Description
If There’s Something Strange in Your Neighbourhood (2014) explores the gentrification of a squatter settlement built in the 70s on a graveyard alongside Yogyakarta’s main river, Kali Code. In 2013 the local mayor announced he wanted to develop this area and local residents have already started being pushed out. Due to the history of this place, tombstones are still visible in the walls of the kampung (neighbourhood) and ghost activity is abundant. For years people in the area have relied heavily on the local ghost mover to relocate the ghosts out of their houses, but these paranormal evictions are now becoming an uncanny parallel for their own evictions in the living world.
This project was first shown in Kampung Ratmakan in October 2014 as an inflatable ghost house, Rumah Hantu, with an embroidered UV glow interior that was created from drawings by the local kids of their ghost stories and the film If There’s Something Strange In Your Neighbourhood…
Read a text on the project by Susan Gibb here
Read a text for Axon Journal by Keg de Souza here
Film Duration: 31:45
Single channel HD video, sound, mirrors
Indonesian and Javanese with English subtitles
Interviewees: Pak Kuncung, Ikbal, Pak Antok, Mas Anton, Pak Remi, Budeh Kom, Mbah Endang, Ibu Toko, Ersa, Pak Agus, Sania, Mak Yem.
Translator/ community liaison: Invani Lela Herliana
Sound recordist: Lucas Abela
Original music: Pawang Hantu by Senyawa
Post sound: Timothy Dwyer
Subtitling: Invani Lela Herliana, Rully Shabara
This is an Asialink Arts Residency Project supported by Arts NSW
through KUNCI Cultural Studies Centre and by the Commonwealth through the Australia-Indonesia Institute of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Exhibitions and screenings: Lismore Regional Gallery; Alaska Projects, Sydney; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada; Slought Foundation, Philadelphia; Flux Factory, NY; Eyedrum, Atlanta, USA; Dead Ringer, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA); Boxcopy, Brisbane
64th Blake Prize, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Planning for Tomorrow, CASCA (Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia)
