'Electronic City': Quirky love story

Ary Hermawan ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Sat, 11/22/2008 12:58 PM  |  Arts & Design

Tom (played by Kemal Ferdiyansyah) struggles to find his way back to Joy, his girlfriend in Electronic City, a satirical play on globalization and the technological age written by German playwright Falk Richter. (JP/Ricky Yudhistira) 

Tom is dismayed and confused. He always has the feeling of arriving, but never leaving. He travels a lot but does not feel like he's moving anywhere. He thinks he was already there in that building before, though he is also convinced he was never there.

"My brain recognizes everything even when I know, no, I was never here before, there's no way I can recognize this, but the rooms always look exactly alike, the rooms say: *Welcome home'. But Goddamn it, this is not my home!" he cries aloud.

He runs erratically before finally falling to the floor. He would not be that confused, he thought, if only he had brought his cell phone.

Tom, a typical mobile businessman, is the protagonist in the play Electronic City by German playwright Falk Richter.

It was performed Thursday by Bandung-based Mainteater troupes in collaboration with filmmakers from Kineruku at Taman Ismail Marzuki arts center's Graha Bhakti Budaya hall.

Directed by Wawan Sofwan, the multimedia play that combines theatrical acts, filmic backgrounds and other digitized media wittily reflects the runaway world we live in today.

It is a world where globalization has made everything look similar everywhere -- from Berlin to Jakarta.

Hotel rooms always boast similar architectural designs, similar wallpapers, similar furniture, and even similar reproduced impressionistic paintings, Wawan said.

Shopping outlets in every airport now look alike and sell the same stuff you never need, he added.

Electronic City, also known as EC, depicts the way globalization -- the spread of multinational corporations and the technological compression of time and space -- has violently disrupted our mode of living.

An outright critic of globalization and neo-liberalism, Richter wrote the play to assault the world wide web of capitalism and human beings' hyper-dependence on communication technology.

It is Richter's second play performed by Mainteater following God is a DJ, which was also directed by Wawan Sofwan six years ago.

EC is the first part of the Das System tetralogy written by the playwright -- an outspoken critic of U.S. policies and media -- as a response to the 9/11 tragedy. The other three parts are Unter Eis, Hotel Palestine and Amok.

The play has only two identified characters: Tom and Joy, who were superbly played by Kemal Ferdiansyah and Atin Rustini.

"The others are people with no identity. They are nothing but a collection of incomprehensible voices, monologues, comments, inner thoughts, reflections and narration," Wawan said.

The story begins with Tom, who is suddenly lost in Electronic City without his cell phone, organizer and laptop. He cannot recognize the city in which he is nor can he recall from which city he comes from and to which city he is going to.

He is always in a rush without knowing the reasons why, always spitting dirty words over and over again to ease his anger for failing to recall the numbers he is obliged to recall -- all stored in the gadgets.

Tom has to dive in a "sea of numbers" to pass his days. He has to recall phone numbers, pin numbers, meeting dates, flight schedules, etc.

Meanwhile, Joy is a temporary worker in an airport lounge who finds her infrared barcode scanner broken while dealing with grouchy businessmen who keeps yelling at her.

Tom and Joy are lovers but they are too preoccupied with their Sisyphusian tasks to learn about one another more deeply.

Apart from its heavy philosophical content, the play tells the usual boy-meets-girl story, but in a very quirky way.

The two meet at an airport security check point. Joy is late and has to shove her way through the crowd to stand in front of Tom.

He pushes her and they quarrel only to be arrested by security officers, who detain them in a glass cube.

There they chat, have sex and fall in love. The officers are watching but the travelers are unsure whether the obscene spectacle is just a promotional gimmick, a recorded porn movie or the shooting of a porn movie about sex in public places.

It is hard to determine the real and artificial in the play, which is carried in three dramatic realities: on-stage, off-stage and on-screen.

The play narrates that Tom and Joy are only actors in a film, or perhaps a reality show -- this was deliberately left unclear.

"This actually has become a common symptom of today's people. They always feel like they are listening to unknown voices who tell them what to do," Wawan said.

The people who played the directors sat among the audience. At times they were fully detached from the play, but at other times they were absurdly involved in it.

A multimedia performance, EC is filled with mind-boggling hyperrealistic scenes.

Despite the shabby curtain screen, video artists from Kineruku were able to produce the artistic hyperreality of Tom's world -- the endless hallways, the bland hotel rooms, the mind-numbing television scenes.

With such limited time and technical facilities, Mainteater and Kineruku managed to bring to stage -- and also off-stage -- an entertaining and fantastic hybrid art show that reminds us of the dangers of the technological and globalized world.

It is probably true that Richter's depiction of technology is too depressing, pessimistic and dystopic, but, alas, we never know -- perhaps such is the way we live today.

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