Merapi

Java is one of the most volcanically active islands on earth and today the significance of volcanoes in Javanese culture is in transition. Animists have long conceived of volcanoes as the home of ancestor spirits and ghosts. Craters and lava domes have been dwelling palaces for spirit kings and queens while caves and banyan trees have been portals to underworlds. Volcanoes, for some animists, are the centre of the earth and the axis of the universe. In this tradition, the dividing line between nature and culture, the earth and humans, the terrestrial surface and its interior, are porous and in constant exchange. – Adam Bobbette

Beyond the alchemy of vision, sociopolitical and economic layers are inherent. The mount is part of the syncretic beliefs of the Javanese people, but the volcanic rocks also form the basis of the local economy, particularly in the cement production and construction. Szlam’s film hints at the latter in presenting the concreteness of MERAPI’s rocks, observing them with a cool, nearly scientific detachment as if to decode their mineral content. Here we’ve finally reached the substrata where spirituality is anchored in earthy experience, and destruction and rebuilding, the rituals of death and renewal, find their concrete manifestation. – Ela Bittencourt