Search

Contemporary Indonesia is at a critical juncture. The intense forces of globalization are shaping how Indonesians position themselves in relationship with the intensifying, transnational movement of bodies wrought by state violence and neoliberal economics. This thesis examines how certain Indonesians perform empathetic responses to these global motions via social media. The first case study looks at Indonesian Islam and Twitter through the lens of the #saverohingya movement. It examines a protest action performed by fans of the Persib Bandung soccer club and the attendant discourse it elicited on Twitter. The second case study examines the Instagram presence of Komunitas Salihara, a cosmopolitan private arts venue in South Jakarta which presented a variety of Latin American themed programming contemporaneously to the #saverohingya movement. I posit that social media not only serves as an archive of performance but that it also accretes performative context, allowing users to enact their identification with transnational Islamic identities or cosmopolitan neoliberal logics through their engagement with the media in a way that troubles extant performance studies and dance studies literature on archive, repertoire, and empathy.