Shadowed Twilight Zone

ke kedalaman samudra. Di kedalaman tersebut, Zona Temaram tidak lagi durasional, atau sebuah fase. Ia adalah sebuah malar, kondisi permanen yang lalu menciptakan habitus-nya sendiri akibat dari ketiadaan alternatif lingkungan. Mahluk laut dalam secara biologis membentuk tubuhnya untuk bertahan hidup di zona temaram.

Program ini berangkat dari pertanyaan-pertanyaan yang berasal dari premis tersebut; bila kita mengartikan ulang apa itu Zona Temaram, secara sinematik dan sosio-kultural, akan seperti apakah Zona Temaram permanen bisa dibayangkan? Apa akibat dari kepermanenan Zona Temaram itu? Dan adaptasi seperti apa yang dilakukan mahluk yang tinggal di dalamnya?

Penggambaran Zona Temaram yang demikian dapat kita saksikan di Diary of Cattle. Hanya saja, kepermanenan Zona Temaram tidak dibentuk oleh kondisi alamiah seperti intensitas cahaya atau kedalaman lautan. Zona Temaram di sini adalah kondisi di mana sebuah sistem ekonomi dan politik begitu dominan sehingga menghancurkan siklus dan menciptakan katastrofi ekologi luar biasa sehingga memaksa mahluk hidup untuk selamanya hidup dalam kondisi seperti itu.

Imaji sapi-sapi yang memakan sampah plastik di samping bangkai kawannya adalah salah satu imaji paling liris untuk menggambarkan katastrofi ekologi di Zona Temaram kapitalisme kontemporer. Relasi antara sapi dan sampah plastik bukanlah relasi simbiosis ataupun sebuah proses daur ulang. Relasi keduanya, yang diperlihatkan dalam Diary of Cattle, menunjukkan kekerasan ekologi yang masif, yang terjadi akibat ketimpangan dan residu-residu produksi berlebih hasil dari sistem tersebut. Zona Temaram dalam Diary of Cattle menunjukkan manusia yang kehilangan kendali atas kenyataan; dirinya sendiri, benda-benda ciptaannya dan bumi tempatnya tinggal. Zona Temaram permanen, yang menunggu kehancuran total untuk mencapai titik batas katastrofi, yang sayangnya, tidak perlu lagi kita bayangkan.

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION 08

Afrian Purnama

Imagining the twilight zone… A place where we stand on a threshold. A territory where humans lose control of their consciousness towards what is real and what is mere image.

The twilight zone can be imagined as phases; thus, it is durational. A shadowed twilight zone can be determined by the amount of light that enters the retina. When the reality which appears in the light slowly drowns, replaced by another reality revealed in the dark. The twilight zone has layers of space and time which rotates according to the laws of nature.

On the contrary, the term ‘Twilight Zone’ is also used to define a specific condition of the environment, namely the layers of sea threshold, the last place where the sun can penetrate the depth of the sea. In those depths, the Twilight Zone is no longer durational or divided into phases. It is continuous, a permanent

condition that creates its own habitus due to the lack of alternative of his environment. Deep sea creatures biologically form their bodies to survive in the twilight zone.

This program departs from questions in those premises; if we reinterpret the Twilight Zone cinematically and socio-culturally, how would we imagine a permanent Twilight Zone? What is the impact of its permanence? What kind of adaptation performed by the creatures in it?

We can see the depiction of this Twilight Zone in Diary of Cattle. Yet, in this case, the permanence of Twilight Zone is not formed by natural conditions such as intensity of light or depth of the sea. In this film, Twilight Zone is a condition where the economic and political system became so dominant. It destroys an ecological cycle and creates a massive catastrophe, forcing the creatures in it to survive in such a condition for the rest of their lives.

The image of cows eating plastic waste besides the corpse of their friends is one of the most lyrical images to depict the ecological catastrophe in the Twilight Zone of contemporary capitalism. The relation between the cows and the plastic waste is not a symbiosis nor a recycling process. This relation, as shown in Diary of Cattle, demonstrates a massive ecological violence caused by the inequality and residues of surplus production from that system. The Twilight Zone in Diary of Cattle represents humans who lose control of reality; of themselves, their creations, and the earth where they live. A permanent Twilight Zone, waiting for total destruction to reach the boiling point of catastrophe—which, unfortunately, needs no further imagining.