17.09.2026
Some questions for Ratri Notosudirdjo
By
Hi Ratri, can you tell us a bit about your practice and what kind of performance you will do for Zenith X per liminal?
I like to create a lot of performances, sculptures with textile, wood or ceramics. For the past three years I've been deepening a practice into shadow puppetry. I first began with an interview-based project called Wayang Mimpi (Shadow puppetry of dreams) to collect stories from fellow diaspora folks and Indonesians still based in Indo. But this opened up a path to collecting absurd stories and poems from my friends and family. A big question for me right now is how to continually connect my practice to Indonesia currently and historically, how to hold that bridge up despite distance. It's a mixing of context and experience, with a lot of fabulation, poeticism and surrealism. For Zenith X per liminal I'll be presenting some of these stories with some new experiments into composition and some new puppet characters popping into my repertoire.
With an impressive body of work over multiple years in and out of Rotterdam and Bali, how does your practice impact your daily life?
I've never really seen there to be a separation of life, art and politics. Of course space between is necessary for the soul and as I say this the word "work" boils up in an ominous and haunting manner. But these things have always overlapped. The way I troupe, move and perform is simply a reflection of my daily life, not only through a surrealist imagination but also the quick-on-your-feet wittedness that migration and displacement necessitates from the body and mind. How my art moves from place to place, whether materially or through my ideas and collaborations, pings back and forth from situation and locality. That locality for the last 10 years has been in Rotterdam Netherlands, so making art is a way to continually re-think and re-sense my relation to "home", to rejoice and remember family, and strengthen my political muscle towards Indonesian history and cultural memory. It functions from a deeply undefined diasporic place within me.
Lee
Loewenicht
- interviewer & editor
Hi Ratri, can you tell us a bit about your practice and what kind of performance you will do for Zenith X per liminal?
I like to create a lot of performances, sculptures with textile, wood or ceramics. For the past three years I've been deepening a practice into shadow puppetry. I first began with an interview-based project called Wayang Mimpi (Shadow puppetry of dreams) to collect stories from fellow diaspora folks and Indonesians still based in Indo. But this opened up a path to collecting absurd stories and poems from my friends and family. A big question for me right now is how to continually connect my practice to Indonesia currently and historically, how to hold that bridge up despite distance. It's a mixing of context and experience, with a lot of fabulation, poeticism and surrealism. For Zenith X per liminal I'll be presenting some of these stories with some new experiments into composition and some new puppet characters popping into my repertoire.
With an impressive body of work over multiple years in and out of Rotterdam and Bali, how does your practice impact your daily life?
I've never really seen there to be a separation of life, art and politics. Of course space between is necessary for the soul and as I say this the word "work" boils up in an ominous and haunting manner. But these things have always overlapped. The way I troupe, move and perform is simply a reflection of my daily life, not only through a surrealist imagination but also the quick-on-your-feet wittedness that migration and displacement necessitates from the body and mind. How my art moves from place to place, whether materially or through my ideas and collaborations, pings back and forth from situation and locality. That locality for the last 10 years has been in Rotterdam Netherlands, so making art is a way to continually re-think and re-sense my relation to "home", to rejoice and remember family, and strengthen my political muscle towards Indonesian history and cultural memory. It functions from a deeply undefined diasporic place within me.
As you spend a lot of time researching topics to counter history “as is told”. Do you have any recommendations about books that you find important every person should read at least once?
Absolutely. These were some reads that really transformed my ideas of how to practice social-politics not only in the arts but in life. It re-taught me the possibilities and most importantly the limitations of making art and change within seemingly fixed liberal paradigms.
Absolutely. These were some reads that really transformed my ideas of how to practice social-politics not only in the arts but in life. It re-taught me the possibilities and most importantly the limitations of making art and change within seemingly fixed liberal paradigms.
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- Red Africa: Reclaiming Revolutionary Black Politics by Kevin Ochiend Okoth
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- The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study by Moten & Harney
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- Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide by Fargo Tbakhi
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- Between Not Everything and Not Nothing: Cuts Toward Infrastructural Critique by Marina Vishmidt
- The Jakarta Plan by Vincent Bevens
If you could spend a day with someone you admire but never met, who would that be and what would you talk about?
I admit this is a scary question because I'm actually quite shy when it comes to rockstars. But if I could, I'd love to have a conversation with artist Wu Tsang. Also as a former Baduist, I'm curious to hear all about Erykah's alien abduction.
Any hot takes you are keen on sharing?
What is the purpose of platforms that give "all" perspectives visibility, when it can't wont and is unwilling to lead to material and infrastructural change. Especially when said platform occupies the same revenue stream as the NEDS Arms fair? Lastly, having a caring practice of paying invoices in time for rent has been seriously overlooked.
I admit this is a scary question because I'm actually quite shy when it comes to rockstars. But if I could, I'd love to have a conversation with artist Wu Tsang. Also as a former Baduist, I'm curious to hear all about Erykah's alien abduction.
Any hot takes you are keen on sharing?
What is the purpose of platforms that give "all" perspectives visibility, when it can't wont and is unwilling to lead to material and infrastructural change. Especially when said platform occupies the same revenue stream as the NEDS Arms fair? Lastly, having a caring practice of paying invoices in time for rent has been seriously overlooked.