BAH: A Fusion of Flood Myths and Cosmic (Re) Beginning
September 25th, 2021
Andria Langi & a crew of Global Storytellers
This creative work synthesizes a variety of performing arts, including shadow puppetry and oral storytelling, into an immersive digital animation dramatizing multicultural flood myths. In the spirit of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods, global stories from eight regions meet on a rising Turtle Island, to inspire, instruct and implore mortals to care for one another and preserve Mother Earth.
In the beginning there were stories. Around the world, many cultures have creation stories that include episodes of annihilation and beginning again, striving to recreate the world anew. Floods figure prominently as forces of renewal in such stories.
Given our present era of catastrophic global warming and rising sea levels, it is both timely and illuminating to reconsider the diversity of flood myths, the precarity of our shared world, and our collective responsibility to imagine better futures. These stories compel us to ask: What forces are destroying our present world? What agencies can remake it? What resources will be preserved, and how?
The mythopoetic work of Bah suggests that language and stories are among the most valuable cultural cargo to survive the ravages of time, and, if preserved, may also buoy our sinking global vessel.
Commonly known also as air bah, Bah is Indonesian for ‘flood’ in its most overwhelming and destructive sense. Bah: A Fusion of Flood Myths and Cosmic (Re)Beginnings, integrates flood stories of multiple global cultures to invent a common epic arc: rising and falling, building and rebuilding, surviving and thriving.
The Bah narrative fuses a flood story of First Nations peoples (the Ojibway creation story of Turtle Island) with eight tales of deluge from other cultures that are prominently represented in Winnipeg by settlers and immigrants. Specifically, the stories derive from the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, a sacred Hindu Vedic myth, the Hebrew book of Genesis (the B’reshit in the Torah), the Arabic Quran, excerpts of Norse mythology, as well as folklore from the Philippines, China and Nigeria. While these stories have important differences, they share many themes and struggles, including confrontations with mortality and immortality; the limits of individual heroism and need for communal cooperation; and the obligations of humans to respect the environment and to humble themselves to the awesome powers of the more than human world.
Bah also represents the stories of migrants with rich cultural inheritance striving for new light and hope, risking their lives on precarious vessels.In gathering a fusion of stories and storytellers, this work itself becomes an ark preserving the emotional and transformative experience of migration journeys.Nine female Winnipeg storytellers with different ethnic and religious backgrounds, each proudly represent the role of the male heroes of the tale. Through this experiment, Bah speaks the voice of the minority and amplifies the aspiration of others.
Integrating traditional Indonesian puppetry, wayang, with contemporary digital animation, environmental sounds, and the emotional voices of multicultural storytellers, Bah leads listeners into the woods of a trans-cultural and trans-historic narrative. In doing so, Bah helps us reimagine how we might avert total ecological disaster, while suggesting how we might all live together in strife-spiced harmony.
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Andria Langi
Andria is an Indonesian designer and storyteller. She believes stories of people, space and place are keys to reaching an inclusive environment. She explores architectural experience through various art forms to create place-making, place-knowing and community engagement. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the Bandung Institute of Technology in Indonesia, and completed her Master of Architecture at the University of Manitoba in 2021 with a thesis entitled, “Tales of the People: Folklore and Heritage Preservation in a Multicultural City”, which included several interviews with multicultural storytellers. Her curiosity and design research has been expressed in several illustration and video projects, including “Project Uncover” - a multidisciplinary art project to promote heritage preservation in Bandung, Indonesia.
Bah is supported in part by the Maxwell Starkman Scholarship in Architecture and the Bill Allen Scholarship in Architecture, Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba.
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Bah is part of the Theatres of ArchImagination contribution to SunShip: The Arc That Makes The Flood Possible, as part of the Arts Letters & Numbers exhibition in the CITYX Venice Italian Virtual Pavilion of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale.
360° | BAH: A Fusion of Flood Myths and Cosmic (Re) Beginning
This creative work synthesizes a variety of performing arts, including shadow puppetry and oral storytelling, into an immersive digital animation dramatizing multicultural flood myths. In the spirit of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods, global stories from eight regions meet on a rising Turtle Island, to inspire, instruct and implore mortals to care for one another and preserve Mother Earth.
BAH crew:
Director: Andria Langi
Producers: Andria Langi & Maulana Aziz
Scriptwriters: Andria Langi, Lisa Landrum
Production Supervisors: Banu & Rheza Arden Wiguna
Art Director - Ephraim Tan
Illustrator - Raissa Azalia
Layout Artist - Ephraim Tan, Raissa Azalia & Restu Dicky
Animation Director - Gentha Yoma
Animator - Mika Reksowardojo
Sound Designer & Composer: Bintang Olii
Global Storytellers:
Mackenzie Skoczylas - voice of Nanabozho
Suzan Palani - Voice of Utnapishtim
Maia Mozes - Voice of Noah
Sarah Alabdulridha - Voice of Nuh
Jingwen (Dorothy) He - Voice of Nuh
Cyrelle Layawan-Mandac - Voice of Sabyu
Sukhjot Parmar - Voice of Manu
Bola Oriyomi - Voice of Obatala
Gunnvör Ásmundsson - Voice of Berglemir,