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Unruly artivism and the participatorydocumentary ecology of The Act ofKillingCamilla Møhring Reestorffa

a Department of Aesthetics and Communication, The University ofAarhus, Aarhus, DenmarkPublished online: 03 Feb 2015.

To cite this article: Camilla Møhring Reestorff (2015): Unruly artivism and theparticipatory documentary ecology of The Act of Killing, Studies in Documentary Film, DOI:10.1080/17503280.2014.1002248

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Unruly artivism and the participatory documentary ecology ofThe Act of Killing

Camilla Møhring Reestorff* iiD

Department of Aesthetics and Communication, The University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark

This paper studies The Act of Killing as an unruly art activist – artivist –intervention in the contemporary aftermath of the 1965 military coup andgenocide in Indonesia. The Act of Killing notoriously films Anwar Congo and hisdeath squad friends reenacting their killings as scenes from Hollywood filmgenres. The film confronts an ethical dilemma between commemorating thevictims and telling the story of the genocide, and situates this dilemma in acomplex participatory ‘documentary ecosystem’. The paper argues that thegenocide emerges as ‘difficult heritage’ in the merging of the reenactments, thekillers’ attempts to remain victors and the participatory documentary ecosystem.The reenactments generate affective conflicts, in which the killers becometroubled indexes of themselves. In the reenactments, the rhythms of the killers’past are confronted with rhythms of the participatory documentary ecology of,what Lefebvre refers to as, presence. Ultimately, it is argued that the artiviststrategy of The Act of Killing emerges in the assemblage of multiple participantsand multiple affective rhythms that calls for as a reinvention of a ‘proto-empathicidentification’ with the unrepresentable victims.

Introducing The Act of Killing

The powerful documentary The Act of Killing (2012) is directed by JoshuaOppenheimer, codirected by an anonymous Indonesian and Christine Cynn,produced by Signe Byrge Sørensen, with Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, Joram tenBrink and Andre Singer as executive producers. The film opens onto a dreamscapein which six Indonesian women dance out of the mouth of a building in the shape ofa fish. The dreamscape is quickly broken with a cut situating the movie between thedreamscape and Indonesian mass murderer and it turns out that the mass murdererswere directing the dreamscape.

The film concerns the contemporary aftermath of the 1965 military coup inIndonesia and the genocide that occurred when General Suharto – initiating his32-year presidency – sanctioned the killing of approximately a million allegedcommunists. The genocide happened in the aftermath of a regional and civil war inthe 1950s, sponsored in part by the USA. Following the civil war, the army and theIndonesian Communist Party (PKI) emerged as dominant political forces and ‘[t]heUS and UK governments, supported by other nations in the region, conducted wide-ranging secret operations aimed at supporting and encouraging the Army-ledslaughter, providing economic and military assistance to this end’ (Simpson 2013, 10).

*Email: norcmr@dac.au.dk

Studies in Documentary Film, 2015http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2014.1002248

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

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The Act of Killing does not provide details about the history of the genocide butfollows Anwar Congo who led the notorious death squad – ‘Frog Squad’ (PasukanKodok) – and his friends Herman Koto and Adi Zulkady and challenges them toreenact their killings. Their reenactments serve as a testimony not only to themurders that they themselves committed but also to the difficult heritage of thegenocide (Logan and Reeves 2009; MacDonald 2009; Knudsen 2011).

The Act of Killing is situated in the city of Medan in the North Sumatra provinceof Indonesia. North Sumatra was one of the regions in which the PKI had astronghold and was heavily affected by the killings. Furthermore, the death squadswere particularly influential in North Sumatra because of their ties to the populistright-wing paramilitary organization Pemuda Pancasila. In the early 1960s, ‘PemudaPancasila took on its character mostly outside Jakarta, particularly in Medan […] aboxer named Effendi Nasution, known as Effendi Keling as well as the “Lion ofSumatra”, was recruited as Pemuda Pancasila chair’ (Ryter 1998, 55). Effendi Kelingwas important because he controlled black market sales of movie tickets and thusserved to enroll ‘movie theater gangsters’ to the organization. ‘Pemuda Pancasila inMedan and Achec were particularly active in slaughtering suspected communists’(Ryter 1998, 55). The gangsters (preman), who include Anwar Congo, continuouslythrived on fear and used the genocide to maintain power. And even though variouspolice commanders have tried to bring in the leaders of the death squad ongambling, assault and gun charges (Ryter 1998, 46), they still boast about havingapproximately three million members that include government ministers. Theaffiliation with Pemuda Pancasila is one of many reasons why the death squadshave never been held to account for the genocide and are celebrated as victors. Asthe film documents Anwar Congo is celebrated as one of the organization’s foundingfathers. As victors they have substantial political, economical and social influenceand they do not have to answer to the victims of their crimes. As Adi Zulkady putsit: ‘“War crimes” are defined by the winners. I’m a winner. So I can make my owndefinition’ (Oppenheimer 2012, 01.07.49).

The paper will suggest that The Act of Killing can be interpreted as an unrulyartivist practice situated in a complex participatory ‘documentary ecosystem’ (Nash,Height, and Summerhayes 2014) in which different participants have conflictinggoals, all of which relate to the difficult heritage that constitutes the imagination ofthe genocide. By allowing the gangsters to tell their story, the film becomesparticipatory and in its enunciation it figures their conflicted interpretation ofhistory. This situates the film in the midst of an ethical dilemma betweencommemorating the victims and allowing for the story of the genocide to be told.The ethical dilemma is further foregrounded insofar as the gangsters’ reenactmentsare staged as scenes from fictional films. Taking on multiple roles, for examplegangsters from film noir, the real murderers fashion and represent their originalmethods of murder through the fictional lens of Hollywood. Fiction therefore servesas an unruly strategy that simultaneously illustrates the universality of gruesomenessand creates a complex relation between the gangsters and their past. To some extent,fiction allows the gangsters to distance themselves from their past because theyimitate certain ‘moods’ common to such genres. However, this paper will argue thatthe gangsters’ attempts to remain victors are challenged in their reenactmentsbecause they become ‘troubled indexes’ (Schneider 2011) of themselves. Further, it isargued that the reenactments generate affective conflicts that are closely tied to the

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‘rhythms’ (Lefebvre [1992] 2005) of the gangsters’ past, as they and their bodies areconfronted by rhythms of the presence. Ultimately, it is argued that The Act ofKilling does not provide a linear narrative or straightforward representation of thegenocide. Rather, it relies on a participatory documentary ecosystem in which thedifficult heritage emerges as a contested site and in which group cognition isreimagined in order to reinvent a ‘proto-empathic identification’ (Protevi 2008) withthe unrepresentable victims.

A participatory documentary ecosystem

As argued by Nash, Hight, and Summerhayes emerging documentary platforms aresituated within a complex media environment ‘in which digital technologies, modes,platforms and infrastructures offer the potential for new ways of conceptualizing thedocumentary project and new means for “audiences” (as viewers, navigators, usersor collaborators) to engage with these forms’ (Nash, Height, and Summerhayes2014, 2). This media ecology entails that we must reconsider the relationship betweenthe documentary film, its subjects, platforms and audiences. Documentary films are,as any other media practice, adapting to the participatory practices that – for morethan a decade – have been invested with high hopes for democratic empowerment ofnoninstitutional voices (Jenkins et al. 2006; Bruns 2008; Gauntlett 2011). Theparticipatory development suggests that ecological thinking involves looking at ‘thebig pictures, at the whole assemblage of agents that constitute documentaryecosystems’ (Dovey 2014, 11).

By focusing on The Act of Killing as a participatory documentary ecosystem, Iunderstand the film as an assemblage of various agencies, participants andconflicting takes on the genocide. The analysis must therefore account for at leastfour agencies: the gangsters, the director, the anonymous Indonesian codirector andthe 49 other anonymous crewmembers, the victims and the extended audience thatpartake in the distribution and circulation of the film. These four agencies allinfluence the ecosystem that constitutes the film and they work across platforms anddistribution systems. However, despite its participatory character the film is alsoembedded in a hierarchical system in which the different agencies do not hold equalaccess to influencing the final outcome.

Sandra Gaudenzi has suggested that documentary films often apply participatorystrategies as means to gather content and that this leads ‘to co-creation but not toco-authorship, since the latter require a degree of intervention in the overall concept(i.e. form) of the product’ (Gaudenze 2014, 130). The participants are thereforerarely involved in the architecture of the project and the film remains embedded inhierarchical structures:

It is still extremely rare for contributors to be allowed to act at a concept level – hence toinfluence the very proposition of the documentary. […] Problems of ownership andnarrative coherence would probably arise, but more than anything else, authorshipwould have to be shared. (Gaudenze 2014, 144)

By suggesting a distinction between co-creation and coauthorship Gaudenzi followsa normative tradition of participation research that emphasizes the emancipatoryand nonhierarchical character of participation. This tradition stems from Sherry

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Arnstein, whose ‘ladder of participation’ distinguishes between nonparticipation(manipulation and therapy), tokenism (consultation and placation) and degrees ofcitizen power (partnership, delegated power and citizen control) (Arnstein 1969).

Research and reviews of The Act of Killing tend to follow the normativeunderstanding of citizen power and focus either on the victims’ lack of participationor the gangsters’ participation. However, in order to understand the film’sparticipatory ecology it is necessary to approach it as a complex framework ofdiverse forms of participation.

The gangsters’ participation is obviously important. If we follow the concept ofcitizen power, their involvement in The Act of Killing does not qualify asparticipation. This is because the director delegates power and allows them toscript, produce and perform scenes and maintains the right to frame the scenes thatactor’s conduct. The production becomes a film inside a film and in that sense theparticipation of the gangsters is manipulated. This manipulated participation hasalso been noted in critiques of the film:

The sense of manipulation is all the stronger in those scenes that present the secondstory. Congo and his friends plan a film about their exploits in 1965–1966, and The Actof Killing is interspersed with both excerpts from the finished film and scenes of priordiscussion and preparation for the filming. Neither the plot nor the structure of thisfilm-within-a-film is ever made clear. Instead we see extracts that are alternately vicious(torture scenes and the burning of a village) and bizarre. (Cribb 2013)

The gangsters’ participation can thus be interpreted as nonparticipation because theyare not allowed to ‘act at a concept level’ (Gaudenze 2014, 144). Furthermore, it canbe argued that the gangsters are manipulated to undergo a kind of therapy throughthe reenactments and that they are only allowed to participate as a strategy ofplacation. They are allowed to participate because their ‘act of killing’ is hindered.In that sense, The Act of Killing is unruly because it promises participation that itdoes not deliver.

The role of the extended audience and the anonymous codirector and crewmem-bers is often overlooked when it is argued that the victims are not represented. JillGodmillow has for instance argued that ‘There is no evidence in this film – and thereshould be – that the Indonesian people are capable of resistance to domination andterror’ (Godmillow 2014). Godmillow is obviously right to be cautious aboutreproductions of geopolitical constructions of first–third world dichotomies. But sheis also too preoccupied with director Oppenheimer as ‘auteur’ (Gerstner 2003).Therefore, she overlooks the anonymous Indonesian codirector and the 49crewmembers’ impact on the film. Godmillow argues that The Act of Killing

reduces its local viewers, who are implicitly ‘in’ the film, to the level of not yetdemocratic, not yet enlightened, and, at some level, still in need of a caring outsider tohelp guide them on the path to positive change. (Godmillow 2014)

Yet, the anonymous codirector exactly identifies as someone who acts and protests:‘I was one of thousands of students who stood face to face with riot police in 1998,urging the New Order military dictatorship to go’ (http://theactofkilling.com/statements/). The anonymous codirector has worked with Oppenheimer on theproject since 2004 and argues that

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I worked with Joshua to make The Act of Killing in order to help myself, otherIndonesians, and human beings living in similar societies around the world, tounderstand the importance of questioning what we see, and how we imagine. Howelse are we to envision our world in a different way?1

It is prudent to recognize the importance of the codirector not only because thecodirector contradicts the argument that The Act of Killing only representsIndonesians as ‘not yet democratic,’ but also because the codirector provides anadditional element to the question of participation. The fact that the anonymouscodirector ‘must remain anonymous, for now, because the political conditions inIndonesia make it too dangerous for me to do otherwise’ (http://theactofkilling.com/statements/) entails that he/she represents the victims and survivors, who have toremain silent. Furthermore, the anonymous codirector’s participation is exactly ofthe kind that Gaudenzi deems rare, namely a type of participation in whichcontributors are allowed to act at a concept level and in which authorship is shared.

Due to the anonymous codirector and crewmembers, the question of participa-tion becomes complex and the film cannot simply be dismissed as an instance ofnonparticipation. This complex participatory ecology is made even more multi-faceted when the distribution of the film is taken into account. Due to a fear thatgovernment censors would ban the film it was not released in movie theaters inIndonesia, instead private screenings were held for the public and special interestgroups including historians, journalists and human rights agencies. Since theInternational Human Rights Day on 10 December 2012, the film has been screenedover 270 times in Indonesia, and in more than 90 cities across that country (Hørsman2013). Not all of these screenings have been successful. In some cities, the organizersdecided to stop their private screening ‘due to a lack of interest or because viewerswalked out as the screening was in progress. Others had mistaken it for a filmcelebrating the 1965 killers!’ (Heryanto 2014, 165). Nonetheless, the numerousscreenings indicate a strong local mobilization in which the participation isembedded in ‘[n]ew infrastructures of distribution, which change the scale and termson which symbolic production in one place can reach other places (Couldry 2003,44)’ (Hands 2011, 68). The new infrastructure of circulation is furthermore evident inparticular global–local scaling. The film was made available for free onlinedownload – geo-blocked and available only in Indonesia – through a partnershipbetween the global media company VICE, the integrated digital platform VHX andthe Danish film production company Final Cut For Real ApS. The local–globalcollaboration between the companies facilitating downloads and screenings and theextended audience who partake in the local Indonesian distribution of the film isobviously not participatory in sense that of coauthorship. But I would argue thatsuch participation nevertheless qualifies as a peculiar form of citizen power becauseit contributes to the generation of a participatory distribution system that connectslocal–global impulses of circulation.

As this indicates, The Act of Killing is difficult to decipher as a clear-cut, ornormative, distinction between participation and nonparticipation. The participatoryprocesses that constitute the ecosystem are simply too diverse. In the case of The Actof Killing participation is not an aim in and of itself. Rather, participation is adeliberate strategy aimed at challenging societal structures. Thus whereas thedistinction between participation and nonparticipation understands participation to

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primarily benefit the participants it is clear that ‘participation is now expected tohave an effect on the structures, institutions, organizations, or technologies in whichone participate’ (Kelty 2013, 24). Participation is therefore not simply a questioncoauthorship for all participants. Kelty et al. suggest a broad definition in which‘participation concerns collective actions that form something larger so that thoseinvolved become part of and share in the entity created’ (Kelty et al. 2014, 5).Following this definition, The Act of Killing constitutes an assemblage of multipleforms of participations and participants that share the entity that generates theparticipatory documentary ecology.

Unruly participation

According to Nick Couldry, ethics is a ‘normative discourse focused on the goodand dispositions aimed at the good (virtue)’ (Couldry 2013, 14). The Act of Killing isembedded in an ethical dilemma and ‘the good’ never seems to present itself.Oppenheimer explains that when he began developing the film in 2005, he had beenfilming for three years with survivors of the 1965–1966 massacres and, indeed, initiallythe film was to be about survivors who confront the killers (http://theactofkilling.com/statements/). Yet, the production proved to be difficult:

For instance, when we tried to film a scene in which former political prisoners rehearseda ballad about their time in the concentration camps (describing how they providedforced labour for the British-owned plantation, and how every night some of theirfriends would be handed over to death squads to be killed), we were interrupted by thepolice seeking to arrest us. At other times, the management of London-Sumatraplantations interrupted the film’s shooting, ‘honouring’ us by ‘inviting’ us to a meetingat plantation headquarters. (http://theactofkilling.com/statements/)

This left the filmmaking process in a dilemma: ‘Not only did we feel unsafe filming thesurvivors, we worried for their safety. And the survivors couldn’t answer the questionof how the killings were perpetrated’ (http://theactofkilling.com/statements/).

Ethical dilemmas are often reduced to amoral temptation, which is merely a ‘right-versus-wrong situation’ (Baker 2009). However, the dilemma in The Act of Killing is atrue ethical dilemma, but one that cannot be described through Sherry Baker’sterminology as a ‘right-versus-right situation.’ The Act of Killing’s dilemmas can beframed, rather, as a wrong-versus-wrong situation. On the one hand, one wants toensure that the voices of the victims and survivors are heard and respected, but if theytestify their lives are in danger. On the other hand, one wants to document the genocideand the fact that the gangsters’ remain in power, but by allowing them to testify onerisks reproducing the power structures that silence the victims and survivors. Thus, nomatter which strategy one chooses in the quest of representation, themisrepresentationor silencing of the victims and survivors of the genocide is present.

Situated in the mist of this ethical dilemma The Act of Killing can beconceptualized as an art activist – artivist – documentary practice. It engages withthe ethical dilemma and the political contexts that make up the contemporaryunderstanding and framing of the genocide. The strategy is artivist because it usesvigorous actions, participation and aesthetic strategies such as documentation andfictionalization as means of enabling dialog and achieving political goals. However,the participatory documentary ecosystem makes it difficult to identify the artivist

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goals because it is an assemblage and therefore we ‘do not have one measure of valuebut many ways of enacting value in a complex web of significance’ (Dovey 2014, 18).Whereas the director and codirectors aim to investigate the mechanics and mind-setsof people who conduct genocide and facilitate changes in the political imaginary,both in Indonesian politics and internationally, the gangsters seek to remain victors.In a musical scene from the ‘film within the film,’ the dead victims perversely awardAnwar a medal and thank him ‘a thousand times’ ‘for executing me and sendingme to heaven’ (Oppenheimer 2012, 02.22.48–02.24.26). The different participatoryagencies thus represent conflicting goals that are confronted in the assemblage. Thedifficulty of delimiting a singular goal in the participatory documentary ecology isone of the reasons why the film is unruly. It is usually expected that activist andartivist practices not only have identifiable goals, but goals based on an ethics ‘aimedat the good’ (Couldry 2013, 14).

Claire Bishop has discussed the ethics of participation. She argues that in a contextof participatory art an ethical turn has emerged in which an artwork is evaluated on‘the degree to which artists supply a good or bad model of collaboration’ (Bishop2012, 19). She argues that ‘[e]ven if a work of art is not directly participatory,references to community, collectivity (be this lost or actualised) and revolution aresufficient to indicate a critical distance’ (Bishop 2012, 12). This emphasis on good orbad models of collaboration is certainly predominant also in the appraising of co-creation (Boswijk, Thijssen, and Peelen 2007), DIY media (Knobel and Lankshear2010) and DIY culture (Gauntlett 2011). These concepts describe a general shift incultural production that privileges nonprofessional contributions and is often seen forits particular democratic potential. Aaron Delwiche, for instance, distinguishesbetween repressive uses of media and emancipatory uses of media. Repressive usesof media are defined as centrally controlled programs and specialist productions, theemancipatory use of media is decentralized and its collective production exercisessocial control by self-organization (Delwiche 2013, 16).

However, as Grant Kester argues any participatory practice that aims tocollaborate and work together ‘carries with it a counter-meaning: a warning, so tospeak, of its ethical undecidability’ (Kester 2011, 2). This ethical undecidablity isforegrounded in The Act of Killing because the participatory documentary ecosystemrelies on the active participation of the gangsters. As already mentioned, theparticipation of the gangsters is controversial because it can be perceived asmanipulation and because it can be questioned whether or not they would haveparticipated had they known how the outcome of the film would be framed. In TheAct of Killing it is often the gangsters’ participation – manipulated or not – that isperceived as unruly. Nick Fraser has, for instance, called the film ‘Porn for liberals’and he ‘dislike[s] both the aesthetics and the moral premise of The Act of Killing’(Fraser 2014, 21). This turns the ethical turn upside-down. The main concern is notlack of participation and central control, but rather that the emancipation ofparticipants – the gangsters – are the voices that we do not want to hear. In The Actof Killing, it is the participation and not the lack hereof that is unruly.

There are many ways in which a documentary can qualify as unruly artivism. Asindicated by Claire Bishop, there is a demand for good models of collaboration. Thefilm and the filmmaker can qualify as unruly by providing bad models ofcollaboration, but also by for example breaking the law, challenging or subvertingcodes for ethical behavior, challenging or subverting norms for artistic and

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participatory practices and/or challenging dominant discourses and power structures.When an artwork or a film is criticized for being unruly, it is often due to thebehavior of the artist or filmmaker. Yet, the unruly structure of The Act of Killing iscomplex. The filmmaker and the film can be conceptualized as unruly, but part ofthis unruliness stems from the actions of the gangsters, who are obviously unrulybecause they are mass murderers. Their reenactments testify to such a gruesomehistory and the film, in part, inherits their unruliness simply by allowing them toreenact their actions.

Despite being murderers the gangsters are not universally perceived as unruly andlaw breaking. Even though murders are most often perceived as a breach of bothethical and state laws, a murder can be sanctioned by the state; for instance throughdeath penalty or war. The gangsters in The Act of Killing have henceforth not beenpunished because their murders, to some extent, have been seen as a service to thestate. In the film, former vice president of Indonesia, Jusuf Kalla, praises the gangsters:

Gangsters are people who work outside the system – not for the government. The wordgangster comes from ‘free men’. This nation needs free men. If everyone worked for thegovernment we’d be a nation of bureaucrats. We’d get nothing done. We need ourgangsters to get things done! (Oppenheimer 2012, 00.35.49–00.36.21)

In this quote, the vice president emphasizes that it is necessary to stand outside thestate system. For him ‘free men’s’ unruliness is necessary for the state to moveforward. This inscribes the gangsters in a political discourse that legitimizes thekillings. Therefore it is, to some extent, only in the participatory ecology in which thegangsters – confronted with and embedded in the assemblage of the directors, thevictims and the audiences – will become unruly.

The participatory documentary ecology is unruly for four reasons: first, becausethe participatory documentary ecology renders it difficult to delimit a singularartivist goal; second, because the gangsters participation – despite being a part of thedocumentary ecology – is manipulated; third, because the film includes the gangstersin the assemblage and thus inherits their unruliness in its representation; and finallybecause the gangster’s dominant discourses and power structures are disturbed in theassemblage of participants.

The unruly character does, however, not disqualify the film as an artivistpractice, but it does resituate this practice. One of the critiques often raised is thatThe Act of Killing does not provide information and education. According to NickFraser, the film ‘does not enhance our knowledge of the 1960s Indonesian killings’(Fraser 2014, 22) and Jill Godmillow argues, ‘[g] ood filmmaking comes down toeducation – education of the senses, including the sixth sense, as the Buddhists wouldhave it, the mind’ (Godmillow 2014). As a strategy, however, information andeducation might not advocate for change. Following Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers(1991) Ariel Heryanto argues that even if individuals know the ugly truth theirinformation level does not necessarily change their approach to the regime(Heryanto 2014, 164). They may consent due to number of reasons and in ‘Indonesiaand its neighboring countries, cold war authoritarian repression ran in tandem withsustained economic growth, industrialization, and an expanding desire for globalconsumerism’ (Heryanto 2014, 166). The Act of Killing thus confronts a challenge. Ifthe target audience already has the information, how do you change their approach

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to the regime? The solution of the unruly artivist is to situate the film in the midst ofan ethical dilemma and rely on the participatory documentary ecology. This entailsthat the unruly politics of The Act of Killing does not follow the educational regime,where consensus exists between a mode of sensory presentation and a regime ofmeaning (Ranciére 2010, 144) but rather exists as a disagreement between multipleparticipatory agencies.

Difficult heritage and reenacted killings

Throughout The Act of Killing the gangsters explore, discuss and boast about thegenocide that they conducted. This is (most likely) exceptional for the gangsters, buteven outside the North Sumatra region the anticommunist sentiment is strong. This isseen in propaganda films such as Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI (Noer 1984). Thegangsters disagree about the film. Whereas Anwar feels reassured when watching thefilm – ‘is the one thing that makes me feel not guilty’ (Oppenheimer 2012, 00:42:08) –Adi recognizes it as a clear case of falsification of the events surrounding the 30September Movement: ‘I think it is a lie’ (Oppenheimer 2012, 00:42:25). Pengkhia-natan G30S/PKI depicts the ‘official history’ in which the PKI (Partai KomunisIndonesia) is described as a group of bloodthirsty killers who torture army soldiers andcut off their genitals. The film was televised annually as propaganda and screened asmandatory viewing for students during Suharto’s presidency. Accordingly, the deadsquads’ actions were embedded in a national imagination in which communists were anational threat. This depiction of the communists as a threat is obviously the reasonthe film reassures Anwar. It legitimizes his and the death squads killings by framingthem as a service to the state.2

The Act of Killing reflects this as the conflict of history. For example, in one scenethe gangsters discuss how a reenactment that they are about to film will impacthistory. Adi recognizes the importance of the public imagination in constructinghistory:

It is not about fear. It is about image. The whole society will say: we’ve alwayssuspected it. ‘They lied about the communists being cruel.’ It is not a problem for us. Itis a problem for history. The whole story will be reversed! (Oppenheimer 2012,01.04.59–01.05.27)

Adi’s reflections about the imagined history of the cruel communists indicates thatthe genocide constitutes what Sharon Macdonald has termed ‘difficult heritage.’Difficult heritage signifies ‘a heritage that the majority of the population wouldprefer not to have’ (Macdonald 2009, 9). For Macdonald, difficult heritage is ‘a pastthat is recognized as meaningful in the present but that is also contested andawkward for public reconciliation with a positive, self-affirming contemporaryidentity’ (Macdonald 2009, 1).

In The Act of Killing we are dealing with a genocide, which obviously ought toconstitute difficult heritage, and throughout the film the gangsters guide us, and tellus where, when and how their murders were conducted. The heritage and thegenocide are certainly awkward for the director – who holds ‘a positive, self-affirming contemporary identity’ – but the gangsters, the paramilitary groupPancasila, the political leaders and the journalists all celebrate the genocide.

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The reason why the gangsters and the politicians do not acknowledge the difficultpast is that they use the genocide to maintain power and, in this sense, their past isnot yet history. Thus, it becomes the artivist project to turn the present into difficultheritage: something disturbing from the past rather than as part of a continuity.

The gangsters’ celebration of the genocide is in opposition to Macdonald, whoargues that difficult heritage is ‘unsettling and awkward, rather than […] celebrated’(Macdonald 2009, 1). The celebration of the genocide is possible because thegangsters have accumulated power and because the imaginary perception of acommunist threat is maintained. Therefore, the general population cannot openlyacknowledge that the genocide is a heritage that they ‘would prefer not to have.’ Theparticipatory documentary ecology is crucial because it is in the assemblage ofdifferent agencies that the heritage emerges as difficult. In a scene in which thegangsters star in a television show on Televisi Republik Indonesia (TVRI) they arecelebrated for developing ‘more humane’ methods for killing communists. The hostdeclares that:

Anwar and his friends developed a new, more efficient system for exterminatingcommunists. It was more humane, less sadistic and avoided excessive violence. But youalso just wiped them out! (Oppenheimer 2012, 01.47.02–01.47.20)

She obviously does not recognize the genocide as a difficult heritage. However, asthis celebration occurs the film cuts to four people behind the camera. They discussAnwar:

How many people did he kill?About 1000How can he sleep? Isn’t he haunted?A lot of them went crazyYeahNo, they got richYeahRich from stealingBut killing all those people made them crazy, too. (Oppenheimer 2012, 01.47.24–01.47.49)

The cut between what is being performed for the public by the news host, Anwar andthe politicians with the responses from the four people behind the camera makesevident that the murders are not so simply celebrated. Behind the scenes politicalminorities and descendants of the victims lurk and in this sense the difficult heritage‘threatens to break through into the present in disruptive ways’ (Macdonald 2009, 1)via the ecology of this participatory documentary.

The contested character of the difficult heritage is also tied to the complex site-specific character of the film and to its many reenactments. The gangsters often actas tour guides and show the directors and the viewers where, when and how theycommitted the killings. As such they provide a knowledge that, following BrittaTimm Knudsen, relates to and establishes a dialog with the past that activates livedor prosthetic memories in order to become part of the social making of these places(Knudsen 2011, 57). In a conversation between Anwar and Adi the latter tells abouthow he killed numerous Chinese people, including his girlfriend’s dad, and heprovides information about where his killing spree took place.

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Remember the ‘Crush the Chinese Campaign’ in 1966? You gave me the list of Chinesecommunists. All along Sudirman Street I killed every Chinese person I met. I stabbedthem! I don’t remember how many, but it was dozens. If I met them, I stabbed them. Allthe way to Asia Street, where I met my girlfriend’s dad. Remember, my girlfriend wasChinese? ‘Crush the Chinese’ became ‘Crush my girlfriend’s dad!’ So I stabbed him,too! Because he was Chinese! (Oppenheimer 2012, 00.50.50–00.51.35)

As this indicates the gangsters provide information that contributes to the acknowl-edgment of the difficult heritage even if they themselves do not acknowledge it asdifficult. The Act of Killing does, however, not only use onsite location, but combinesthese with locations deliberately built for the film. For instance, a village is built sothat it can be set on fire. ‘These variations in site-specificity matter deeply, for it is inand through this work of historically informed but creatively realized re-inhabitationthat the film helps cultivate a new sense of space and place’ (Walker 2014, 18).

The creatively realized re-inhabitation of space is further mirrored in the use offiction in the reenactments of the killings. Mads Daugbjerg, Rivka Syd Eisner andBritta Timm Knudsen collectively argue that

Re-enactment as activity and concept implies a number of challenges to conventionalunderstandings of ‘heritage’ and many of the taken-for-granted qualities and assump-tions usually associated with the term, such as fixity, conservation, ‘listing’, ownershipor authenticity, to name but a few. (Daubjerg, Eisner, and Knudsen 2014, 681)

They understand reenactments as performative processes embedded in a complextemporality in which the reenactment ‘is both “bound by the past”, obliged on thesceneries and scripts it seeks to recreate, and also necessarily forcing participants toexperience that past from the position and reflexive hindsight of the present’(Daubjerg, Eisner, and Knudsen 2014, 682).

The performative character and the complex temporality of reenactments arecertainly evident in The Act of Killing. The reenactments that the gangsters performare inscribed in fictional frames through the use of genres such as western, noir,mafia, musical, etc. The use of fiction entails that The Act of Killing’s reenactmentsinvent an archive, rather than performing obedience to one (Schneider 2011, 10). Theinvention of the archive is complex because the recognizable Hollywood genresinterrupt the search for the original event, the genocide. The impossibility ofreaching the original has, by Elizabeth Freeman and David Román, been termedrespectively ‘temporal drag’ (Freeman 2010, 59) and ‘archival drag’ (Román 2005,137). Román applies his notion of the archival drag to read the gangsters as settingout to ‘reembody or revive a performance from the past’ (Román 2005, 140). But theperformance from their past is their own, which creates a peculiar cross-temporalconnection that can be further developed via Freeman. She argues that ‘within thelost moments of official history, queer time generates a discontinuous history of itsown’ (Freeman 2010, xi). The cross-temporal connection performed by the gangstersexactly gives access to such an alternative history.

The alternative history is introduced through the complex temporality, but alsothrough a very concrete archival drag. While Herman reembodies his own past, heoften also wears drag costumes. The ‘archival drag’ creates ruptures in the historythat the gangsters attempt to communicate because it becomes very obvious thateven Herman – who committed the murders – cannot access the original event.

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In one reenactment, Herman chops off the head of a doll that looks like Anwar,drinks the fake blood and laughs. When Herman and Anwar discuss the scene, thequeerness of the cross-temporal connection is confirmed:

But Anwar you’re dead in this scene because I cut your head off. So if this is thebeginning it must be someone else’s head that gets cut off, not yours.That’s not true because this scene is set in a time tunnel. (Oppenheimer 2012, 01.42.40–01.43.07)

The archival drag not only describes the queered relation to the original but it alsodescribes the gangsters’ queered relation to themselves. They navigate between theirindexical character and the archival drag and this might disarm the index. In anotherscene, Anwar reenacts the way in which he would murder, placing the head of thevictim under a table leg then sitting on the table. Herman gives Anwar a pink hat towear while reenacting the scene: ‘This one is for the “Big Boss.” Yep. It’s perfect forme’ (Oppenheimer 2012, 00.29.22–00.29.25). The use of fiction and the queerness ofthe cross-temporal connection might serve a purpose for the gangsters: they delimittheir own indexical character. But the queerness of the cross-temporal connectionalso entails that the viewer is confronted with an alternative history. The gangsters’representation of themselves as ‘heroes’ is ruptured by a discontinuous history inwhich their testimony cannot be trusted.

Affect and the rhythms of killing

Through the reenactments the gangsters become ‘troubled indexes’ of themselvesand their past. When Anwar watches a reenactment in which he is the victim who isbeing tortured and killed the troubled index becomes clear:

Did the people I tortured feel the way I do here? I can feel what the people I torturedfelt. Because here my dignity has been destroyed and then fear comes right there andthen. All the terror suddenly possessed my body. It surrounded me and possessed me.Actually, the people you tortured felt far worse because you know it is only a film. Theyknew they were being killed. But I can feel it, Josh. Really I feel it. (Oppenheimer 2012,02.27.24–02.28.26)

As noted by Rebecca Schneider, any act of reenactment can be recognized exactly asa reenactment (Schneider 2011, 32). This is what Oppenheimer does. He points outthat not only is this a reenactment, but Anwar is the index – a troubled index – notof the victim, but of the killer.

The disconnection between past and present and between self and actor thatmanifests in the troubled index has been seen as an indication of Anwar sufferingfrom posttraumatic stress disorder (e.g. King 2013). Others reject Anwar’s bodily,somatic experience of being ‘surrounded and possessed’ by terror and argue thatAnwar is merely performing (e.g. Fraser 2014; Cribb 2013). I will, however, followinterpretations of Anwar by both Janet Walker and Oppenheimer and argue thatAnwar is simultaneously performing and having a somatic experience (Walker 2014,14). Accordingly, my interest is not to investigate the ‘trueness’ of Anwars’performance, but the ways in which different affective states collide.

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John Protevi has studied the role of affect and precognitive killing in infantrycombat. Infantry combat and the genocide are obviously different both because of themethods of combat and because infantry combat are sanctioned by the legalprocedures of a state apparatus. Whereas infantry combat attempts to avoid closecombat, the gangsters in The Act of Killing conduct their killings up close.Nevertheless, there are similarities in the strategies applied to handle the affects – orfollowing Protevi ‘the proto-empathetic identification, which produces psychologicaltrauma at the sight of the blood and guts of the killed enemy’ (Protevi 2008, 405). InThe Act of Killing the gangsters and politicians are continuously dehumanizing thecommunist and seeking to establish the killings as sanctioned by the state. Further-more, even though the gangsters were killing up close, they partly distanced themselvesfrom their killings. This distance can be seen in the use of fictional genres as entrypoints to the killings. Anwar and Herman explain:

When we’d watch happy movies, like Elvis movies, we’d leave the cinema smiling,dancing to the music. Our hands … Still dancing … Still in the mood of the film. If girlspassed we’d whistle. We loved it. We didn’t care what people thought. Here was theparamilitary office, where I always killed people. I’d see the guy being interrogated. I’dstill be dancing, laughing. It was like we were killing happily. (Oppenheimer 2012,00.16.17–00.17.16)

They use fiction as a training ground and as a certain ‘mood’ that impacts the way ofkilling. It is the ‘mood,’ borrowed from fiction films, that serves to distance themfrom ‘the sight of the blood and guts of the killed enemy.’ A similar strategy ispresent in the reenactments. By reenacting the killings through the frames of fiction,they borrow ‘moods’ and at least partly to avoid confronting their past andrehumanizing the victims.

Following Zahavi (2005) and Gallagher (2005), Proveti argues for a distinctionbetween agency and ownership of bodily actions. ‘Ownership is the sense that my bodyis doing the actions, while agency is the sense that I am in control of the action, that theaction is willed’ (Protevi 2008, 408). Even though both are aspects of subjectivity, thedistinction indicates an ‘affect program’ that ‘skip[s] subjectivity and directly conjoinslarger groups and the somatic’ (Protevi 2008, 408). The gangsters in The Act of Killingalternate between ownership, and agency, of their bodies and actions. They ofteninvest their actions with agency, for instance when Adi Zulkady, as mentioned, bragsabout killing his girlfriend’s father. Nevertheless, their actions can be qualified interms of an ownership in which they directly conjoin ‘larger groups and the somatic.’

The question of ownership, group relations and the somatic is tied to the questionof rhythms: ‘soldiers are acculturated to dehumanize the enemy by a series of racialslurs. This acculturation is especially powerful when accomplished through rhythmicchanting while running, for such entertainment weakens personal identity to producea group subject (McNeil 1995; Burke 2004)’ (Protevi 2008, 410). Rhythmic chantingis crucial. Rhythms of music and dancing impacted the ways in which the gangsterskilled and it plays a role in both the reenactments and their stories about the killings.When Anwar explains his favorite method of killing rhythms appears:

There’s [sic] many ghosts here, because many people were killed here. They diedunnatural deaths. They arrived perfectly healthy [Anwar is mime-walking] […] We haveto reenact this properly. This is how to do it without too much blood [pulling the steel

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wire]. I’ve tried to forget all this with good music … Dancing. Feeling happy. A littlealcohol … A little marijuana … A little … What do you call it? Ecstasy. Once I’d getdrunk, I’d fly and feel happy [animated movements of the body]. Cha cha [Anwarcontinues to do the cha cha]. (Oppenheimer 2012, 00.06.26–00.11.13)

These rhythms, the movement of the body and the ‘cha cha’ are important.Although Anwar expresses agency in his act of the killing, he also conjoins himself toa different rhythm, the music, and it is by following this rhythm that he is oscillatingbetween agency and ownership and approaching the somatic.

According to Henri Lefebvre, we easily ‘confuse rhythm with movement[mouvement], speed, a sequence of movements [gestes] or objects (machines, forexample)’ (Lefebvre [1992] 2005, 5). Thus, Anwar might only be moving, vibratingand attached to the music. In his vibrations ‘affect is expressed rhythmically – throughrelationships, reciprocations, resonances, syncopations and harmonies’ (Henriques2010, 58). But Anwar is not only following the vibrations of the music, he isappropriating the mood of the music to escape the proto-empathetic identificationwith his victims. However, this escape is not possible. Rhythms are not only a matter ofvibrations, music and movements: ‘No rhythm without repetition in time and space,without reprises, without returns, in short without measure [mesure]’ (Lefebvre [1992]2005, 5). Accordingly, the reenactments can be interpreted as repetitions in time andspace, and the gangsters’ use of music interpreted as an attempt to repeat the rhythmsof the past. Lefebvre writes that ‘[t]he present sometimes imitates (stimulates) to thepoint of mistaking itself for presence; a portrait, a copy, a double, a facsimile, etc., but(a) presence survives and imposes itself by introducing a rhythm (a time)’ (Lefebvre[1992] 2005, 23). Thus, even if the gangsters attempt to imitate the rhythms of the past‘there is always something new and unforeseen that introduces itself into the repetitive:difference’ (Lefebvre [1992] 2005, 5). In the reenactments something new occurs, newrhythms and competing affective programs.

The introduction of difference and competing affective programs is evident in thegangsters’ reenactment of the massacre of the village Kampung Kolam. In thisreenactment, the deputy minister of Youth and Sport, Sakhyan Asmara participates.The minister is there to motivate the people from Preman Pancasila, who participate inthe reenactment. Quickly the scene becomes intense and the participants are screaming:‘Kill! Kill! Kill the communists! Slaughter them! […] Exterminate them to theirroots! Chop off their heads! Burn them! Kill them!’ (Oppenheimer 2012, 01.53.23–01.54.27). The participants imitate the rhythm of the past and they affect each other;they ‘conjoin larger groups and the somatic.’ They are, in the words of Brian Massumi,primed to the same collective event. However the intensification and somatic characterof the event disturbs the minister and he addresses Oppenheimer and the crew:

Joshua and crew, now I’m speaking as leader of Pancasila Youth. What we just saw isnot characteristic of our organization. We shouldn’t look brutal like we want to drinkpeople’s blood. That’s dangerous for our organization’s image. But we must exterm-inate the communists. We must totally wipe them out – but in a more humane way. […]Don’t erase it! Use it to show how ferocious we can be! (Deputy Minister SakhyanAsmara in Oppenheimer 2012, 01.54.53)

The minister reveals an uncertain relation not only to himself as an index, but also tothe affect displayed by the crowd. The crowd – which has ownership but not

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necessarily agency – threatens the organization’s image because it depicts theextermination of the communists as something irrational and brutal.3 This is a clearindication that the reenactments’ repetitions of the rhythms of the past are met withcompeting affective programs and rhythms, hence the minister’s fear that Oppen-heimer and the crew will misrepresent his organization. Thus, an affective politicsemerges in the assemblage of the various participants and their rhythms and thisaffective politics works as ‘an art of emitting the interruptive signs, triggering thecues that attune bodies’ (Massumi 2009, 6).

Conclusion

The Act of Killing relies on unruly artivism and it confronts two ethical dilemmas.The first concerns the representation of victims that are either unrepresentablebecause they are dead or unable to give their testimony due to the gangsters’ powerallocation. The second dilemma concerns the film, its participatory form and itsreenactments. The film abandons the traditional human rights model – the so-calledthe lock-step model – in which knowledge is believed to generate action. Rather thanproviding a coherent narrative and information about the genocide it presents itselfas a participatory documentary ecology.

The participatory documentary ecology is an unruly strategy because the multipleagencies in the film and its distribution make it difficult to identify a singular artivistgoal. But the film is also unruly due to questions of participation and collaboration. Byincluding the gangsters in the participatory assemblage, the film simultaneouslyinherits their unruliness and disturbs or even manipulates the gangsters.

The assemblage of multiple participants reveals the contested and difficultheritage of the genocide. The gangsters might not acknowledge the heritage asdifficult but through the assemblage of participants, the creatively realized re-inhabitation of space and the use of fiction in the reenactments, their performance ischallenged. In their reenactments they emerge as troubled indexes of themselves, asarchival drags, and this creates a peculiar cross-temporal connection through whichan alternative history emerges. This alternative history depends on an affectivepolitics and the assemblage of the various participants and their rhythms. Even if thegangsters attempt to imitate the rhythms of the past, something new emerge in thereenactments and in the meeting with and assemblage of other participants’ rhythms.This provides an alternative reading of the film, its ending and impact. In the finalscene, Anwar claims to realize his wrongdoings and makes vomiting sounds:

I know it was wrong [he walks around and makes vomiting sounds]. I had to kill. Myconscience told me they had to be killed. [He grabs the steel wire and a bag]. This is oneof the easiest ways to take a human life. And this. This was used to take away thehuman beings we killed. [He walks around and goes to fence to make vomiting sounds].(Oppenheimer 2012, 02.31.41–02.35.22)

This ending, in which Anwar both seems to somatically realize his actions and thehumanity of his victims, has been rejected with reference to Anwar not beingtruthful. However, if we maintain the focus on the participatory documentaryecology it does not necessarily matter if Anwar’s performance is truthful. Becausethe mere fact that he deems it necessary to perform somatic affects and grief is a

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testimony to the importance of the participatory assemblage. It has becomeimpossible for him to continue the repetition of the rhythms of the past and hemust acknowledge the existence of the competing rhythms, i.e. acknowledge thegenocide as difficult heritage. Therefore, it is through competing affective rhythmsthat the victims become grievable. The victims are not granted a voice, even thecodirector must remain anonymous. They are, as Butler would say, derealized(Butler 2006), already dead and therefore never mourned. But because the affectiverhythms are acknowledged the difficult heritage emerges as a contested site and a‘proto-empathic identification’ (Protevi 2008) with the unrepresentable victimsreinvented in the participatory documentary ecology.

Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes1. Joshua Oppenheimer’s statement: http://theactofkilling.com/statements/.2. In recent years, the imagination has been challenged. During his presidency (1999–2001),

Abdurrahman Wahid invited former PKI exiles to return to Indonesia. He proposed toremove the ban of the communist ideology, but this was strongly opposed and caused arally in Jakarta.

3. Despite the affective ruptures caused by Oppenheimer and the crew the minister wants torepeat the rhythms of the past. He wants to use the fear of the somatic and the crowd togenerate fear. His aim is thus a particular ‘emotional work’ (Ahmed 2004) in which certainobjects and emotions are tied to the communists and ferocity is tied to the gangsters – whonevertheless are framed as justified due to the despicable communists.

Notes on contributorCamilla Møhring Reestorff is an assistant professor at the Department of Aesthetics andCommunication at the University of Aarhus and Honorary Research Fellow at the University ofMelbourne. She is the main editor of Conjunctions. Transdisciplinary Journal of CulturalParticipation. Her work focuses on mediatization, activism, political art and cultural participa-tion and includes publications such as ‘Buying Blood Diamonds and Altering Global Capital-ism. Mads Brügger as Unruly Artivist in The Ambassador’ (2013) and ‘Mediatised AffectiveActivism: The Activist Imaginary and the Topless Body in the Femen Movement’ (2014).

ORCIDCamilla Møhring Reestorff iiD http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5419-132X

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015