The Overwoman
Ari Angkasa
25
April 2024
25
April
2024
Seventh Lawn
"Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the superhuman, a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal, an over-going and a down-going." — Friedrich Nietzsche
The Overwoman is a new experimental live film by Ari Angkasa presented with Seventh Gallery and commissioned by Multicultural Arts Victoria as part of their Diasporas commissioning series. Through live and archival forms, Angkasa extends the trope of the femme fatale figure in cinema to make sense of trans-diasporic identity in a society edging dangerously towards fascism. Borrowing from the ritual and theatre of organised religion, The Overwoman subverts the famous right wing incel-adopted Nietzschean concept of the Übermensch (Overman)—an ‘ultra-human’ birthed from the pitfalls of postmodernity—as a critique of Western exceptionalism and its sociological effect on queerness.
Anchored in an acute awareness of the body as a cinematic medium, The Overwoman sees Angkasa across live and archival forms performing rituals of nostalgia for the femme fatale. Contextualising Nietzsche’s Übermensch in different realities both on stage and on screen, Angkasa reconciles her transitional dysphoria with the narcissistic guilt of Western exceptionalism. Asking, where does altruistic social responsibility end and indulgent self-preserving individualism begin? Where do they blur together?
The Overwoman is presented by Seventh Gallery and commissioned by Multicultural Arts Victoria through their Diasporas commissioning series. The Overwoman is generously supported by Creative Australia and the City of Melbourne.
"Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the superhuman, a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal, an over-going and a down-going." — Friedrich Nietzsche
The Overwoman is a new experimental live film by Ari Angkasa presented with Seventh Gallery and commissioned by Multicultural Arts Victoria as part of their Diasporas commissioning series. Through live and archival forms, Angkasa extends the trope of the femme fatale figure in cinema to make sense of trans-diasporic identity in a society edging dangerously towards fascism. Borrowing from the ritual and theatre of organised religion, The Overwoman subverts the famous right wing incel-adopted Nietzschean concept of the Übermensch (Overman)—an ‘ultra-human’ birthed from the pitfalls of postmodernity—as a critique of Western exceptionalism and its sociological effect on queerness.
Anchored in an acute awareness of the body as a cinematic medium, The Overwoman sees Angkasa across live and archival forms performing rituals of nostalgia for the femme fatale. Contextualising Nietzsche’s Übermensch in different realities both on stage and on screen, Angkasa reconciles her transitional dysphoria with the narcissistic guilt of Western exceptionalism. Asking, where does altruistic social responsibility end and indulgent self-preserving individualism begin? Where do they blur together?
The Overwoman is presented by Seventh Gallery and commissioned by Multicultural Arts Victoria through their Diasporas commissioning series. The Overwoman is generously supported by Creative Australia and the City of Melbourne.
Ari Angkasa
Ari Angkasa (née Tampubolon) is an artist based in Naarm (Melbourne). Ari’s work considers the liminal voids she inhabits in transitioning and diaspora as generative sites of expression. Operating with the principal of body as cinematic medium, Ari’s work subverts formal conventions of film and performance as a mode of resistance against neo-imperialism in visual culture. Her research-based practice draws on soft power political theory to understand the sociological impact of cinema on collective identity-making.
Ari’s has exhibited recent work with Gertrude Contemporary, The Substation, Immigration Museum, and The Wheeler Centre, to name a few. Ari is a performance booker with Club Miscellania and occasionally performs in drag under the moniker of ‘Dewa’.
In addition to this, Ari is an independent film producer specialising in arthouse comedy films. Her upcoming films Living Truthfully in Invented Circumstances (dir. Andy Butler); Quantum Leap (dir. Serena Tampubolon); and Femcel (dir. Subah Kamal), will be exhibiting at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA); Storage Bangkok; and Guts Gallery London, respectively.