Tellurian Drama

Tellurian Drama probes the past and present of Mount Malabar in West Java, where the colonial government of the Dutch East Indies had the local indigenous peoples build a vast radio station to keep the overseas territory in perpetual contact with the home nation. Now the Indonesian government plans to reopen the facility as a tourist attraction. Structured via an unorthodox historical text by pseudo-anthropologist Drs. Munarwan, Rizaldi’s multi-layered essay marshals archive footage and photographs, stunning forest vistas, plans and diagrams and the sound of the zither into a shifting reflection on technologies and ideologies and the instrumentalization of time and space. (JL)