RM 30
About:
The idea of making a seasonal calendar with the Semai of Ulu Jelai community came about after witnessing their hill paddy cultivation cycle, the fruit seasons, and various fishing techniques. How do all their activities fit within the year and how can these activities illustrate their relations to land and all beings within their landscape?
One of the learnings is that when we think of seasons, we often think of Peninsular Malaysia of only having the alternating dry and wet periods of the shifting monsoon.
This seasonal calendar, however, shows otherwise. It is marked by a multiplicity of seasons beyond just wet and dry. Seasons to the Semai of Ulu Jelai are defined by a cyclical burst of lives and activities that follow, or vice versa, according to the rhythms of nature as illustrated in the calendar.
Seasons are embodied experiences, so that their beings are always embedded within the environment and their doings are in living with and caring for, rather than surviving and conquest of, the lives that abound the land and the land itself.
