When it comes to archives, what comes to mind for most people is a collection of old files and brown paper. However, the Archives Exhibition, which is part of a series of events at the Biennale Jogja XVI Equator #6 2021, tries to break the stigmatization.
The Biennale Jogja Equator Series has been going on for 10 years since its first event in 2011. This relatively long period has provided many lessons and meetings with various countries that took part in the Equator Series.
Equatorial Archive Exhibition, Game Of The Archive. The sentence was plastered on the main wall of the exhibition building as the first thing visitors will see. The narration of Equator Series’ journey is also drawn on the wall with a dominant dark blue color and decorated by Google Dinosaurs animation. It is very interesting to see how the dinosaurs seem to be explaining the journey of archive exhibitions from generation to generation.
It is undeniable that technology plays an important role in the process and practice of communication. Especially amid an industrial society that is transforming into an information society. Communication technology is often associated with hardware.
Archives are not just a dusty and creepy old room. Archives aren’t just about boring piles of paper. The archival discourse presented in this archive exhibition has been modified and knitted into two keywords, namely, ‘media shift’ and ‘play room’.
While classic archives still exist, the Archive Exhibition presents archiving in archives and documents that are visually engineered. By emphasizing the speculative method of reading history, where there is a direct link between the past and the future.
The Archive Exhibition is a media of mass communication, where aside from conveying information about archival narratives of the equatorial series, it is also an entertainment medium targeting the younger generation. The form of the archive in the Minecraft game, as well as traditional games that intersect with the equatorial archive. There is also a white room with the remains of production scattered on the floor. In this room, visitors are free to write or draw something using the remaining paint in that room.
Entertainment media always builds fantasy, affects emotions, and forms meaning for the audience, more or less shaping the way they define and understand reality or the world that surrounds them (Shrum, 2004).
The entertainment media then developed into an industry, which is even more global in scale. As part of the creative economy, entertainment media combines creativity, innovation, and principles in the media industry to maintain its continuity. Unlike other industries, entertainment media demands the ability to manage talent and creativity into commodities that have economic value.
Then the question arises. Do the visitors who come understand the issues narrated in the Archive Exhibition? Or are they just visiting to hunt for content?
