Indian’ as documented on my I.C. We do not know the actual name of nek tok. I am sure someone does, but it was never recounted to my mother nor my aunts and so, she remains in image as the betel nut chewing lady, whom I would sit and observe from afar, enthralled by her mannerisms and hoping someone would linger too long in conversation so I could catch a glimpse of her jeling. The Bugis are sea folks, I’m told. I wonder if that is why I often have recurring dreams of the sea.
Does the land remember it’s an island if it has forgotten the sea?
That soft tango between methods of classification and storytelling have always intrigued me as one cannot do without the other. In thinking about the ways we approach knowledge and information, I would often distinguish the two: the former being like air, found everywhere, eddying into breathes that utter space, stories, sayang; the latter, a documented form, a book that can be transmitted to the masses. Whilst both knowledge and information can be easily subjected to both classification and storytelling, its point of encounter resides in different domains. Pairing storytelling alongside classification ensures we do not reify categories of ‘race’, ‘other’, ‘orient’, ‘native’, ‘wild’, created to cast outliers from a perceived centre. Stories allow for ways of correcting categories, as interludes that open boundaries of the geographical, spiritual, mental. It reminds us that, like air, many flow from crevices of memory and ancestry, residing in tongues and limbs who mimic their words, but who might be met with ‘unknown’ when forced into classification. The importance of infusing storytelling into and against classification has thus become the approach undertaken in this attempt to document the nusantara, a space, stories, sayang that many feel on their skin, but have not the words to speak into form. Annotating thus became my way of breathing air alongside the fragments.
When I first decided to play the role of the archivist to this project, I had in mind a task of weaving together pieces of information across the various fragments to create an archive that would contain all the necessary information needed to navigate our nusantara. Upon my encounter with each fragment, thoughtfully mediated by their respective interlocutors, I began to realise how counter-intuitive it was to hope for any sort of a nusantara archive for the nature of the nusantara flowed against the state and form of the archive, which works to contain and classify for some sense of preservation. As an experience that transcends geographical and historical boundaries and categories, conceptualising the nusantara as an archive would render it a complete form. Instead, like history, it cannot be so. An annotation is thus an incomplete venture. It does not want to be called an archive for it does not aim to exist as a depository of knowledge. It is never meant to offer one a full picture of anything. In fact, it employs instinct as its source of articulation alongside other stories. To a certain extent, annotation exists as a refuge for the bits of knowledge, memory, and expressions we could not or do not want to translate into information, for it remains to be understood by those who can, and witnessed by those who sense value in them.