Geronimo Cristobal

Pushing against the roof of the world: ruangrupa’s prospects for documenta fifteen

October 30, 2020

documenta, Indonesia, ruangrupa

President Sukarno, the first leader of Indonesia after it became a republic in 1945, inspects his troops. (Photo by Hulton-Deutsch/Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via Getty Images)

My latest article about ruangrupa on Third Text:
http://thirdtext.org/cristobal-ruangrupa

“A concern in many texts of Indonesian mythology is the need to raise the sky. This appears in myths from elsewhere, too, but the forms they take are not as extreme as in Indonesian stories, in which heaven and Earth are so closely jammed together that even spears are knocked down in mid-flight after hitting the ceiling of the skies. Invoking the gods, who had until then always remained seated, the people called upon one of them to stand up and lift it higher.”