Hari Raya: Evenings and Days

Celebrations mark the end of the Muslim fasting month. The second day is when the fun and games begin.

Henna on the fingertips and decorating the back of the hand

Hari Raya literally means "Day of Celebration". However the celebrations, marking the end of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, continue for several days. Days are calculated as beginning at sunset (not midnight or dawn as in European traditions). I've already detailed evening 1 and day 1. This included some pretty serious stuff.  In this blog, I look at evening 2 and day 2, when the celebrations set in.

Evening 2: Parties

Nek Huz (purple) gives speech

Guests listening to speech

The evening was marked by a large party. Several members of a local family celebrated birthdays. These had fallen during Ramadan but it apparently seemed appropriate to hold off on the celebrations until the fasting was complete. The celebration followed a typical jemput makan (eating get-together) pattern. The wives/mothers had prepared many dishes, which were arranged on long tables. Nek Huz gave a speech of thanks.

Yet more guests sitting patiently with plastic plates in hand

Then men got up and served up food for themselves on plates, followed by women. Then the same process was repeated for deserts.

Ladies first for the photo

A few of the men

After that we joined Nek Su and Ayesha for a smaller jemput makan (eating get-together) with members of Nek Su's family. The arrangement was similar, but this was styled as a BBQ. I'm not sure if there were speeches beforehand. Aside from the Nek Su's relatives, my family and a visiting nurse joined the festivities. We took some photos. The women were enthusiastic, but most of the men had something far more important to do. Discussing the jukung racing.

Day 2 Jukung racing and soccer

End of jukung race

Grandfathers enjoying the race

The long-awaited jukung racing started on the morning of day 2. Jukung are local sailing boats. I will write about this in another blog on jukung.

Resting at half time

Shot goes wide and high

The soccer was the first time I have seen the game played on Home Island. Some local boys had marked out the field using white sand. Two teams played.

Enjoying the spectacle

Evening 3

Evening 3 was a unique experience for Home Islanders and also for my family. A group from Malaysia who are staying on Home Island for a couple of months were performing Nasheed. This is a kind of lyrical acapella chanting accompanied with percussion.

Click here to see it live.

Nasheed group

Trestle tables covered with food prepared by wives and mothers

Waiting with plastic plates

More guests for Nasheed

Day 3

I was busy with administrative work on Day 3, so missed both the second jukung race and the second soccer game.

Evening 4

Evening 4 was marked by another big show at the Cyclone Shelter. A community dinner had been organised by PKPK, a local group. We missed this as we had been lucky enough to be invited to Nek, Pak and Mak Den's for dinner. 

Nek Den, Nek Sofia and Daud

Day 4

More jukung racing this morning. It is the third of five races, culminating on Saturday with the largest class of jukung.

Much talking and preparation before the jukung race

Jukung heading out to the middle of the lagoon, where the winds will be stronger.

  Before the evening, it was the boys' turn to play soccer.

Boys' soccer: blue plays yellow

Money given by the shire is given to the participants in the jukung races and soccer games. The boys were no exception--each were given a small amount of cash.

Evening 5

We went to Nek Sofia's house and tried papaya with sambal, and rost chicken and duck. All very delicious.

Day 5

More jukung racing with an exciting end. The footage was filmed from the jetty as was preparing to board the ferry back to West Island, bringing my Hari Raya experience to an end.

Analysis

I think it was Leach who observed that rituals tend to have periods that are apparently playful and apparently serious. A wedding ceremony is mostly serious where as a reception is mostly playful. Then within the serious period there are playful elements (at the ceremony there is a mock kerfuffle over the wedding rings) and within the playful period there are serious elements (at the reception there are tearful speeches).

From the sadness of the graveyard visit to the joy of Nasheed, this Hari Raya was a profound experience for me. Thank you to Home Islanders for sharing it with me.

Hari Raya / Eid al-Fitr / Idul Fitri: Initial Rituals

With the fasting month complete, Home Island residents take part in ritual meals, chanting, and an emotional visit to the graveyard.

Many homes are lit up for Hari Raya

Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month, ends with a festival. This is known as Eid al-Fitr (Romanized transcription of the Arabic); Idul Fitri (Malay version of the Arabic); or Hari Raya (a Malay term meaning "Day of Celebration"). Actually the celebrations last several days.

Hari Raya is as one person put it, "a very emotional time". Local residents mentioned feeling proud, excited, and sad. I think more specifically, accompanying rituals express, among other things, relief and triumph (that fasting has been completed);  forgiveness (towards others); penitence, remorse, and atonement (for wrongdoings); sadness, sorrow, longing, and acceptance (for those who are absent that have died). More generally Hari Raya expresses, celebration (of life); hope (for the new year);  and many other things.

Mak Sofia and Mak Kiki take some kids for a drive, taking in the sights and sounds around the village

When does Hari Raya begin?

Put simply, Hari Raya occurs at the end of the month of Ramadan. If that's enough for you, you can skip this section, which  is concerned with the technicalities of when Hari Raya occurs. It is technical because the factors determining when Hari Raya begins run a little counter-intuitively, if you're not familiar with the traditions.

In Islam the calendar follows the moon. Every lunar cycle (approximately 28 days), a new month begins. Ramadan lasts from the sighting of the new moon to the arrival of the next new moon. It can be difficult to determine when the new moon is sighted (it might appear that there is a slight crescent to some but not to others). This might differ between countries: as night falls on Cocos the crescent might not have appeared, but by the time night falls on Morocco it might have appeared. It also might different between 'sects' or streams of Islam: a 'modernist' might say "lets just follow science on this", whereas a 'traditionalist' might say "forget science, the important thing is can we see itor not". Thus, this year, Muslims different countries and in different streams of religious adherence started on either of two days.

It was also the case on Home Island, where some thought it began on June 28, others June 29. Nek Sofia explained to me, "The tunggu tahun people go by the calendar and started on the 28th. The rokiyah people go by the moon, when they see it, they start fasting". This is also the case with finishing the fast; this meant that some on Home Island finished their four weeks of fasting on July 26, others on July 27. 

When you can first make out a crescent on the moon, Ramadan begins

Another factor determining when Hari Raya begins is that for Muslims, the day begins at sunset as opposed to sunrise. This is the same for Jewish people ("And there was evening, and there was morning -- the first day"). In other words, first comes the evening and then comes the morning. Nevertheless, in what appeared to be the spirit of accommodation all began to celebrate on the afternoon July 27, in anticipation of the sun setting and Hari Raya beginning.

Ritual Meals before Sunset

Nek Su, sitting on blue stool, pauses during his speech

Nek Arena (midlle) and Pak Sofia (black)

The first set of Hari Raya rituals I observed were ritual meals called kenduri. These occurred prior to sunset while most were still fasting. Several of these occurred in different houses around the village. Nek Su invited me to Nek Sumila's house for one. Nek Su provided the welcoming speech. He explained that the ritual was in honor [I can't think of a better right now] of various members of his family. The imam (Nek Arena in blue), flanked by the vice-imam (Pak Sofia in black), then began chanting. This was accompanied by counterpoints from other participants (see below). As it was still considered fasting time, no one ate. Rather, once the chanting was completed, the male participants gathered food to take home. With this, the kenduri concluded.

Chanting during ritual meal

Nek Sofia recalled that when he was young, people finished the last day of fasting around noon, so Hari Raya celebrations used to start earlier in the day. This might explain the origin of these ritual meals before the conclusion of the fasting month.

After Breaking the Fast

Sunset marked the end of the fasting. I expected a lot of fanfare. Instead, it was the usual sunset prayers. Things then started to gather pace with, I gather, quite a few households holding an open house. I visited two houses. Nek Zamani, husband and wife, were kind enough to invite me to their house, where I enjoyed a delicious dinner.

Meal at Nek Zamani's

We then made our way to the house of Nek Sofia, husband and wife. As usual, they were exceedingly generous and put on a meal for us and other guests. This was my second dinner, but as the food was delicious, I kept going.

Members of Nek Sofia's-, Nek Den's- and my- family.

More chanting begins

By about 9pm more chanting began in the mosque. This went on until late at night, as far as I can tell.

Melawat Tanah Kubur--Visiting the Graveyard

It should be noted that Ramadan is not the last month of the Islamic year, but at this time there is a lot of reflection on the year that has passed and the that will come. Part of this is visiting the graveyard on the first morning of Hari Raya. Two things seemed to occur at the graveyard

A wife asks forgiveness of another wife, while their husbands do the same.

First was asking forgiveness. Men would approach other men; and women other women. According to Nek Sofia, he usually says something like:

Asking forgiveness

"Selamat Hari Raya, maaf zahir dan batin. Makan dan minum minta dihalalkan.  Kata yang tersilap atau tersalah, atau yang tertinggi, bahasa yang kasar yang tidak enak minta diampunkan. Mudah-mudahan dapat dijumpa lagi lain tahun. Semoga tuhan beri kesehetan dan keselamatan. Sampai jumpa lagi di tahun yang akan datang."

Taking a lot of license, this translates as:

"Happy Day of Celebration, sorry from the bottom of my heart. I hope the food and drinks [I have given you throughout the year] are accepted. My words that were wrong or misguided, or that were too [over the top?]; my language that was rude or not nice, I ask that they be forgiven. I hope we will meet again next year [after Ramadan]. I hope that God gives you health and safety. Until we meet again in the year that has begun..."
Such ritual speech is quietly performed while gently shaking hands. Eye contact is very limited. While one speaks, the other nods silently.

Praying at a grave

The other is related to the graves of deceased loved ones. Local residents clean these graves, spread flowers and water, and then perform prayers. Nek Sofia explained:

Praying at a grave

"we ask forgiveness for the dead and wish that they are put in the right place, which is hopefully heaven [not one of the other worlds between hell and heaven, where] if you're not a good person, you'll be stuck . We ask God to forgive them for what they have done. Most people read the Koran, some people just pray. They bring flowers to decorate the graveyards. Water to cool the place. When we were kids we believed they wore the flowers, drank the water, some people brought cigarettes and lollies, but now there's not that belief anymore. Now we believe that when you are dead you are gone. Some families still believe that. At the kenduri [ritual meals] they give Coca-Cola if they [the deceased] liked to drink that." 

Thus praying at the grave used to be directed at the spirit of the dead person, but now they prayers are directed at the Almighty, to intercede on the dead person's behalf. When it is a recently deceases person, the prayers are understandably tearful affairs.

I think a large part, if not all, of the community present on Home Island visited the graveyard that morning, so it was crowded at times.

Data and Interpretation

The writing and photos above provide some data surrounding the rituals of Hari Raya. Like other anthropologists, I use fieldwork to gather such data. The next step lies in analysis.

There are many different ways to analyse this data. Often the analysis takes a form that people from the culture being written about might not recognize. In any case, I'm going copy the way a famous anthropologists called Clifford Geertz might look at it. It's old fashioned anthropology, but I like to think of it as 'classic'...

Rituals express the way the world "really is" and the way people "should" relate to each other.

The Hari Raya rituals refer to two of the more important aspects of Home Island life; communing with dead ancestors and relatives and sharing of food.

Spirits of dead ancestors and relatives feature heavily. The feast for spirits of the dead  preceded the fasting month. In this feast, food was ostensibly provided for the spirits--now at the conclusion of fasting food is again given to them. As soon as fasting was complete, on the first morning of Hari Raya, residents visited the graveyard and pray for these spirits. While at the graveyard they also make ritualised apologies to family and friends. In a sense, they make peace with all residents; living and dead. Part of the apology is an expression of intent: that food and drink which has been shared has been accepted (dihalalkan).This brings us to the second important aspect.

Food and drink are a central theme, because, for the past month, Home Islanders have been ritually denied them--consuming them during daylight hours had been taboo. Yet throughout the fasting month, as indeed for the past year, Home Islanders have been constantly giving presents. The gifts most commonly take the form of food. This can be in the form of simple presents, but also in the context of ritual meals. Now, during Hari Raya rituals food and drink is shared, consumed and thrown away in proportions that are excessive compared to everyday usage. 

Both food sharing and the spirits of the dead may be connected. In rituals, when food is shared, it is also on offer for the spirits. Sharing food is, in the ritual context at least, a way of communing with the spirits. Sharing food is also a product of, and produces, community ties. Community, spirit and food are thus connected.

Visiting West Island--Cocos (Keeling) Islands

West Island, of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, has a population of around 200 people. They  mostly come from mainland Australia. These locals form an interesting and welcoming community, welcoming a constant stream of tradespeople, specialists and tourists. My family and I spent 10 days on West Island, joining the visitors who are the subject of this blog.

Tropika & Cocos Club  

Cocos Club during the day

Some locals and visitors like to have dinner at Tropika restaurant or visit the Cocos Club. I went to these destinations with my iPhone to provide some snapshots of visitors on the nights of July 23 and 24, 2014 . At the Cocos Club, which comprises a bar and a pool table, the mood was very relaxed with people of diverse ages inside and outside of the club; sunburnt tourists like me can enjoy a cool drink in the tropical breeze. Tropika restaurant is run by the Cocos Co-operative. It has a nightly buffet popular with hungry families. Now for some of the people I met...

John

John

John is from near Utrecht. He is employed by Geoscience Australia and remotes into Cocos from his Canberra office. His job involves maintaining and reading very sensitive instruments which measure air pressure. Eight of these machines on different parts of West Island measure atmospheric change, nuclear particles, and things like that. They can pick up nuclear blasts anywhere in the world. These are part of a global network of machines. The data collected goes back to the CTBTO (an international organisation preparing for a complete ban on nuclear tests) in Vienna. After MH370, the missing Malaysian Air flight, he checked the instruments for slight deviations in air pressure that a passing plane can cause, but in this case, nothing turned up. After work, John is taking kite surfing lessons on this visit. This is his second time on Cocos:
"I hope to be back in three months' time...love it, yeah it's awesome; the fact that it's an island y'know and there's nothing to do except the marine life." 

Steven

Steven with his 'doof-doof' shirt. Kelly, pictured
in the background playing pool, was on my laptop and wrote
"Kelly shooting awesome pool in the background,
I believe she is a legend on Island." I'm in no position to disagree.

I met Steven at the Cocos Club, playing pool and hanging out with some local and tourist friends. His 'doof doof' shirt, as he calls it, lights up in response to loud noises; many of them were whoops of joy when he or his playing partner sunk a ball. He was very much the life of the party  His Mum is from Singapore and migrated to Christmas Island, where she began working for an airline operating out of Indonesia. 
Steven was born on Christmas Island and raised there for 18 years. He always has seen his calling in the airline industry, especially as cabin crew. So he began working his way up, literally. From Christmas Island as a travel consultant to his current position as a Virgin cabin supervisor. This position, as I understand it, means he's in charge of the flight stewards:

Helping the concerned family

Christmas will always be home and Cocos is pretty much like being at home...I've been flying up here for 3 and a half years. Crew love coming up here due to the lifestyle. Those [crew] who come up here are more community oriented--we don't need to be within network range.

The next day I met Steven at "Tropika" the local evening restaurant. He was speaking fluent Malay with a Cocos Malay worker Vivian. He downplayed his language abilities, but the next day when one of the elderly Home Island residents was flying to Perth for a serious operation, he was there to help the family by drawing on his Malay.

Kevin and Paul

Kevin and Paul

Kevin and Paul are doctors originating from New Zealand. Kevin has been living in Perth, where he started kitesurfing around 2002-2003. At that time, kitesurfing was a relatively new pastime, being only a few years old. It was quite dangerous then as a lot of the technologies which have subsequently made the activity safer had not been introduced. He experienced kitesurfing on Cocos relatively early. "A guy named Ian from Perth had a windsurfing shop in Perth and delved into kitesurfing and set up a camp on West Island". He "put up a canvas top . We were a group of 18 [and] were new to kiting. We had to share the kites". At that stage of technology there "were only two lines" meaning you could control the direction you traveled but not the power. "Once you were hooked in"to the kite through the harness "you couldn't get out". At the time no-one really knew what they were doing. Sometimes they got dragged several kilometers and had to drag the gear all the way back. It was called the "walk of shame". Paul reunited with Kevin on a visit in Perth  "We went to uni together, studying medicine in Dunedin [New Zealand]. I knew these guys [who I studied with] lived in Perth." They discovered that they shared a passion for kitesurfing. As a result, they are taking this holiday on Cocos together.

Shane

Shane

Shane is on island as a "subby" (subcontractor) doing maintenance of the air conditioners. He works with Hooch. Hooch lives on Christmas Island and does some aircon contracting on Cocos. He started in the marine industry being a decky (deckhand) on a prawn trawler in Western Australia's northwest.  
This is his second time on Island. He's basically here for the week. Playing golf (Scrubbers) is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. "love the place, love the water, love the marine environment; the fishing, spearfishing, four-wheel driving that sort of thing". It's also the community life that he likes. "When you come to these isolated areas, the community has a major role. You meet someone you say hello. You get in the smaller townships there's totally different".

Rosemary and Ben

Rosemary and Ben

Rosemary is returning to Cocos Islands after two decades of being away. Her ex-husband Peter Greaves used to teach here. She is delighted to have brought her son with her. I asked what she like about living here in the early 1990s. She responded that it was the:
"Simple pleasures; you made fun out of nothing. We used to have dinner parties on the runway and the siren went off (for an approaching plane) we would pick up the table and run to the side. There was met [meteorological] bureau and they had a flat roof so we had a dinner party on that". I asked her what made her bring her son, Ben with her: " I just wanted to bring my son back it was really important. Because Ben had seen a list of photos of DI [Direction Island], and him as a smiley happy baby. He was 21/2 when we left and Emma [my daughter] was almost 5. This is twenty years later." Rosemary explained that Ben has been really impressed by the experience: "he's just saying I had no idea of how good it is. On Direction Island today I was a bit frightened because The Rip [a famous snorkeling spot] was really was fast but we saw sharks and reef fish; so you know his mother thing. I'm so lucky my 22-year-old wants to travel with me. I'm in Busselton teaching and he's doing an electrical apprenticeship in Perth without his mother."

Scroungers Golf

'Scroungers' posing on the runway

Drinking and laughing took
precedence over golf shot accuracy

Aside from the Cocos Club, I took part in Scroungers' golf. This is a Wednesday evening institution. Locals and visitors alike hack their way through nine holes of the 'golf course' such as it is. More than twenty of us played, writing our names on our balls. We formed four teams and played 'Ambrose', namely the game in which all team members hit from the best-positioned ball of your team. The game was full of mock competition with players cursing themselves and others. Everyone brought beer and other such beverages in cool bags. The greens are astroturf (artificial grass), and the fairways are rough. Twice you need to drive over the airport runway. But not even the arrival of an RAAF (Australian air force) plane could interrupt the merriment.

John, the Scroungers organizer (pictured holding onto flag), takes to his heels as golf balls start whizzing around the green.

Summary

This blog is not anthropology, just a little insight into the many people who travel to the island for short stays. As stated, they are welcomed by the local community. In the future, I'd like to write more about this local community. This is because, although part of the same atoll, there are many differences between the cultures of West Island and Home Island.

Art is Trash!

Artists working on West Island turn trash into art

Anthropology is the study of social and cultural aspects of human life. Although making tools is an aspect we share with other species (various primate species, for example, use sticks and stones), the variety and complexity of our tools, and our ability to make tool-making tools seems to distinguish us. 

For tool making, gratitude seems due to our predecessor, Homo habilis, “handy man” of 2.6-1.7 million years ago. Archaeology is constantly being revised but currently, Homo habilis is famous for making the first tools.It's possible even earlier hominids made tools; but whoever was responsible someone didn't just use what he or she found, but actually transformed the object so it could be used. We think the earliest example of this is the Oldowan pebble choppers made by homo habilis. Now extremely valuable, these were random rocks till archaeologists 'discovered' them and put them in a museum.

Factory

 Since these ancestors, tools and the things we have created through them, often develop a life of their own, almost literally. For example, we give our boats names such as “The Queen Mary” and mourn them when they sink.Yet the Industrial Revolution allowed us exponentially, the ability to create tools and objects. Factories can makes loads of things, quickly. Mechanical reproduction, a guy name Benjamin observed, meant that original works of arts obtained a different significance. Now in the electronic age, a musical track is produced as a binary sequence which is exactly and infinitely reproducible.

But what gives these objects their value? If they have an allotted time, how do we treat the objects when they reach them.

Watts Towers

Watts Towers

Simon Rodia made me, and many others, reconsider how we use 'things' when we have finished with them. From the 1920s to the 1950s, this Italian migrant living in Los Angeles collected trash and transformed it into beautiful, surreal monuments. In the late 50s the local government decided to destroy his towers as they were called, against much local opposition. According to the story, the towers stood up against the crane attempting to pull them down. And today they still stand, a fantasy of curly designs, pastel colors, and mirrors. Discarded objects now have been transformed into art and heritage, which is the theme of this blog.

Art Adrift

Rubber sandals collected
by Emma 

We tend to associate coral atolls like the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, part of Australia's Indian Ocean Territories, with pristine white sands and and overhanging palms. Yet strewn above the high water mark of most of the ocean beaches, particularly those facing Australia and Southeast Asia are, along with coconut shells, lines of plastic bottles, plastic sandals (called "thongs" in Australian English), nets, ropes, and other human detritus. Shampoo containers from Indonesia, plastic toys and cutlery, toothbrushes.  This debris appears to have floated down the streams, rivers and other waterways of Southeast Asia and Australia, across the north-east Indian Ocean over the coral reefs that surround this out of and onto the calm sandy white peaches of the islands. Some artists in particular have sought to transform this maritime refuse into another category--art. In this blog I focus on 3 artists, Emma Washer, Cara Ratajczak and my aunt, Sandy McKendrick, who have, over the years, created stunning pieces by collecting and juxtaposing items salvaged from the beaches of Cocos.

"Rubbish on the beach is a supermarket for artists," Sandy McKendrick explains. She :

walks kilometers along the coast looking for things that catch my eye whether it is things that are shades of green or bits of furniture. It might also be wood that has paint on it; bamboo that has been carved; big thick mooring ropes wash up in massive bundles.When you unravel these have really vibrant cores.  What I really love is when we find thongs (i.e. flip-flops, plastic sandals) that have a name carved into them.  I don't find a new thong all that satisfying. The ones I love are the old ones. Those thongs have traveled thousands of kilometers. With the next high tide that might get picked up and taken away. The toothbrushes have identity. When you collect them put them together they are like people with different hair styles. They become more beautiful as they disintegrate, like old sculptures. The chance of finding that particular thing at that particular time, that particular piece of rope that happens to be washed up. 

The barge, Biar Selamat, now transformed into a small art gallery.

Emma Washer, an artist who has lived on West Island since she was a child, has realized what might seem like a fantastic dream. She has built an art gallery on West Island, using the barge that used to transport people between Home and West Island. She took an old barge, which was used to ferry residents across the lagoon, and fitted out interior areas with lights and air-conditioning. The barge had been in a forlorn state, I'm told, before it was rescued and transformed. Now her Big Barge art gallery, exhibits works from local and other artists, some of them utilizing similarly salvaged materials.  The third artist, Cara, I have not met yet, but am hoping to one day.

In 2009, the Big Barge gallery was opened with an exhibition called Art Adrift,which exhibited boats made out of beach debris. As Sandy explained:

This was a 6 week project of the 3 artists working with Cocos Malay traditional boat builders and local community to explore maritime history of islands and create vessels of fantasy from flotsam, melding traditional skills and contemporary arts practice.

Then Art Afloat was the next stage, that was floating art works at Direction Island and Christmas Island. On Home Island, the Cocos Malay school children, the elders like Nek Neng (see blog The Bird that Returns Home) and the local doctor, among others, all participated in creating the exhibition. 

Finally, the two projects were combined in the harbor town of Fremantle, Australia, for the 2013 Fremantle Festival. Part of this festival was the work of art below created by Asylum Seekers on Christmas Island and then displayed in Fremantle harbor.

Identities of things

Emma explained to me that: "Lots of the rubber sandals that come adrift are repaired, if the plugs have come out they’ll resew the thongs. Often they’ve been fixed a number of times. In our society we just chuck them out". The difference in the way the rubber sandals are treated came out when the artists were working with asylum seekers on Christmas Islands. Emma reflected:

 When we use rubber sandals for art the first thing we did was cut of the straps. We gave them ropes. Then the first the thing they did was remake them into rubber sandals. They all started fixing [the straps even though we had cut them]. In the picture they’ve all been remade into thongs. They said “oh we can fix these” because it’s so easy to make them wearable.

In other words, the asylum seekers wanted to make the rubber sandals wearable as well as beautiful. 

Emma's art (ABC)

So , a rubber sandal may have had the most extraordinary biography. Rubber synthesized from chemicals is transformed in a Chinese factory, where the worker is compensated with money for creating a pair of sandals. The two sandals are then transported as cargo on a boat taken to the Surabaya port in East Java, Indonesia. Perhaps a bribe to the harbormaster helps facilitate the container the sandals are resting in to move quickly onto the docks. From here, it is distributed through Chinese and Muslim merchants to a  market in a small town. There, a man spends half his daily wage on them and carves his initials. Now when he goes to the mosque for Friday prayers and removes them, he knows that he can find them on the way out, and no-one else can claim them. No-one, that is, until his poor cousin asks for them, and the man is too embarrassed to refuse.  The poor cousin can only afford a hut by the river. Then when the river embankments collapse in the next monsoon, the pair of rubber sandals gets separated forever with one washing downstream and floating in the ocean. For months the human world is oblivious to its existence bobbing under the sun. Possibly fish and birds nibble at it. It gets washed up on Christmas Island, where an artist collects it and other artists, asylum seekers transform it into a sculpture. It is exhibited in Fremantle Harbor. Then it features in this blog! Then, maybe, it is again washed away to Africa perhaps, where it is seen as trash, or used for something else, and then the possibility of its use is endless. On the one hand, it is an inanimate piece of rubber, on the other, humans invest radically different meanings into it, all of which, bring the thing to life. 

A good example of this is the commodity--things we buy and sell. Our common sense tells us that a diamond has more value than a diamante or glass. But our common sense partly misleads us. You might get two tables equally useful for eating on, yet one with the right label (a famous designer) or the right history (a famous movie star sat on it) is more valuable. This value is an exercise of imagination. To borrow Marx's idea, it is as real or fanciful as if the table had started crawling around and talking to us: 

The form of wood, for instance, is altered, by making a table out of it. Yet, for all that, the table continues to be that common, every­day thing, wood. But, so soon as it steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into something transcendent. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas...

The commodity value of a table appears natural or inherent, but it is cultural and extrinsic to the table.

Emma's art materials

The same object has different meanings and values attached to it in different cultural contexts. It is a commodity to be bought and sold. Depending on the theory of value, initially in the factory its value is determined by the price of the materials and the labor or the class relationship between the person who owns the factory and the person who works in the factory. Then as it is transported the cost increases. As a gift, the value has to be determined with reference to the relationship between giver and the receiver--whether it is a patron and client; and whether they reciprocate in a general or specific manner. Once the rubber sandal is separated it has almost no commodity value. Then as art it might acquire an aesthetic value as well as a commodity value. The thing itself, the rubber sandal, steadily deteriorates, but the values attached to it change. All of these values or meanings are deeply and intricately connected to human relations and meaning. 

The way the rubber sandal moved across the ocean, pushed and pulled by currents, swells, and winds, seems a good metaphor for the way it moves into different spheres of meaning.  As Kopytoff (83) writes:

when the commodity is effectively out of the commodity sphere, its status is inevitably ambiguous and open to the push and pull of events and desires, as it shuffled about in the flux of social life.

If correct, this provides an easy first step to answering a whole range of difficult philosophical questions, such as "what is art?", and to a lesser extent, "what is a commodity?", "what is a gift?" and so on. In the first place, it is a meaning  and use that humans have invested in objects.

Inside the art gallery, the lower deck of the barge. Foregrounded is the inside of the barge's hull. In the background prints, painting etc. The bright tropical sun has whited out the windows in this photo.

References

The concepts I have used here come mostly from Igor Kopytoff, "The Cultural Biography of Things". I have also drawn on Marshall Sahlins' Stone Age Economics. The analysis here is primarily enabled by Karl Marx, "The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof".

2016 Update

I wrote the above in 2014. Two years later, the life of these objects has been further enriched as they now feature on Australian stamps 

Stamps themselves have a fascinating extension from use value (to post letters with) and fetish value (as commodities to be bought and sold for profit). The plastic trash that floats up on the Cocos Islands continues to evolve.