The article explores ruination and human geography by focusing on the vast rubble hill of Teufelsberg (Devils Mountain). Located in Berlin's outer district of Wilmersdorf, Teufelsberg was constructed ...in the aftermath of World War II from the remnants of buildings destroyed during the air war on the city. This article focuses on the
Trümmerfrauen
('Rubble Women'), children and men who 'shifted' the rubble of Berlin's destroyed urbanity to its burial at Teufelsberg. Noticing the different ways in which Teufelsberg rewrites the city yet appears like any other hill prompts a question: what opportunities would arise in attempting to rediscover the buried city of Berlin? To answer this question is to first recognize that Teufelsberg and present day Berlin share a landscape bound by geography; the unearthing of one leads to the unearthing of the other. To uncover this partnership between the labour of the
Trümmerfrauen
, the rubble and burial, presupposes a rethinking of the human and material forms that lie buried at Teufelsberg.
Using a speculative logic, the article draws on various concepts of ruination from Richard Pogue Harrison's
humic
foundation in burial practices, Jacques Derrida's self-ruining in self-portraiture painting, Albert Speer's theory of ruins and W.G. Sebald's self-anaesthesia in order to open up new possibilities of thinking around Berlin and ruination post World War II. References are made throughout the article to a selection of black and white photographs drawn from the Berlin Landesarchiv (City Archive). The photographs are important as they evidence Berlin's destruction in the immediate aftermath of the war and graphically depict the
Trümmerfrauen
, children and men who worked in the ruins of their city. By referencing these images, the aim is to re-establish Teufelsberg's physical yet hidden presence of ruination and burial as an extension of the present day city of Berlin.
When performance vacated the interior of the theatre to work with site - factory, shop, square, street, landscape - it not only shifted the practice of scenography, it left us to ask the following: ...do we construct the experiencing of scenography and performance through the conventions of the theatre that is performer/spectator, seen/unseen, sensed/felt, light/darkness, stasis/movement, silence/sound and imagined/real? Exploring the themes scenography and architecture, the article will propose that scenography, the body and spectacle become implicated through the spatial appearances of site-specific performance.
To position scenography within site-specific performance will not be based on making more dualities as above or more widely, a debate of formal space (theatre) versus informal space (site-specific), rather it will be about 'positioning' and 'situating' scenography. Positioning, it will be argued, is the resistance to fixity and permanence, conjuring scenography in a constant state of flux. Situating will be argued as the spatial exchange with spectator and performer through site and place. It can be said that the interior architecture of the theatre constructs a societal 'self-fascination' or a constructed self-scenography: re-presenting and mirroring society in and as performance. Theatre sets in motion an outmoded historical 'visuality', something Hal Foster informs us is '...a social construct for an organized collective vision' (1998). The question then arises: is the experiencing of site-specific performance a shift away from this outmoded historical 'visuality' or just a repositioning of theatrical scenography into outer-theatre spaces?
My practice as scenographer and dramaturge in site-specific performance is situated within the space, context and history of site. Formulated through spatial dynamics into spatial propositions to reflect the choreographic idea, my work embraces the scenography of site and the vagrancy of occupation through the performing body.
It is a commonplace among historians that people are fundamentally formed by the generation to which they belong. In two interviews, Sergeant-Major Nasi Bungkus talks about the Revolution and his ...part in it.
Anderson profiles Indonesian nationalist leader Bung Karno. His family, educational, and political background are presented, including his staunch resistance to the idea of a Guided Democracy. The ...methods adopted by Karno to overcome several post-independence difficulties are also discussed.
Petrus Dadi Ratu Anderson, Benedict R. O'G.
Indonesia (Ithaca),
10/2000, Letnik:
70, Številka:
70
Journal Article
Recenzirano
When Abdul Latief was brought before a special military court on charges of subversion, he turned his defense plea into a biting attack on the New Order. Latief concluded that it was Suharto who ...planned and executed the overthrow of Sukarno.
A reconsideration of Anton Mussert, party leader of the Dutch Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging (NSB, National-Socialist Movement), who wrote and spoke regarding the significance of the Indies to the ...Netherlands before and during World War II. An Indies branch of the NSB was established in 1930, and its attempts to shape a program and message illustrate the dilemmas encountered by a fascist party in a colonial outpost. The colonial authorities in the Indies sought to control the potentially inflammatory rhetoric of the fascists, and Mussert dissuaded NSB members in the Indies from criticizing and challenging those same authorities. Mussert wanted to protect and sustain the Indies branch of the NSB in large part because funds collected from it helped support his efforts in Holland. As the war approached, the party splintered, divided by disagreements over the role and status of Indo (mixed-blood) members of the Indies NSB, who constituted 75 percent of the membership. Anti-semitism and intolerance for “race-mixing” increased. “In the end, the Indies NSB was doomed to fall on its own sword.”
Dan massa Sastro2 ini bergegas2 pindah menjadi pegawainya Balatentara Dai Nippon. Tetapi kalau ada jawaban, sering nongol nama2 orang keturunan Tionghoa: Yap Thiam Hing, advokat along yang tak ...terbeli dan tak bisa dibikin takut; Dede Oetomo, yang berani buka diri sebagai seorang homosex, dan sekaligus berusaha keras untuk melawan malapetaka AIDS dan membantu sesama gay dan banci, tidak peduli pribumi atawa keturunan Tionghoa; Arief Budiman, yang sejak awal tahun 70-an menyusul jejak adiknya Soe Hoe Gie almarhum sebagai pengritik terbuka terhadap politik dan immoralitasnya "Pak" Harto; atau Riantiarno, yang tanpa genitnya Rendra yang menjemukan itu, berusaha membangun teater borjuis yang orisinil dan tajam dikota metropolitan. Anderson is the Aaron L. Binenkorb Professor of International Studies, Government, and Asian Studies at Cornell University, New York.
A translation of short stories by the well-known Indonesian author, Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Written in the 1950s, these stories are intensely regional in flavor and modern in approach. This collection ...includes such works as Stranded Fish, Creatures Behind Houses, and the great Ketjapi.
The author of this article argues that the paradox of postcolonial states pursuing internal and external policies remarkably similar to those of their colonial predecessors, despite the passage from ...colonialism to independence, is best resolved by focusing on the distinct, long-standing, institutional interests of the state-qua-state. It is these interests that make explicable the key policies of Suharto's New Order toward economic development, the Chinese minority, participatory organizations, and internal and external security. The author analyzes the nature and growth of the Dutch colonial state, its decline and near-collapse between 1942 (Japanese invasion) and 1965 (downfall of Sukarno's Guided Democracy), and its revival under ex-colonial sergeant Suharto.
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