Tirai
by Bilawa Ade Respati
2024
Tirai (Curtain) is a web visual novel and sound installation, conceived as a digital memorial site. The reader will follow fragments of three stories that are set against the backdrop of the Japanese Occupation in Indonesia (1942-1945): a Japanese student pilot that is ordered to do a suicide mission, a Dutch woman who sings in a choir inside a concentration camp, and an Indonesian poet that is torn between his artistic expression and the hardship of a wartime. What will we reveal as we follow their stories behind the “curtain” of a historical stage, performing in one period of humanity’s tragic play?
Bilawa Ade Respati
Tansy Xiao is an artist, curator and writer based in New York. Xiao creates theatrical installations with non-linear narratives that often extend beyond the fourth wall. Her work explores the immense power and inherent inadequacy of language through the assemblage of stochastic audio and recontextualized objects. She finds solace in the unknown, ludicrousness in the authorities, and absurdity in the geopolitical demarcations that separate and differentiate people.
