Art people understandably categorize science fiction as kitsch, but despite their flashy presence — with multimedia gizmos and all — there is nothing common about the art installations on display at the National Gallery in Central Jakarta.

After its debut last year with “Sandbox”, which was about games, the international festival on new media art returned with Instrumenta #2 entitled “Machine/Magic” to bring visitors to a parallel world of reality — one that may not make any sense today but could imminently, or already does in real life in a way that can best be described as science fiction.

The works of 28 artists, 21 of whom are Indonesians and most of whom are young people, removed the borders between art, science, technology and cultural values.

Instrumenta artistic director and curator Agung Hujatnikajennong said the festival aimed to show the public both the inherent and imaginary intersections between art media and science fiction, either as a concept or in its practical form, as an affirmation of science and technology or a criticism of them.

“As they raise questions on the relations between science and technology and cultural values, science fiction art caters to human desire to go beyond the mundane world and normalcy and use imagination to go to a world of magic filled with novelty and charm, as well as vision,” he said.

A multilegged giant robot controlled by a baby genius (which is actually a toy) named X-Spider Punx greets visitors at the entrance of Building A of the gallery.

The robot was created by Surabaya-based artist Dwiky KA using a description of one such in the 1972 science fiction novel Getaran (Vibration) written by Djokolelono, a forerunner of the genre in Indonesia.

Multifaceted: A unique symbiotic system between water fern and bacteria, which is known as Azolla-Anabaena azollae, is linked to the presence of the mythical goddess of fertility, Dewi Sri, in this work.

In the lobby, there is a wooden machine that Yogyakarta-based artist Rudi Hendriatno put together using joints that only work when several people wind separate handles at the same time and a hanging bridge by Jakartan Rianti Gautama that embraces the concept of time and space of a time machine by interactively changing its shape to follow the movement of a person passing over it.

The bridge brings visitors to the darkened exhibition area that hosts every imaginable art creation from a video installation by Hong Kong-based artist Vvzela Kook entitled Gods and Pilgrims that was inspired by a famous TV series called American Gods, which was based on Neil Gaiman’s novel, to an experimental mini-lab to find today’s Dewi Sri — the mythical goddess of soil fertility.

Next was the Rate 18+ area, as it was called by the team of curators — Agung, Bayu Genia Krishbie, Bob Edrian Triadi and Gesyada AN Siregar — as the art installations on display there require broader minds to compute their ideas.

In this area there is a video installation by Japanese artist Hayashi Chiho showing the sensual relations between a woman and a cyborg by the name of Mr. President and a video of Australian artist Stelarc who transplanted an ear into his arm to see if it would still function in its new location.

The works depict the magical realm of technology in the sense that instead of being an instrument of humans it had transformed into a force that controlled people’s bodies and consciousness.

In another part of the area, Benny Wicaksono from Surabaya shows how “Big Brother” surveillance works its way deep into people’s daily lives as his criticism of technological advancement, while Bandung-based duo Rega Rahman X Bandu Darmawan showed their creations, a machine to detect the presence of alien spaceships and a computer tablet able to show what is not originally visible on a piece of paper it scans – which would look cool in a movie.

Breaking the norms: A video installation by Japanese artist Hayashi Chiho shows a sensual relationship between a woman and a cyborg by the name of Mr. President.

“We were inspired by Sudjana Kerton, a painter who made public his story of being kidnapped by aliens,” said Rega.

Bandu, who lived in the same neighborhood as the painter in Ciburial, West Java, said the story itself had been taken as an undeniable fact by locals.

“It is common for parents in the region to stop their children going outside the house at dusk in fear of being taken away by evil spirits, but in that particular neighborhood, the parents told their children they would be taken by a UFO.”

There are more works displayed in Building C, which include a video installation by Japanese Mei Homma who rejected how society has treated women by arguing that the female body was a superior machine because it produces placenta.

The work of Malaysian artist Nur Amira Hanafi laid a foundation for a more thorough scientific experiment. Entitled Another Us, she collected bacteria from a person’s hand, face and the inside of the ear and nurtured it by playing the person’s favorite music in loop to it.

Her experience showed the time-lapse of the bacterial growth and how different types of interference, such as the change of the music genre, produced different results.

“The thesis is that the nonhuman beings have relationships with their human hosts and that it could actually reflect on the human’s personality,” she said.

Time portal: A visitor walks on a hanging bridge created by Rianti Gautama that embraces the concept of time and space by interactively changing its shape to follow the movements of the person crossing it.

— Photos by JP/Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak

____________

Events connected to the exhibition that is to run until Nov. 19 include a panel discussion, artist talk, art performance, workshops and a lecture by Stelarc on Nov. 11 in Goethe Haus, Central Jakarta. The organizer also provides tours on Sundays.