Complex history in a superb performance with scale models
A sea chest, photographs, a scale model of a house, and a pan of rice: these are the objects Herman Helle uses to sketch his paternal family history, one that is closely bound up with the colonial Dutch East Indies and the war of independence that followed. This short scene, which beautifully merges the personal and the historical, forms the prologue to Our Empire, Hotel Modern’s latest scale-model play. It is the first part of a planned trilogy on the Dutch presence in Indonesia. Atop the tables there are scale models of the Indonesian Archipelago, with its ocean, jungle, villages and palaces. They are inhabited by eight-centimetre tall puppets – the ones depicting Westerners have doglike heads. Helle, Arlène Hoornweg and Pauline Kalker ‘manipulate’ the scale models, filming as they do so and projecting the resulting scenes on a large screen. Meanwhile, composer Arthur Sauer provides the live soundtrack and effects: empty coconut halves for hoofbeats; snapping celery for bodies being violently broken.
The events depicted here took place between 1600 and 1680, in a period when the Dutch were increasingly colonising the Moluccas in their rush for cloves and nutmeg. And when the local population did not give the Dutch what they wanted voluntarily, they took it by force. Hotel Modern show how indigenous peoples were pitted against each another, setting in motion a cycle of revenge that the Dutch greedily encouraged: ‘For each head, a fine new sword.’ The cast add a narrative voice to the onscreen images, and it is a complex history to convey. While Hotel Modern’s earlier plays featuring scale models, such as The Great War and Kamp, also spanned an immense history, they incorporated individual stories and moments that brought history up close. In Our Empire, rather too much emphasis is placed on relating the history, and there are too few characters to relate to, and there are fewer memorable moments as a result.
The best scenes are those in which almost no words are spoken, when the focus rests firmly on the superb performances with the scale models, and on the juxtaposition between the three actors fiddling about with cameras and puppets and the resulting film on the screen. They include the dynamic, smoke-enveloped sea battles, and the sequence in which a Dutch delegation bring annual gifts to the gate the court in Mataram, where a toucan-headed ruler runs a rigid regime. It is in this latter part that we that we encounter the casually absurdist humour that typifies Hotel Modern. As always, Hotel Modern’s scale models are a wonder to behold and packed with ideas and detail. While Our Empire is perhaps a touch too educational, it lays a good basis for what could be a fascinating trilogy.
23 December 2019
