Derived from Beyond Provenance, a transnational collaboration between art collective Indeks from Bandung and screening platform wysiwyg from The Hague, this interdisciplinary film program Can you hear the objects speak? by Asian Movie Night and wysiwyg, seeks to reclaim the living worlds of displaced heritage.

Rather than focusing solely on material significance—a logic that often mirrored colonial frameworks of preservation—the program foregrounds the emotional, cultural, spiritual, and communal values these objects hold for the communities from which they were taken, as a gateway to understanding the animist and relational cosmopraxis shared by many Indigenous nations in present-day Indonesia.

Through film, conversation, and performance, we will listen to the voices of ancestral beings held hostage in museums, mineral stones extracted for AI technology, as well as the ghostly presence in the streets of Amsterdam built by looted wealth. In doing so, it challenges the Western ontological impulse to turn living beings into static objects, and instead reawakens a sense of liveness, agency, and wisdom in the beings we connect with, thus learning differ,ent ways of relating—ways that may help us not only rethink restitution, but also reimagine worlds and futures beyond the crisis we are facing.

After the screening, there will be a panel talk with art historian and researcher Danielle Hofmans, filmmakers Hattie Wade and Kae Oktorina, and Ruben Verkuylen from wysiwyg, moderated by LI Yuchen.

The discussion will expand from the films we have watched into the overarching theme of colonial history, hidden narratives, displaced ways of living and restitution and justice, connecting to the recent Exhibition Bakudengar in Arnhem Museum and the research project Beyond Provenance.

The edition is supported by Arnhem Gemeente, Cultuurfonds, Het Nieuw Instituut

Programme

Dear Shadow, My Old Friend (Sihir Kamar Gelap)

Timoteus Anggawan Kusno | 2023 | Indonesia, Netherlands | 13’ | Indonesian w/ English subs
A phone call from within a dream recalls encounters with shadows in a photographic darkroom. Celluloid fragments open onto inherited memories, blurring personal and collective memory. The film becomes a meditation on displacement, history, home, and the echoes that persist across generations.

The Stone That Remembers (Durga Mahisasuramardini)

Diyantini Adeline (developed in collaboration with Vladimir Vidanovski) | 2026 | Indonesia | 14’
The Stone That Remembers interprets the Durga Mahisasuramardini ­- statue’s journey from its home, the Singhasari Temple, to the hands of colonizers, and various museums. The film follows the patriarchal displacement of a woman that represents the Durga, exploring the parallels between the fate of the statue and many women today.

Sharp Objects (Keris Klungkung)

Taufiqurrahman Kifu and Hattie Wade | 2026 | Indonesia, the Netherlands | 16’ | Indonesian and English w/ Indonesian and English subs
Sharp Objects follows the forgotten story of the Klungkung keris back to it’s origins and to its post-colonial relevance to Bali today, tracing the looting of the keris to modern day tourism in Bali. The film juxtaposes the ‘knowledge’ of colonial archives against community-based knowledge and mythology, convoluting the understanding of what is preserved, what is dead and what is lost.

Arahmaiani: Between the Mountain and the Sea ACT 1: River elegy

Performance by Arahmaiani, directed by Andrea and Peter Hylands | 2014 | Indonesia, Australia, India | 11’ | English, Indonesian
Arahmaiani: Between the Mountain and the Sea is a 3-act performance art documentary produced by Creative Cowboy Films featuring prominent Indonesian multidisciplinary artist Arahmaiani Feisal. The documentary text and video recordings outline a philosophy rooted in ancient Indonesian cultural heritage (drawing from Lantara, ancient Mataram, and Islamic Mataram philosophies). The title represents a core thesis: human beings are creators existing between the earth’s natural structures, but they are also the primary drivers of its disruption and destruction. The documentary serves as a deep dive into how modern systems have broken the balance of nature.

Kasiterit

Riar Rizaldi | 2019 | Indonesia | 18’ | Indonesian w/ English subs
One-third of the global tin supply is extracted from Bangka island in Indonesia. Tin is the most impacted mineral by the upcoming technological development, which includes artificial intelligence and technology for renewable energy. Natasha is a solar-powered A.I. voice, and in this film, they trace their genealogy and the truth of their origin; from the capital liquidity to labour dynamic. With their feminised voice—as quite often performed by other AI-powered voice assistants produced by tech-companies, Natasha narrates the emergence of tin in Bangka island and their existence from the perspective of tropical anthropology of nature, value theory, philosophy of time, genetic mutation, geopolitics, and automation.

Asian Movie Night (AMN) is a diasporic film platform in the Netherlands. Established as a direct response to the systematic lack of Asian representation in the Dutch cultural scene, AMN brings in radically different narratives and aesthetics to a broad audience through collaboration with various cultural venues. With an interdisciplinary approach that integrates film, visual art, design, and conversations, AMN aims to challenge the notion of ‘Asianness’ by transcending nation-state borders and resisting fixed identities.

wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) is a platform for anyone interested in expanding their horizons in film and art. Dedicated to advancing the position and interconnectedness of artists’ moving image in the Netherlands, we focus on local communities while remaining closely engaged with international and recent historical developments in film. Through consistent and playful programming, we aim to facilitate meaningful exchanges between visitors, makers, and the industry.

Curated by LI Yuchen and wysiwyg

LI Yuchen (1991) is a mother, an artist, a cultural organizer and a community builder. Her interdisciplinary practice traces migration, identity and decolonial healing, asking what it means to belong beyond divides of skin and passports. Rejecting the singular story of ‘progress,’ she uses art to create encounters that open toward plural worlds and renewed kinship with Earth.

With a background in Biology, Fine Arts and Theater, her work, spanning video, installation, performance and collaborative processes, has been presented internationally at institutions including Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, Casco Art Institute Utrecht and TarraWarra Museum Australia. LI is co-founder of diasporic film initiative Asian Movie Night and the performance collective Weaving Realities, as well as a member of The Pluriversity Weavers to relearn Earth knowledges with Iku communities from Gonawindua.