Bahasa Jompet Kuswidananto
Jompet Kuswidananto became an artist during a key period of political transition in Indonesia—the final years of Suharto’s authoritarian rule in the late 1990s and throughout the consolidation and strengthening of the democratic movement in Indonesia. His work often references the anomalies and mysteries of tradition, the problematic legacies of colonialism, and the tension between the celebratory mania and confused cacophony at the sudden freedom, weight of choice and responsibility in post-1998 Indonesia. Kuswidananto’s profile as a musician and collaborator in the production of contemporary theatre works with Teater Garasi in Yogyakarta places the artist and his practice in a unique position in Indonesian contemporary art.
Using a distinctive blend of sound and noise, light, materiality, technical manipulation and theatre-style stage design, Memanggungkan kebersamaan (Staging collectivitism) 2013 is one of the best examples of how the artist critically represents historical and political issues in Indonesia. In this work, faceless, bodiless figures—constructed from colourful veils and scattered shoes—are installed in the back of an old truck, accompanied by the slow clapping of mechanical hands.
A symbol of festivity, trucks with dozens of people crammed upright in the tray are a familiar sight in Indonesia: football supporters on their way to the stadium to watch their team play, families attending a religious sermon or wedding ceremony, groups of people heading to a political rally. Trucks are crucial to mass mobility but also enable huge numbers of people to present themselves physically en masse to enforce and enact democracy in Indonesia.
Sadly, the truck is also a haunting reminder of Indonesia’s dark history. As Sukarno’s administration began to fall and the ban on the Indonesian Communist Party was declared in October 1965, millions of people accused of being members of the communist party were captured by the army and anti-communist vigilante troops and transported by army trucks. Many of them were brutally killed. In those days it was common to witness passing trucks transporting hundreds of corpses to be thrown in rivers, lakes or ravines, especially in rural areas of Java, Bali and Sumatra.
Kuswidananto’s work elegantly tussles with the tension between Indonesia’s traumatic past and the chaotic festivity of democracy under construction using the truck as a site that mourns the loss or the reduction of the individual. What’s one corpse among millions? What’s the minority among a heaving majority?
Antariksa
