{"id":207288,"date":"2025-01-28T18:16:21","date_gmt":"2025-01-28T17:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iffr.com\/en\/?p=207288"},"modified":"2025-01-30T14:01:06","modified_gmt":"2025-01-30T13:01:06","slug":"blog-timoteus-anggawan-kusno-through-the-pores-of-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iffr.com\/en\/blog-timoteus-anggawan-kusno-through-the-pores-of-time","title":{"rendered":"Timoteus Anggawan Kusno: Through the Pores of Time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

During IFFR 2025, we spotlight the work of the Indonesian and Amsterdam-based visual artist and researcher Timoteus Anggawan Kusno. Through the works selected for the programme, IFFR programmer Koen de Rooij reflects on the style and urgency Kusno’s art.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n

Over the course of the past ten years, visual artist and researcher Timoteus Anggawan Kusno (b. 1989) has created a body of work that is as inviting as it is intriguing to delve into, and to consider as a whole. Most of these films, while set in the present, are deeply tied to historical events, exploring the ongoing effects of living under colonial rule, order and discipline, or through social disruptions such as mass mobilisation and regime change, on the lives, minds and bodies of people. His films offer us an insight into how (often traumatic) memories and experiences from the past root themselves deeply in our bodies and subconscious, and ultimately in society as a whole. Making use of interviews, footage from a variety of archives, anecdotes, on-site research and different forms of media to express the complexity of historical narratives, his work provides a space for experiences and stories often unseen or unheard, and makes us question how we view the past and its consequences in contemporary society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His early work Others or \u2018rust en orde\u2019<\/strong><\/a> (2017) makes for a perfect point of departure. The visualisation of four different interviews with informants recorded on tape, discussing a specific ritual practiced in Tanah Runcuk in Indonesia in the colonial period, allow Kusno to blur the boundary between memory, reality, documentary and fiction. Functioning as a creative intervention into history, the film shows Kusno carving out a space for himself to reimagine and subvert the historical narratives we grow up with and take for granted. The work also shows Kusno\u2019s freedom in working with different materials and approaches, as the film incorporates archive, animation, drawings, performance and re-enactment, among others. Throughout his work, we see Kusno returning to all of these elements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly all of the films shown here make use of archival footage. Two works in the programme specifically, Dear Shadow, My Old Friend<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>(2023) and Anatomy of Nostalgia<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>(2024), <\/strong>take <\/strong>extensively from archives, re-purposing and reconstructing new narrative structures out of old footage. In the first title, we join our protagonist through his dreams, while he narrates stories from his childhood and stories recounted to him by his great-grandfather. Over the course of the film, the connotations these images carry with them are questioned, and a space for new meaning and associations opens up. In Anatomy of Nostalgia<\/strong><\/a>, there is no vocal narrator. Instead the music invites us into a stream in which to ascertain our own relationship to the images we see, wherein we question the nostalgic implications that arise when we are confronted with the black and white image of pastness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In much of this footage, spaces, buildings and ephemera such as photographs and old paintings, reemerge to come alive with new meaning, and uncover new perspectives. By blending these temporal boundaries, the notion of time also becomes flexible, allowing phantoms of the past, left behind in these spaces or items, to seep into the present, manifesting themselves in myriad ways. As Kusno\u2019s characters and performers interact with them, these lingering phantoms make their way into their lives, their dreams and subconscious. As these boundaries become ever more fluid throughout these films, we are invited to question what is obscured by history. This is visualised most clearly in Reversal<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>(2023), the first film in his loose trilogy Luka dan bisa kubawa berlari<\/em>, where a young man falls asleep on a train, while crossing the railroad tracks built during the colonial era, and his body starts to channel people and experiences from the past which he encounters on the journey. As he encounters a cast of ghosts, their spirits manifest themselves through his physical gestures and the ongoing effects of colonial history become immediately tangible to the viewer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most recent works in the programme, <\/strong>Afterlives<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>(2024), functions as a convergence of Kusno\u2019s work to date. In a striking scene halfway through the film, we find ourselves in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where the portraits of colonial rulers, which were hidden in sugar factories in the hope of saving them during the Second World War, now find their way to the walls of the Dutch museum some eight decades later, creating new contexts for the ghosts trapped in these frames. Ultimately, as the memories, anecdotes, lived experiences and their re-enactments become entangled, and these films weave their threads between different archives, items and rituals, they underscore our inability to move forward without addressing the phantoms of the past. Several characters and scenes from earlier films also find their way back into Afterlives<\/strong><\/a>, making us aware of the deep connection of ideas throughout Kusno\u2019s work. Similarly to how the distance between the past and the present diminishes, Kusno allows his films to refer back to and into themselves and the limits between the very works themselves become fluid. As images from one film invade the other, new layers are added to previous works and we are forced to reconsider and re-interpret what we have seen before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a part of the Focus programme, several charcoal drawings from his series In a Landscape<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>will be exhibited during the festival. These drawings share a deeply intimate relationship with his films. Not simply because many narrative and visual elements reappear in the films he has made afterwards, but because they function as an intrinsic part of Kusno\u2019s creative and artistic process. Mostly created in 2019, they are the direct result of interviews Kusno conducted with people who lived through periods of oppression. As a more immediate and physical form of expression, these drawings engage Kusno\u2019s whole body in processing the experiences shared in these interviews and allow him to immediately channel them, in a profound and direct way \u2013 before they find a voice in his films. Functioning as a reflective moment, sensing the shadows, the light, and reassessing what enters the frame and what is left out of sight, they become visualised thinking processes of unspoken narratives and for us as an audience, essential to understanding Kusno\u2019s artistic practice and body of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By showing these films and drawings together and making connections between the various threads and ideas that emerge in them, these works become increasingly rich in their meaning. They open up a space for reflection and dialogue, inspiring us to ponder, question and critically reconsider our collective historical memories, and the way we interpret and frame them. In times where the unaddressed shadows of the past only seem to divide society more, Kusno\u2019s work invites us to pause, reflect and potentially consider how to envision new ways forward, which might be more necessary than ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

written by Koen de Rooij<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t

A list with articles<\/h2>\n\t\t\n\t\t
\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t