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From starting to cut the wood opens with mask carver Ki Pono Wiguno, stepping on stage with a piece of wood. While singing a Javanese song, he marks the space through a pathway based on a Javanese spatial concept. This pattern of diagonal lines rotating from and to the center, establishes the choreographic framework of the performance.

The stage fades into darkness with a soundscape of an Indonesian village with chickens, birds, people's activities and into the studio of a mask carver, who starts to carve a mask: from using the saw, ax, chisels, knife, sandpaper until a fine brush. The sounds are a reflection of his work pace, the very specific steps of his process of mask making and his relationship towards his work materials and tools. Each of these sounds has their own pacing and pattern, which opens up images, feelings and associations.

One performer is translating these sounds into movement. He moves with the sound, against the sound, along the sound. His explorations are wandering between interpretation and transformation. Between a dancer and his response to these sounds and someone, who is becoming the wood itself, which transforms into a mask – an object of spiritual content.

Combined with these interactions are projected text fragments, a collage of an observer’s thoughts while witnessing the mask carver making a mask:

I am thinking of the shift, this moment in history when machines started to replace body movements. When a new rhythm was created and human touch started to disappear.

The observations shift into the philosophy of work, in which quotes of various philosophers are been recalled. The process of mask making is becoming a metaphor of the relationship of human mankind to work, the relationship of human mankind to its own existence.