Tellurian Drama
D: Riar Rizaldi, Indonesia, 2021, 26min
Film screening
Sa., 21.10.2023
15:45–16:15
Safi Faye Hall
Free entry
Languages: English, Indonesian

Tellurian Drama (film still). By courtesy of Riar Rizaldi
5 May 1923. The government of the Dutch East Indies celebrated the opening of a new radio station, called Rasio Malabar, in West Java. In March 2020, the local Indonesian government plans to reactivate the station as a historical site and tourist attraction. Tellurian Drama imagines what would have happened in between—the vital role of mountains in history; colonial ruins as an apparatus for geoengineering technology; and the invisible power of the Indigenous ancestral. Narrated based on a forgotten text by a prominent pseudo-anthropologist Drs. Munarwan, Tellurian Drama problematizes the notion of decolonization, geocentric technology, and historicity of communication.