“GUANG: Ariel William Orah & Bilawa Ade Respati”, 20 Seconds

GUANG, 20 Seconds, Issue 9: The Archive

I was very happy to prompt a conversation between Ariel William Orah and  Bilawa Ade Respati about their recent “concert–lecture” GUANG commissioned by Ballhaus Naunynstraße. It’s published in 20 Seconds, Issue 9: The Archive — print only, so get your copy here!

GAUNG, a “concert-lecture” devised and performed by Ariel William Orah and Bilawa Ade Respati, was commissioned by Berlin post-migrant theatre Ballhaus Naunynstrasse for its Decolonial Frequencies (2021–22) program and was recently revived in February. In it, the artists perform alongside archival texts, films, and images, notably bringing two collections of instruments and their associations to bear on each other. Gamelan borrowed from Rumah Budaya Indonesia Berlin (the House of Indonesian Cultures) are juxtaposed with numerous electronic instruments the artists have personally acquired. While gamelan has long fascinated musicians trained in European traditions, from Claude Debussy to Philip Glass, it is also a sign of Indonesian identity and culture; a courtly “instrument of power.” In recent years, Indonesian artists have made a significant impact in Europe, at times upsetting German sensibilities. GAUNG negotiates these tropes, recalling mythology, history, and national politics.

Art in Critical Condition: A Review of BAK & Jonas Staal’s ‘Climate Propagandas Congregation’, NO-NIIN

Jonas Staal, Climate Propagandas Congregation (2024), BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht. Photo: Ruben Hamelink

Over two days, Climate Propagandas Congregation brought together theorists, artists and organisers involved in struggles around the world to present on ideas raised in artist Jonas Staal’s recent book, Climate Propagandas: Stories of Extinction and Regeneration (2024). In it, Staal identifies and analyses competing climate propaganda, grouped according to their ideological attributes: “Liberal”, “Libertarian”, “Conspiracist”, “Ecofascist” and “Transformative”. Climate Propagandas was co-published by MIT Press and BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, an organisation in Utrecht that triangulates politics, activism and aesthetics across a range of practices, including visual and performing arts, theory, publishing and pedagogy. 

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Continuing Staal’s practice of staging political assemblies, Climate Propagandas Congregation occurred in BAK’s auditorium among a diorama of “ancestors”; large cut-out chimeras propped up on wooden stands. Based on paintings made by Staal, these fantastic characters featured the heads of leftist icons, including Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, and Ho Chi Minh, grafted onto the bodies of complex organisms that were dominant in the Ediacaran period (635 million to 541 million years ago). 

Read at NO–NIIN.