Ghosts of the past roam through the corners of our memories. These ghosts burst into consciousness and spread throughout the bodies of jathilan (traditional dance using horses made from woven bamboo and decorated with colorful paints and cloth, ed) dancers who are in a trance. The young men, holding horses made of woven bamboo, can barely control their movements after entering a trance under the influence of ethereal spirits—ghosts from the past, colonial ghosts who refuse to be burned by time. The trajectory of knowledge, dramaturgy, and archival corpus are explored by Timoteus Anggawan Kusno in Afterlives (Tunggang Langgang) (2024).
This 22-minute documentary is an overview of TA Kusno’s labyrinth of thoughts previously worked on in the form of the installation “Luka dan Bisa Kubawa Berlari” and the process behind its creation. A work assembled using archives and colonial artifacts from the Dutch Rijksmuseum collection for Revolusi! Exhibition (2022). This documentary is an attempt by TA Kusno, as the writer, director, and editor, to deconstruct the historical representations created by the colonials of the colonies they had annexed.
These efforts are then presented in various media across multiple dimensions. Jathilan is a starting point for reinterpreting ancestral traditions and the history that occurred in the past. From the beginning of jathilan performances with horses made of woven bamboo as a means of war training and propaganda in the village, to trance conditions due to possession by ancestral spirits that control the unconscious. This jathilan performance in celebration of Indonesia’s independence throws us into a further narrative of colonial ghosts.
Rully Shabara’s howling screams in “Setabuhan” at the beginning of the film open the gates to the archives and the footage takes us into the liminality between the past and the present. The sound of freedom from annexation is piercing and mixes with the footage of the handler who awakens the trance. The music then also accompanies the alternation of archival footage and recordings that alternately appear and blur, light up and fade away. Similarly, the literary narration read by Jamaluddin Latif leads us into the mind of TA Kusno who is attempting to rearticulate history.
The dramaturgy of jathilan has always been the driving force of the living subjects in this documentary, from jathilan performances, tiger masked dancers in a sugarcane plantation, to a person who is stepping on a body that has lost consciousness. The tiger masked dancer in the middle of a sugarcane plantation recalls the ghosts of the past that continue to reach into the present. The tiger becomes a ghost that creates fear and is ready to pounce and tear apart humans in its presence. That fear is shared and used as a symbol for bad luck, leading to tigers being sacrificed in the Rampogan Macan tradition practiced by Javanese kings. However, the fear of the tiger is still perpetuated as a ghost to guard the landlord’s sugarcane plantation after independence even though we know and realize that the Javanese tiger is extinct and its name is no longer heard.
In Afterlives (2024), TA Kusno also shares footage of the process of creating the installation “Luka dan Bisa Kubawa Berlari” at the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands. Various forms of installation, artifacts from a sugar factory in East Java, and manuscript archives are displayed in a single room with colonial ghosts. The painting of the governor, separated from its frame and reassembled with the installation of tigers, crows, and amulet manuscripts, is an attempt to represent history that displays the spirit of revolution to escape colonialism.
Perhaps, all these ghosts of the past are still roaming around us. They are present in the corners of our memories, discussion rooms, and international symposiums, even in the bodies that go into trance in jathilan. You can find the ghosts of the past in Afterlives (2024), which is featured in the Short Competition Program FFD 2024. (Ahmad Radhitya Alam) (Ed. Vanis/Trans. Naufal Shabri)
Film Details
Afterlives (Tunggang Langgang)
Timoteus Anggawan Kusno | 22 Min | 2024 | DI Yogyakarta, Indonesia
In Competition for Short Competition
Festival Film Dokumenter 2024
Screening Schedule
Nov. 3 | 13:00 WIB | IFI-LIP
Nov. 5 | 13:00 WIB | Militaire Societeit, TBY
