South Sea

During the fatal ritual, offerings are made to ancestors, requesting prosperity, escape from the mundane conditions of poverty. This reflects how these rituals are embedded in the contemporary daily lives of the celebrants, most of whom come from the lower class. The religious and the social overlap; these ritualists are seeking answers to and an exit from oppressive daily circumstances.
The Payangan incident became a massive spectacle in Indonesia and was presented in a sensational true-crime aesthetic on television, more interested in the sect rather than the bigger picture. I am interested in perceiving and articulating true-crime alternatively, not necessarily driven to manipulate the audience’s emotions. I am fascinated in this case with the ides of unravelling and solving a mystery, and finding the appropriate narrative structure that builds to the climactic “revelation” or “answer”, in order to best deconstruct both the reason for the mystery itself, and the pretence of the answer as a monolith.
What happened that night on Payangan beach is an important event to recalibrate and understand the dynamics between our social and environmental surroundings, as well as to the notion of the “Answer”.