{"title":"Ghosts on the Scene of Gas","authors":"S. Vignato","doi":"10.1163/15700615-02102005","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n This article describes a vision of time (the past and the future) in post-industrial dynamics that the author and her co-researchers could gain through shooting a film in the region of Lhokseumawe, Aceh, a once fruitful site of extraction of natural gas subsequently planned to become a Special Economic Zone. It engages with the notion of “worlding” processes and pinpoints, in the ethnographic case of Aceh, the difficulty to access them through discourse because specific strategies of silencing and erasure are enforced throughout an emotional landscape. It is argued that it was the use of film-making as a relational tool aiming to create images that enabled the researchers to see through time and beyond regimes of invisibility. This is how they met ghosts on the gas scene. The steps in the making of an ethnographic film are used as a narrative lead. A scene is set up where the extractive economy of gas is linked to a global vision of development and prosperity as well as to present and past national politics, including a thirty-year-long war of resistance (1975–2005). The creation of a Special Economic Zone is shown to provide a relevant interpretive prism. Different styles of self-staging reveal cultures of suffering in North Aceh. It is argued that fear as a collective emotion takes different shapes across time and serves different political scenarios. Dispossession of land and under-remunerated work appear on the scene; the film’s feminine characters’ positive look to the future appears as an active effort of elaboration of the evolving context. The film Aceh, After is on free access at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR89korhLwQ.","PeriodicalId":35205,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2022-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"European Journal of East Asian Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700615-02102005","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Arts and Humanities","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article describes a vision of time (the past and the future) in post-industrial dynamics that the author and her co-researchers could gain through shooting a film in the region of Lhokseumawe, Aceh, a once fruitful site of extraction of natural gas subsequently planned to become a Special Economic Zone. It engages with the notion of “worlding” processes and pinpoints, in the ethnographic case of Aceh, the difficulty to access them through discourse because specific strategies of silencing and erasure are enforced throughout an emotional landscape. It is argued that it was the use of film-making as a relational tool aiming to create images that enabled the researchers to see through time and beyond regimes of invisibility. This is how they met ghosts on the gas scene. The steps in the making of an ethnographic film are used as a narrative lead. A scene is set up where the extractive economy of gas is linked to a global vision of development and prosperity as well as to present and past national politics, including a thirty-year-long war of resistance (1975–2005). The creation of a Special Economic Zone is shown to provide a relevant interpretive prism. Different styles of self-staging reveal cultures of suffering in North Aceh. It is argued that fear as a collective emotion takes different shapes across time and serves different political scenarios. Dispossession of land and under-remunerated work appear on the scene; the film’s feminine characters’ positive look to the future appears as an active effort of elaboration of the evolving context. The film Aceh, After is on free access at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR89korhLwQ.
期刊介绍:
The European Journal of Health Law focuses on the development of health law in Europe: national, comparative and international. The exchange of views between health lawyers in Europe is encouraged. The Journal publishes information on the activities of European and other international organizations in the field of health law. Discussions about ethical questions with legal implications are welcome. National legislation, court decisions and other relevant national material with international implications are also dealt with. Each issue of the European Journal of Health Law contains articles (with abstracts), selected legislation, judicial decisions, a chronicle of events, and book reviews.