Asarela

1. Hope and fear when entering the campus

I remember many mornings when I entered the campus feeling both hope and fear. I don’t think hope is ever one hundred percent hope; it almost always comes with a little uncertainty or fear.

On my first day at university, I was excited because studying in Germany had been my dream for a long time. At the same time, I was asking myself: Will I survive with my limited German? Will I make friends? Will I fit in? Will I do well?

The morning I remember feeling the most fear was when I had to give a solo presentation in German. On paper, I had a C2 German-language certificate, but presenting my own research was something completely different. I was standing in front of an audience of mostly native speakers. Usually, I would rehearse and prepare a script of what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. But the university schedule was very busy, and I had to work part-time on the weekend, so I had no time to write a script or rehearse. I arrived with only my PowerPoint presentation. It didn’t go well because I felt incredibly anxious. Looking back, I don’t think it was my project that failed; it was my confidence that collapsed.

Things changed in the third semester, when I discovered filmmaking. The university offered a beginner’s film course, and I attended it. It felt as though I had finally found a language that suited me. I was studying communication design, and learning about film and moving images was eye-opening.

The last morning I went there as a student was when I presented my graduation project: a short film shot in Indonesia and inspired by my own experience. I walked there carrying my film report and presentation, feeling excited and hopeful that people would like the film and understand me and my story. They did. They really liked the project and its story, and I received the highest possible grade, 1.0.

It made me realize that I did belong there and that I could be understood by others through a language I felt comfortable with.

2. “No Plan B” and the possibility of returning home

For a long time, returning to Indonesia didn’t feel like an option. I didn’t feel safe going back there as a queer person, and I also didn’t have a safety net or family to return to.

I felt that I had to make my life in Germany work. Because there was no Plan B, I approached everything in survival mode. I studied very hard, worked part-time, had many sleepless nights, and never went on vacation. I constantly pushed myself because I felt that if I failed, I might have to leave Germany, which would mean losing my existence here. That was how I thought about it.

Even after graduating, I found it difficult to slow down. I was always worried about supporting myself and keeping my visa. That is still one of my biggest worries, although much less so now.

Finding a place for myself and trying to belong was also a long process. At the beginning of my life in Germany, including at university, I thought I had to surround myself mostly with German friends to become part of society and always speak German. But that made me feel quite lonely. It felt unnatural to pressure myself to spend time only with certain people.

This changed when I began connecting with other diasporic communities. One of those openings was sōydivision, where I met many people from the diaspora, at that time mainly Indonesians, who were interested in music and art and were very open. I also became connected with other diasporic communities. Even though our stories are different, there are experiences we immediately recognize in one another. That sense of mutual understanding and community continues to shape my life and my artistic practice.

3. The three-channel artwork

I don’t think this work could exist as a linear documentary because I’m not trying to tell one story. I’m trying to create a dialogue between different moments in time and different perspectives.

The starting point is my own experience as a student entering this building every morning. When I learned about its history, I realized that many other people had walked through the same gates and inhabited the same building in the past: factory workers, forced laborers, gas workers, and, later, students like me. The three channels allow these different perspectives to exist at the same time.

One channel presents historical archives, another holds my personal memories, and the third shows fragmented text and narration, almost as if it were the voice of the building itself.

I’m not trying to explain everything. With this work, I want to invite the audience to encounter these different layers and perhaps find connections between them.

4. Ethical reflection: connecting experiences without equating them

This is something I have thought about a lot while developing the project. I’m not saying that these experiences are the same, and I don’t want to flatten their differences. I’m not connecting people because they suffered in the same way.

The connection begins with the architecture they shared: this building, which is now a campus and was previously a factory. History placed each person in a very different position within it.

What interests me is how the same building has witnessed different generations arriving under different circumstances and political and social conditions, and from different backgrounds. The installation does not merge these histories into a single story. I try to place them beside one another, allowing visitors to notice both the similarities and the differences. I hope it creates a space for reflection rather than comparison.

5. ALIÄNSI and the student archive

Placing this work within ALIÄNSI has definitely changed my understanding of my student archive. When I was a student, we had already learned about the campus’s history, but at the time it was simply historical information. I didn’t really see myself as part of that history.

Developing Rehearsing Becoming as part of the ALIÄNSI exhibition changed that. It made me reflect not only on the building’s history, but also on my own journey.

I realized that my personal archive, which I had always considered a collection of private memories, is also a document of a particular moment in the history of this building. This project helped me understand that my memories are connected to a much larger history—not because my experience is the same as the experiences of those who came before me, but because we all became part of the building’s ongoing story.