Riar RIZALDI works as an artist, filmmaker, and amateur researcher. Born in Indonesia and currently based in Hong Kong. His main focus is on the relationship between capital and technology, extractivism, and theoretical fiction. Riar has also curated ARKIPEL Jakarta International Documentary & Experimental Film Festival — Penal Colony (2017), Internet of (No)Things (2018) at Jogja National Museum and co-curated Open Possibilities: 'There is not only one neat way to imagine our future' at JCC, Singapore & NTT ICC, Tokyo (2019-2020). His works have been shown at Locarno Film Festival, BFI Southbank London, Centre Pompidou Paris, International Film Festival Rotterdam, NTT InterCommunication Center Tokyo, Auditorium du Louvre Paris, Times Museum Guangzhou, and National Gallery of Indonesia amongst others.
Kasiterit
Researched, filmed, and recorded on Bangka island in the Indonesian archipelago, Kasiterit is a video installation that explores the complex entanglement of tin with contemporary technology and the labour dynamics on the island. Branded as one of the major exporters of tin in the world, Bangka’s tin represents one-third of the global tin supply. Due to its low melting point and high electrical conductivity, tin is an instrumental foundation in all electronic apparatus and every digital screen. In Kasiterit, Riar traces the materiality of tin from the mine to the museum, from the tension between communities, politics, and mining, to the geophysics that shapes the daily life of human and nonhuman life on the island. From the moment it is extracted from the soil until it ends buried as e-waste back in the earth, tin travels around the globe as an actant that shapes our dependency on technological apparatus. There is a little piece of Bangka island in everyone’s pocket.