Program Kuratorial: Ekskavasi Arsip: Puitis
Diluar cuaca dingin, hujan baru saja membasuh apa-apa yang menjadi tempat mendaratnya. Memang agak melegakan cuaca lembap tanggung seperti ini, karena dalam pekan-pekan terakhir Jakarta di suguhi suhu yang luar biasa panas. Semakin panas karena Indonesia sedang diguncang dengan panggung demonstrasi “Peringatan Darurat”, sehingga mendapati kelembapan seperti ini, agaknya mampu sedikit menyegarkan kulit. Bertepatan dengan itu, aku kembali melangkahkan diri dengan mantap mencari pojok setia untuk menonton filem yang bertajuk A Feeling Greater Than Love (2017) karya sutradara Mary Jirmanus Saba. Ruangan penuh, gambar bergerak mulai memainkan perannya.
“Bangunan Regie berada di tanah Lebanon, dan para petani tembakau berhak mendapatkan hak-hak mereka…. Pemerintah kita memanggil tank, tentara. Dan pasukan keamanan, dan mengepung mereka.” begitulah kira-kira penggalan dialog yang cukup bekesan di menit-menit awal filem ini. “Ah, nyatanya filem ini tak kurang panasnya dengan Jakarta,” besitku yang semakin tenggelam.
Filem yang mengkonstruksi dialog antara keadaan kini dengan mengaktivasi gambar-gambar militansi dari masa lampau aktivis, tentu saja memberikan sensori yang puitis. Jukstaposisi antar gambarnya juga menarik, ini dipertegas melalui tanya-jawab antara Valencia Winata dengan Ali Aladawy (pemilik program kuratorial malam itu dengan tajuk “Kami bukan buruh tak terlihat di museum atau istanamu,” kata mereka) yang dimoderatori Luthfan Nur Rochman. Misal pada gambar cerita tentang tokoh perempuan dijukstaposisi dengan gambar bangunan lanskap dan wawancara yang menghasilkan dialog dengan sejarah gerakan buruh. Ada juga gambar yang cukup menggelitik perut yakni ketika adegan sepasang suami istri borjuasi yang baru bangun tidur di kasur, istrinya bertanya apakah kamu peduli dengan perjuangan Palestina? Suaminya hanya menjawab dengan menyuruh sang istri menuangkan kopi dan menyetrika bajunya. Dari hal ini kita bisa melihat bagaimana Mary membingkai arsip ini dengan kritis, tentu saja arkeologi menjadi strategi penting untuk membongkar yang tak tampak menjadi tampak.
Diskusi pasca menonton masih berlangsung semakin seru. Ruangan bioskop menjadi saksi sejarah pengetahuan yang cukup baru bagiku. Aku memperbaiki duduk agar lebih nyaman untuk memperhatikan dan menyimak Ali dan Luthfan di depan. Suasana semakin hangat, penonton terlihat semakin serius dan ada yang mencatat di buku kecil ataupun di handphone, ada yang manggut-manggut, ada yang sesekali berbisik ke teman sebelahnya, dan ada yang menatap seakan-akan tak mau terlewat satu katapun.
Kira-kira begini dialog dan suasananya :
Luthfan : Ali, aku ingin bertanya mengenai konteks. Jadi bagaimana Pan Arabisme itu di bangun dan diletakkan di konstelasi perang sipil di Lebanon? (dengan wajah sumringah manis dan terdengar antusias)
Ali : Konteks dari Pan Arabisme ini berkembang pasca Perang Dunia II, dan bagaimana di masa-masa itu tentu saja negara-negara Arab, membangun kembali dan mendekolonisasi diri sendiri. Pemicu pentingnya adalah perang Aljazair serta bagaimana Gamal Abdel Nasser sebagai presiden Mesir membangun gerakan Pan Afrika dan juga Pan Arab itu sendiri. (Jawab Ali, yang tak kurang dari antusiasnya). Emmm (sedikit berpikir untuk menambahkan, kemudian terdengar tarikan nafas Ali melanjutkan penjelasannya). Sebenarnya, Pan Arab, Pan Afrika, dan gerakan Non Blok semua berkaitan di waktu yang sama.
Luthfan : Ya… Ya… Penanda penting selain berdirinya Israel, dan kekalahan negara Arab, menjadikan palentina self organized. Namun setelah Nasser meninggal, figur pelindung Pan Arab hilang, jadi… (jeda sejenak) ada semacam ketidakstabilan. Setelah itu raja Jordania yang telah mempunyai semacam perjanjian, menerima gerilyawan dari Palestina ke Jordania, namun ketika itu juga terjadi semacam ketidakstabilan mereka pindah ke Lebanon, dan ketika kembali ke Palestina sudah ada iklim kiri komunis yang kuat untuk mewadahi aksi solidaritas. (sambut Luthfan menambahkan)
Sebelum diskusi pindah ke ruang informal, penonton menyepakati bahwa filem yang telah di putar ini menjawab premisnya sendiri, kenapa gerakan-gerakan ini gagal dan juga kenapa gerakan kirinya berhenti. Poin yang tak kalah pentingnya adalah arsip-arsip ini juga terlihat karena orang-orang baru mengekskavasi arsip-arsip ini setelah kegagalan revolusi Arab Spring. Seniman-seniman ‘berhasil’ mengaktivasi gambar yang dulunya tak terlihat. Ketika praktek merawat gambar baru muncul, maka tantangan untuk seniman bukan saja hegemoni relasi kuasa dari pembuat arsip dan tentu saja tegangan nyata antar kekuasaan. Tapi tensi yang sebenarnya adalah bagaimana figur-figur yang mendominasi screen itu tidak sadar sebenarnya mereka pernah diambil suaranya untuk mengambil sikap pada perlawanan ini.
Sehingga sekarang memontase gambar bukan sekadar optikal atas revolusi, tetapi bagaimana kita memandang dan merasakan dengan lebih afektif. Bukan hanya komunikasi yang kaku dari arsip. Tapi turut serta menghadirkan figur-figur perlawanan yang dulunya tak terlihat. Dalam filem, Mary mengekskavasi sejarah buruh dan perempuan, sehingga membubuhi interseksionalitas menjadi gerakan tampak ke permukaan. Sebagai tambahan informasi lainya, arsip dalam filem ini besar kemungkinan didapatkan dari berjejaring dengan berbagai partai komunis di Lebanon, Palestina, dan Mesir. Selain itu juga dari pengarsipan akar rumput, kemungkinan juga didapatkan dari orang Israel korup. Tidak ada arsip nasional yang menyimpan filem produksi mereka. Ada hubungannya dengan penghancuran arsip-arsip Palestina oleh Israel ketika itu.
Satu jam berlalu, diskusi formal telah ditutup. Apa-apa yang aku tonton tadi, dan aku dengar menjadi landasan awal bagiku untuk belajar lagi. Sambil mengambil sekaleng beer, aku berpikir tentang filem ini lebih jauh lagi.
Curatorial Program: Archival Excavation: Poetic
Despite the cold weather, the rain had just washed away whatever it landed on. It was a relief to have this kind of humid weather, because in recent weeks Jakarta got very hot. It was getting hotter because Indonesia was shaken by the “Emergency Warning” demonstrations, thus having humidity like this, somewhat refreshing my skin. At that moment, I stepped into my favorite corner to watch a film entitled A Feeling Greater Than Love (2017) by Mary Jirmanus Saba. The theater was full, and the moving images began to play their part.
“Regie’s building is on Lebanese land, and the tobacco farmers deserve their rights…. Our government calls in tanks, soldiers and security forces to surround them.” That was the fragment of dialog that was quite memorable in the early minutes of this film. “Ah, it turns out that this movie is no less hot than Jakarta,” I said as I was immersed.
This film, which constructs dialog between the current situation and activates images of militancy from the past activists, certainly provides a poetic sensory. The juxtaposition between the images is also interesting, this was emphasized through Q&A between Valencia Winata and Ali Aladawy (the owner of the curatorial program that night under the title “We are not the invisible labors of your palaces or museums,” they said) moderated by Luthfan Nur Rochman. For example, a story about a female figure is juxtaposed with images of landscape buildings and interviews that produce a dialogue with the history of the labor movement. There is also a scene of a bourgeois couple who just woke up in bed, where the wife asks him if he cares about the Palestinian struggle. The husband only answers by telling his wife to pour coffee and iron his shirt. Hence, we can see how Mary frames this archive critically, of course archaeology becomes an important strategy to expose the invisible to the visible.
The discussion after watching continued to get more and more exciting. The movie theater witnessed a history of knowledge that was quite new to me. I fixed my seat to make it more comfortable to pay attention and listen to Ali and Luthfan at the front. The atmosphere was getting warmer, the audiences looked more serious and some were taking notes in a small book or on a cellphone, some were nodding, some were occasionally whispering to friends next to them, and some were staring as if they didn’t want to miss a single word..
These were the dialogs and the atmosphere:
Luthfan: Ali, I would like to ask you about the context. So how was Pan Arabism constructed and placed in the constellation of the Lebanese civil war? (with a smiling face and sounding enthusiastic)
Ali: The context of Pan Arabism is that it emerged after World War II, and how during that time, of course, the Arab states were rebuilding and decolonizing themselves. An important trigger was the Algerian war and how Gamal Abdel Nasser as president of Egypt built the Pan-African movement and also Pan-Arabism itself. (Ali replied, no less enthusiastically). Emmm (a little thought to add, then a sigh as Ali continued his explanation). Actually, Pan-Arabism, Pan-Africa and the Non-Aligned Movement were all linked at the same time.
Luthfan: Yes… Yes… An important indicator besides the establishment of Israel, and the defeat of the Arab states, made Palestine self-organized. But after Nasser died, the Pan-Arab patron figure was gone, so… (pause) there was some instability. After that the Jordanian king who had some kind of agreement, accepted the guerrillas from Palestine to Jordan, but at that time there was also some kind of instability, they moved to Lebanon, and when they returned to Palestine there was already a strong communist left to accommodate solidarity actions. (Luthfan added)
Before the discussion moved to the informal space, the audience agreed that the film answered its own premise, why these movements failed and also why the left movement stopped. An equally important point is that these archives are also visible because people only started excavating them after the failure of the Arab Spring. Artists ‘managed’ to activate images that were once invisible. When the practice of caring for new images emerges, the challenge for artists is not only the hegemony of the power relations of the archive makers and of course the real tension between powers. But the real tension is how the figures who dominate the screen do not realize that they have actually had their voice taken to take a stand in this resistance.
Therefore, now montaging images is not just optics of the revolution, but how we perceive and feel more affectively. Not just the rigid communication from the archive. But also presenting figures of resistance that were once invisible. In the film, Mary excavated the history of labor and women, bringing intersectionality into the movement to the surface. As additional information, the archive in this film was most likely obtained from networking with various communist parties in Lebanon, Palestine, and Egypt. In addition to grassroots archiving, it was probably also obtained from corrupt Israelis. There is no national archive that preserves their production films. This has something to do with Israel’s destruction of Palestinian archives at the time.
An hour had passed, and the formal discussion had come to a close. What I had watched, and heard, had become a starting point for me to learn more. As I grabbed a can of beer, I thought about the film deeper.
