Balinese Offerings (Banten): Visual Exploration of Repetition and Embodied Experience

Abstract

The daily life of Balinese Hindu communities is closely connected to offering practices carried out as part of religious life. One important part of these practices is Banten, whose knowledge and skills are passed down through generations. For Balinese women, making Banten involves repetitive hand movements, material engagement, and learned processes. This repetition is not only related to producing Banten as a ritual necessity, but also creates an experience through the body, material, rhythm, and concentration. This research explores the making of Banten from an art perspective, focusing on repetition as a visual and embodied experience. It examines the relationship between repetitive movement, material engagement, working rhythm, focused attention, and bodily awareness. Repetition and rhythm may create a meditative experience, not as an objective determined from the beginning, but as something that emerges through bodily involvement in the process. Using practice-based research, the study involves direct practice, process documentation, and reflection on embodied experience.