Rachmi Diyah Larasati (D) is Indonesian traditional dancer and writer whose theme is on modern trauma of Indonesia and diaspora identity. She is one of survivor from 1965 communist massacre and her work was deeply influenced from and contemplating contemporary meaning of the narrative of the catastrophe.

 

<This interview has been made 23rd of August at one of hotel lobby in Jakarta.>

J means Dr. Jun and D means Diyah as follow

 

D: In Indonesian society in most of the cases, memory of death is celebrating publically. Especially in Bali memory of death celebrate by public with food and some mantra. However, we don’t have any memorial for Massacre, and we don’t know when and where and how the death bodies are. So there is a glimpse of hope that these bodies are missing, but still alive. Memory is the departure point

of one memory. Hence, I could never create particular memory of my father’s death. Even though, sometimes we find death body, we just assuming that which body is whose. In the case of my family,

we didn’t find any corpse. So those bodies were missing except one we could find, my grandparents’ one because they were executed publicly. In general, they put all corpses in one place. In this island, there are thousands of holes for those corpses

 

D: We cannot do the death ceremony, I know some people like me doing death ceremony secretly and personally just for remembering their ancestors. As for me, I am dancing at silent place or sometimes I am just looking at water surface. But still, it is not such a thing of memorial, gathering public and make it official. We even sometimes do not claim about death publicly, because it considered as a taboo that missing parents during the cold war because it’s not a good thing. It’s like it is hard to claim that we are mourning for the loss. We are mourning. But mourning is forbidden.

 

J: could you describe for me how you remember the time that you lost your parents?

 

D: So, the train for me. Its’ a sound that bring kind of shadow when the train passing by the house it cast a shadow. When the train passing, suddenly all sounds gone except the sound that train passing

remain. Shadow of the train closes the sight. So for me the sound of train passing remind me and functioning as the mourning and sadness. I couldn’t find a reason it connected with my memory of loss, but it surely does. For me, it is refugee moment and the space of refugee. And that is actuary I used to claim from Antigone. It is a space and time that I allow to feel mourning. It’s not about materiality of the body because we couldn’t find it. But just feeling that how we owned. I am wondering how many defector patients you have every day?

 

J: Approximately, 100-200 people per month and whole their population in S.Korea is 27,000. I am counseling around ten defectors a day. They are mostly young. The biggest portion is age between 20-30, and female defectors are 80% from the population. So I can say, the most population is 20s’ women. Could you tell me your family background?

 

D: I came from artist family, that is one of the reasons that we were targeted. My family was very close to the peasant movement. So the combination of two reasons makes them as a target, as communist in a way for anti-communist movement In Indonesia. I do not know what kind of organization they belong to, but they persecuted because of hegemonic story of Indonesia at that time. If any of the family belong to personal and social activity that is not official, the government assume that he is communist. I did not have any provident of their involvement with any kinds of political activity because we were lived in the village alone. I danced since when I was five. In my book, I talk about gun that I saw from almost every day.

 

J: Gun?

 

D: That gun is not actuary belong to my body and to my family because the gun was always enclosed by cloth. But I could remember the gun because people who have similar gun to our house many times almost every day. I can say there is one actual gun that is a symbol of our family protection but at the same time the gun made the house itself as a ‘GUN’. So the meaning of the house is a combination

between a house that I could dance and also the house that I have a lot of the bad memory. So the house is the combination of two kinds of memory.

 

J: You said your parents were also dancer right?

 

D: I was very closed with other people when I was dancing, and the place where I was dancing was pretty close from where prostitution happened. So I had my first performance when my age was five with Hundreds of audience but I never see any of my family members’ dance what they teach me after I became dancer. So often, I ask my aunt whether I could see her dancing because she was also the dancer but always see said she will never dance anymore because it evokes the memory of my family. The Massacre made all the dancers gone.

 

J: I am curious how the trauma influenced to your dancing practice or how you overcome your trauma through your practice.

 

 

D: So the dance sometimes became the space and time of the refugee to remember to have a feeling of mourning and also sometimes the dance is catalyst. However, the dance is the one make me survive

economically and as a self. So for that sense the dance is for me the refugee space.

 

J: Do you regard you as a diaspora?

 

D: I am diaspora actuary. I do not feel yet U.S is home. The home is moving we will never find a home. The home is a promise of settling and at the same time, the home is the representation of the journey of hope. Sometimes you feel sometimes not. I always feel displaced since me and our family moved from that house.

 

J: Let me ask again.. How did you overcome your problem or trauma?

 

D: Well…. We all believe that we have a good mechanism of forgetting and loss, but actuary we are not. I think different rhythms of life were forcing you to deal with bad memory because there is no such

space for keep mourning to grow. In modern society, you always need to be a person overcoming something. That is the general definition of human in our contemporary world. You have always to be

good even after disaster happen to you. For me, there is one word that always kept in my heart. The word is Return. In fact, I always talk about the limit. For example, I am now talking about U.S and writing a book. My loss displaced to something else. The feeling of refugee, the temporal shelter always belong to feeling of return. I visit home as many as I can to feel of the return to the idea belonging the

home, but I couldn’t find yet.

 

J: The feeling of diaspora that you have is like the same with North Korean Defectors. Imagine there is someone who has memory of the homeland but dislocated and live his entire life from a foreign country. He always has an emotional attachment for his homeland whatever his memory is a good thing or bad. North Korean Defectors have the same mindset. Once they dislocated to S. Korea. Even though South Korea is a way more wealthy and they live affluent life while Defectors had seriously starved and lived within serious bad situation. They do long for their homeland. There is another example for the same situation. Imagine an old South Korean man whose early life was seriously poor and rarely get feed from his normal days and now economically got succeed. This is very general story of a South Korean middle class life now days. He or she was also longing for his early life even though the memory is not beautiful. I have a question for you how many times you visit Indonesia a year?

 

D: Every year when I visit Indonesia. I need to deal with Visa issue that is difficult to process every time. I visit home two to three times a year. I do return home to keep the feel belonging home. I feel I don’t find it yet, because the meaning of home is also moving.

 

J: How long you stay in Indonesia?

 

D: Two to three month every time. This year was the first time I stay eight months in Indonesia. I feel like Indonesia as a home more than ever. I had the experience to meet a lot of people like me those who have a trauma from history of late twenty century and had a long journey which initiated from his trauma. I adopted by air force army man in U.S after my parents died. I have a question for you. What kind of conversation you make with North Korean defectors?

 

J: They normally talk about their trauma sometimes it is about their journey when they move out from North Korea, and sometimes its’ about their first impression of South Korea. I think your feeling of homelessness and North Koreans detachment feeling is somewhat different. You don’t feel home from your motherland even though you can easily come back, because the meaning ‘Home’ became nomadic. You do not feel as like home once you leave. In contrast, North Korean defectors cannot go back. I think that is the main difference of your experience as a diaspora and North Korean defectors. And of course, they talk about how they adapt to Korean society. And they also talk about their family they left to their homeland.

 

D: I have been lived in U.S nineteen years but I couldn’t find a home yet that I should try something else. And something else is return. It’s same with me what is difference U.S and here. For me that fear still stay for me but different from here and there. Fear about military here all the time in the U.S too. When I saw military in U.S I still fear from them. In the U.S in the campus where I am teaching, I seriously got fear when I saw police.

 

J: Your situation is the same with North Korean Defectors. North Korean Defector has fear from policemen since they saw them while they are in a dangerous situation. Even though police in the adaptation camp are there to help them. Most of the North Korean defectors have fear from the police. We called this situation ‘re-traumatizing’ could you tell me about Memory of father?

 

D: Its very difficult question to answer. I always talk about the train with shadow when I got asked about my father by someone. Because that train is the first marker of the memory once someone actuary told me about my father. In the beginning, I was not aware of the whole story of the cold war. Because I was a little child. My neighbor told me that your father was left home with Train. You know our house was not far from train station. So what I remember about my father is about disappearance. I cannot remember the person itself. Disappearance is the one that I remember about my father. I heard many times about my grandfather because he executed brutally in front of people in front of the train station and executed by many people. But my fathers’ case, it was just missing. Shadow of train station is memory of my fathers’ disappearance. That blank of light and dominant of sound train passing is memory of my father. There was the big whole that they buried my father that is distanced from our place that’s why my father disappeared. There are thousands of the whole.

 

J: It seems this is an important point for you. We have mourning period after we have a bad memory. Here, the proof of the loss functioning as a signifier of the memory. But if we cannot find any evidence of the loss, our conscious still looking for the evidence and having grace period for the memory. You

couldn’t find the corpse of your father so some part of your conscious still waiting your fathers appearance even though your logical thought already know he already dies. In this situation trauma amplified than actual one. I think you unconscious decide to remember shadow of the train rather than

the actual event because this reason.