Jati Goes to Rotterdam

Prized for its durability and beauty, jati, or teak wood, fuelled the expansion of plantations and the extraction economies that connected Indonesia to Europe. Part of Otty Widasari’s larger project Ones Who Looked the Presence (2015–2020), the short film contemplates the histories of Indonesia’s natural resources and their exploitation under colonial trade. Opening with footage of timber transportation, Jati Goes to Rotterdam repeatedly pulls back to reveal the image as a recording within a recording. Moving across locations in Rotterdam, Widasari reintroduces the archival documents of extraction into the spaces that once received these resources.