Here, the human dancer is absent. Instead, robotic limbs—scavenged from the wreckages of the extractive automobile industry—inherit the task of mechanical violence. The bamboo, once a tool of both punishment and play, now performs autonomously, detached from its historical operators. The machine does not dance. It does not remember. It only executes.
But somewhere between execution and repetition, a question arises; who or what is the subject of this performance? The colonial apparatus has long automated itself—economic policies, surveillance technologies, global labor flows—each iteration more abstracted than the last. The tinikling bird, evading its captors, has become data. The foot hovers over the pedal. A decision lingers. In the gaps between movement and machinery, between history and code, resistance is rewritten.