Mirage: Metanoia - Prelude
On Mirage the series:
Riar Rizaldi’s films explore the roots and repercussions of modern science and advanced technology on the social, political, and cultural life of humans and nonhumans in Southeast Asia. His latest work is a dialogue between particle physics and ideas about the nature of God in tropical Sufi mysticism. It introduces the life and work of sixteenth-century Sumatran philosopher, poet, and Sufi mystic Hamzah Fansuri. In his writings, Fansuri conjectured that God infiltrates every aspect of the universe, down to the smallest particle, and the universe itself is God’s radiating holographic projection on a two-dimensional plane. Toward the end of his life, Fansuri was deemed a heretic and he and his disciples persecuted. His ideas, however, anticipated by several hundred years breakthroughs in particle physics—the notion that the universe is composed of subatomic particles including both matter and antimatter—as well as the holographic principle—the theory that the universe is, in fact, two-dimensional.
Episode 1
Duration 06'04"
The film is the first in a series that reconfigures and interrelates two parallel modes of inquiry into the nature of reality. Formatted as a Hanna-Barbera and early Disney animation short set in the distant future—moving images format that is frequently used as tools of science communication in the mid 20 century, it rehearses a conversation between two cosmologists about the presence of God in atoms. Particle physics and Malay-Indonesian Sufi metaphysics are brought together as different expressions of the same human endeavor to grasp the transcendental in the material. The film positions Western science as one methodology among many in a constellation of pluralistic worldviews.
Film still
Installation view at Riar Rizaldi: Mirage, Gasworks, London, UK (2024).
Single-channel, 3:2 format, colour and sound (stereo), 06 min 04 sec, with mural
Image courtesy of Gasworks. Photo by Dan Weill.
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Installation view at Jan van Eyck Open Studios, Maastricht, Netherlands (2023).
Single-channel, 3:2 format, colour and sound (stereo), 06 min 04 sec, with sofas and carpet
Photos by Romy Finke.