ARKIPEL

“After what seemed like hours, days or maybe even seasons, camelia and nahla found the magical creatures. They finally saw the future of the city but it wasn’t as clear as day. This vision unsettled the two friends, and confused their senses. They realized then and there that things will never be the same again.”- The Secret Garden (2023)

Ada cerita tentang sejenis racun yang dianggap begitu kuat sampai dikatakan mampu mengobarkan perang antar manusia dan pohon hingga mengusik urusan negara. Sumber racun ini hampir tidak diketahui oleh mereka yang ingin menguasai perdagangan rempah sepenuhnya di Malaka, dan di kepulauan timur Hindia Belanda pada abad ke-17. Para serdadu akan berjatuhan setelah racun rahasia ini mengalir di pembuluh darah mereka dan mempercepat detak jantungnya sampai berhenti. Menimbulkan getar yang melebihi dentum meriam bagi yang melihatnya. Hawa cemas menjalar di antara rusuk dan tungkai Belanda atas hadirnya senjata yang mereka tidak bisa raba dan kuasai layaknya tanah dan putik wangi komoditas mereka.

Di tengah kecemasan terhadap racun yang tak dapat mereka gapai, ada seorang laki-laki tua bernama Rumphius yang memilih hidupnya di ambon sebagai pencatat tumbuh-tumbuhan. Di penghujung hidupnya, ia masih berupaya menyelesaikan pencatatannya walau terhalang oleh kebutaan sehingga ia hanya bisa mendengar cerita dalam berbagai bahasa dan memandu keluarganya untuk menulis. Nama panggilan tumbuhan dalam tujuh hingga sepuluh bahasa dicatat olehnya; Latin, Belanda, Melayu, Ambon, bahasa dari Ternate, Banda, Makassar, Bali, Jawa, juga Arab, Cina, hingga Portugis dan Hindustan bersamaan dengan ratusan ilustrasi rinci mereka sampai karya ini selesai dan dikirim berlayar menuju Belanda. Namun dalam perjalanannya, penerbitan bukunya dihalang di Batavia karena dianggap berbahaya bagi kelangsungan kongsi dagang. Salinan bukunya baru diterbitkan 40 tahun setelah kematiannya secara anumerta; Herbarium Amboinense, kitab jamu-jamuan Ambon.

Arbor Toxicaria Macassariensis

40 tahun setelah kematiannya, 1741, tajuk pohon racun dalam bukunya berkembang menjadi bayang-bayang di Eropa tentang organisme aneh nan berbahaya di Timur:

“Tidak ada tumbuhan lain yang tumbuh di dekatnya sehingga menimbulkan kesan kebotakan di tengah bukit yang lebat. Tulang belulang dan bulu burung berserakan diatas tanah yang gersang. Seekor makhluk berkaki menyerupai basilisk dikatakan bersarang di sela akar banir nya yang meninggi. Karena saking beracunnya nafas makhluk itu, ia mampu membunuh hewan apapun dari jarak jauh. Orang-orang akan membaluti dirinya dengan kain di sekujur tubuh dan kepala untuk melindungi diri, lalu memanah makhluk tersebut sampai mati dari kejauhan sebelum bilah bambu tajam ditancapkan ke kulit kayu. Tetes getah putih susu mematikan akan mengalir, yang kemudian direbus sampai mengental kecoklatan. Racun ini lalu dibalurkan ke ujung duri-duri sumpit” (Dove 54) 

Pengetahuan rahasia ini setidaknya mampu membuat serdadu Belanda kencing berdiri. Sampai-sampai seperti bagaimana mereka membakar kebun-kebun di pulau yang tidak bisa mereka kendalikan. Berlawanan dengan bayangan Eropa—seperti dalam puisi Pushkin tentang Anchar yang mengubahnya menjadi lambang mati dan tirani—Ipuh bukanlah sumber racun semata bagi masyarakat Asia Tenggara. Ia juga hadir seperti flora lainnya yang menghidupi, bagi yang tinggal di dekatnya. Dari makanan, obat-obatan, hingga kain lahir dari tubuhnya. Ipuh, antjar, upas dan nama lainnya dipakai untuk berburu. Di Jawa, racun pohon ini dikenal dengan nama upas atau antjar yang dibalurkan di keris sebagai senjata berbisa. Sejak nama-nama dikumpulkan dan kulit kayunya tergapai, cerita maut dari jarak jauh pun runtuh. Dan nama Antiaris toxicaria lahir di buku-buku ilmiah. Demi nama rasionalitas, pengetahuan pun berpindah tangan.

“Taman yang tertutup”

Dalam filmnya The Secret Garden (2023), Nour Ouayda menghadirkan lamunan dalam sebuah ‘bioma baru’ yang tumbuh menggantikan kondisi kotanya dalam semalam. Jika horor kosmik digambarkan sebagai mutasi morfologis, film ini membawa proses transformasi ke dalam aspek yang lebih perseptual dan psiko-somatis; seperti maladaptive daydreaming atau kondisi antara terjaga dan bermimpi dimana kita sedang berada di realitas yang ambigu.

Otak manusia mengenali peristiwa yang telah terjadi. Rangkaian ingatan akan persepsi dan stimuli membantu kita dalam pengenalan cepat. pengendapan dari rangkaian stimuli peristiwa yang telah lewat dan berulang-ulang terjadi, mewujud menjadi pola yang familiar. Familiaritas tidak membutuhkan detail dan akurasi ketimbang rekoleksi yang bekerja dengan kerincian dan keterukuran.

Narasi fiksi menjadi ruang benturan antara biomorfologi tumbuhan dengan geometri beton. vegetasi disorot sebagai agen yang menginvasi struktur bangunan dan jalanan. Aberasi kromatik yang terjadi dalam bias silau cahaya, menghadirkan kesan fantastis bak pelangi. Bingkai bergetar dengan kasar bersama dengan tekstur suara yang disruptif. Montase suara bergerak di antara lembut suara narator dan ricuh burung-burung selama rangkaian delapan babak dongeng. Gaya narasi yang digunakan Ouayda menghadirkan kesan bahwa faktualitas telah bergeser menjadi fiksi. Catatan lapangan yang ditemukan Camelia dan Nahla menjadi sebuah momen prognosis; bahwa kebaruan yang terjadi juga mengandung yang lampau. Sebagaimana praktik pengamatan ekologi yang merekam perubahan-perubahan alam untuk membaca masa depan, upaya Camelia dan Nahla justru mencoba meraba dinding ambiguitas antara keindahan dan tragedi: taman yang tidak punya jalan keluar; tumbuhan dengan morfologi dan perilaku aneh; serta usia nya yang tua namun muncul dalam semalam. Kita ditawari sebuah sudut pandang di mana kehidupan dibawa di sebuah garis ambang antara keseharian yang biasa dan pembesaran yang menakjubkan: antara kelopak jambon di surga dan malapetaka di bumi.

Akumulasi pengalaman kolektif atas yang telah dialami, dilewati dan dimiliki dibawa sebagai pola yang bekerja bagai firasat; bahwa transformasi adalah sebuah kepastian dan akan dihadapi dalam realita yang tidak sama lagi seperti sebelumnya. Setidaknya ketika dilihat dalam konteks teritorial, konflik dan invasi telah menjadi bagian dari keseharian masyarakat Lebanon. Sejak perang saudara pada 1975–1990, invasi Israel pada 1978 dan 1982, pendudukan di Lebanon Selatan hingga tahun 2000, perang tahun 2006, serta berbagai ketegangan di wilayah perbatasan yang terus berulang, lanskap Lebanon dibentuk oleh pengalaman hidup berdampingan dengan perang. Dalam konteks demikian, kehadiran ancaman kekerasan, reruntuhan, suara misil, bahkan eksodus, tidak lagi muncul sebagai peristiwa luar biasa, melainkan sebagai pengkondisian yang terus membentuk cara ruang dan kehidupan sehari-hari dipersepsikan. Bayang akan kemusnahan terasa berkali lebih dekat ketimbang hari memanen kurma sampai sekedar hidup layak hanya menjadi angan. Sejak surga dimaknai sebagai tempat berlindung yang hanya bisa dimasuki saat kita meninggalkan fisikalitas manusia, justru pelarian dan mimpi adalah  akar kekuatan yang bisa kita cakup dalam melawan pengkondisian pikiran sadar kita di dunia. Di sini, stimulasi sensorik dirangkai menjadi sebuah kerja image yang mempertanyakan status quo tersebut serta memberdayakan, alih hanya mengalami visual-visual indah tersebut.

Ouayda peka dalam membawakan apa yang bergeming kaku dalam getaran shockwave. Kita sedang mengalami hidup baru yang perlahan menjadi akrab dan diterima sebagai keseharian, ada yang menyusup diam-diam dalam wangi dan warna. Film ini membawa kita ke pengalaman bagaimana sebuah dunia bergeser dari satu keadaan ke keadaan lain tanpa pernah menunjukkan batas yang tegas.

Kita sedang diberi intipan kepada sebuah taman yang tertutup.

“Pernikahan”

“Sikep itu ya nikah. Perempuan dan laki-laki kalau sudah sama maunya itu yang dinamakan sikep ya itu.”

Kalimat di atas agaknya membuat saya terpaku agak lama. Jika merujuk kepada definisi dari KBBI, nikah dapat dimaknai sebagai ikatan perkawinan yang dilangsungkan sesuai dengan ketentuan hukum dan ajaran agama. Tapi “sikep” disini mungkin bukanlah tentang persoalan menjauhi zina, tetapi meminta keabsahan kepada ‘yang ilahi’ langsung tanpa persoalan birokrasi negara. Sejauh mana rupanya negara sampai menentukan dosa manusia? Apakah untuk ‘hidup’ juga membutuhkan restu dari hukum negara?

Sedulur Sikep atau Wong Sikep kerap dibahas di internet menjadi sekumpulan orang ngeyel, sak karepe dewe, dengan ajarannya yang harmonis dengan alam, tidak memiliki buku nikah dan dikenal sebagai kelompok yang menolak membayar pajak kepada pemerintah kolonial Belanda. Mereka juga lebih memilih untuk mengasingkan diri di hutan dan jauh dari peradaban manusia modern terutama sejak Samin Soerosentiko, tokoh yang mencuri pandang semua orang pada menit 06.04 dalam film Sedulur Sikep, mengenalkan ajaran Samin kepada masyarakat Blora di Jawa Tengah. Ia pula yang mempelopori penolakan terhadap sistem kerja paksa Belanda dan houtvesterijen, yakni pengelolaan hutan di bawah djawatan kehutanan Hindia Belanda yang mana adalah kedok perampasan jati Randoeblatung yang berkualitas tinggi. Pemerintah kolonial awalnya mengabaikan ajaran ini, namun seiring bertambahnya jumlah pengikut, grafiknya mulai mengkhawatirkan bagi negara. Samin sudah terbiasa keluar masuk bui karena ngeyelnya sampai akhirnya ia diasingkan ke Sawahlunto, Sumatera Barat, dan sebagai narapidana yang dipekerjakan sebagai kepala salah satu lubang tambang batubara di Ombilin. Samin menjadi salah satu contoh bentuk pengkondisian terhadap kesadaran kita tentang dikotomi pemerintahan kolonial yang selalu absolut, dan rakyat memegang konsekuensi. Namun, bak gulma yang mudah menyebar, dimanapun dia diasingkan pengikut baru selalu bertunas.

Film ini adalah bagian dari program Akumassa, Forum lenteng, di Randublatung, Kabupaten Blora di tahun 2009. Dalam rangkaian 8 film di kanal Youtube Journal Footage, proyek ini menyoroti ragam kehidupan sosio-kultural masyarakat Randublatung dan sekitarnya. Akumassa adalah program literasi media merespons situasi teknologi video hadir dengan marak dan mudah diakses semua orang. Teknifikasi pengambilan gambar video Akumassa menggunakan mata massa tanpa sutradara untuk mereduksi subjektivitas–menyerahkan perekaman pada kenyataan lokasi–sebagai kritik terhadap konglomerasi media di Indonesia serta bagaimana representasi dibingkai mengikuti kepentingan kapital. Otty Widasari bercerita tentang pengalaman dirinya ketika bertemu dengan orang-orang di sana. Di antara cerita-cerita itu, dia memperagakan, mengulurkan tangannya untuk bersalaman, sambil menyuruhku untuk bertatap mata. Menirukan gestur yang dilakukan oleh penduduk di randublatung, “Nama saya… saya orang Samin. Kamu diterima kapan pun di sini.”

Frantz Fanon dalam bukunya The Wretched of The Earth (1963) berpendapat, “By penetrating its geographical configuration and classification we shall be able to delineate the backbone on which the decolonized society is reorganized.” (58). Situasi yang dihidupi oleh masyarakat samin dapat dilihat sebagai perlawanan serta konsekuensi dari kebijakan linear yang diterapkan sejak pemerintahan kolonial. Dengan membaca bagaimana masyarakat pasca-kolonial ditata kembali, ‘komparmentalisasi’ (penyekatan) telah menjadi kesadaran yang telah berlanjut dan dirawat. Sikep hadir sebagai aksi-tanding dari watak yang terus diasuh dari kesadaran kolonial. Jika dilihat dari gestur serta ideologi yang diterapkan samin dan pengikutnya; anti kekerasan bukanlah tentang menjadi lemah lembut melainkan sebuah upaya kesadaran atas ‘akar’ kehidupan yang dijalani. Dan walaupun Fanon seolah ‘melegitimasi kekerasan’ kaum terjajah sebagai revolusi total, yang ia maksud adalah penghancuran total terhadap pengkondisian warisan kolonial yang terus berjalan di kesadaran kita.

Mungkin inilah sikep itu. Sebuah jabat tangan antar manusia dan manusia, manusia dan tanah, mengutip masyarakat Samin di dalam video Akumassa, “…kalau sudah sikep itu harus punya sikepnya”. Bahwa, manusia tidak hanya terhubung dalam kategori, melainkan seperti montase tangan para petani yang membajak tanah, melempar bundelan padi; garis horizontal antara langit dan bumi yang tertembus oleh pohon, serta dikelilingi oleh tiang sutet dan kabel.

Jarak 285 tahun sejak buku jamu-jamuan Ambon terbit adalah sebuah intipan kecil tentang bagaimana dunia hari ini masih bekerja dengan cara yang sama. Ketakutan penguasa akan ketidaktahuan dan kerakusan yang membuatnya makin buas kerap berulang dalam prosesi penguasaan hingga hari ini. Data, minyak, tradisi, terus diekstraksi. Pengawapekaan kesadaran berlangsung selama proses ekstraksi itu. Lewat dua film dalam program kuratorial ini, polemik pengetahuan terbahas lewat aksi-aksi tanding yang dibawa dalam pengalaman sinematik. Mimpi yang terkandung di dalam Secret Garden, dan ideologi Saminisme dalam Sedulur Sikep, menawarkan cara kerja yang lahir dalam upaya penolakan terhadap bagaimana negara memperluas dan mempertahankan kekuasaan.

Daftar Pustaka:

Dove, Michael Roger. Hearsay Is Not Excluded: A History Of Natural History. Yale University Press. 2024. 

Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Terj. C. Farrington, Grove Press, 1963.

“After what seemed like hours, days or maybe even seasons, Camelia and Nahla found the magical creatures. They finally saw the future of the city but it wasn’t as clear as day. This vision unsettled the two friends, and confused their senses. They realized then and there that things will never be the same again.”- The Secret Garden (2023)

There’s a story about a poison so potent it can wage war between humans, and to trees even unsettling to the affairs of state. The source of this poison remained largely unknown to those seeking to monopolize the spice trade in Malaka and throughout the eastern islands of the Dutch East Indies during the 17^th century. The soldiers would collapse once this secret poison coursed through their veins, accelerating their heartbeats until it stopped. This caused trembles exceeding the sound of the canon explosions to those who saw it. An air of anxiety spread in between the ribs and limbs of Dutch colonists at the presence of weapons they could neither grasp nor control in the same way they laid claim to land and fragrant pistils of their commodities.

Amidst anxieties regarding a poison beyond their reach, an elderly man named Rumphius chose to live in Ambon, dedicating himself to documenting the plant’s life. Even in the twilight of his age, he strove to complete his records despite being hindered by blindness; he could only listen to stories told in various languages and guide his family members as they wrote them down. Names in seven to ten languages were recorded by him; Latin, Dutch, Ambonese, languages From Ternate, Banda, Makassar, Bali, Java, as well as Arabic, Chinese, To Portuguese, and Hindustani along with hundreds of their detailed illustrations until this work was completed and set sailed to the Netherlands. However, the publication was halted in Batavia where colonial authorities deemed it a threat to the trade company. The copies of his book were posthumously published 40 years after his death; Herbarium Amboinense, The Ambonese Herbal.

Arbor Toxicaria Maccassariensis

40 years after his death, 1741, The chapter of poison tree in his book began to grow a spectral life of its own within the European imagination, becoming an emblem of strange and perilous organism in the East:

“No other plant grows nearby, leaving a conspicuously barren clearing amid the dense hills. Bones and bird feathers were strewn across the barren land. A beast with legs resembling a basilisk is said to nest among its rising buttresses. Because the beast’s breath is so venomous, it is able to kill any animals from a distance. People would wrap cloth around their body and head to protect themselves before sharp bamboo blades were stuck into the bark. Drops of lethal milk sap will flow, later boiled down into a thick brown liquid, before being applied to the tips of blowpipe darts.” (Dove 54).

Such secret knowledge, it seems, was enough to make Dutch soldiers wet themselves in fear. So much so just like the way they burned the entire groves of plantations on islands they couldn’t control. Contrary to the European image—as in Pushkin’s poem about ‘Anchar’ which turns it into a symbol of death and tyranny—Ipuh is not merely a source of poison for the people of Southeast Asia. Like any other plant, it also sustained those who lived alongside it. From food, medicine, to cloth born from his body. Food, medicines, and textiles all emerged from its body. Ipuh, antjar, or upas, and other names its poison was primarily used in hunting. In Java, this poison tree is known as ‘upas’ or ‘antjar’ which is smeared on ‘keris’ as a poisonous weapon. Yet once its many names had been gathered and its bark reached, the stories of long-range death gradually collapsed. the name Antiaris toxicaria born amongst the scientific literature, and in the name of rationality, the knowledge changes it’s owner.

“The Enclosed Garden”

In her film “The Secret Garden” (2023), Nour Ouayda presents a reverie set within a ‘new biome’ that sprouts up overnight, replacing the city’s existing state. If cosmic horror is typically depicted as a morphological mutation, this film shifts the transformation process into the realm of perception and psychosomatics—akin to maladaptive daydreaming or that state between wakefulness and dreaming where one inhabits an ambiguous reality.

The human brain recognizes events through accumulated experience. Sequences of perception and sensory stimuli enable rapid recognition, while the sedimentation of repeated encounters gradually forms into familiar patterns. Familiarity depends less upon details and precision than recollection; it is recognition without exhaustive detail.

The fictional narrative becomes a space of collision between plant biomorphology and the concrete geometry of the city. Vegetation is highlighted as an agent invading building structures and streets. Chromatic aberration, occurring within the glare of light, creates a fantastical, rainbow-like effect, the frame shakes violently, accompanied by disruptive sound textures. The sound montage shifts between the narrator’s gentle voice and the clamor of birds throughout the fairy tale’s eight-part sequence. Ouayda’s narrative style creates the impression that factuality has shifted into fiction. the field notes that Camelia and Nahla found became a moment of prognosis; that the newness that occurs also contains the past. Just as the practice of ecological observation records changes in nature to read the future, Camelia and Nahla’s efforts are actually trying to feel the wall of ambiguity between beauty and tragedy: a garden that has no way out; plants with strange morphology and behavior; an old age but appeared overnight. We are offered a point of view in which life is carried on a threshold between the ordinary everyday and the magnificence of the miraculous: between the pink petals in heaven and catastrophe on earth.

The accumulation of collective experiences of what has been experienced, passed through and owned is brought out as a pattern that works like a hunch; that transformation is a certainty and will be faced in a reality that will no longer be the same as before. At least when viewed in a territorial context, conflict and invasion have become part of the daily lives of Lebanese people. Since the civil war (1975–1990), the Israeli invasions in 1978 and 1982, the occupation of South Lebanon until 2000, the 2006 war, and recurring tensions in the border region, the Lebanese landscape has been shaped by the experience of living side by side with war.

In this context, the presence of violence threat, ruins, the sound of missiles, and even mass exodus no longer appears as an extraordinary event, but rather as a conditioning force that continually shapes the perception of space and daily life. The thought of destruction feels many times closer than the day of harvesting dates, until a decent life becomes just a dream. Yet, since “paradise” is understood as a sanctuary accessible only upon shedding one’s physical form, it is precisely escape and dreams that provide the strength to resist the conditioning imposed on our conscious minds in this world. Here, sensory stimuli are woven into a form of imagery that questions the status quo and empowers the viewer, moving beyond the mere experience of beautiful visuals.

Ouayda is sensitive in conveying what remains stiff in shockwave vibrations. We are experiencing a new life that is slowly becoming familiar and accepted as everyday life, some are infiltrating it quietly in fragrance and color. This film brings us to experience how a world shifts from one state to another without ever showing clear boundaries.

We are being given a peek into a closed garden.

“The Marriage”

“Sikep is marriage. If a woman and a man have already agreed on the same thing, that’s what is called sikep.”

I found myself lingering over this sentence for quite some time. According to the Indonesian dictionary (KBBI), nikah refers to a marital union solemnized in accordance with religious law and legal regulations. But “sikep” here is perhaps less concerned with avoiding adultery sin and more with seeking blessings directly from the divine, without the mediation of the modern state. To what extent does the state apparently determine human sin? Does being ‘alive’ also require the blessing of state law?

‘Sedulur Sikep’ or ‘Wong Sikep’ (sedulur and wong mean ‘people’, sikep refer to sikap in javanese or ‘attitude’) is often discussed on the internet as a group of ‘ngeyel’ (stubborn) people, ‘sak karepe dewe’ (living as they wanted), with their teachings that are in harmony with nature, not having a marriage certificate and are known as a group that refuses to pay taxes to the Dutch colonial government. They also chose to withdraw into forests, distancing themselves from the institutions of modern civilization, especially since Samin Soerosentiko, the character who stole everyone’s glances at minute 06.04 in the film Sedulur Sikep, introduced Samin’s teachings to the people of Blora in Central Java. Samin was also the driving force behind resistance to Dutch forced labour and the houtvesterijen—the colonial forestry administration of the Dutch East Indies, which functioned as little more than a bureaucratic guise for appropriating the valuable teak forests of Randublatung. The colonial government initially disregarded these teachings, but as the number of followers grew, the expansion graph became increasingly alarming to the state. Repeated imprisonment became part of Samin’s life. Eventually he was exiled to Sawahlunto in West Sumatra, where, as a convict, he was assigned to supervise one of the coal mining shafts at Ombilin. His story reveals the mechanisms through which colonial governance conditioned public consciousness: the colonial state occupied the position of unquestionable authority, while ordinary people were left to bear its consequences. Yet, like weeds that spread wherever they take root, new followers continued to emerge wherever Samin was sent.

This film is part of the Akumassa program by Forum Lenteng, from Randublatung, Blora Regency in 2009. In a series of 8 films on the Journal footage YouTube channel, this project highlights the variety of socio-cultural life of the Randublatung community and its surroundings. Akumassa emerged as a media literacy initiative in response to the growing accessibility of video technology. Rather than relying upon a conventional director, the project embraced what it called the mata massa—the “eyes of the masses”—to reduce authorial subjectivity by allowing the camera to remain accountable to the realities unfolding before it. In doing so, it offered a critique of media conglomeration in Indonesia and of the ways representation is routinely framed by the interests of capital. Oti told me about her experience when she met the people there. Between stories, she demonstrated by reaching her hand to shake, while telling me to make eye contact. Imitating the gestures made by residents in Randublatung, “My name is… I am Samin people. You belong anytime here.”

Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth (1963), writes, “By penetrating its geographical configuration and classification we shall be able to delineate the backbone on which the decolonized society is reorganized.” (58). The lived reality of the Samin community can be understood as both a form of resistance and the consequence of the linear governmental logic inherited from colonial rule. To examine how postcolonial society has been reorganized is to recognize that compartmentalization—the partitioning of land, people, and consciousness—has persisted as a mode of thought carefully maintained long after formal colonialism ended.

Within this framework, sikep emerges as a counter-practice to the habits cultivated by colonial consciousness. Judging from the gestures and ethical principles embraced by Samin and his followers, nonviolence should not be mistaken for passivity or gentleness. Rather, it is a conscious return to the roots of life itself. Although Fanon is often read as legitimizing literal violence, what he ultimately calls for is the total destruction of the colonial structures that continue to condition our ways of thinking long after colonial rule has officially disappeared.

Perhaps this is what sikep truly means. A handshake between one person and another; between human beings and the earth itself as the Samin community says in the Akumassa film: “…once you become sikep, you must have “sikep.” Human beings are bound together not merely through categories or identities. Rather, they are connected like the montage of farmers’ hands tilling the soil, tossing bundles of harvested rice—horizontal lines stretching between sky and earth, interrupted only by the vertical presence of trees.

The 285 years separating the publication of Herbarium Amboinense from the present offer only a brief glimpse into how the world continues to operate according to remarkably similar logics. The fear of rulers toward what they do not know, combined with their insatiable desire to possess it, repeatedly resurfaces through successive regimes of extraction. Data, oil, traditions—each continues to be mined. Alongside these processes comes the gradual numbing of perception itself.

Through the two films brought together in this curatorial programme, the politics of knowledge unfolds through gestures of refusal experienced cinematically. The dreamscape imagined in The Secret Garden and the political imagination embodied by Saminism in Sedulur Sikep each proposes modes of thinking born from a refusal of the ways states continually expand and reproduce their authority.

Perhaps this is what sikep truly means. A handshake between man and man; man and land, quoting as the Samin community says in the Akumassa film: “…once you become sikep, you must have sikep.” That human beings are not bound together merely through categories or identities. Rather, they are connected like the montage of farmers’ hands tilling the soil, tossing bundles of rice sprouts—the horizontal lines stretching between sky and earth, penetrated by the vertical presence of trees among the electric tower and cables.

The 285 years separating the publication of Herbarium Amboinense from the present offer only a brief glimpse into how the world continues to operate according to remarkably similar logics. The fear of rulers toward what they do not know, combined with their insatiable desire to possess it, repeatedly resurfaces through successive regimes of extraction. Data, oil, traditions—each continues to be mined. Alongside these processes comes the desensitization of sanity itself.

Through the two films brought together in this curatorial programme, the polemic of knowledge unfolds through gestures of refusal experienced cinematically. The dreamscape imagined in The Secret Garden and the political imagination embodied by Saminism in Sedulur Sikep each propose methods born from a refusal of the ways states continually expand and reproduce their authority.

References:

Dove, Michael Roger. Hearsay Is Not Excluded: A History Of Natural History. Yale University Press. 2024. 

Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Terj. C. Farrington, Grove Press, 1963.