Surrounding Silences

In the first decades of the Colonial Institute (the predecessor of the current Wereldmuseum Amsterdam) propaganda films were screened with the purpose to recruit men, attract investors and provide a positive narrative around plantation industries. Large scale rubber plantations providing latex for the booming global consumer industry of car-tires and bicycles, were profitable by using a vulnerable workforce of indentured labourers under the “coolie ordinance.” This system regulated the labour conditions rendered plantation owner both policeman and judge. Drawing from her ongoing research on this history, artist and filmmaker Groenewegen repurposes the propaganda material to examine the role of the films in the system of exploitation of women on rubber plantations. Inspired by Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s short story Jongos + Babu, the artist examines the films for what they concealed.