MONS.- The MAC's is presenting On Paradise, a new transdisciplinary installation by the artist Jompet Kuswidananto, housed in the museum’s main square hall. Archive documents, videos and inert or animated objects, sound and light appeal to the viewers’ senses, transporting them, in two steps, into the midst of the poetic evocation of a historical event. The aesthetic experience is also an invitation to reflect on wider history. The artist has agreed to answer our questions about the visual art he has practised for twenty years, in which he also combines the fruit of his experiences as a musician and theatre man.

An eclectically trained, polyvalent artist who lives and works in Yogyakarta (Java) where he was born in 1976, Jompet Kuswidananto remains profoundly attached to Indonesia and rendering its turbulent history, which he first studied through a university degree in communication, when he became interested in sociology and political science, then through practical training in the archipelago’s music and wayang, traditional shadow theatre. In his visual art, he has used these techniques to develop a personal style of multimedia spatialisation, which aims to provide both aesthetic pleasure and an account of the changing identities that have shaped and indeed continue to shape the fate of individuals and communities in Indonesia, and perhaps beyond. The artist’s intention is above all to construct his own imaginary world, using traces of the past and current documents, whilst leaving freedom of interpretation to whoever discovers his work.

History itself, as experienced in the street and as he studied it, has made change and transition central themes of Jompet Kuswidananto’s reflection: the archipelago “Indonesia” has for centuries been a melting pot for various ethnicities, religions and traditions, often engaged in conflictual relations. “The dramatic, shared experience of transition in 1998 led me to consider the cultural and political transitions that have shaped the history of Indonesia, and to try and draw lessons from them. One thing that particularly interested me was to understand why for 1,500 years— after the arrival of Hinduism in the archipelago in the 5th century, followed by Buddhism and finally, in the 14th century, the massive establishment of Islam and its drastic hegemony, which preceded some three hundred years of the Dutch presence—major upheavals and transitions have unceasingly left their mark on numerous parts of what we now call Indonesia.

Even in the 20th century, in the post-war years, the achievement of independence and the consequent events have been marked by long periods of turmoil and two dictatorships, the last of which only came to an end twenty years ago. For fifteen centuries, the archipelago has therefore experienced a succession of cultures and powers and their removal, in a sort of permanent instability. I have begun to collect and compile stories which, over the centuries, have described this situation of ‘constant transition’. And I have drawn from them these images of fluidity, incompletion and instability.” Even if these images inevitably evoke numerous references for the spectator, “the ghostly figures which frequently appear in my work therefore refer directly to Indonesia’s shifting historical backdrop and my experience of democratic transition in 1998.”

“Post-1998 Indonesia has led each Indonesian to redefine the boundary between ‘you’ and ‘me’, or ‘them’ and ‘us’. (…) It was an evolution marked not only by debate, but also conflicts, sometimes extremely violent, the introduction of sharia law in the province of Aceh and many other events” , including the terrorist attack in 2002 in Bali. Its mastermind, Imam Samudra, who was executed in 2008, left behind a text outlining his vision of Heaven, extracts from which Jompet Kuswidananto has used in his installation.

On Paradise, the installation presented at the MAC’s, explores more specifically the links between politics and religion in the 19th century colonial context, but we cannot fail to see in it a three-dimensional account which speaks to us of the 21st century… “One of the installation’s principal objectives is to present testimonials offered by a society living in the grips of absolute power and which is incapable of being effective in relation to it. On Paradise thus brings together the fragments of stories that speak of a society’s vision of the approach of the Final Judgement. Such a vision was apparently made possible by the combined effects of oppressive colonial politics, disease and natural disasters, allied with a renewal of religious practices in Banten, on the island of Java, in the 19th century. But I wanted to go beyond a simple confrontation between beliefs and systems, to speculate instead on the imaginary world dreamed of by those who rose up against this absolute power. It is more speculation than a precise analysis (…) and I did not want to reduce the theme to conflictual elements, to an opposition between theocracy and globalised capitalism, or between traditions and western modernity… Of course, these issues were in the background, at the outset of the project, but they did not determine the project’s viewpoint”.

This multiple discourse and its dialectic “ambivalence” is tangible in On Paradise which gives the public a two-stage experience of discovery. Amongst the objects offered for view are the numerous white chandeliers that litter the ground: that part of the installation is inspired partly by the final scene of the Phantom of the Opera (1910), where a show’s performance is brutally interrupted by the spectacular crash of an immense chandelier, sabotaged by the antihero of Gaston Leroux’s fantasy novel, Erik, whose satanic voice resounds through the Opera hall. Should we understand that the paths of rebellion are sometimes obscure and can lead to a battle with light? “In my perception, which aims to be connected with what was possible in Banten in the 19th century, the Opera, with its sparkling chandeliers and conventions associated with a specific social system, is an element that forms part of a dreamworld carved out by a high, brilliant culture, wellbeing, order and power. And in my view, Erik—and certainly a 19th century Banten peasant—is quite simply a person who has no right to any of this, and cannot even dream about it. But his gesture, by striking out against the light, can effectively have many meanings…”

The final, significant feature of Jompet Kuswidananto’s installations is that they do not place the spectators at a distance, but instead allow them to become immersed in a form of participation. When leaving the installation presented at the MAC’s, the viewer feels invited to remember not only a unique aesthetic experience, but also the reflections it has inspired about this “grey room” where history is written. On Paradise, chaos structured by the artist into the evocation of a dramatic past event, narrates how the social and cultural identity of individuals and groups is transformed in a changing world. As such it effectively forces us to reflect on the new relationships that we have to construct to escape the global imbroglio that individuals, communities, nations and the world are now grappling with…

The visual artist, Jompet Kuswidananto was born in 1976 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, where he lives and works. He studied communication in the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at Gadjah Mada University, in Yogyakarta. A recognised theatre man and musician amongst his peers, he has developed his visual art since 1998. His opera installation Dark Play was notably exhibited at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.