Instruction (2009)

Instruction interrogates the agency of the individual in conditions of war. The work revolves around an unresolved episode of military history: the Dutch intervention in Indonesia’s struggle for independence in 1947-49. Van Oldenborgh asked a group of cadets from the Royal Netherlands Military Academy to read out and discuss a script composed of documents related to the conflict. Performing the script becomes a means to enact diverging historical subject positions, as well as to negotiate positions and responsibilities in the present.