Still of The Right to Do Nothing, 2022, radio play, installation, 48 minutes. Indonesian and Cantonese with English subtitles in a supplemental video. Courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by CTM Festival Berlin, Deutschlandfunk Kultur/Klangkunst Germany and ORF Austrian Broadcasting Service.
Riar Rizaldi focuses on the relationship between capital and technology, labor and nature by using the conventions of genre cinema and theoretical fiction. During the pandemic Rizaldi produced The Right to Do Nothing (2022), a radio play about non-productivity. Reflecting on the economic inequalities revealed by the Covid-19 pandemic this sonic fiction tells a story of A, an Indonesian migrant domestic worker in Hong Kong who is trapped in an alternate reality where the notion of work does not exist and doing nothing is rewarded. A seeming paradise to many, this world is a nightmare to Rizaldi’s protagonist.
The play is inspired by the Indonesian domestic workers who gather in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park on their day off to do Jathilan performances. A form of trance dance, the Jathilan is about the long history of military power in ancient Java and is usually performed by males only to rid themselves of evil spirits and bring around good ones. However, in Hong Kong, Indonesian migrant domestic workers–nearly all of whom are women–have co-opted this practice as a communal activity to enjoy in their leisure time. They perform this dance to enter a trance state, temporarily leaving their corporeal selves to find a truly personal world, albeit a smaller one.
In her whispering voice, the main character in Rizaldi’s piece describes navigating this trance world in an obscure way. She is unnerved and finds doing nothing unnatural, even threatening. This experience parallels that of many domestic workers in Hong Kong during the Covid lockdowns. While staying home became a social virtue for many, those tasked with domestic labor experienced increased workloads.
