December (2021)

• "December" is a three-part narrative 3-channel video installation with 6-channel sound, surrounding my grandfather’s forced disappearance on 18 December 1965, in Bali, Indonesia. The work is part of the Swedish Research Council-funded artistic research project "Protocols of Killings: 1965, distance, and the ethics of future warfare", and develops on the idea of continuity of history, territory, and technology. it brings together political and personal materials by visually contextualising my grandfather's forced disappearance within the 30,000-page of declassified archives of the Jakarta US Embassy between 1964 and 1968. These archives, released by the National Security Archives, document inter-embassy communication surrounding the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-66 – aided and abetted by the world's leading democracies – and the establishment of the Suharto government in Indonesia. "December" incorporates archival documents dated December, September, and May – three different months during the killings that are personally significant to me. These are, respectively, the month my grandfather was forcefully disappeared, the month when the pretext of the killings took place, and the month it became possible for my father’s family to gather again after being separated for safety reasons. I work these out with animated drawings, sounds, and fragments from my childhood family stories, while contemplating spatial and temporal distance. The reference on the continuity of audiovisual technologies – from slide projection to stop-motion animated frames that made up a film, and to the capability of video to mimic these – is a reminder of the continuity of history. This in turn refers to the project's argument that drone warfare as a futuristic war is not unprecedented.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Konst (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts (hsv//eng)

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