It will end up in me, HD Video Single-channel color, 22 minutes, 2017
In the work, It will end up in me, a documentary revealing indiginous Indonesians from Kubung villiage describing their use of medicinal plants, and The Expedition, Monosov leads us through the Indonesian landscape to encounter indigenous healers. The works address bioethical questions and subtly upend the oppositions between science and mythology, documentary and fiction.
THE EXPEDITION
It is a simple truth.
If plants wither and die,
man will sicken and die with them.
A patient is forgotten as an individual.
Inside a room awash with sounds of birds – for relaxation,
looking at an abstract image on the doctor’s monitor.
During this expedition
I was in a state right between reality and fiction
As if I’m both there…. and not.
On a search for survival.
Perhaps in the attempt for this documentation
of the importance and the knowledge itself is the failure
Inside the home for an estimated 7.000 medicinal plants
A patient is forgotten as individual
The solutions provided are chosen to optimize the
profit margins of pharmaceutical companies.
It is time to examine yourself in the same manner as a botanist examines plants.
During my travel
to the top of the hill in Purworejo Gunung Wangi
I was invited to attend a healing ceremony.
The ceremony was set up for the healing of a young boy
Demons were possessing his body.
There were other symptoms.
The healer, using a mix of white turmeric,
Jasmine flowers, and water.
Scrubbed it over the boy’s body.
The ceremony ends with a prayer for the boy’s health.
After the filming, I understood that
the ceremony was set up for me.
If the practice is real, this ceremony is very real indeed.
But how can one tell in what way his reality has been constructed?
It should also be taken into account
that individual’s recording information
about the use of medicinal plants
mix their own cultural perspectives into their interpretation.
But the images of plants used here are often overly simplistic.
It is an illustration.
It is the production of reality in which I was not surrounded by observers.