Synopses & Reviews
Dutch film artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh believes, as Faulkner wrote, The past is never dead. It's not even past. Her films, which mix scripted scenes with improvisational participation, investigate the Dutch colonial past in Indonesia. This publication features two of her recent films, No False Echoes (2008) and Instruction (2009), which present as photonovels traumatic episodes that still reverberate in the Netherlands. The book also includes a reprint of a 1913 essay of national freedom by Soewardi Soeryaningrat, Indonesian nationalist, and another text, from 1935, concerning national education in Indonesia. Oldenborgh's films are rich in the layering of cultural history and issues of memory and race.
Synopsis
The publication unfolds and draws an open-ended connection between individual and collective struggles and (emotional) conflicts intertwined with the colonial and decolonizing histories of Indonesia and the Netherlands by taking two film works by artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh, No False Echoes (2008) and Instruction (2009), as points of departure. Both films take up rarely spoken fragments of the Dutch colonial past, particularly related to Indonesia, that are dormant but still affective in contemporary Dutch society. With the participation of different historical and contemporary stakeholders set against specific built environments, these two films are presented in the form of photo-novels. The film No False Echoes introduces one of the major historical sources cited in full in the publication, that is, a 1913 essay on national freedom by Soewardi Soeryaningrat, an Indonesian nationalist--or "revolutionary"--whose radical position manifested in the essay is widely known in Indonesia. The reprint of this essay is accompanied by two contemporary responses by Lizzy van Leeuwen and Nuraini Juliastuti, which in turn open another text written in 1935 by Soeryaningrat under a different name, Ki Hajar Dewantara, concerning national education in Indonesia. The latter text indicates the shift in political strategies, which, instead of fearless resistance, moves forward toward gradual building of counter-institutions of "upbringing" of new independent subjects.
Electric Palm Tree Textbook 01
Copublished with Casco
Contributors
Binna Choi, Lizzy van Leeuwen, Nuraini Juliastuti, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Soewardi Soeryaningrat/Ki Hajar Dewantara