New Pessimism: Tropical Frontier - Screening + Artist Talk

The screening will focus on Natasha and Riar's works that deal with the theme of rural, indigeneity, and genre cinema, followed with a conversation with both artists.

Ghost Like Us (2020) by Riar Rizaldi

A multilayered, haunted film that invokes the spectres of Indonesian horror cinema to examine the othering of people on the peripheries.

Garden Amidst the Flame (2022) by Natasha Tontey

Garden Amidst the Flame continues Natasha’s ongoing research into the ancient knowledge, technologies and cosmology of the Minahasa, an Indigenous nation in the North Sulawesi province of Indonesia. In this most recent work, the artist emphasises core Minahasa cultural beliefs in the all-encompassing equilibrium between the human and non-human. Drawing on her experience of karai, a ceremony that grants Minahasan warriors an armour of invincibility, the artist seeks to establish a queering approach towards gender, youth and ecology.