FUAIM Concert - ghOstMiSt - 14/03/25, 1:10pm, Aula Maxima, UCC

16 Jan 2025

Happening On 14/03/2025

ghOstMiSt performs “Shadows of Migrants”

ghOstMiSt* comprises of Dewa Ayu Eka Putri (dance) and Putu Tangkas Adi Hiranmayena (music) performing reflexive improvisation of Balinese arts. Using Balinese gamelan, effects pedals, and experimental traditions of dance, this piece interrogates the repercussions of growing neo-colonial settlements and digital nomad culture in Bali, Indonesia. That which casts shadows of cultural stereotypes imposed on Balinese bodies. The opacity of active idealism hides in the transparency of social commotion. ghOstMiSt lives in the contradictions of identity but fights for epistemic justice.

*capitalizations of OMS denote various manifestations of cosmological greeting.

Bios:

Putu Tangkas Adi Hiranmayena is an Indonesian artist-scholar serving as Assistant Professor of Music (Performance and Creativity) at Grinnell College, where he directs the Balinese Sound Ensemble and teaches courses on Heavy Metal Music, Electronic Music, and Noise and Activism. He also is a founding member of Balinese Experimental duo, ghOstMiSt, with dancer-anthropologist, Dewa Ayu Eka Putri; PAK Yeh (free-improvisation trio) from Denver, Colorado; and T.A.T.W.D. (improvised noise-metal trio) from Urbana, Illinois.

Hiranmayena’s academic, performance, and compositional research focuses on the intersections of Cosmology, Indigeneity, Environmental Activism, and Performativity in Balinese Gamelan, Heavy Metal, and Noise. He takes post-colonial, performance studies, and creative ethnographic approaches to looking at the state of sound in the social sciences and humanities. His work constitutes equitable forms of knowledge production in the form of public-facing academic articles and Glocal creative artistic pieces.

As a creative ethnographer, Hiranmayena has written articles, coupled with artistic compositions, that interrogate the state of performance in South-East Asian performing arts. Most notably, his articles, “If a Dragon Dies in the Forest, Do Humans Hear a Sound?” (2022); “Fix Your Face”: Performing Attitudes Between Mathcore and Beleganjur,” (2022); “ghOstMiSt’s Trails of Indigeneity,” (2021), discuss myriad perspectives on traditional, popular, and experimental Balinese performance idioms. Hiranmayena continues to perform and compose internationally while also maintaining status as board member of Insitu Recordings and Gamelan Tunas Mekar.

Dewa Ayu Eka Putri is a Balinese artist-anthropologist and is currently a Lecturer of Dance at Grinnell College. She teaches courses on Balinese Dance and Performing Arts, specializing in traditional and contemporary dance styles. Putri also maintains her position as dance instructor at the critically acclaimed arts organization, Sanggar Cudamani, from Pengosekan, Bali, Indonesia.

She received her B.A. from Universitas Udayana in cultural anthropology and is a leading figure in women’s gamelan ensembles all around Bali. Born into a family of artists, Dewa Ayu is internationally known for her collaborations of traditional and contemporary works in theater, music, and dance while actively working as a freelance research assistant. The majority of her work advocates for the legal protection of women and children which is highlighted in various discursive artistic modalities.

Currently, Putri has international projects with organizations in Mexico, Switzerland, and Japan, as well as annual projects in Indonesia. She also organizes the performing arts shelf in the virtual library at BasaBali Wiki.

ghOstMiSt is a Balinese experimental duo that focuses on practices of reflexive improvisation toward phenomenological inquiries into confronting cultural contradictions. The project was founded by Dewa Ayu Eka Putri and Putu Tangkas Adi Hiranmayena in the summer of 2020. Born out of a distanced practice during the COVID-19 pandemic (Putu Tangkas Adi Hiranmayena in the United States and Dewa Ayu Eka Putri in Indonesia), ghOstMiSt releases monthly artistic pieces on social media platforms (Facebook and Instagram) to a Glocal audience:

“We created the duo out of frustrations with exoticist interactions and a desire to confront cultural contradictions through performance. We intend to create artistic and ideological commotion through a general co-motion of contemporary Balinese artists. In doing so, we attempt to thwart the assumptions that Balineseness means being solely ethereal artists tied to Indigenous animist practices. By enacting performative inquiries of Balinese-ness we question spiritual and cosmological epistemologies of performance. It is important that we teach through community-based methods and engage in diverse participation in efforts to create works of art that promote creativity, while understanding historical privilege to address social and philosophical issues.”

Social Media:

Instagram: 91ghost_mist89

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ghostmist2386