Hello :)

How do one share the unknown?

When I started thinking about the unknown, I am reminded that a lot of the things I have done (or am doing) began with wanting to know—about someone, one time, one event, etc. A lot of things my friends and I started began with curiosity and not knowing what will become, what would come out of each curiosity. Is not knowing is equal to unknown? I am not sure.

Currently, me and my best friend, my colleague, Ratna, is unraveling the working process of one of Indonesia’s eminent sculptor, the late Edhi Sunarso. He is mostly known for his gigantic monuments that basically is the face of Indonesia.

Most of them ordered personally by our first president, a very confident guy with a good taste of fashion: Sukarno.

He ordered things to be made, made sure its made in the way he wanted it to be (through sketches and even studio visits, like in this picture he is visiting Edhi Sunarso and posing the way he wants the Welcome Monument to be), and, finally, officiated it.

We look into Edhi Sunarso’s sketches, order letters, draft books, maquettes, research trips, documentation, etc.

Rather than monuments, we are interested in the many “little” things that he made. The historical dioramas.

Other than the fact that they are beautiful objects, forms; also because they remain a big question mark to our so-called national history.

Arriving in Phnom Penh, regardless to his English, my taxi driver was telling me his side of the story regarding Khmer Rouge and even point me where I should go if I want to look further in to it. If you arrive to any part of Indonesia, and ask them about the 1965 communist killings, most likely their faces would turn blue.

However we feel like we do not come from that period, not even our parents want to talk about those times, we are not interested in that part of the past, none of us was taught in school whatever really happened, etc, we are still attached to the fact that our country had an unresolved genocide in the past.

Though so, in the recent 20 years, after the so-called Reformasi, many people with different interests, reasons, and politics have been trying to unravel the story of the 1965 mass killings in Indonesia. We are aware of the different streams of thoughts, thinking, reading, analysis. Yet we ended up not believing in any of them. It gets us to a point where we believe that we have to generate our own truth on what seems to be—and will always be—attached to us, our past, our identity.

We would like these dioramas, the stories behind the making of it, the Edhi Sunarso personality, to be the gate towards this search. We would like to make our own attachments—even though we are very conscious that at the beginning it started with what people attach to us just for being an Indonesian.

However small those figures I just showed you, it keeps reminding us how the New Order version of history, version of truth, is still out there and people are still imposed to it. Most likely still believing in it. It makes us wonder, how little time we have to contribute into real, actual changes in our own realities…

How do we beat the guy who were in power for literally 32 years and managed to create a new version of the archipelago’s history within the first decade of his power and freezed it in various different forms from people’s daily lifestyles, historical writings, education curriculum, films, songs, censorship, law, and even in forms of dioramas.

Not even a funding from CIA would get us to close down more the 7 museums that contains those dioramas made by Edhi Sunarso, let alone others…

September 30

We find it completely uninteresting to see the world in a binary sense. One thing opposed to another. 1 or 0. Right or left. Our fashionable first president had addresed similar concern in September 30, 1960.

September 30

Five years later, this date become a very dark date in our history. September 30, 1965, is when the mass killings officially began starting with the death of 7 military generals.

Sukarno said—and I quote:

Why do I believe so much that our fight will succeed, with or without the UN? I am pretty sure for two reasons. First, because I know my people; I am all for the never-ending thirst for national independence and I’ve seen their struggle. Second, I am pretty

sure of that because of the history.

All of us, wherever we are in the world, live in the era where nations are being built and imperiums are falling down. This is the

time where people make their nations and nationalism starts being cooked up. To close your eyes on this fact is an insult to

history, it is not allowing history to happen, and it is refusing realities. I will say this one more time, we live in the era where

nations are being built! A new world is in the making!

He was saying this in an opening speech for the UN Conference. He was trying to convince the quorum to accept China as part of UN. Despite all the ideological difference (communism), China is one of the strongest country in the world and Sukarno—on behalf of Indonesia—think that the whole world need to acknowledge it.

Also to acknowledge the Asian and African countries need to be accomodated as part of the egalitarian world. And the fact that independence, nation-making, is an unavoidable future and the colonizing countries have got to learn to treat all human beings as equally independent free thinkers that can manage their own lives and negotiate parts where different kind of human being meet.

Differences are unavoidable and the world’s idea of peace need to grow up.

Need to change.

It’s not about what one think is right or wrong;

it’s about negotiating the dynamics of life.

As you may have heard, the 1955 Bandung Conference managed to create that myth—that the colored people in the world have their own league and do not wish to be part of the existing power structure and system; that they wish to inhale peace to the world. Jawaharlal Nehru, Josip Tito Broz, and Norodom Sihanouk are some them. They are Sukarno’s comrades.

Sometime after that UN speech Sukarno did, he decided that the olympics are not fair and thinks that countries alike his (not considered as first world, not considered as developed, etc) should have their own league decided to make his own. He might sound crazy to us now, but he was not the only one with the thougt. Many actually agrees with him.

Including, guess who, …

Ratna and I are not quite sure how we will formulate or distribute this research. But this is our beginning in searching what does it mean to be living in Indonesia and what does it mean to be an Indonesian…

The ‘easiest’ way to articulate is to make a book, a publication of sort. But easy is never appealing…

Right now, there are already two artistic projects running within the course of our research. One is with Tom Nicholson (parts of it were shown in Jakarta Biennale 2015) and another one with Ary Sendy ‘Jimged’…

We will try to involve more and more artists along this research in the hope that on 1000th day commemoration of Pak Edhi’s death we can do an exhibition in his museum…

Will that answer our question as to why do are we living in Indonesian and what does it mean for us to be an Indonesian? I surely don’t know…

Most likely not…