Unruly artivism and the participatory documentary ecology of The Act of Killing

Abstract

This paper studies The Act of Killing as an unruly art activist - artivist - intervention in the contemporary aftermath of the 1965 military coup and genocide in Indonesia. The Act of Killing notoriously films Anwar Congo and his death squad friends reenacting their killings as scenes from Hollywood film genres. The film confronts an ethical dilemma between commemorating the victims and telling the story of the genocide, and situates this dilemma in a complex participatory 'documentary ecosystem'. The paper argues that the genocide emerges as 'difficult heritage' in the merging of the reenactments, the killers' attempts to remain victors and the participatory documentary ecosystem. The reenactments generate affective conflicts, in which the killers become troubled indexes of themselves. In the reenactments, the rhythms of the killers' past are confronted with rhythms of the participatory documentary ecology of, what Lefebvre refers to as, presence. Ultimately, it is argued that the artivist strategy of The Act of Killing emerges in the assemblage of multiple participants and multiple affective rhythms that calls for as a reinvention of a 'proto-empathic identification' with the unrepresentable victims.