STARDUST: On Chasing the Light Through the Veil
By Promona Sengupta (23rd, 25th & 26th October 2024, Uferstudios)

No other experience in human life is able to elicit both an effluence of emotion and complete finitude of expression such as death. An entirely universal experience, of profundity unbound, and still personal to a fault, death is the unwieldy subject matter of Ming Poon’s multimedia, multisensory multi-day performance-installation-ritual “Stardust”. Like the subject matter itself, the work is able to escape narrowness of formal categories, elegantly providing an inroad and access to, one could risk saying, everyone. Very rarely does a work of art claim to have a universal audience, and even if the claim is made, the promise is often empty. We are used to polarizing experiences in art spaces, we crave a challenge, and in a politically polarized world, art spaces provide us with much-needed time and capacity to grow and confront the overwhelming state of affairs, and endure ideas and opinions differing from our own. In startling contrast, Poon’s work delivers the caress of death ensconced in unexpected comfort, in a self-consciously safe, multisensory, caring, almost hospice-like artistic environment that is skillfully built into a fairly abstract stage design, highly conceptual dramaturgy and significant dramatic effects. Given that the work is birthed in the years 2023-24, it would be remiss to ignore the world around this piece, that is highly desensitized to industrial levels of death being broadcasted live from multiple genocides happening around the world. In such a world, where the profundity of life is cheapened beyond recognition and dignity in death is a covenant broken, Stardust provides a disarming amount of care to its audience, in various stages of mourning, reminding us that care is indeed the defining experience of humanity, and deserves to be the final experiences of our lives.

Over the course of 8 days, a large studio at the Uferstudios hosts the Stardust installation – a gallery space with multiple levels of seating, soft cushions, chairs, soft architecture covered in eerie white shrouds to rest the body on while contemplating on various aspects of the space. The space is divided up into a “living space” at the entrance, a “transient space” at the gallery stairs, and a “dying space” in the stage pit. A wall-to-wall projection in the cyclorama of the stage area depicts the synaptic connections of universes far beyond our reach – what looks like faraway stars and galaxies swirling in hypnotic little pinpricks of light could very well be an abstracted image of the inner workings of our nerves, firing and misfiring connections that keep us alive at every moment. The cyclorama is an excellent receptacle of thought, encouraging relaxed contemplation like the night sky. The space is filled with light and sound design that changes over the course of the eight days, according to the specific thematic of the dramaturgy. On the two sides of the gallery, pinned to the walls, flanking and overlooking the “dying space” are pieces of old and discarded white clothing, again resembling the shroud, that are tattered and messages are written on them – questions for the audience such as “what would you miss the most when you die?”, “What regrets would you have?” and so on. The tattered clothing that serves as the canvas for these challenging questions provide an element of the uncanny, making one question, who is asking? Who do these clothes belong to? Once the sense of uncanny enters the mind, the shrouded furniture start appearing as bodies of the dead, and the space, once an environment of gentle if not somber introspection, turns slowly supernatural, haunted. 

The slow descent of the audience into the uncanny is but natural, in a performance installation that is on dying and death. Much needed dramaturgical grounding comes in the form of a care person and death doula, available on site at all times for a chat and a word of support. A retreat room is made available as well, with stim toys, emergency sweets, and other grounding material that can pull one away from the seduction of the uncanny and the disorienting beckon of the otherworldly. Indeed, the installation and the space threatens to engulf with its relentless and haunting quality, and the repeated reminders about the care person, the availability of care and rest and the presence of different entry and exit points to the experience is not only a profoundly grounding artistic choice, but also a viewership necessity. With the presence of a caring and sensitive human asserted, audience members are invited to interact with the space in different ways, with diverse levels of attention. Within the installation are two interactive elements – an “audio guide”, accessible through a QR code, named Instructions for Dying, and a text exercise that can be taken home, in the form of drafting a eulogy for oneself. At the entrance side of the gallery is installed a “veil” of these written texts, contributed by members of the audience and the cast. This veil, made up of loosely pinned sheafs of paper idly and transiently flapping in the air like Tibetan prayer flags, is testament to the long process of installing the piece, and the durational and interactive nature of the work. A last interactive element in the space provides an authorial grounding experience – an invitation to talk to Ming Poon himself about dying.

It is possible as an audience member to lose oneself in Stardust, especially while listening to Instructions for Dying. Over 17 minutes or so, a highly skillful piece of audio, directly speaking in your ear, calms you down and guides you through the various stages of death, from preparing, to breathing your last, decomposing slowly, entering the life and water cycle of nature, and releasing the soul. The female voice is measured, caring, and without a shred of pathos or sadness. She guides the dying in a matter-of-fact manner, and is even able to enthuse you with the lurid descriptions of maggots in your decomposing cavities. However, to experience it within the installation is far more immersive, and the eyes shut and overwhelm threatens to take over. It is not so easy to die, despite the promise of release.

Hence, the rituals. Every evening, following the loose dramaturgical structure of deathly transformation in Tibetan Buddhism, the Stardust space hosts a ritual, to be joined by audiences searching for release or grounding. Rituals are the primary knowledge systems around the scientifically complex and spiritually charged truths of life and death, and they provide the most effective ways of experiencing and processing these profound stages of existence. Earth, Water, Fire, Air, White Light, Red Light, Black Light and Clear Light are the guiding themes of the eight rituals, helmed by eight performers from diverse fields. I had the chance of witnessing three of the rituals – Air, Red Light and Black Light – performed by Birte Opitz, Veronika Heisig and Lisa Stertz respectively. 

On Day 4, Opitz, ritualizing the element of air, which in terms of the Tibetan Buddhist philosophy of the Death Process connects to the breath among other things, uses her voice as her ritual object. Her costume, consisting of a long billowing cape made of thin plastic, is extremely effective as a prop, uncannily caressing the audience members when she moves through them, as they perch themselves on the various seating areas, eyes closed. Opitz slowly shuffles through the audience washed in blue-green light, sitting intermittently, singing various “evening songs” or lullabies in German. The concentration demanded by the ritual, otherwise deceptively simple, is itself intense enough to elicit emotional responses from the audience. This is the nature of ritual – the atmosphere, the space and the participants join forces with the ritual maker to forge a transient affective community, and in creating this community the ritual provides the release of emotions, and catharsis. 

On Day 6, the day of the Red Light, the transformation of the luminance of the departed soul into a radiance, Veronika Heisig ritualizes cycles and cyclicality through a touching meditation on fragility and memory, inviting the presences of her grandparents into an intimate audience circle. The redness of the light is deceptive – the ritual is not as suffocating as Opitz’s, and is sweet and sentimental. Heisig performs a choreography with her props – a large box of broken china, possibly belonging to her grandmother, and a personal diary about the passing of her grandfather. The narrative is moving, telling us the story of her grandmother, dealing with the loss of her spouse, and her interactions with her young grandchild. However, the ritual takes on an even more touching quality when Heisig painstakingly arranges the broken shards of china in the circle, and one by one, approaches audiences and gifts them a shard, sharing a moment of eye contact and connection with them. Heisig’s ritual ends with an open invitation for audience members to share a moment with each other, and gift a piece, and I am blessed with a hug from my dear friend and Stardust cast member Lee Mun Wai. Once again, the community building force of the ritual is unfailing.

On Day 7, Lisa Stertz takes on Black Light, the highly esoteric concept of the soul moving from radiance to imminence, and finding its way out of samsara through transparency. Trained in the Sufi Dervish tradition of whirling, Stertz invites the audience through a brief spoken declaration about the imminent end of the cycle of rituals. She brings out some elemental props for her ritual – the cardinal directions and their elements of wood, fire, metal and water are given to four members of the audience for safekeeping. And then, she steps into the ritualistic skirt and blouse, made of thick black fabric. The lights dim, the rhythmic music starts, and Stertz starts whirling. As a ritual form with a long and rich history, whirling in any form is particularly engaging, as it calls on the audiences’ basic desires – the need for catharsis, the extreme physical feat, the unending dynamics of movement and the irreplicable magic of the human form in motion. With Stertz’s undeniably powerful rendition, we are treated to watching the process of a person moving to an inch of losing themselves, and bringing themselves back from the precipice of consciousness, a fitting ritualization of Black Light. 

As said before, the theme of death is certainly no crowd-puller in our world, and the sombreness of the topic demands high levels of sensitivity, especially in a world defined by necropolitics in many ways. Promising to be an exploration of death as self empowerment and transformation, Stardust actually manages to soften and humanize this defining experience of profound sadness, and address it without normalizing its cruelty and unfairness in our world. Pulling at the long and arduous string of Buddhist thinking on consciousness and its intertwined nature to the realm of death, Poon’s work finds a disarmingly gentle yet effective way of delivering the bad news in its true form, as a celebration and stocktaking of being alive, of life itself.