Memories of Empire: Amateur Film and Displacement in Péter Forgács's Looming Fire

Abstract

Through the analysis of the installation Looming Fire – Stories From the Netherlands East Indies (Péter Forgács, 2013), this article investigates the new meanings mobilized by the reappropriation of amateur films produced in the heyday of the colonial exploitation of the Dutch East Indies, territory which today constitutes Indonesia. As these private records assume new territories of history and memory, we propose to study their various displacements. Along with films which reappropriate official images from the Dutch colonies such as Mother Dao, the Turtle-like (Vicent Monnikendam, 1995) and Facing Forward (Fiona Tan, 1999), we intend to analyse how the ethical and aesthetic procedures employed by the artists question both the colonialist logic and gaze.