Haunted.
Haunted (2021)
Installation view and stills.
Haunted (2021)
05:31 min
EXHIBITION
Tempory House of Home
Nieuwe Instituut
4 July 2021 - 12 May 2022
The Haunted video-installation examines how the nostalgic views on the former ‘Dutch East Indies’ create ample breeding ground for forgetfulness towards its overlooked and contested histories and how they have produced the colonial spectres of Dutch History. This installation was the introduction to the fourth iteration of the And Other Spectres research project titled Colonial Spectres which Janilda Bartolomeu developed. This fourth iteration aimed to develop a reading of ‘Colonial Spectres’ as embodied presences and as memories intertwined within bodies, material spaces and objects both in Indonesia and The Netherlands.
The Haunted video installation is a multi-dimensional space exhibiting an essayistic film and objects speculated to be haunted. The video essay focusses on how the nostalgic views on the former ‘Dutch East Indies’, fosters the breeding ground for forgetfulness towards its overlooked and contested histories and how this has produced various colonial spectres of Dutch History. Who are these spectres? How are they able to cut through the dogged nostalgic perspectives towards colonial histories? How are their histories heard? The Haunted house of objects provides the experience of converging spaces and temporalities which reflects on the condition of post-colonialism, as well as the colonial spectres’ abilities to move across these dimensions, and therefore disrupting them. Whereas the function of colonialism seems to be the act of confining matters (bodies, materials, objects) into their rightful places, the objects and video essay disrupt this notion by breeching through or breaking out.