Citation:
Abstract:
This essay will focus on the works of Lab Laba-Laba, a film collective founded by a group of young filmmakers in Jakarta in March 2014. Occupying the decaying laboratory of the Indonesian State Production Film Center (PFN), Lab Laba-Laba salvages, develops, re-creates, re-prints, curates, and presents crates of celluloid from the state’s vaults to reveal material history of the country’s inglorious past. During the New Order’s rule (1966-1998), the authoritarian regime depended on the celluloid and its distribution control to erase the traces of brutal massacre of left wing intellectuals, filmmakers, peasants, workers and students in which the regime was founded on, and to represent itself as a legitimate ruler of the mind and heart of the people. The occupation of PFN, one of the most important nodes in the New Order’s medial system and the battles that follow will be considered in the context of Lab Laba-Laba’s interaction and fascination with the archive of authoritarianism and its rapid obsolescence.