In the mid of September 2019 Yudi was traveling to Colombo and Galle for a week, to both experiences the city and meet with one of our collaborator, Venuri Perera. Yudi Ahmad Tajudin took the opportunity to study how Sri Lanka defines “home” and how its artists view progress and its challenges. Comparable to Vietnam and Indonesia, Sri Lanka has a long history of coloniality that structures the idea of “home,” and the recent history of civil war continues to haunt the contemporary idea of self and others. Much like Vietnam and Indonesia, Sri Lanka is also a place of encounters; a place where travelers meet and stay and leave their socio-cultural traces in its cities.
Yudi experiences firsthand the dynamism of contemporary artists in Colombo, following his encounters with various artists in the cities. Aside from Venuri Perera, Yudi meets with Firi Rahman, Ruhanie Perera and Jake Oorloff, a few influential Colombo artists in the broader Asia and Europe. Yudi encounters important groups and collectives such as Floatingspace and The Stages Theater Company (Ruwanthie de Chickera and Jayampathi Guruge).
Yudi also recognize how the remains of the civil war continue to haunt in the background, a prolonged anxiety that shadows the contemporary everyday life, while the threat of the hardline politics, much like any other places in the world today, also had become more apparent in the background. The political economy of the global movement of capital, notwithstanding, also produces fear.