The Pidada Intimacy: exercising Multispecies Cinema inside the Mangrove Forest

What Can Artistic Research Contribute to Conservation and Environmental Protection Efforts?

How can we communicate our shared experiences of hardship?  Beyond the human lens of traditional cinema, this project seeks to capture the voices of the non-human. In Muaragembong's mangroves, humans and primates endure a shared environmental crisis. Through an experiment in generating a multispecies cinema, we invite nonhumans as our co-creators: as the director, the sound designer, the narrator, the camera person, or even the editor. By taking the notion of cinema as memory in the multispecies context, this project aims to expand our understanding towards sensing and recording as an attempt to reveal the representation of multispecies injustice.

The pidada, a mangrove species, embodies interspecies connection: its culinary traditions are passed down through generations, and Javanese Langurs in Muara Gembong’s forests rely on its leaves as a primary food source. However, this connection is not without its inherent conflicts. Since 2021, Labtek Apung has been conducting molecular-level investigations into environmental changes in Muara Gembong, an area increasingly impacted by deforestation, rising sea levels, and worsening floods. Observations of primates in the remaining mangrove fragments of Muara Bendera, forced to seek fresh water in human settlements due to increased salinity in leaves and rivers during the dry season, have revealed that these molecular changes affect not only humans but also non-human species. Muara Gembong is representative of wider environmental shifts occurring along the Javanese coast. Similar challenges—rising sea levels, coastal erosion, and land-use conversion that disregards proper environmental impact assessments (AMDAL)—are prevalent across the island. We believe that effective conservation must be complemented by the development of knowledge that enables us to envision futures beyond the limitations of purely human perspectives.

This project is led by Labtek Apung, a transdisciplinary research collective based in Bandung and Jakarta, Indonesia.  Members: Indrawan Prabaharyaka (anthropologist), Novita Anggraini (chemical analyst), Gusmiati  (WASH engineer), Endira F. Julianda (artist/art producer), and Kamil Muhammad (architect). It is carried out in collaboration with Rakarsa Foundation and Aspinall Foundation (in conversation).