IVAN SAGITA: Death-Containing Life
JUNE 18 - JULY 29, 2005
CP ARTSPACE, JAKARTA

Testimony of The Trees, Dadang Christanto's Eulogy and Path of Healing
By Farah Wardani

"Gunung, when you grow up, what do you want to be?"
"I want to be a palaentologist, Dad".
"Oh good. Perhaps later you can join me searching for your grandpa's remains".

Dadang: Man in the Cycle of Memory and Historical Wound
I was still in the early years of student life when seeing the fiber glass installation '1001 Earth People' by Dadang Christanto at Marina Beach, Ancol, 1996. At that time, the so-called contemporary art in Indonesia had not been as developed as today, at least as was seen from the surface, concealing the conflicting tensions beneath it, between endless clashes of esthetic ideologies, the search for form and content, and the spirit of resistance and the desire to express against the social, political and cultural repression by the New Order regime. 'Resistance' becomes a keyword to deal with a 'common enemy', i.e. political power, which in a whole is somewhat regarded as a kind of zeitgeist of the art practice in that generation, which can be said as a continuity of the spirit of The Indonesian New Art Movement in mid 1970s and emerged actively during the end of 1980s until mid 1990s.

'1001 Earth People' is one of the most iconi works that signify this generation, perhaps due to its relatively colossal scale for an art work in that era, and most likely also since until now there has been rarely an art work as such coming up to be that monumental. Monumental in the sense that it managed to disturb and stay in the memory of its audiences, with the human figures, men and women, naked, standing up out of the sea, like the bodies of the nameless victims drowned, who then resurrected to remind everyone of the nation's history that has always been diseased with wounds that never heal, concealed to rot, until the pain is gone but left to be a growing cancer in the inside.

Almost a decade later, there have been many changes happened. Political situations, social structures and modernisation that progresses along with the shifting generation. Contemporary art is now busy with its new issues, slowly leaving the premise of the '90s that is cemented as a collection of texts in the art books of discourses. Is this the change wanted by the spirit of resistance that echoed in the past decade? Is it with this change, with the elimination of the 'common enemy', then art no longer functions politically, or it has always been merely tagging along with the path of time that moves like a cycle, not as an agent of change that was ideologized decades ago? Such questions with all the paradox contained within them never seem to receive answers, just as history that never gives explanations. Like the word 'reformation', which was so holied a while ago by political and student activist, yet abandoned later on to slowly go stale, its meaning fades out underneath all the noises.

When I met the artist, Dadang Christanto, at the end of last September in Jakarta, as was described in our conversation, it is not the matter of the lost common enemy and resistance that can be settled just like that by the concrete change of political situation, but the worry of the lost of restlessness as a starting point of artistic quest. For him, the restlessness still remains, though often ignored in the everyday life of the Indonesian nation that moves like a cycle of memory, between trauma and amnesia. Between painful memories and forgetting as a defense mechanism, a medium of denial.

Dadang, as known by everyone who follows his artistic journey, indeed has a very strong reason that can be said as the basis of all his creative process and content that he offered in his works. As a son of the 1965 tragedy victim, who in the age of 8 saw with his own eyes his father, Tak Ek Tjiu, was taken away with a military truck and never returned ever since, becoming a point of entry of an endless search, and the restlessness that inspires his creation of art.

"My worry is that restlessness as a price to be paid by man. Since we never learn from history, never try to self-criticize, that reaches to the cultural level, to the issue of justice. It is never settled. Many people said, it is because our people forgive and forget. From the side of the victims, or survivors, it is not easy, it is what has never been acknowledged. Perhaps it is easy for the executors to say that way. And there is a theory saying that the executors and the survivors are at the same position, for me it's nonsense. Reconciliation never happens. Survivors have to be able to face and settle it personally, and then socially. Afterwards it is transformation. A continuous process..."

Thus, until now, Dadang holds on to his restlessness, even though traces of anxiety that used to be so intense in his past works are getting to more blurred and subtle. Especially since he moved to Australia, which signifies the shift of his thematic exploration to more personal areas, particularly based on his experiences in dealing with the feeling of displacement that intrigues him as a foreigner in a foreign land, and the sense of distance with his homeland, the place that used to be his 'battlefield', as an ethic minority citizen who possesses a persona trauma a memory of a tragedy among collective amnesia.

Nevertheless, the theme of humanity and violence remains to be his main premise of his personal contemplations in the works, something that can always be reinterpreted further as a universal issue. His works become the artefacts of that restlessness, a set of reflections that contain anger upon the violence towards humanity and also a series of questions on the essence of humanity itself, paralleled with a search of existential identity as a human being. As proven by the credo of modernism that only leaves leftovers of utopian dreams and sketches of wounds of the last century, art might not be capable to provide a solution of all the problems, yet it can still be a part of the whole struggle to question and requestion the meaning of humanity within the whirlwind of violence and power.

A Eulogy for a Nonexistent Funeral
Dadang presents his most recent set of works in this exhibition, three years after his last solo exhibition in Indonesia, 'Unspeakable Horror' (2002), a series that comprises a set of objects and two dimensional mixed media with materials like linen, paper, stone, wax and organic materials like coconut shell and coffee, which are formed into figures of trees as the idiom of his statements and poetics.

The idiom of trees are based on Dadang's thought of the forests where many of cases of genocide in this country took place, like the forests in Java and Bali that became the site of the execution of the 165 tragedy victims, where the remains of his father might possibly lay buried somewhere in those forests. This project becomes a kind of a pilgrimage, an intention to perform a funeral ritual for his father whose burial had never been found and noted. The trees presented here are a metaphor of the dumb witness of that tragedy, witnesses that carry the grief of the past and depressed for never been able to speak out the truth.

In Dadang's imagination, the trees are crying. Weeping for the human tragedy they witnessed, and for their own fate of having to be burdened by their testimonies that have never been testified. Each work in this tree series stands alone as an autonomous work, but all in a whole forms one big installation piece, a reconstruction of a memory site that attempts to intrigue its audiences not only in the sense of a visual experience, but also atmospheric. A space of pilgrimage to trace back the wounds concealed by time that mark their tracks on the age lines of the trees, and the brownish stains on the leaves that depict dry blood, as described in the poetics of form presented by Dadang in some works. The poetics of space and form in this installation becomes a kind of a eulogy, created for the funeral ceremony of his father that never happens in reality.

The thought of the problems of art practice in exploring dark themes like violence and suffering, and the dillemma of the limits between esthetics and exploitations are something that has always been his points of consideration all this time in making his works, and becoming the base of his effort in form and material exploration to create works that can negotiate with such limits. For him, a good work can not only trigger esthetical impulses in terms of retinal sense, i.e. pleasing the eyes, but also critical impulse and provoking thoughts. It is not also to reproduce violence to stimulate aggressive reactions or merely subjugate itself to esthetics for then the works appear visually fetishistic that in the end desensitize the audience.

Dadang's intention in the end is an effort of reconciliation, inviting the audience toparticipate with him in healing the wounds. His personal wounds that are also a part of his nation's collective memory, and a part of the big problems on humanity as something that the world has to solve continuously. Something remains unsettled.

And can it be solved? Or is it our destiny as mankind to be in the cycle of endless suffering where history always repeat itself? Can it be that at least the attempt to dig the wounds is a way to break out from the pain and keep life moving on, or on the contrary it would just open it wider?

When I ask him how it feels to live by dealing with wounds, he responds, "It is hard. But such totality is what keeps me going, facing the despair, for something good, to heal. Healing is reached through such quest. The feeling of push-pull between a longing to find a place to finally stop and rest, and the desire to continue questioning. I'm just worried that I might be finished. When accepting discrimination, stigma and not doing anything. Finished just the way victims are, no struggle. But art is what makes me capable to express my feelings and thoughts, to state that I am not finished, with the way of art. The role of artists is an intellectual role, to bark in every unsettling moment of humanity issues".

Thus, the works in this exhibition mark the episode of Dadang's journey today, in which the art medium has transcends beyond the matters of political function, more as a medium of spirituality searching. Just like an ascetic striving to reach his enlightenment, by dealing with wounds, he invites everyone to face our own fears of memories that rot inside and never been healed.

For Dadang himself, at least in this exhibition, he has finished his eulogy for his father, for then returning back to continue his quest. Perhaps there are many of us would think, how far we can share that quest with Dadang. We can choose to forget, just as what has usually been happening, and leave traces behind. And a list of names, with or without headstones. Marsinah. Wiji Thukul. The four victims of 1998 tragedy. Munir. I am asking on behalf of my generation, in the future could we be one of them, or our loved ones, our children, and so forth?

"There is no guarantee that such violence would not return if forgotten just like that", Dadang stated while looking at Gunung, his years old son who accompanied him during the interview at that time. Through art, he prepares a legacy to his children, a legacy to always learn from history. The way to find the path of healing from the memory of pain and the cycle of misery, that in the end leads to the enlightenment as a human being.

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