'Mystical Machine Made in Indonesia' stuns audiences
'Mystical Machine Made in Indonesia' stuns audiences
By Prasetyohadi
JAKARTA (JP): This may be an unnecessary inquiry but a valid
one nonetheless: Do you find it disturbing when you realize that
technology, a human achievement that is supposed to make life
easier, ends up making your life more difficult?
Such questions were raised in the recent performance of
multimedia artists entitled The Mystical Machine Made In
Indonesia from Yogyakarta at the Teater Utan Kayu over the
weekend.
The exhibition was part of their touring show which is hitting
several cities in Java, including Yogyakarta and Bandung.
This multi-media artwork, a collaborative effort of more than
a dozen of artists, could be categorized as a blend of
performance and fine art.
The avant-garde artists utilized their own bodies as important
elements in the creative process, but their performance seemed to
offer more questions than answers.
The central theme of the performance was the dehumanizing
aspects of technology.
The stage was itself an industrial installation of metal
pipes and wires.
Technology was initially a science of "art" in the archaic
sense of "craft".
It was a human craft that was supposed to improve the lives of
people, freeing them from menial tasks and, inevitably, from
slave-like existences.
In developing countries like Indonesia only the rich and
powerful are able to benefit from technology. The majority of the
poor still live in misery.
Once you adopt technology and industry to improve the economy,
you cannot detach yourself from the disastrous effects of
repressive globalization, including its political and economic
impact.
In the performance, Sigit K. Pius remarkably created a scene
where a man is bound to a primordial monstrous-looking
contraption and writhing hellishly in its clutches, illustrating
how much we are controlled and dominated by technology.
Technology actually derives partly from the structures of he
human body.
The 30-minute multi-media performance was followed by a series
of visual actions presented by artists and through computerized
video clips and sound effects.
There were two kinds of human scenes: two boxers fighting, and
a woman shackled in an iron cage indifferently protesting her
destiny.
The boxers danced together when dangdut songs were played. The
woman then burned paper sculptures of female and male figures,
houses, cars, trees and heart-shaped forms. Surprisingly, one of
the boxers canvassed his enemy on the stage.
The video clips, on the other hand, featured scenes of dangdut
singers chatting with each other, an image of a woman's body tied
up with a rope and local TV clips of news reports and riot
scenes.
All scenes had a satirical edge.
In the end, however, the performance was elaborate and too
elusive, and the focus too vague.
Amrizal Sulaiman, the director, actually eliminated some of
the more intriguing scenes.
When they performed in Yogyakarta and Bandung, they recited
the National Guidelines (GBHN) articles while a male artist
performed a masturbation scene with a female doll.