An Authentic Past
The reenactment of the Serangan Umum 1 Maret is organized annually by a historical society called the Komunitas Djokjakarta 1945. This group consists of forty-seven members, predominantly men who range in age from 13 to 67, and was established after the head of the group, Henry,5 split from another historical society in Yogyakarta.
Entering the group in 2016 meant that one became part of a much larger network of reenactment groups across the Indonesian archipelago. The 2254 members of their Facebook page6 were mostly members of other Indonesian historical societies as well, with each society known to have its own expertise. A few focus on photo shoots in which they reenact “original” photographs of the 1945-1949 period, while others organize reenactments such as the Serangan Umum 1 Maret. For such big events, the term teatrikal was used, a word that in Indonesian refers to a model of Western drama featuring a written script (Hatley, 1995).In order to analyze thoroughly how the reenactment was constructed, I joined the group during their preparations for the event. I learned that
organizing a “theatre” of history requires making a tangible representation of the past. First, this means an “authentic” setting. The reenactment of the Serangan Umum 1 Maret had the Benteng Vredeburg as its backdrop, a colonial fortress that has been converted into a museum featuring dioramas about the National Revolution. It also required a stage filled with props such as fences, barrels, Dutch street signs, vintage vehicles, and a tank. Second, and to most reenactors, more importantly, it required proper gear to create a convincing impression. Each reenactor amassed his or her own “collection.” This usually consisted of helmets, uniforms, badges, and weaponry such as guns and knives. However, most would also collect other “relics” of the period 1945-1949, including photographs, bullets, and medals, as an inspiration.
During my first weeks in Yogyakarta, I usually asked people if I could interview them about their collection of relics, which they would carefully exhibit on the table for me and my camera.
After a few interviews, I began to notice that recreated artifacts were placed next to “original” old relics, sometimes hard to distinguish for an outsider like myself. Guns were crafted from wood, mortars welded from metal, uniforms sown by the reenactors themselves or by their wives after extensive research. In reenactment, the quality of a performance is often defined by its perceived authenticity (Gapps, 2020, p. 183). The Komunitas,s culturally constructed version of authenticity emerged from the expertise of a few of its skilled members. In order to protect the group’s status, younger reenactors would be “schooled” during workshops on how to create a successful gear-set. Authenticity here mostly meant giving the illusion that these crafted artifacts were the originals. Wooden guns were painted with rust or scratches, giving these newly made relics a mythical sense of the past. These reproductions often became more desirable than the originals (Gapps, 2009, p. 398). As Daria Radtchenko (2006) has described, within reenactor groups there seems to be a specific fetishism for apprenticeship—for handmade and therefore “unique” relics, as opposed to machine-made, modern, and therefore “cold” items, as if the process of labor would insert the spirit of the past. Original relics, often fragile and expensive, were merely collected and displayed at home, and rarely used during actual reenacting.Becoming a reenactor means having to develop what Christina Grasseni (2007) would call “skilled vision,” a visual sensibility acquired through participating in a certain community. In this case, this involved being able to recognize and evaluate each other’s “impressions” critically (Gapps, 2009, p. 399). People would, for example, often criticize videos or photos on social media with comments on faults ranging from people taking “weak” poses during reenacting to ill-fitting uniforms or just bad photography. The most common “mistakes” were inauthentic (usually 21st century) items in pictures, such as soda cans or smartphones, dispelling the illusion of the past.
I will never forget the annoyed look on Henry’s face when I did not hide a microphone under camouflage nettings because doing so would have messed up the sound recording.As authenticity is constructed between and within reenactor communities, it functions as status-differentiating capital that can either enhance or degrade a group (Gapps, 2020, p. 184). Protecting the group meant including certain reenactors and excluding others, and often this seemed quite subjective. I encountered a situation in which people were not allowed to join the reenactment because they were not perceived as authentic enough in terms of both impression and behavior. This involved people from another reenactor group in Yogyakarta that usually rode their vintage bicycles in colonial uniform. According to Henry, the head of the Komunitas, they not only “allowed” their members to wear “anything old” but were also “too concerned with business, selling gear rather than reenacting.” As in many practices, reenactment produces a market, a kind of “community-scale capitalism where the means of production is fitted to local concerns” (Schlunke, 2020, p. 161). While this was quite visible in the numerous financial negotiations being made between reenactors, it was also downplayed and dismissed as a topic of conversation. When I aimed to my camera at one of these deals, for example, reenactors awkwardly covered their money as they did not want the financial exchange to be recorded. Agnew and Tomann have argued that authenticity implies a “superlative quality [...] that is more genuine, real, or true than anything with which it might be compared” (2020, p. 21). The business side of reenactment seemed strongly at odds with such a notion of authenticity. In order to protect the reenactment’s status, Henry rejected certain people who would spoil this “genuine” performance by aiming to make a profit out of it—or, at least, he insisted that it be done out of sight of the audience and/or researcher.
As Sian Jones has pointed out, “the negotiation of authenticity is frequently a contested process” (2010, p. 199).Authenticity in reenactment did not merely emerge from the crafting of objects or people’s relation to these objects. It was also an embodied practice in which one acquires a “distinct type of insight that cannot be learned from reading books” (Brsdder et al., 2017, p. 186). It was as if you were only allowed to do your “impressions” if you knew how to produce them, as well as how to wear them. This embodiment of authenticity ranged from practicing marching and other choreographies to singing songs from colonial times. A hugely popular game was Weaphones (Figure 9.2), a firearm simulator app in which the user could learn how to load a range of guns. One could shoot them too, but there was no target; learning to operate them was the main goal. Participants also regularly competed in who was able to load their guns the fastest with their eyes closed, a practice that would teach their bodies how to move naturally in the imagined past. The past was not just represented in artifacts, nor in the process of making them, but also in the experience of employing these items (de Groot, 2009, p. 106; Johnson, 2015, p. 199).
Physical danger, exhaustion, and pain seemed to be an inherent part of reenacting as a form of “affective evidence” (Agnew, 2020, p. 59). This ranged from frequent injunctions to be “physically fit” and training sessions
Figure 9.2 David demonstrates the game Weaphones. Video still documentary The Feel of History (2017) by Lise Zurne.
prior to the event to jokes about the ambulance personnel who would not be able to identify the real injuries with all the fake blood on the reenactors' bodies. This physical experience seemed to be another source of “authentic” connection with the perceived past. When I filmed the reenactment, for example, I was stunned by how chaotic it was.
The performance exposed the unpredictability of combat: I recorded people dropping weaponry to put their hands over their ears, protecting them from the blasts of the bombs; others not knowing where to point their guns, doubtfully looking at their fellow soldiers; and some just hiding behind a wall (Figure 9.3). One of the participants, Ahmed, explained that he often cried after the reenactment. He argued that it was a combination of different factors such as exhaustion, being proud of their work for the show, and feeling proud of the Indonesian soldiers who truly fought this battle. Reenactment, he claimed, made it possible to understand the pain and fear “real” soldiers must have felt.
Figure 9.3 Reenactor performing Royal Netherlands East Indies Army hides during battle. Video still documentary The Feel ofHistory (2017) by Lise Zurne.
The physical involvement thus resulted in what Agnew has described as an experience of a kind of “self-transcendence” both individually and collectively (2020, p. 59). This “authentic” experience of the past, therefore, is carefully constructed in the relationship between the body and a tangible material culture. The next section will demonstrate how, in the construction of this imagined past, historic narratives become merely a backdrop to achieving a “spectacular” battle.