Inspecting the Trace of History on Contemporary Cinema: notes on Keynote Speech at Forum Festival
This article is a reportage piece
for ARKIPEL Social/Capital – 5th Jakarta International Documentary &
Experimental Film Festival (2016) and was published on 19 August 2017. The
Indonesian version of this article can be found at the end of this article.
An archived version of the article
is available at:
Inspecting the Trace of History on
Contemporary Cinema
“The complex effects of the war,
mediated through our bodies, have been inscribed into our national, family, and
personal histories. In short, the cold war is still alive within us”
Kuan-Hsing Chen on “Asia as
Method: Toward Deimperialization” (2010) page 118.
It’s likely, the quotation above
summarizes straightly the general conditions of contemporary world that Hsu
Fang-Tze expressed on her Keynote Speech at the Festival Forum ARKIPEL Penal
Colony – 5th Jakarta International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival.
Approximately 70 participants,
both invited participants, guest speakers and curators and public participants,
were present at Goethehaus, Goethe Institut Jakarta on 18 August 2017 at 09.00
WIB to listen to the Keynote Speech. With a paper and presentation titled When
Dead Labor Speaks: Subjectivity, Subjugation, and Meta-Cinema, Fang-Tze
elaborated the practices of artists and filmmakers relating to the problems,
which are also part of the historical legacy of the Cold war. This independent
curator, translator and Ph.D candidate in Cultural Studies at National
University of Singapore explores the why and how practices of some filmmakers
and artists, such as Takamine Go, Kidlat Tahimik, Nick Deocampo, Lin Hsin-I,
Soni Kum and Nguyen Trinh-Thi represent the issues of violence in the era of
war in the contemporary context through cinema.
On her elaboration, Fang-Tze
reviewed the works of those artist and filmmakers in the framework of
meta-cinema according to film scholar, William Siska, which underlines the
reflexivity, which means ‘consciousness turning back on itself,’ on form and
personal of the makers in their works. According to Fang-Tze, there are three
main issues highlighted in the works of those makers above-mentioned. The issue
about subjectivity, she said, might be inspected on films made by Kidlat
Tahimik, a filmmaker from Philippines, and in the works of Takamine Go, an
Okinawan filmmaker. Both put how the process of filmmaking appears also from
how the social situation forms not only the social context itself but also the
personal lives of people including the filmmakers. In this regard, the social
condition referred is the People Power Revolution in Philippines and the
situation in Okinawa on post-war Japanese occupation and post-war American
military occupation.
Fang-Tze, who develops her
research interests around contemporary knowledge formation, Cold War
aesthetics, memory, philosophies of technology, and the embodiment of artistic
praxis in everyday life, then explores the issue on subjugation through the works
of Nick Deocampo. As the minutes before, while elaborating the material,
Fang-Tze also screened the footages of film she discussed. However, among other
footages she screened during the presentation, in my opinion, the footage of
the film Oliver by Nick Deocampo was the most startling one and still dwelling
on my mind. Fang-Tze screened the work of the Philippines filmmaker which
straightforwardly bring the subjugation on certain subjectivities, especially
in the context of gender and state regime in Philippine. She explained, in
Oliver, we can see how Deocampo used the visual language of cinéma vérité,
truthful cinema, to convey his critics on a kind of cultural doctrine, “the
true, the good, and the beautiful,” promoted by the media apparatus under the
Marcos regime at that time.
This co-curator of iNegative
Horizon: 5th Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition then articulated the
issue of gender which according to her occurs in various levels started from
domestification on the representation of women in cinema, violence by regime of
state until the legacy of colonialism which in the end mutes the narration of
women. She stated her arguments on this condition through the representation of
commemoration which tends to locate the women as the figures who mourn and by
her feminine virtue must nurture what the heroes left, which generally embedded
to the figures of men. She used the analogy of silent letters in English
vocabulary, they are there but unheard. Similar issue also exists in the work Foreign
Sky by Soni Kum, a Korean-Japanese artist, who through her story about
racial discrimination and sexual harassment also represents how the legacy of
violence in the era of war by the Japanese to the Korean is still going on even
until the war has ended. Both in socio-historical and gender-political context,
the concept of woman, according to Fang-Tze, is a political construction and it
is particularly true in the screen culture.
Later, a participant asked a
question after the Keynote Speech was read out. Gaston Suhadi asked Fang-Tze’s
opinion on differences in the generation of filmmakers in Asia. Fang-Tze
responded this by questioning again what Asia is. She expressed that the context
of Asia itself needs to be clarified and to answer about the generation
differences is a complicated thing because it involves a very long history. It
should be noted, however, that Southeast Asian cinema, for example, has a very
close context to the capitalist state and how the state then uses cinema as a
medium to inscribe certain ideologies and subjectivities to its citizens. It
was only then that accessibility to the apparatus which could also be noted as
the source of difference of works from one generation to another.
In this case, the quote from
Philippine writer Nick Joaquin, who was also presented by Fang-Tze in her
speech, was very relevant. “History, when not just news of the world or march
of time but a key sequence of events, is culture in its pure meaning – that is
a creating, a producing, a husbandry, a drawing forth, an opening.” Thus it is
important to underline how exactly the historical narrative about Cold War, is
pronounced through the situations of violence, not only on the story of the
past but also in today’s dramas. So history can be interpreted as a culture
whose values become a legacy mediated through the bodies of people and
eventually also present at the contemporary cinema. ***
Menelaah Jejak Sejarah Pada Sinema
Hari Ini
“The complex effects of the war,
mediated through our bodies, have been inscribed into our national, family, and
personal histories. In short, the cold war is still alive within us”
Kuan-Hsing Chen on Asia as Method:
Toward Deimperialization (2010) page 118.
Kutipan di atas agaknya memang
merangkum kondisi umum dunia kontemporer yang Hsu Fang Tze paparkan pada Pidato
Kunci-nya di Festival Forum ARKIPEL Penal Colony – 5th Jakarta International
Documentary and Experimental Film Festival.
Sekitar 70 orang peserta, baik
dari peserta undangan, tamu pembicara dan kurator maupun peserta umum, hadir di
Goethehaus, Goethe Institut Jakarta pada 18 Agutus 2017 pukul 09.00 WIB untuk
mendengarkan Pidato Kunci tersebut. Dengan makalah berjudul When Dead Labor
Speaks: Subjectivity, Subjugation, and Meta-Cinema, Fang-Tze memaparkan
praktik-praktik seniman dan pembuat filem yang terkait dengan
permasalahan-permasalahan yang merupakan bagian dari warisan sejarah pasca
Perang Dingin. Kurator independen, translator, dan kandidat Ph.D di bidang
Cultural Studies di National University of Singapore ini mengeksplorasi mengapa
dan bagaimana praktik-praktik sejumlah pembuat filem dan seniman, seperti
Takamine Go, Kidlat Tahimik, Nick Deocampo, Lin Hsin-I, Soni Kum, dan Nguyen
Trinh-Thi menghadirkan kembali isu-isu kekerasan pada era perang pada konteks
hari ini melalui sinema.
Pada paparannya, Fang-Tze mengulas
karya-karya para seniman dan sutradara tersebut dalam kerangka meta-cinema
menurut seorang akademisi filem, William Siska, yang menggarisbawahi
refleksifitas—yang diartikan sebagai ‘kesadaran yang kembali pada dirinya sendiri’—atas
bentuk serta atas personal pengkarya dalam karyanya.
Menurut Fang-Tze, terdapat tiga
isu utama yang bisa digarisbawahi dari karya-karya pengkarya tersebut di atas.
Isu mengenai subjektivitas menurutnya dapat ditelaah pada filem karya Kidlat
Tahimik, pembuat filem asal Filipina, dan dalam karya Takamine Go, yang
merupakan pembuat filem dari Okinawa. Keduanya meletakkan bagaimana proses
pengkaryaan dan bentuk pengkaryaan muncul juga dari bagaimana situasi sosial
membentuk tak hanya konteks sosial itu sendiri tapi juga kehidupan personal
orang-orang termasuk pembuat filem. Dalam hal ini, kondisi sosial yang dimaksud
ialah Revolusi Politik Rakyat di Filipina dan situasi Okinawa paca okupasi
Jepang sebelum perang dan okupasi militer Amerika pasca perang.
Fang-Tze, yang mengembangkan minat
penelitiannya, antara lain, pada pengetahuan kontemporer, estetika Perang
Dingin, memori, filosofi teknologi, dan perwujudan praktik artistik dalam
kehidupan sehari-hari, kemudian mengeksplorasi isu subjugasi pada karya Nick
Deocampo. Sebagaimana menit sebelumnya, sembari memaparkan materi, Fang-Tze
juga menayangkan potongan-potongan bagian filem yang ia bahas. Namun, dari
semua potongan filem yang ia tayangkan, menurut saya, potongan gambar dari
filem Oliver karya Nick Deocampo-lah yang paling mencengangkan dan masih
tertinggal di kepala saya. Fang-Tze menayangkan karya pembuat filem asal
Filipina tersebut yang secara lugas menghadirkan subjugasi atas
subjektivitas-subjektivitas tertentu, khususnya dalam konteks gender dan rezim
negara di Filipina. Ia memaparkan, dalam filem Oliver, kita bisa melihat
bagaimana Deocampo menggunakan bahasa visual cinéma vérité, atau kebenaran
sinema, untuk menyampaikan kritik dan kontribusinya pada jenis doktrin budaya,
“the true, the good, and the beautiful,” (“yang benar, yang baik, dan cantik,”)
yang dipromosikan oleh aparatus media di bawah rezim Marcos kala itu.
Ko-kurator iNegative Horizon: 5th
Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition tersebut kemudian mengartikulasikan
isu gender yang menurutnya terjadi dalam berbagai level dimulai dari
domestifikasi pada representasi perempuan dalam sinema, kekerasan oleh negara
hingga warisan kolonialisme yang pada akhirnya mensunyikan narasi perempuan. Ia
menyatakan argumennya mengenai kondisi ini melalui representasi aktivitas
berduka yang cenderung hanya meletakkan perempuan sebagai sosok yang berduka
dan dengan kebajikan femininnya harus merawat apa yang ditinggalkan sang
pahlawan yang umumnya dilekatkan pada sosok lelaki. Ia mengumpamakan hal ini
seperti huruf-huruf diam dalam kosa kata Bahasa Inggris, mereka tetap ada
tetapi tidak diperdengarkan. Isu yang serupa juga hadir kembali dalam Foreign
Sky karya Soni Kum, seorang keturunan Korea-Jepang, yang melalui kisahnya
tentang diskriminasi rasial dan pelecehan seksual juga menghadirkan kembali
bagaimana peninggalan kekerasan di era perang oleh Jepang kepada Korea pun tetap
berlangsung bahkan ketika perang tersebut usai. Baik dalam konteks
sosio-historis maupun politik gender, konsep perempuan, menurut Fang-Tze,
merupakan sebuah konstruksi politik dan ini secara khusus sejatinya pun hadir
dalam arena kultur layar.
Sebuah pertanyaan kemudian muncul
dari peserta setelah Pidato Kunci usai dibacakan. Gaston Suhadi bertanya
mengenai pendapat Fang-Tze tentang perbedaan pada generasi pembuat filem di
Asia. Fang-Tze kemudian menanggapinya dengan mempertanyakan kembali apa itu
Asia. Ia mengungkapkan bahwa konteks Asia itu sendiri perlu diperjelas dan
untuk mengungkapkan tentang rekam jejak perbedaan generasi adalah hal yang
pelik sebab melibatkan sejarah yang sangat panjang. Namun perlu dicatat bahwa
sinema Asia Tenggara misalnya, memiliki konteks yang begitu lekat dengan
kapitalis negara dan bagaimana kemudian negara menggunakan sinema sebagai media
untuk memahatkan ideologi dan subyektivitas tertentu kepada warganya. Barulah
kemudian aksesibilitas terhadap aparatur dan kelengkapannya yang juga bisa
dicatat sebagai pembeda karya dari satu generasi ke generasi lainnya.
Dalam hal ini, kutipan dari
penulis Filipina, Nick Joaquin, yang juga dihadirkan Fang-Tze pada
presentasinya sangat relevan. “Sejarah, ketika ia bukanlah berita dunia atau
barisan waktu namun serangkaian kunci tentang peristiwa, ialah budaya yang
dalam makna murninya – yaitu sebuah penciptaan, sebuah proses produksi, sebuah
pengurusan, sebuah penggambaran, sebuah bukaan.” Sehingga patutlah turut
digarisbaahi bagaimana sebetulnya narasi sejarah tentang Perang Dingin,
dilafalkan melalui berbagai situasi kekerasan, bukan hanya pada kisah masa lalu
namun juga pada drama masa kini. Maka sejarah pun bisa dimaknai sebagai budaya
yang nilai-nilainya menjadi warisan yang dimediasikan melalui tubuh orang-orang
dan akhirnya turut pula hadir pada sinema hari ini. ***