Group Body Language in Performance Art, Films and Dance by the Indonesian Avant-Garde

Abstract

This chapter explores body language in some key films by the Indonesian avant-garde. Hanan argues that in the most remarkable of these Indonesian works, it is not the individual psyche (as in films by Buñuel), nor even the individual body (as in films by Maya Deren), but multiple bodies organized as a group, that is most distinctive. This is demonstrated in Gotot Prakosa's Meta-ekologi (1979), Sardono W. Kusuma's Sorceress of Dirah (1993) and Garin Nugroho's Poetry Cannot Be Buried (2000). The chapter makes use of Bourdieu's notion of habitus, a term referring to the way human beings internalize aspects of their cultures in their bodies and body language. It also deploys theoretical frameworks developed Bateson and Mead in their pioneering work of visual anthropology, Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis.