Rizaldi’s instructional films are aids to miscomprehension. One takes the form of a Hanna-Barbera space alien cartoon. Its saturated colours and muffled dialogue could be a highlight in a ‘70s science classroom. A pantheism subplot throws the lesson, however. The artist hopes we students won’t notice.
The spin continues on the next screen where a shipwrecked astronaut breathes physics jargon and 15th-century Sufism. Science and world religions dance in a polytheist multiverse. Nothing, sadly, saves our lonely hero.
Rizaldi’s grand unifying theory is as charming as it is confused. The conflict of belief and reason is a 19th-century problem. Throwing vague old maxims at it advances little. When an artist thinks he’s understood quantum mechanics, to twist Richard Feynman’s words, he doesn’t. How will he know if he knows god?
