Kusno’s trilogy uncovers Indonesia’s hidden histories and the lasting effects of colonialism. Each film exposes the scars of a society shaped by silenced truths. Through layered narratives, the three works explore Indonesian struggle for justice and remembrance. The films are made using a range of formats, such as 35mm, Super 8, analogue video, and AI-generated images. They feature archival material and re-enactments, blurring the lines between fiction and documentary.
In Reversal, a young man dances uncontrollably. His bodily gestures connect him to past wounds he doesn’t fully understand. The film takes him to old colonial sugar mills, where he discovers ancestral trauma hidden within his body.
Drawing from magical realism and mysticism, After Colossus speaks about a time of fear and chaos. It is set during the fall of Suharto, Indonesia’s longest-serving president and military dictator. Researchers discover secret documents about “Project Rafflesia”, a covert operation linked to political unrest. The film shows how past power structures still influence the present.
Terra Incognita is conceived as an abstract index to the trilogy. The film explores the erasure of painful memories tied to mass mobilisation during Indonesia’s regime change. It examines how those in power shape history and how we understand and remember the past.
- Introduction
- Timoteus Kusno, Reversal 2022, video, colour, sound, 22 min
- Timoteus Kusno, After Colossus 2024, video, colour, sound, 29 min
- Conversation with Timoteus Kusno and Annie Jael Kwan
- Timoteus Kusno, Terra Incognita 2022, video, colour, sound, 22 min
Timoteus Anggawan Kusno
Timoteus Anggawan Kusno is a visual artist and filmmaker whose practice unfolds through installations, drawings, and moving images. His work navigates the fluid intersections of fiction and history, fantasy and memory, while critically interrogating the coloniality of power and its enduring spectres.
Kusno’s works have been exhibited and programmed at international institutions and biennales, including the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), Fundació Joan Miró (Barcelona), the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA, Seoul), the Mumbai City Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA, Taipei), Kunstmuseum Bonn, the Centre for Fine Arts Brussels, and the Gwangju Biennale, among others. His films have premiered at international film festivals, including Berlinale, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Dok.Leipzig, and CPH:DOX, among others. Kusno lives and works between Amsterdam (Netherlands) and Yogyakarta (Indonesia).
Annie Jael Kwan
Annie Jael Kwan is an independent curator and the 2025 Brent Biennial curator. Kwan’s exhibition-making, programming, publication, and teaching practice is located at the intersection of contemporary art, cultural and pedagogical activism with an interest in archives, feminist, queer and alternative histories and knowledges, collective practice and solidarity.
Yes No Wave Music is a non-profit music label distributes sound/musical works to a broaden public as an experiment on applying free legal music both online and offline to support open-sharing culture movement. Founded in 2007 by Wok The Rock in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
This event will be BSL interpreted.
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