The research project "Exploring New Futures for Indonesian Objects: Dismantling Colonial Knowledge Production and Recovering Lost Histories and Memories" seeks to historically deconstruct and dismantle an existing colonial framework which shapes our understanding of cultural objects and their histories, and explore new ways of approaching, understanding, and framing cultural objects collected in colonial contexts. This will benefit not only objects collected in colonial context in the Netherlands and Indonesia will but also shoes objects acquired in colonial situations beyond the context of Indonesia and the Netherlands.
The war booty looted from the Cakranegara palace in Lombok in 1894 serves as a case study for a two-fold research approach; on the one hand the research will historically deconstruct and dismantle the existing colonial framework through which we understand cultural objects and their histories. The first part of the research investigates the formation of a colonial episteme of the looted Lombok objects through an analysis of language, discourse, and historiography in both countries.
On the other hand, it will explore new ways of approaching, understanding, and framing cultural objects collected in colonial contexts. This part of the research explores the meaning of these objects in Lombok society before their loot and what memories and histories were lost because of their removal from their original communities and context. The objects of the Lombok war booty will serve as a historical source and the materialization of absence and approach them as windows into memories and histories of their original values and meanings. This will facilitate a reconnection with lost knowledge and histories and will establish (re)connections between historical objects and current Dutch and Indonesian society.
