Tano Toba Saga – “Power And Other Things: Indonesia And Art (1835-Now)” Europalia Art Festival Indonesia

An art exhibition design project exploring North Sumatra’s long colonial history through the narrative of conflict between Sisingamangaraja XII and Hans Christoffel during the Tapanoeli War.

(2017)

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“The Tano Toba Saga” installation is the second art exhibition that was designed for the Lifepatch project’s exhibition series, and became part of the “Power And Other Things: Indonesia & Art (1835 – Now)” under the framework of Europalia Art Festival Indonesia in Palais des Beaux-Arts (BOZAR) – Brussels, from 18 October 2017 until 21 January 2018, curated by Riksa Afiaty and Charles Esche. Meanwhile, the First project is an exhibition titled “IN SITU: Lifepatch – The Tale Of Tiger And Lion” in Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen (M HKA) from 16 September 2017 until 7 January 2018, curated by Nav Haq and Alia Swastika. Both are part of an exhibition series of installations that depict the stories of two key figures and their relationships within a small fragment of the long history of North Sumatra during the colonial era: the Swiss-Dutch soldier Hans Christoffel and the last king of the Toba people, Sisingamangaraja XII. If the Tale of Tiger and Lion Exhibition focused on introducing the initial encounters between the two figures, the Tano Toba Saga Exhibition expands the inquiry into the broader mechanisms of colonial power and its systemic impact on the Toba landscape.

Both installation projects began with an opportunity for Lifepatch to conduct brief research on various well-preserved Indonesian historical artefacts at the Museum Aan de Stroom (MAS) in Antwerp. It possesses thousands of collections from the Nederlands Indisch colonisation era, stretching out from weapons, jewellery, heirlooms, flags, documents, old photos, and many more items were granted from Hans Christoffel’s private collection. Since too many to show, some of them curated to present Sisingamangaraja XII and the Toba people’s resistance towards the Dutch colonisation in North Sumatra, along with the narration about Hans Christoffel, who successfully ended the resistance during his services as a Koninklijk Nederlands Indisch Leger (KNIL) officer. At the same time, we also got an opportunity to learn about both of the two key figures from the artefacts collection at Bronbeek Museum in Arnhem, which is the Koninklijk Nederlands Indisch Leger (KNIL) main archive to keep their histories during the East Indies colonisation era.

Witnessing thousands of artefacts, including irreplaceable historical heirlooms that are directly related to the Sisingamangaraja XII and Toba People’s resistance, being stored and valued to construct or verify historical narrations far from their origins, brought Lifepatch to conduct further research in various places in North Sumatra, such as Medan, Balige, Bakkara, Parlilitan, Pangururan, and many more places. During the exploration, we realised that even though people in North Sumatra didn’t possess their rightful historical heirlooms and they were being oppressed culturally and politically by the colonial government, they still believed and preserved their histories through generations. Slightly different from the structure of Western knowledge in that history tends to be conveyed in a linear fashion and facts are generally collected based on written sources and the existence of historical objects as physical proof, the history and knowledge in Indonesia are produced and delivered orally and culturally through storytelling, theatre, song or even dance. Sifting through those scattered materials in North Sumatra, we begin to gather fragments of stories based on the Toba people’s side of view about Sisingamangaraja XII, the people’s resistance against the Dutch, Hans Christoffel, the connection between colonialism and evangelism, and the myths that accompanied the Tapanoeli war stories.

Working with these artefacts, materials, and narratives, there are tendencies for the histories often depicted and articulated into several versions that are motivated by the perspective of ideology, politics, and even personal identity. It appears that the “truth” is slightly different between the conflict “winners” version and the Toba people’s version. However, instead of intending to summarise the long history of colonialism in North Sumatra and comparing each version to find the most proper version, Lifepatch presents the scattered historical fragments and their contrasting attributes to bring up the complexity of history. Furthermore, driven by its identity as a collective-based community with collaboration between its interdisciplinary members as the core of their work, The Tano Toba Saga is presented by incorporating historical artwork installations and archival material, together with a major narration linking all the exhibits. As part of Lifepatch, I was tasked with designing an exhibition layout that served as a physical manifestation of the narrative to emphasise the Tano Toba Saga’s major narratives. Besides that, I also contribute to the exhibition by presenting Hans Christoffel’s ghostly memories through “The Lucid Memories” Installation.

Drowning in the stream of history, I’ve been struggling to understand its complexity, which always seems to spin and confuse me, like a maze or a labyrinth. Isn’t just motivated by its contradiction because of the “perspective of view”, the North Sumatra conflict is also a result of connectivity or causality between two or more linear progression lines that each line has its own causality sequence, which is “this happened, and then that happened; that happened because this happened first”. In this case, both Hans Christoffel and Sisingamangaraja XII, as the two key figures, have their own histories with distinct attributes, such as cultural backgrounds, political interests, and so on. Sisingamangaraja XII is the King and religious leader of the Toba People who lived in North Sumatra. On the opposite, Hans Christoffel is a soldier who serves under the Koninklijk Nederlandsch-Indische Leger (Netherlands Royal Army) or KNIL. It was a military force that was formed to protect the Dutch interests when expanding their colony’s territories and maintaining their colonial rule in the Dutch East Indies. However, driven by the Dutch Kingdom policies around the early 19th century to bring a conducive atmosphere for economic interest in the East Indische archipelago as their colonisation region through unification and pacification, Hans Christoffel, as part of the KNIL, had to collide with the Toba people’s resistance led by Sisingamangaraja XII in a long-term war, so-called the Tapanoeli War. It’s a conflict that occurred for up to 29 years and ended after the death of Sisingamangaraja during his guerrilla resistance.

Talking about the key figures and their connections, there seems to be a tendency that Causality, as an orderly sequence of the “cause and effect” within a linear progression line plays a vital role in the Toba Saga exhibition layout design. Spatially, each key figure’s narration is described as like a water stream that flows in opposite directions from a different entry point. The first stream focused on the narrations of the Toba people before the Dutch arrival and afterwards. The opposites stream presents the Hans Christoffel narrations as the Dutch and their policies of colonisation representation. Flows through the exhibition room edges, both of the narration streams collide and create swirling flows at the centre that are similar to the phenomenon of whirlpools, as a conflict analogy. The whirlpool that continuously flows in a circular direction seems to bring an effect that both the cause and effect become overlapping, each other and blur the details of its individual narrative differences, making it easy to interpret or define differently from various perspectives.

Looking back on the entire research, it revealed that the Tapanoeli war and its complex attributes have a bigger contribution to work as an ambient background and affect the whole process. Its complexity becomes the main reason for questioning the truth and brings us to learn every past narration before the conflict happens, and what things might be causing it. At the same time, it also drove our thoughts when trying to understand how the conflict plays its part either spiritually or physically, forming the North Sumatra people’s way of life in the present. Through this, it reveals the idea that the Tapanoeli war has deeper values rather than only being placed as physical historical archives to present stories about the great historical conflict in North Sumatra during the colonial era. It has an ability or functions as a ghostly imagining that is able to transcend time and space when describing the North Sumatra people’s identity and their way of talking about the past, present, and even the future.

Interested in representing the conflict unseen values as the ghostly imagining, I wanted to use the main vortex spatial design to carry the symbolism. The circular wall, with the whirlpool accentuation engineered with a glass wall on the part that is directly facing the entrance, in order to bring the conflict vortex, could be visually accessible from the entry door. The idea is to introduce the viewer to one of many conflicts during the colonial era in North Sumatra as the exhibition’s main issues and ignite their curiosity about it since they enter the exhibition room. Since it can’t be physically accessed directly, the viewer is forced to walk into the flow of the narration stream and learn the historical narration from a particular perspective before finally reaching the inner vortex. Furthermore, when walking out of the vortex through the opposite stream, the viewer will get a chance to learn the other perspective as a comparison to the former knowledge they already earn or have memorised.

Tano Toba Saga Exhibition

Produced as part of “Power And Other Things: Indonesia & Art (1835 – Now)” Europalia Art Festival Indonesia.
Exhibited at the Palais des Beaux-Arts (BOZAR) of Brussels, Belgium.

Reference Site:
* Details of “Power And Other Things: Indonesia & Art (1835 – Now)” Europalia Art Festival Indonesia on Europalia Art Festival official website
* Details of Tano Toba Saga Exhibition on Metropolism Magazine Online Feature official website.
* Details of Tano Toba Saga Exhibition on Lifepatch official website.

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