During the eighties there was a television serial called ‘TIME TUNNEL’, in which the hero was thrown about from one age to another. He appeared in the past or in the future in just a blink of an eye. In addition he was powerless to get himself to an expected or desired time, an ideal time when everything is perfect. The time leaps often occured as his way out of a threatening time or situation. In this way, he was escaping his helplessness to face the threat of a situation at hand. In this case, the hero was seen as having an existence alien to the contemporary discourses of wherever he might appear. His sudden insertions into a particular reality were unexplainable. How did he react to this and view his peculiar situation? He, as an individual who manifests ‘the present’, is also a synthesis of a system of past and present and the history of its relations. He has been shaped, framed with the present views in which the present itself was a construction of the past. I’m not sure if he could completely free his mind to the point of zero so he could easily accept the unfamiliar reality spread before him. What it means is that both the hero and the reality of the different time were confined within their own mental construction parted by the time distance. Who constructed it all? I don’t try to explain the definition of ‘history’ or ‘civilization’; what I am trying to do here is to see an individual within a relations system that is inseparable from the problem of identity.

In a relations system, an individual could be both in a subject (controlling) and an object (controlled) position. I think that an individual in the beginning was a being submitting to the power outside himself, the enforcing power in the form of thoughts, dogma, and the awareness of his own limitation. He became vulnerable to being intrusion, attack, and subjection by the power. From this point of view, the individual is placed as an object, even though actually he can be read as a subject placed by the discourse.

But indeed in this border the individual gets is in what can be called an existential experience. The individual who used to be a ‘being’ object is transformed into a ‘present’ subject. Eventually he then tries to reflect and give the system of relations a new, critical meaning. The matter of reality, identity and their meanings are thus shifted to a relative position: an ‘exchanging’ position that reflects a democratic attitude, as well as ‘conquering’ each other, or perhaps each one is like the ‘Turn Left, May Proceed’....

ARIF YUDI (AY)
His close relationship with the theater world can be traced back to his high school days. This has become a dominant backdrop for his various activities. In many occasions he even perceived things happened in his daily life as theatrical happenings. Consequently he reads his relation with anything outside himself as a theatrical discourse. Thus this system of relations can be broken down into ‘happenings’ (in a sense that there’s characterization), ‘showmanship’, ‘directorship’, and other ‘theatrical elements’. Through this point of view, AY’s system of relations is very complicated. He, the conscious subject, may pre-arrange anything caught into his system of relations. Everything may flexibly and quickly trade places: actor turned into director, turned into property, turned into happening, turned into audience, turned into actor, and so on. I call the complexity of AY’s system of relations ‘savoring the theater’. When he plays with his camera (he calls it a picture-taker) his ‘savoring the theater’ is still prominent. He found his activity of taking pictures not as a subject-object relation but as an independent subject-subject relation between AY as the camera operator - ideas – the camera – the target – the picture (the result) and the picture receptor. All of which has its own ‘live’ independence. Even when he absorbs the entire relations within the arranged elements, he already perceives it as another ‘savoring the theater’. It is multiple layers like an onionskin: relative and existential! Chances are, this kind of complexity that broings him to a level of absurdity that even he finds it hard to define. As a subject, he desires to harbor his belief, which for some unknown reasons is hard to do. Yes, of course it is because he still believes in ‘something’. Face to face with his theater, he feels like a little boy who is spelling ‘dead letters’ (consonants). The work titled "Wait, I am spelling the ‘dead letters’ (consonants)" reflects his desire to try to understand and to harbor his belief in "the theater world" he invented. It is the "acting to acting" struggle, for both the actor and the director. In the making of this work, the camera was set to standby mode with some automatic functions. Then AY acted to respond to an album. AY let the camera as an independent entity do the work in taking the pictures. The photo album which is also independent is read by AY who is independent as well. He said that the album was not a lifeless object! Photographs are not lifeless objects either! He is worried by the whole "theater happenings" in the album because they fill him with memories. Hope, anxiety, despair, vengeance, surrender, and dreams all are fused, affecting his reading on it. It is simultaneous in a momentum that is grasping the past, the present and the future in his sincere savoring of the theater. Perhaps now he is sharing his savoring of the theater with you, or perhaps he is giving you a world, or perhaps he is claiming you to be an onion. And Arif Yudi is in the audience’s position, or even, the audience of the audience.

AMING D. RACHMAN
He has been familiar with the video camera for three years. For him, a video camera is a documenting tool. He considers video more powerful than photography in the sense that it can capture movement and its duration through time to enable a more effective presentation of the space and time concept. As a documentor he is aware of maintaining an objective position in covering events. However, when his finger touches the ‘on’ button of the camera, he realizes his difficulty to do so. Every decision made to execute an object for the monitor is, in the end, a representation of thoughts and ideas of the subject, the cameraman. He is at the moment starting to understand the meaning of fact and reality. "Siukan yang menjadi" is a compilation of art event documentation files. He regards this work just as any other ordinary taks he performs daily for his living. He allowed the fragments of events to ‘just be’ and then let them turn into something that could mean anything. Even the words "Siukan yang menjadi" were taken from a piece of newspaper, without any prior planning to elaborate the meaning. He believes that the question of meaning is indeed a work of man to identify something. Through his works like this one, he seems to open a chance for the audience to give meaning to the reality they are facing. "There’s no fact, only intepretation!"

DIYANTO
As a painter, Diyanto has been actively involved with the theater world since 1987. Worth noted is his joining the ‘Teater SAE’ in Jakarta in the 1993, which has deeply affected his aesthetics and artistic vocabulary. The influence was not derived merely from his role as an actor and artistic director, but prominently from the concept of theater of Teater SAE to see theater as a place to ‘play’ with various aesthetic possibilities. The elements of literature, visual and so on were taken not as supporting elements for a play as in conventional theaters, but as an equal element that may be exposed as a play of expression. This view has shaped his basis of reproduction to the present. Diyanto still has faith in the initial ideas. However, in the following process of his creation he couldn’t avoid the rubs with many experience, events, things and text (language) around him as the life and the work forces. This is clearly shown in his previous solo exhibition titled "Put Not" (1994) where text (language) has influenced the basis of reproduction of Diyanto whereas his older works were faithful to the convention of painting. I consider languange as the basis of reproduction of Diyanto as an important point since ideas were naturally perceived first through it. In "Chest Reading", text (sentence) is not visually appear. However, its presence could be traced through certain key words "stored" within visual images, that are: human being, chest, hanger, and to hang, black-white, and washing. "Chest Reading" consists of 6 canvas panels. In front of each canvas there is hanged a human figure that is opening his chest so anyone could see the interior. Diyanto shown his painting gesture by ‘coloring’ the figure. As if denying it, he then washed the colors on the figure away while the canvas is blocked with black-white instead of being painted as usually a painting is. What is arresting from his visualization is the act of opening the chest. It implies a desire to reveal to scrutinize what is inside the chest. What is it? Anatomically there’s an organism called heart. Ideologically, this is where intention, desire, ego and conscience that control human behavior kept. Then why this is this chest should be scrutinized and read? To read means to build an understanding and to recognize ourselves. Further more, this self-understanding will evoke a critical awareness of the self’s existence among other selves. Placing one self hanged on the hook could be a wise way to measure your needs and desire, match it to your capability. The word cukup, mahi, sacukupe (enough, sufficient) is an ideal value for the subject’s balance in placing himself. This means that the subject himself who would decide what is ‘enough’ for himself relatively. Here, the self-authority and the self-independence are appeared. The washing indicates contrasting meanings. Washing implies both cleanliness and dirtiness. The dirt is then washed away. At the beginning, the human figures in this work were painted and colored in the name of aesthetics or whatever. This is a humane desire for a value. On the contrary, it takes some dirt to make washing necessary, doesn’t it? Yes, human being is a place where those wars of value are forever continued.

MARINTAN SIRAIT
There is an inseparable connection between the work "A Moment Without Explanation" and its predecessors, especially "Sound of Body" (a collaborative work), "Building A Home", and "We are building a home" (a collaborative performance). In the previous three works Marintan used her body and movements (as well as other elements) as her language of expression. The exploration of the body –as a home for the ‘I’, has brought her to a critical awareness of the relationship between the subject (I) and the outside world. In "A Moment Without Explanation", the body is mediated through a white shirt with an image of a face. The mediated body could be that of anyone who has experienced an event together. When the event gains momentum, the rational part of the mind is usually searches for an explanation, identifying, and arguing in its effort to comprehend (to seize) the momentum. This attitude is substantially an act of seizing the objects and events by the subject. But when the momentum happens all at once with the entire matters, then the whole matter is equal to each other.
Borderline,
without explanation,
without side, without defense
without message. An emergency idea,
an emergency call from within the body,
that blend with the matters, each brings its own urgency.
A moment in the area of resistance.
(Marintan’s statement)

RUDI SETIADARMA (UDEY)
Udey seems to find the authority of a subject in a room called Lavatory. Lavatory is seen not for its function in daily life, but more as a place where the authority in a relationship between subject and object is unable to dominate anymore. He even calls it a room of the conspiracy of thoughts. In there the individual is the king of him. "Lavatory is a very private room, even the public ones. Lavatory is a ‘break’ for anyone gets into it, it produces a new man through the next phase." (Udey’s statement) But who is the real king of himself?

Translated by Lie Fhung - Bandung, September 1998