Pleasure to meet with Putu and Jonas today.
Putu was teaching gamelan already at 12 years old around ubud and starting playing at 6 years old. A prodigy and pioneer in the balinese contemporary scene, now focused on the avante guard and experimental. Jonas learned guitar under Ravi Shankar and has spent his foundational musical years in pakistan, now residing in denmark. They’ve been collaborators since 2013 and shared some of their music with me today. Thank u
He had the full furnace and hydralic forging press in his home.
experimenting with indigo dye at tian taru
Untreated this flute lasted only 5 days and carried one song.
the flute is a weapon.
a tool in the armoury of the gentle warrior.
it slashes the air like a sonic machete.
piercing the heart.
a political tool re-activating the primal pysche as the first instrument to hold melody
a weapon in the material and spiritual realm, clearing and communicating with the spirits.
clearing them, gathering or calling to them
a ghost of armour or memory of something once needed
What does it mean to wear armour more fragile than our own body. It externally marks our inner vulnerability and calls to it. Framing our body as a site of invitation not protection. What is it to be a gentle warrior?
Power is projected via the crown, the mask, the helmet, the veil. Modifying ourselves into a hybrid form of part human part artifact.
Rasool Khan my great grandfather migrated to Kashmir from Afghanistan region. He was a Pashtun, their are around 60 tribes within the Pashtun, Our subtribe I’m not sure but I suspect from the Yusufzai tribe.
The Pashtun trace their lineage back to Sarbani, Gharghashti, Bettani, and Karlani tribal groups.
Historical theories link them to, Ancient Afghan tribes, Iranian Scythians or Sakas and The Lost Tribes of Israel.
Pathan (Pashtun) identity is defined by Pashtunwali, a tribal code emphasizing:
- Melmastia (Hospitality) – Treating guests with great respect.
- Nanawatai (Asylum/Refuge) – Offering protection to those who seek it.
- Badal (Revenge/Justice) – The principle of honor-based retaliation.
- Tura (Bravery) – Valuing courage in battle.
- Sabat (Loyalty) – Fierce loyalty to one's tribe and allies.
They are known as fierce warriors, and for having frequently resisted major empires, like alexander the great, the mughals and the british.
For me personally I still encounter this energy within my family and within myself even before understanding my own history. There is a constant war and violence within close family history and within the self.
I’ve been lucky to break this chain and explore new energy forms more and more but I’m wanting to revisit this.
think about movement, expansion and contraction from breathe, developmental movement and auditory sense.
After being in meditation for 3 days, I realised I want to carry my family with me, even if they are no longer here. I’m very happy to have my brother and our relationship, and that he’s having about to start a family. My dad only passed recently and he is close by me, but my mum I lost so long ago now. I really am beginning to forget her energy. I want to carry a photograph of her with me.
Niskala is a fundamental concept in Balinese cosmology, meaning “the unseen” or “the immaterial”—everything that exists beyond what is physically perceivable.
It is the counterpart to Sekala, which refers to the visible, material world.
Together, they form the Sekala-Niskala philosophy, a dualistic understanding of reality where both the seen and unseen must be in balance.
So much over these months I’ve encountered the niskala forces that shape everyday life.
I’m greatful for the encounters with it
One of those was this show, meeting Ayu and this performance piece.
We made our own offering from a true place that influenced these niskala forces.
Performance by Ayu Anantha Putri,
Ben Khan and Arran Gregory.
Each of us has come out of the void.
The first act of creation is to grasp form with our breath.
The first senses begin in the womb until we sever our cords, becoming independent, laying footsteps onto the earth.
As we move on the earth, with our mother, we sense a creator. Sculpting our path of inevitability.
The wind is our father, and the earth is our mother. Like our parents, these elements have been nurturing us since the beginning of time, asking nothing in return.
As our consciousness ripples once again in union with the void, we rejoin, returning to the mother.
Immersive 2 way film screenings of arran gregory’s earth body film series.
Jan, 2025
Ripstop Nylon
Dimensions 8 x 8 x 3 Metres
After a few months of travelling in indonesia and borneo and shaping my practice alongside my brother AG, we were granted the opportunity to exhibit together at Titik Dua gallery in Ubud.
We decided to inhabit the gallery for a week so we could experiment and leave space for an improvisational weekend of programming to occur. We knew we wanted to work with performance and meeting Ayu was the key that linked our worlds, mine of breathe and arrans of earth.
I wanted to design and make a new bubble space which took 4 days of projecting pattern, cutting and sewing, to inflation.
Last year I started playing the flute.
I thought I had come to it on a separate instinct, I was doing breathwork therapy to get through losing my dad, and the grieving process following after. I thought if I’m going to start a breathing practice, I should l create melody and tune myself to frequencies as a continuation of that.
Only after he passed, on the burial day in Kashmir, I learned from his old school friend that he was a really talented player when he was younger. He never let onto it, but when his friend said this, it triggered a memory of him jokingly picking up a random object and pretending to play it like a flute.
I question whether he allowed himself the sensitivity and vulnerability required to engage with this instrument into his adult years. It’s something I’m struggling with even being new and excited about it.
Internally I feel like I’d known this about him all along.
Through playing now, I feel I can sometimes speak to him. It is this mystic bridge for me.
Walking in the jungle I found some broken off sunwashed bamboo. Decided it had to become my first attempt at a bansuri flute, i consider this the first flute I’ve made.
I brought no tools for flute making, i had a rusted old drill bit and small piece of sandpaper and pencil.
It makes me think about early humans that crafted the first instruments and the determination towards music, how necessary of a form it is for us, how driven towards sound we must be and its vital place in our lives.
I feel more and more connected to this deeper pool of memory as I follow this feeling.
A 60,000-year-old Neanderthal flute.
Discovered in Divje babe cave near Cerkno and has been declared by experts to have been made by Neanderthals.
It is made from the left thighbone of a young cave bear and has four pierced holes.
Discovered in Divje babe cave near Cerkno and has been declared by experts to have been made by Neanderthals.
It is made from the left thighbone of a young cave bear and has four pierced holes.
A Tremor In The Forest
Are you able to feel, a tremor in the forest? Do the butterflies know when the others bat their wings? When the humans come, do the animals feel their roaring machines, like a sonic machete through their body. The sound of inevitability severing them from each other. If you stop and listen, can you feel? The tremors of the forest
“Tremor in the forest”
Goatskin, Bamboo, Vine
Shifting how you hear, see, and feel the world around you. Muting sound, frame vision, create disorientation —
a living sculpture that re-tunes perception.
Goatskin, Bamboo, Vine
Shifting how you hear, see, and feel the world around you. Muting sound, frame vision, create disorientation —
a living sculpture that re-tunes perception.
its the body as a site. The central and most important architecture and extending this into space.
The head is an important ritual site, it marks the shift from ordinary to extrasensory
We made 2 - first he made and I watched and documented then he guided as I made one pictured above.
Tasek is the last of his generation to know how to make the Latong (Also known as Pratuokng) in his bidayuh village, Nyengol in Sarawak, Borneo.
The Latong is a 6 stringed bamboo zither special to this region of Sarawak. Made entirely from one node of bamboo around 20cm in diameter.
Its first carving is a percussive drum where a 7cm wide strip of the bamboo is prized up to create the main resonant body. Then carefully 6 strings around 1cm thickness are etched and prized up suspended by bridges and struck with a bamboo mallet.
It’s a resourceful and sensitive process keeping the entire node of bamboo in tact and only small elements carved away. Nothing is added, graphed or joined to create this instrument.
Kapur, Goatskin, Bamboo
Dec, 2024
Dec, 2024
In Indonesia the crossing of two rivers “campuhan” or “tirta” is considered a highly charged energetic and sacred place creating a channel between realms.
One night I dreamt of a female river spirit visiting my room beckoning me to the river at dark. She wasnt a friendly spirit. She wanted something from me - a transaction, I kept silent and stared her down until she left.
“Shedding the red”
Ben Khan, Arran Gregory
Ben Khan, Arran Gregory
The river here feels sacred and its energy calms me, the jungle can overwhelm at points.
The atmoshpheric changes are so frequent and draw my emotions in, rapid shifts in density, pressure, sound, light and weather.
Each day we see many butterflies, every one of them different.
The tonal shifts of the insects birds and small animals shift through the hours, days and week. Nothing remains the same.
I can feel from the Jungle in one day the beauty, the ugliness, the violence, the decay, the longing, the emptiness and the smothering power.
Its humbling to feel and know that this place claims everything in time.
Nature’s resilience is infinite and unmatched compared to just one species within the great chain.
a root thats searches deep enough into the earth is able to resonate the body
(un-edited sound)
Captured with ambient mic and contact mic.
Use headphones to hear the depth of tone
Foraging sound
The bamboo grows in nodes that almost perfectly correspond to its own scale.
Just separating out the bamboo stem at each knucle. Every nodes finds its own harmony with the other
The voices of nature offer unadulterated music. Only small interventions are needed in sculpting and shaping of harmonics already in existence.
Bark Paper Head Piece
Dimensions: 35 x 20 cm
Bark Paper, Vine, Bamboo
Payangan, Bali
Nov, 2024
constructing from different layers of bamboo
creating different flexibilities, tensions and structure.
carving away thin strips to create a bamboo thread to tie the framework and knot the bark paper into place.
Auric Fields in Payagan
you cannot decipher or speak of a mystery that you begin to touch and know with all the senses.
Mirrors in Mirrors
Me and AG woke up at sebas place and recognised we both had something to shake off, we went to the end of the limosan that frames the valley as the morning mist rolled in and unlocked ourselves. Looking back i think it was an offering to seek permission to be in the land.
So many blockages and pains I moved through in the past 2 years. This was another shifting moment that unlocked something, I began shaking and dropped to one knee at the end from the emotion in my body. Its so important to reach the body out into space, push and pull, bend and crash. There’s so much communication that can occurs in these moments, it becomes a visceraly tangibile experience where you cannot decipher or speak of a mystery that you begin to touch and know with all the senses.
30 Oct - Morning Entry
Woke up not knowing the place. Damp pillow but not from sweat, did it rain last night? no power for charger. Sit up and reach for the flute... I’m becoming sick of this same scale, part of me is beginning to resent this flute.
No, its my same movements I make on this scale, its my own stagnation I’m resenting. I need to release control of the patterns and feel free on it. I want my playing to feel like a conversation, it could keep me company in my loneliness or even become a stimulating love.