The politics of remembrance and commemoration is complex. One can forgive but one should not forget. In places like South Africa, East Timor and Aceh, truth and reconciliation commissions have been set up to investigate and reveal the atrocities committed by the colonizers, the complicit and the compliant. It is not just a tabling of reports and mere presentation of facts and figures, but it is important how narratives are shaped and shared. It is through storytelling that ideas are spread and kept alive.
This is where comics is a powerful medium for such a purpose – giving voice to the silenced and speaking truth to power. In 2012, a young woman was raped on a bus in Delhi, India. She died from her injuries a few days later. A comic book based by the tragic incident was produced in 2014. Priya’s Shakti makes use of augmented reality tech and is available for online reading.
https://professorlatinx.osu.edu/comics/priyas-shakti/
Closer to home, the events of the May 1998 riots in Indonesia have inspired comic artists like Mice to reflect on the aftermath of the riots on the ordinary citizens in Jakarta. Now, adding to the list is Rani P Collaborations’ Chinese Whispers, a digital comic that has its first incarnation as a performance installation in 2014. It traces lead artist, Rani Pramesti's journey from Indonesia to Australia, from citizen to diaspora.
Growing up in a privileged Chinese family in Indonesia, Rani was sent off to live in Australia when the riots happened. Her story is not uncommon. I have colleagues from Indonesia who came to study and live in Singapore after 1998 for the same reason. Some came to Singapore. Others like Rani went to Australia and she grew up safely in the comfort offered by her adopted country. But she wondered about her past, which formed the basis of her art practice. Having graduated from the University of Melbourne in 2013 with a Bachelor of Dramatic Art, Rani formed Rani P Collaborations to work on productions which explore history, memories and trauma. She mined her own family history for the world to see and reflect. In Sedih//Sunno, she shared her mom’s story as a sexually abused child. In Surat-Surat (Letters), she used her grandparents’ letters to each other to tell a love story.
For her appearance at the Singapore Writers Festival in November, she returns to her first performance installation, Chinese Whispers, whose lifespan as a performance piece has been extended to a new platform of digital comics. For Chinese Whispers, Rani collaborated with illustrator, Cindy Saja; composer, Ria Soemardjo; and web developers, Martin Harusetyanto and Gondo, to develop this new version of Chinese Whispers for the cyberspace.
I was curious about the politics of race and identity in Rani’s story and I asked her these questions.
What is the main difference (in intent, if any) between the performance installation and the digital graphic novel?
My team and I created the digital graphic novel as a way to reach more people, particularly younger generations of Indonesian people first and foremost, with this work. The intent of the work remains the same, which is to create time and space to reflect on a part of Indonesian history that is still often shrouded in ignorance. Just as the performance installation guided audiences one by one through a labyrinth, to engage in meditative reflection, so does the digital graphic novel. One of the key messages to reflect on is how "we cannot heal, what we will not face". My hope is that this question is a relevant one across many of our shared histories, although I use the May 1998 politically motivated racial and sexual violence as one 'launching pad' from which to reflect on this key message.
What is it that you hoped to achieve when you first started this project in 2014 and what has been achieved now with the digital graphic novel?
At the beginning of the research and development for Chinese Whispers, back in 2013, I wanted to find a way to tell Chinese-Indonesian stories on Australian stages. As I delved deeper into the conversations I was having with Chinese-Indonesian diaspora women in Melbourne, however, I slowly realised that what I actually wanted to talk about was May 1998. I then went back to the women I had interviewed and informed them of this shift in my intention with the work. With their consent, I focused the storytelling on my personal experiences with May 1998 and also on socio-historical sources on May 1998, including the human rights activist, Karlina Supelli and the journalist, Dewi Anggraeni.
What I hoped to achieve in 2014 continues to apply today- which is to pass on a story to the younger generations of Indonesian people (whether Chinese identifying or not), about a part of our history that needs to be remembered and a part of our history that we all need to work on learning from, in order to stop it from happening again.
What has been achieved now through the graphic novel is a contribution to a global conversation on the legacies of colonialism. It's really exciting to hear people's responses from Australia to Indonesia to the US, to France, to Italy, to Taiwan... Just to name a few responses I've received since Chinese Whispers went digital!
How has the project been received in Australia and in Indonesia? Have you encountered any cynicism?
Far from cynicism, during the premiere of the performance installation in 2014 at the Melbourne Fringe Festival (where we won Best Live Art and Innovation in Culturally Diverse Practice Awards), younger Indonesian people have come up to me to thank me, because this was a part of our story that their parents were too afraid to expand on. So for them, Chinese Whispers gave a way 'into' this disturbing part of Indonesia's history and the ways this has shaped Indonesian diaspora globally.
In 2018, we launched the Indonesian language digital graphic novel to commemorate the 20-year anniversary of May 1998. The digital graphic novel was launched by the Indonesian Director General of Culture, Dr Hilmar Farid, and moved many to tears! We were also blessed because the timing meant that our work was picked up by many media outlets. Far from cynicism, our readers continue to leave us very generous messages of forgiveness, of unity, of pledging to never forget.
Since the 2000s, there are more works that dealt with the violence against the Chinese in Indonesia, eg. The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence. And also the books of Dewi Anggraeni such as My Pain, My Country. Have things improved now? Are people more aware?
My experience of viewing The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence is that it very much focused on the widespread politically motivated violence of 1965, rather than necessarily being focused on the racially motivated violence towards Chinese-Indonesian people. Is that correct?
I think in terms of works about 1998, there has definitely been more and more. In fact I think there has been twenty years' worth of works dedicated to May 1998. But that does not mean that there is more awareness of how anti-Chinese violence is just one colonial tactic that continues to divide our nation, whenever it suits people in power to use for their own ambitions. I would love it if more people asked themselves, "who does it actually benefit when I participate in this kind of hatred" whether towards Chinese, towards West Papuans, towards LGBTIQA+ communities and so on... It's been heartening to see the key demands of the current student led protests which have called for an end to the violence in West Papua, amongst other demands, because that is a show of solidarity for another group in Indonesia that has always been "othered" since being colonized by Indonesia.
Why is the denial of racism (both ways) so strong in Indonesia?
I think it's less a "denial" of racism and more a "normalization" of racism.
Firstly, I want to say that one of the flaws of Chinese Whispers, which I can now see in hindsight is the lack of focus on how the heinous violence of May 1998 was orchestrated to happen. If you read the report of the Fact Finding Team (there's a link to this report at the conclusion of the final chapter), you'll see ample evidence of provocateurs literally being offloaded into majority Chinese areas and then provoking/ inciting violence. So, May 1998 was able to happen because there is a level of normalized "othering" by both Chinese/ non-Chinese (so-called "Pribumi" or "native") but also because the violence was deliberately stoked to explode.
Secondly, in terms of the normalization of racism from "both sides", I do think it's interesting to study the different social, economic and political roles that Chinese played throughout pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial times. For example, even before the Dutch came, the Chinese already played the role of tax collector for many kingdoms in Java and Madura. This was a role that the Dutch exploited and exacerbated during three and a half centuries of colonial era, for example by appointing Chinese Kapiteins which had more political, social and economic powers than the so-called "natives".
When social, economic and political structures are created to divide people, racism is a natural by product of these structures.
Chinese Whispers is also your personal story. Was it hard adjusting to Australia at 12 years old when you move there after the May 1998 riots? Do you consider yourself as part of the diaspora?
Yes, it was very hard. The hardest thing was coming from a very politically charged context (a literal political revolution) and then moving to a very privileged all girls' private school boarding house. Materially speaking, my class privilege has always sheltered me from material hardship and for that I am thankful.
However, the challenges came more in the form of culture shock. More and more as I accumulate years of being based in Australia, the most challenging thing is how to survive and attempt to thrive in a white supremacist society like Australia. I absolutely consider myself a part of the Indonesian, Chindo and Asian diaspora. I wouldn't have lasted this long living on Kulin Country (Melbourne) without my friends who hail proudly from First Nations and diaspora communities.
What are your feelings about Indonesia ?
I love Indonesia. It is a beautiful country with beautiful people. In terms of from my perspective as an artist, I am excited by the explosion of arts and culture (both in terms of artistic practice as well as arts infrastructure) in the past twenty years of relative democracy. I am excited by the embracing of technology by the younger generations. Jokowi recently opened the "1000 startups" conference in Jakarta and to see government ministers in conversation with the younger generations- it's evidence of real future thinking at the national level. At the same time (and this is what Chinese Whispers tries to remind us of), in order to move knowingly into our future, we must embrace the lessons of our past so that we don't repeat our past mistakes. That is my feeling and my hopes for Indonesia.
You can view Rani’s SWF programmes here.
https://www.singaporewritersfestival.com/nacswf/nacswf/author-speaker/Rani-Pramesti.html
You can read Chinese Whispers here.
https://thechinesewhispers.com/
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