Displaying nuances of collective memory and its constant shaping and reshaping, Aditya Novali beautifully captures the portrait of the current times in Indonesia. Remanence: There's just so much that I want to say is another intriguing work from his show ‘New Obsolescence’, breaking down and analysing the archival video documentation of the artist and other performers from June 17, 1989 at the Istana Negara or the Indonesian Presidential Palace. Playing with the film footage recorded on Betamax, Aditya skilfully utilises the screenshots from the outdated cassette to paint an audience suffering the disorienting aftermath of Dutch colonialism. Capturing the “glitch” through his painting, he offers us opportunities to acknowledge the multiple identities of the past. As Frantz Fanon, a celebrated political philosopher, explains “Colonialism…turns the past of oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it.” In each panel, we see a similar process undertaken—the first capturing a blurriness and the final panel almost completely faded off, nearing abstraction. Set in the Presidential Palace, the audience is a testament to the complex heritage and architecture of the building. A symbol of Indonesian sovereignty but retaining Dutch colonial elements, the prestigious building parallels the myriad of complex roots of the national and self-identity of the public. 

It is a nod to the larger political narratives blurred and entwined with the digital, with the brilliant use of the colour blue in each panel. There is a discrepancy or a “glitch” in the audience as well. It hosts the presence of Ibu Tien, the wife of the then-Indonesian president, wearing a Prussian blue kebaya and seated along with her political dignitaries. While political leadership during that time was occupied mostly by men, most of the audience in the 1989 show were women—representing how soft power was concentrated among them. The colour blue signifies not just royalty in this context, but also the dissolution of the same with the blue screen. Thus, with the original Betamax footage being filled with glitches, fuzzy dots and low-resolution scenes, it is impossible to tell what exactly happened that evening of June 17, 1989. With such a compromised vantage point, Aditya gives a final mischievous nod to the blatant cultural mystification through the process of digging up the past.