*Mirage of Eigenstate,* video still, 2024, Courtesy of Riar Rizaldi

As I was getting ready the interview below, I was re-reading Carlo Rovelli’s Helgoland. I was thinking about past, reversed time and ghosts. Rovelli beatifully begins his introduction to quantum physics by describing Heisenberg’s time on small island Helgoland. Helgoland means Sacred Island and the connection between Riar’s interest with quantum physics, nature of mysticism, and hautings and possesions converge in a starnge pararell of Rovelli’s opening chapter.

This is the second interview that I have conducted with Riar. The first one, just weeks before, somehow failed to record sound. Although the conversation now exists only in our memory, its affect radiated onto the conversation published below. As we spoke for the second time it was as if we were tracing a memory, or a dream. We followed ghosts just as Rovelli followed memory of young Heisenberg on sea and strom beaten island.

Like in a realm of quantum physics, Riar works with frequently, the initial conversation seems to move between different states deepening on where we look from, its potentiality radiating onto our subsequent encounter and readings.

P:

Hello! I am so sorry that we have to do it for a second time. It feels strange and funny to meet again and repeat the interview that happened and yet, as was never recorded, one could say, never occured.

R:

It's fine. The answers may be totally different though.

(Both laugh)

P:

I was thinking about that. I believe the time gap, we had a little bit of a break between the first interview and this second meeting would be a good strategy. Instead of trying to recreate something that's already happened and now is barely a memory, we could just have another conversation drawing on this first experience. So I'm going to change questions a little bit and ask you a surprise question. So to begin, I was wondering if we could start by talking about the nature of repetitions?

I don't know if you know a story about Tarkovsky's movie “Stalker"?

Tarkovsky shot the entire movie for which he received a massive budget from the Soviet Union. They shot the “first Stalker”, so to speak. They used the new Kodak film . They even had a person trained in developing this particular material. It completely failed. So they had a movie that happened and has never been preserved. “Stalker” that's now in cinemas is the second film that was made without any budget as they used nearly everything for the fancy stage sets and so forth the first time around. The famous shots of the Zone and the amazing wastescape, which is such a presence in the movie, is the actual site of ecological disaster somewhere in Latvia.

I have been thinking about the connection between science fiction in terms of the gender of movie and the way of making movies in the context of our conversation. And our first interview happened, but really doesn't exist.There is a memory of all event, but no record of it. We repeat it without actually repeating it. I have been thinking in ways how this may relate to the way you work. You work predominantly in film, the process involving repetition.

Also, some aspects of mysticism rely on repetition, but differently. And in a way, the scientific process, which is also explored in your practice, very much involves extensive repetition and documentation routines.

R:

The process is based on perfectionism, perfecting previous attempts. It’s as if the same thing has been repeated over and over until it gets truly ‘perfect’.

I guess the same thing happens in evolution. Darwinist evolution works on the principle of repetition where a particular strain reaches a near perfection. But that perfection is also very vague and momentary, because, well, you never know.

P:

Did you ever experience a situation when you ended up having to work simultaneously in a repetitive and circular manner? I wonder how you find that category in your practice? Circularity?

R:

That's a good question. I always try to not repeat myself. In terms of how I conceptual develop my work. Or In terms of conceptual development of my work.I try to avoid doing the same thing, to avoid repeating myself. I repeat things in the editing process, but not when it comes to the concept. But so many people when they see the work, they say. I keep on doing the same thing, but use a different method. Questions I ask, ideas I explore, belong to the same sphere.

In terms of practicality it may be hard to say, but I guess when it comes to filming, it's just the way we do it. Once, we had this shoot that we needed to do after we completed all the shots in the project. And that one day it was raining. So we could not continue whatever happened before.

* the connection online breaks up

P:

Riar, you vanished.

R:

Sorry. Sometimes my computer experiences this kind of a glitch. I think it's something with this interview. It's cursed.

P:

This interview is cursed. (both laugh)

R:

So, in simple terms of practicality, I experienced this moment when it was imperative to repeat things, but it turned out to be impossible. So the obvious repetition did not occur. We couldn't continue with the material that we already shot, because of the rain. In the end, we just repeated previous shots with the rain to maintain continuity. That's the only example that I can think of.

I have been thinking a lot about the idea of repetition. And in this context, I think that maybe the previous shots weren't that good anyway. That it was actually much better with the rain. It had more drama.

P:

Originally, we started by discussing the idea of elsewhere, which you presented at the ICA during your performative lecture. (EVENT DETAILS) I think that elsewhere, a place which is so much more than just a location. Regardless whatever it's a metaphorical, or physical one, it is a place that is also a process. It contains things and events, and processes which happen within elsewhere, happening inside, as they belong to the order of passage of time and to the realm of change, and elsewhere houses everything that resides and happens within it.

I wanted to ask if you would consider your practice, the way you work, also a place? In the same vein, I see possession as a place, a place/sphere of elsewhere?

R:

I guess that could be a way to conceptualize it, by thinking that the practice I established is this kind of elsewhere. Or maybe, it’s simply the nature of the practice overall. It's as if I don’t operate in a specific category.

Maybe the film world has already established,rigid structure. As is the art world. I like to navigate the space of in-between. I guess this is what elsewhere is. My practice is located in this zone of in-betweenness. Conceptually, I can say, this in-betweenness is elsewhere, a place beyond categorizations. I was thinking that maybe the approach to the practice as experimentation is also part of elsewhere as it doesn't have an established form.

This is the very reason for experimentation. I guess experimentation can be described as also related to elsewhere as it's positioned outside the established certain forms and ideas.

I like the idea of my practice being considered as elsewhere. I never thought about it in this way. But once you mentioned it, I also think more and more about the idea of in-betweenness. Ways of not necessarily entering this binary world of film or art, but instead working within a place that can be operated in a truly fluid manner. I guess that fluidity is also elsewhere.

P:

From my point of view, elsewhere is also an act of putting yourself outside, beyond clearly defined categories. You step out into a gap. Just a little bit.

I think I've mentioned it when we spoke in the interview that happened and didn't happen. Within the realm of quantum physics some of the researchers suggest that time, one-directional time, is just a construct that one can escape from, or redefine, that it is not a fundamental aspect of reality. The direction of time depends on the position of the observer. It becomes fluid and relative.

So, how does one remove, or redefine time? To me, it just may be a metaphor for your practice, because the boundaries and the categorizations that we believe are very sharply defined, become blurred and porous. And as a result the outside is not really the case.

How to step outside undefined boundaries? It's similar to questions you postulate within your works. What is simultaneously, possible and not? To me, it concerns a manner of operation. Manner described as conventionally impossible based on connections, which are not so obvious to make. And yet, within this place that is your practice, in this place of elsewhere, you make these connections and it is where you also position the audience. In the place that is also a process.

R:

Yeah, but it works only when you kind of step outside of sharp edges of definitions. I guess, when we were talking about stepping outside of definitions and ideas explored by physics, we were discussing a sphere of theory, which in practicality, often cannot be achieved, etc. And elsewhere (...), I guess it also manifests the limits of humanity. Humans can only think or understand with some sort of limitation. They can think about the outside, the elsewhere theoretically, but once it becomes practical, the problems start to occur. In the realm of mathematics, it is possible to resolve. But outside the system of numbers there's another world, beyond the physical world that, in this context, cannot be directly experienced.

I guess this limitation of the meaning of what it means to be human, is what I'm also really interested in. I think that's why, aside from science, I'm so interested in mysticism. I believe mysticism pushes the idea of limitations of human, of understanding of humanity, proposing it to be considered in the light of ideas outside the realm of rationality.

When it comes to physical materials,this argument resides outside materiality. The goal behind the process is to transcendent the experience into something lying beyond human capacities. I am interested in achieving something that is not completely defined. Well, something fluid, something that could shape-shift into any kind of other “thing”. (entity/process?). When we consider human perception of things, we can observe the need for a category, an index, a label applied in order to explain something easily or communicate it successfully. I'm inspired by vague transcendent experiences, hence my interest in mysticism. I guess that's the connection to the notion of elsewhere. I begin with science, but I move from the scientific paradigm and method in order to explore possibilities of pushing the rationality embedded in science towards something that is completely different in a sense that it does not really follow physical, material aspects of the world, but steps outside of materiality of the universe.

P:

I find the Enlightenment and mind you, this is the culture I grew up with, it shaped me, somehow strangely beautiful. It feels so reassuring to have a universe that is safely classified and categorized, a model where everything has a label and everything has its place. But in truth it's not really like that.

To me this system indicates the attitude of human beings, both individually and collectively, to the surrounding world and surrounding universe. It is what we classify, but that means that the relationship with the world is vertical, we position ourselves above the world in order to be able to put it all in nice brackets. The universe is an object to be put apart, to explain it away and file away. While mysticism and not only from a singular cultural perspective, is completely different. Mystics do not approach the world from the position of outsider.

The difference lies in the attitude, between approaching the world as a potential explorer or a person who performs experiences and practices mysticism, where one is a part of the universe. So the relationship is mutual. The world affects me and I affect the world. It's a very horizontal relationship. It exists through mutual exchange, awareness and agreement that you are being part of something.

It is pretty common, especially in the Western context, to associate mysticism with something that is purely spiritual. But I argue that it very much involves flesh, our bodily reality, and not only our own, as the individual, as a person who practices it, but also the world’s. The body is spiritual, and yet, it's real. It's there. It's present. I wonder, whatever you ever think about it, as you work with the phenomenon of possession, which to me, always relates to the bodily. On the other hand, you also work with ghost stories, which are very much hauntings that are non-bodily. They impact places instead. You made the “Notes from Gog Magog”, where the haunting manifests in this very fleshy visceral way, while clearly being a digital creation. Ghosts-spirits reside in the story. Memory of an event and in digital version of flesh. It is as if you moved between the categories, and between relationships and between realms of existence. You work with spiritualism and mysticism, a relationship that's horizontal, but also with capitalism, that is a very vertical attitude.

R:

Maybe it’s hard to explain, but I have always been interested in mysticism, which is a form of knowledge production. At the same time, if we consider humans positioning themselves on top of the world, we need to acknowledge that this kind of behavior is based on categorizations, and categorization is rooted in how humans see themselves as the center of everything. And I'm not the greatest fan of this idea. I'm more interested in the ways humans can experience the world rather than logically understanding it. In bridges, in connections between things, ideas and experiences. I'm interested in mysticism when it is considered from the point that is very bodily, that is rooted in bodily experience, etc. At the same time I'm interested in ghost, a kind of a spectre, a non-body entity and a place of haunting.

Further, I add this really tangible, imminent problem, exploring how capitalism could be linked to the idea of ghost stories. For me, this is very interesting, as all of these ideas, these threads, are not necessarily classified as one specific category. I'm trying to jump into the gap in-between these ideas and definitions. I agree that the most important thing is to actually understand the world, outside of being the center of it, where one is a subject, who sees the world as an object. What is really interesting about this idea is exploration of scenarios of what it would be like if humans never existed. In such a world, our perception of it is based on limitations. I'm interested in the model where humans never existed, and where intelligence, rationality could develop in other non-human ways. And outside of the animal counterparts.

The case with mysticism is that it does not really oppose the idea of rationality. In fact, there are mystics who practice by looking from a point of a very specific, rational approach. For example, a group of Iraqi people called al-muʿtazila in the 10th century, who liked pushing the idea of rationality. The reason why I'm particularly drawn to mysticism is that somehow it de-centers human. A lot of Catholic mystics, mostly women, go through a purposeful process of de-centering themselves in order to become one with God. For example, Meister Eckhart* thought a lot about being in fluid communion with God. There's this term in mysticism called annihilation, where one ceases to be human, fusing with the universe, with the world instead. I really like this idea. This mystic notion of almost inhumanity, of something set against the idea of humanity, is very fascinating.

The notion of understanding the world through science; the whole idea of science includes certain limitations. Humans are very small in the universe. But when you look at thia from a different vantage point, like mysticism, it opens a kind of portal to another possible world.

Mystics who intend to annihilate themselves, are very common in the history of mysticism. On the other hand, the term mysticism itself is pretty undefined, I guess. It was created by the French only in the 18-17 century. Before it wasn't even a term, and it concerned mostly people with roots in Abrahamic religion, who talked a lot about annihilation. That is what I'm really interested in - the melting of the human with the universe.

P:

Mysticism can be seen as originating in ancient Greek mysteries, where it was a category of worship, which involved disciples going through secret rites of passage during initiation and festivals. The name was derived from the Greek word μύω múō, meaning "to close" or "to conceal". It focused on transformation. Mysticism means knowledge that is sacred and “hidden”.

But you're absolutely right. It was about going somewhere else, disappearing, and then being reborn anew.

R:

I'm particularly interested in that. Maybe not exactly the movement itself, but an individual, the way they approach the notion of mysticism.

I'm also interested in de-centering the human, when it is used to create a new figure, something that is beyond human, and beyond the human limitations. As a concept, I find it fascinating. We always wonder how this kind of ideas, if not necessarily marginalized, then perhaps redeveloped into something that is defined as more ”serious” as something that is “treated like science”, and a concept in which science becomes “scienticism,” which works on the premise that truth could only be achieved through scientific experiments.

But again, talking about truth, (...) it could be very abstract. It could be like anything. It's never singular. The absolute truth is a construct. What if the idea of mysticism is treated as something that is similar to scientific advancement or scientific progress?

P:

It reminds me of an interview with Monira Al-Qadiri about the “Holy Quarter” I watched. She shot drone videos of the Empty Quarter desert, in the Arabian Peninsula. The area is full of stories, mystic and otherwise. There are a lot of stories regarding spirits inhabiting the desert, jinn, hautings and so on are apparently a constant presence, Also it is apparently a site of quite a substantial amount of meteorite impacts. Someone asked her about this, because the work moves between mysticism and science fiction. At the core of the story lies the visitation of the other-alien being. it's never specified, whatever that being is being alien or extraterrestrial, or it is being that is divine. All definitions are blurred, fruzzled. The interviewer said something that really struck me when it comes to your practice as well, that the work concerned the divine without religion. The nature of the divine, that doesn't necessarily have to have a religious framework, in order to think about it, to feel it, and analyse it and experience it.

R:

The idea of divine or spirituality, outside of the context of a religion is something that, again, was practised extensively by mystics regardless of their chosen faith. That's the reason why so many of them practised outside of the institution of the church, or even openly opposed it.

For example, many of recently canonised Catholic mystics followed this trend resulting in them being largely ostracised or at least marginalised by the institution, for example Julia of Norwich. In Islam it was similar, many desert mystics were put outside of the institution. That's why the Sultanate hates them in Indonesia.

I like this idea. It's kind of a radical asceticism. For them, it is an action aimed at annihilating themselves in adoration of God.

It's an intimate experience. It lies outside of preaching, the mission to attune with the universe and become one with God, the divine, monistic, kind of being. To me, in the desert, one can just disappear, something I find really interesting.

P:

And in a way, step outside of time, right?

R:

Yes, exactly.

P:

I would like for us to speak a bit about the nature of translation. My question is prompted by something that I heard. I was at a talk about translating poetry, and someone asked; “do you think the translation can be a form of resistance?” I kind of look at your practice as such, as translation, that proposes an alternative way of translating. In “Notes from Gog Magog” you take a very capitalist setup in the harbour. But then, the workers start to share stories about ghosts and hauntings, and about potential possessions. In a way, all those stories are translations of the oppressive situation that they've ended up in.

You take these stories, and you translate them into the language of art and film. Then you translate them with the help of AI into a completely different imagery, and you translate flesh into another realm and materiality where, the ghostly, and the bodily, the visceral merge one with another.

You deal with colonialism, that's another cultural process that we never spoke extensively about. Do you think that what you do could be an attempt at translation?

R:

Yeah, I guess that's a possibility. working with art, with films, (...), they constantly translate, the language that belongs to art and the language through which the audience describes the world differ.

In my practice, I kind of like to mix everything all together. Especially, my early work was always considered very textual, even though the medium was film. But definitely, there's some sort of translation happening, not only in terms of the language, but also if my goal is to talk about one subject, I definitely have to translate that subject into my own interpretation. And then my interpretation gets translated again.

My interests in terms of visuality, history of cinema, are related to a methodologically approached subject. So this kind of double translation occurs. That's why I'm interested in fiction. Fiction is also a form of translation of, “reality”, or actuality, whatever that means. It's as if I translated the real world into something that potentially could happen or could not happen. There is a form of translation present. I guess, when I use fictional elements, I see my practice as a form of a practicing translation.

P:

I kind of think that “normality”, the practice of daily living, means translating yourself onto others and vice versa, and translating yourself onto the world, which I think is also a mystical practice.

R:

Yeah, that's true. You're as a subject and the other person as a subject, are not connected at all. Your brains are totally different. Your minds are totally different. So you have to constantly translate yourself in order to communicate, regardless if it comes to verbal language or other forms of exchange. You have to translate your gestures, yourself, so the other person would know what you are communicating. It’s necessary unless you are part of a hive mind where everything is connected. maybe like a virtual hive mind. For example, where others understand you without even communicating. I think all communication is a form of translation.

P:

Definitely. In “Notes from Gog Magog”, the AI-created video of haunting looked as if you were translating. It was very, very strange, the translation was that of the tangible into non-tangible space. It's something that is normally very tactile, which refuses to be tactile at the same time.

It was like a sculpture of the mind. There also was a combination of a very real, let's say, very analogue-organic based idea of a flesh within a digital environment and language. It was a very strange translation and equally, a new category.

R:

I really would like to bring up Ballard and Cronenberg in this context. They both have the ability to translate this form of bodily “wetware”; kind of human, kind of like organic flesh, into something that is more mechanical, technological, more machinic. When these two things collide; organic-human, and machine-technological, it results in emergence of certain visuality, vibes, something that is almost there, but is not really there. It's almost being something, but it's not something. It gives off an eerie, weird sensation; “oh, is this kind of strange?” type. These two things, the machine, the non-human, and everything bodily, more of machine mixed with flesh, create a new quality and a new being, something that resides in an uncanny valley. Like a digital viscera. When two things like that collide, it's untranslatable. We cannot grasp this mixture, because again, it's kind of there, but it's not there. I don't know how else to explain it.

For me, working with AI, especially the early AI, has quality that I try to achieve. Aesthetics that look like the uncanny valley of flesh, but at the same time, it is about how this flesh is mixed with the idea of capitalism. Capitalism in this context manifests through an exploration of the advancement of technology.

In “Notes from Gog Magog”, the protagonists are also ideas; giant logistic machines, like a container ship, a big company like Samsung, etc. When I was making it, I was very much inspired by Ballard and Cronenberg, and related ideas of machine-flesh.

P:

Now that you say this, do you remember that last scene from “The Shivers”?. In the pool? The place at the cetre of the universe is the housing complex, which becomes a machine filled with and run by flesh.

I heard an interview, where Cronenberg said that he wanted to show the idea that the new order that replaced the previous order, as it happens within those very physical possessions in “The Shivers”, were both equally problematic. And this disturbingly quasi-erotic scene in a pool, when all the possessed tear each other apart, while desiring one another, was a little bit as if they were human, but they were not human at all. And the desire was consumption. It was right there in the middle. And there was no way to move from one side to another. Something very interesting.

I recently was reading a book about time modes of catastrophe, times of the Anthropocene. The author, Gary Weng, posts the notion of time mode parallel to the notion of the catastrophe. The etymology of the word katastrophē "an overturning; a sudden end (" from katastrephein "to overturn, turn down, trample on; to come to an end," from kata "down" (see cata-) + strephein "turn" (see strepto-)). means that catastrophe is the time that's always stuck between before and after. You're always in the middle, there is never reaching out to before and there is never reaching the moment after.

R:

Somehow it resonates. When you say that it's always in the state of making. As if it never was completed and didn’t want to be completed either. Like there is no need for that. Like the process is outside of time. And the need for time to begin with, in truth, doesn't need to be completed. It doesn't have to have the beginning. It can just be there in between.

P:

It reminds me again, of this interview of ours that never was. It reminds me of repetition and difference of repetition that is never duplication.

It always includes a difference. It makes a space for it. Things are never the same, and it's kind of funny because the very purpose of the repetition is that we seek the exact same result, but of course it's a complete and utter failure. It could never happen.

I wanted to ask you about collaborations with non-human agents. We spoke previously about AI in “Notes from Gog Magog”. But when you speak about mystics who sort of remove themselves from their humanity and become one with the world and with the divine or the alien/other, or when we consider the nature of spirit possessing someone, or the story that possesses someone, or the story haunting someone; all of these things and processes are beyond human, and not necessarily living. In the way you work, you don't objectify them, you work with them. I'm not sure whether I have a good intuition, but to me it's more of a collaboration than anything else.

R:

I was very much inspired by a movement where science fiction novels really focused on things non-human as the main characters. When I was a kid, I really liked this novel Raptor Red. It's fiction, but also a very informative book about Utah raptors. It was written by a paleontologist, Robert T. Bakker, who had a theory that dinosaurs were social animals. Before that raptors were considered cold-blooded solitary hunters, but for him, dinosaurs were social entities, beings, so he wrote a book about a raptor and his family. I was always interested in this idea of starting a story, fiction, or not even a fiction, but beginning of from a perspective of a material, or non-living, or non-human entity

One of my early works is about tin in Indonesia, and how tin is distributed across different industries. How it transforms into an image and how it becomes imagery and its importance for screen-based technology, phones, laptops, etc. I imagine the trajectory of tin from when it's mined, and distributed to everywhere on the planet.

I'm interested in the non-humanity of AI, and recently in mysticism, the idea of the concept that human is becoming something that is not human. Maybe my interest to speak about or to observe these subjects, somehow make it my practice collaborating with the non-human. Collaboration in this context means observing as a human, but also rethinking together, trying to recreate a worldview that is somehow a collision of different worldviews. Not only the worldviews of human, but also of attempts to speculate. Maybe that's the word, speculating the worldviews of the non-human, which in this context could be AI, could be tin, could be mysticism, I would say that in my case collaboration may be inspired by large in science fiction.

P:

One of my favourite books is Stanislaw Lem's “Solaris”. A book that is essentially about the mind that is non-human, a celestial body and a piece of land, or rather an ocean, and a creature that communicates completely differently,while being all those things all at the same time having this multifaceted nature.

R:

I guess that goes back to the idea of limitations of the human. It’s the context of the ways in which humans think about politics or about physics, how one can imagine something based on mathematics and function, politics, but this mathematical function is impossible to be applied to the “real world”. For example, the idea of multiverse is mathematically possible, but as a human, you cannot experience it. In quantum physics, there's a phenomenon called decoherence. Everything that applies to rules of quantum physics only could work in the quantum state. Where the scale is so small. Once this scale changes to a bigger one, quantum rules, decoherence crumble. So, because humans cannot access necessary smallness or “quantumness” , it's impossible for them to understand that in quantum physics, the universe is multiple. This multiple world has multiple interpretations, and these interpretations, these imaginations can be achieved through speculation by taking not purely human perspective.

I think that science often speculates and imagines theoretical physics. Obviously once we employ rules of theoretical physics, they begin to inhabit a place within imagination trying to make the imagination a form of “institutionalisation”, residing in the imagination through the language of mathematics. The formula emerges, but it may not be possible to achieve without standing outside of mathematics. I really think about these speculations, when it comes to considering the nature of non-human, where exploration outside human capabilities or human limitations. I think it's quite an interesting way to try things out. For example, when considering an entity that is as small as quantum itself and how they may see the world, what is fascinating for me in this context, is how the collaboration is mostly speculative.

Then again, this speculative collaboration is something that I always do within my practice, because I'm really interested in science fiction. So collaboration with non-human, is practical, in a way, as I also think a lot about materials. Real materials, like tin, I work a lot with metals. I have a project about signals in old radio stations. I also think about ghosts. Collaboration determined a large part of my practice. collaboration on the concept, in terms of materials, but also in terms of speculations.

P:

I believe in the agency of different kinds of entities. Non-human entities, like for example, Octopus. They don't think with the brain, they think with the tentacles, and there's actually more neurons in their tentacles than in our brain. I find it very interesting that knowledge, information, data, could be processed outside the brain, but could also be processed through another kind of a genome sensor, which is what happens for octopus. For me, a human-like brain is not the only thing that determines our world andthe universe. I particularly think about non-human in this context, not only animals, but also other kinds of weird intelligence.

P:

Apparently spiders see the world through vibrations. In a sense, a spiderweb is a part of a spider's brain. And it is something that's being produced. In a very bodily, visceral manner. So in a way, a spider makes their own brain that exists outside of their body and is made out of their body. I find the process kind of amazing.

R:

Think about this as a visual graph. It's similar to how our neurons are connected. Maybe when you touch one of the edges of the spider nets, the spider could also sense who you are?

P:

I think it can. It was great to speak with you.

I really hope this time it is going to work. otherwise we'll repeat this forever, the same interview again and again. Speaking of repetitions and differences.

(both laugh)

Riar Rizaldi works as an artist and filmmaker. He works predominantly with the medium of moving images and sound, both in the black-box of cinema settings as well spatial presentation as installation. His practice explores the relationships between science, technology, labour and nature, alongside competing worldviews, genre cinema, and the possibilities of theoretical fiction. His works have been shown at various international film festivals (including Berlinale, Locarno, IFFR, FID Marseille, Viennale, BFI London, Cinema du Reel, Vancouver, etc.) as well as Museum of Modern Art (2024), Whitney Biennial (2024), Taipei Biennial (2023), Istanbul Biennial (2023), Venice Architecture Biennale (2021), Biennale Jogja (2021), Centre Pompidou Paris (2021), National Gallery of Indonesia (2019), and other venues and institutions. Recent solo exhibitions and focus programmes have been presented at Gasworks, London (2024); the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2024); Z33, Hasselt (2024); the Centre de la Photographie Genève (2023); and Batalha Centro de Cinema, Porto (2023), among others.

Riar’s film Tellurian Drama (2020) won Silver Screen Award - Best Southeast Asian Short Film at SGIFF 2020, First Prize winner at 16th Busan International Video Art Festival, and Honourable Mention at DOK Leipzig 2021 amongst other awards. His first feature Monisme (2023) won Golden Hanoman Award at Jogja-Netpac Asian Film Festival 2023, Best Feature Film at Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival 2023, and Grand Prix at Five Flavours Film Festival Warsaw 2024.

Helgoland Ghosts and Monsters of elsewhere. Riar Rizaldi

Discrete Life of the Infrathin

Helgoland Ghosts and Monsters of elsewhere. Riar Rizaldi

Warsaw Biennale.

Discrete Life of the Infrathin