Tanpa Bayangan Mu (Shadowless)

An absent hand, a broken sword and a martial arts manual torn in half: from these fragments, the one-armed swordsman develops a new way to fight. In Tanpa Bayangan Mu (Shadowless), I return to this iconic figure of wuxia cinema, celebrated worldwide and especially among diasporic Chinese audiences. His swordplay gives resistance a physical form, shaped by an altered body and incomplete knowledge. I first encountered wuxia through bootleg VHS tapes under Indonesia’s New Order, when Chinese culture was suppressed. I now trace the swordsman repeatedly across the pages of a book, writing the lyrics of an Indonesian heartbreak song alongside him. Animated for the screen, the drawings place his movements among words of longing and separation. The swordsman travels from film to copied tape, then through my hand onto the page and back into moving image. Each translation alters what he can carry: his improvised swordplay becomes a repeated act of drawing, while the Indonesian song brings longing into the image. What reached me under constraint becomes something I can remake and pass on. In that passage, his power to adapt becomes an agency of my own.