It will end up in me, HD Video Single-channel color, 22 minutes, 2017

A film by Rachel Monosov in collaboration with Pinarsita Juliana and Meta Setalisa

In the works, It will end up in me, Description use of medicinal plants and The Expedition, Monosov, leading us through the Indonesian landscape to encounter indigenous healers. The work addresses 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.