AustLit

'Suffolk House is a famous colonial mansion outside Georgetown, Penang, now in a state of disrepair and awaiting restoration. At one time the residence of the first Governor of Penang, its ruins now stand on ground that was formerly known as Suffolk Estate, so named after the English county where Francis Light, the merchant-adventurer who established Penang in 1786, was born. Francis left the Suffolk Estate to his life-partner Martinha Rozells, but very quickly the land passed out of her hands. History has forgotten Martinha and turned Francis into an imperial myth. It has even forgotten that Martinha, besides being a remarkable figure in her own right, was the mother of William Light, Adelaide's first Surveyor-General. As for the great mansion known as Suffolk House, we know that in order to build it an older building had to be removed: a Malay-style pavilion. The House that Flies is a sound diary of Jadi Jadian, a heritage-in-performance project designed to resurrect the memory of Martinha Rozells. It takes its title from the bamboo pavilion, which, in its lightness, symbolises the spirit of Martinha and builds on an earlier work, Light, an ABC Listening Room-Adelaide festival collaboration in which Carter, Chandrabhanu and Adelaide artist Hossein Valamanesh, explored the legacy of William Light. It tells the story of Martinha as her soul, woken from its 200 year sleep, is escorted to the underworld and is at last released on the funeral pyre of her pavilion to go home, once again lodged in history's memory. The performance of Jadi Jadian took the form of a secret ceremony made at the ruins of Suffolk House in 1998, based on Chinese funerary ritual, and incorporating Malay spirit healing incantation as a way of bringing Martinha back to her lost ground, and reinstalling her memory. Now that Suffolk House lies in ruins awaiting restoration, Martinha's return raises a question: will we again erase her presence? Or will we let the wind blow through and remember differently?' (ABC Classic FM website)