YALE
INDONESIA FORUM WORKSHOP
Saturday, April 12, 2008
11:30 A.M. - 5:30 P.M.
Film Screening 'Lukas Moment' - 5:45 - 7:15
Luce Hall, Room 203, 34 Hillhouse Ave., New Haven
The past can be memorialized in
any of a wide variety of ways. Monuments, archival records, and political
rhetoric all carry forward memories and narratives of what has gone
before. In Indonesia, though, history is preserved by very different
means, and the popular narrative of events is often found in arts
and media.
As important as the arts are for discovering the past, though, the
past is also important for the creation of art. Memories and historical
events constitute an important topic for literature, music, dance,
film, and other art in the archipelago. Often art is inspired by a
desire to promote or preserve a narrative of struggle or success.
The Yale Indonesia Forum Workshop 2008 wants to look at the reciprocal
relationship of narrative, memory and history with arts and culture
in Indonesia. It aims to address, yet hopes not be strictly limited
to, some of the following questions: What is the relationship between
contemporary art forms and regional or national identity in Indonesia?
What are the continuing influences of religion and nationalism on
the arts? What are the creative and dynamic interactions between 'traditional'
art forms and more contemporary? What are the evolving relationships
between Indonesian art form and Western modernism? What have been
the effects of an increasing commoditization of and international
interest in the Indonesian art world? What is the role of art criticism
within the Indonesian media on shaping the arts there, and what are
the roles of external influences? How do local discourses about the
arts differ from global or academic discourse? How has state sponsorship
for the arts changed in the reformasi era, and how have artists
responded?
Bringing together three pairs of a senior and a junior scholar, the
conference organizers hope to achieve a balance between academic research
that addresses these questions, by Indonesians and others, as well
as bring in people actively and creatively engaged in contemporary
Indonesian arts, media and culture.
| 11.30 | Registration and Lunch |
| 12.25 | Welcome and Opening Remarks (J. Joseph Errington, Chair, Yale Council on Southeast Asia Studies) |
| 12.30 | Panel 1 (Tony Day and Intan Paramaditha) |
| 2.15 | Panel 2 (Sumarsam and Julia Byl) |
| 4.00 | Panel 3 (Abidin Kusno and Gareth Barkin) |
| 5.30 | Dinner |
| 5.45 | Documentary
Film "Lukas' Moment" and Presentation (Aryo Danusiri) |
|
Panels: Two 30-minute
presentations followed by 30 minutes for Q&A (90 minutes) |
|
Tony Day is an independent
researcher living in New Haven. He was Visiting Professor of History
at Wesleyan University in 2006-2007 and taught again at Wesleyan in
Spring 2008. His most recent publications are an edited volume of
essays, Identifying with Freedom: Indonesia after Soeharto
(Berghahn, 2007), and an essay for a special issue on world literature
for the journal MLQ, "Locating Indonesian Literature in the World."
Intan Paramaditha is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Cinema
Studies, New York University. Her articles on gender, sexuality, and
nation in Indonesian cinema and literature have been published in,
among others, Jump Cut, Journal of Asian Cinema, and RIMA
(Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs). Her anthology of
short horror stories about women in Indonesia, Sihir Perempuan
(Black Magic Woman), was nominated for the national Khatulistiwa
Literary Awards in 2005.
Sumarsam
is an Adjunct Professor of Music at Wesleyan University, teaching
performance, history, and theory of gamelan. He is a graduate of the
Indonesian National Academy of Music in Surakarta, Central Java. In
addition, he holds an MA degree from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D.
from Cornell University. He is the author of numerous articles on
gamelan and wayang, in English and Indonesian publication. His book
Gamelan: Cultural Interaction and Musical Development in Central
Java was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1995
(Pustaka Pelajar Press of Yogyakarta published its Indonesian version
in 2003). As gamelan musician and a keen amateur dhalang of Javanese
wayang kulit, he performs, conducts workshops, and lectures throughout
the world.
Julia Byl earned her PhD in ethnomusicology in 2006 at the
University of Michigan, with a dissertation entitled "Antiphonal
Histories: Performing Toba Batak Past and Present." Her research
combines historical and ethnographic research to find out how North
Sumatran history is relevant within Toba musical performance. Since
2006 she has been intermittently translating and researching in Southeast
Asia. This fall, she will be associated with the Center for Historical
Analysis at Rutgers.
Abidin Kusno is Associate Professor at the Institute of Asian
Research and Faculty Associate of Department of Art History, Visual
Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia. He is the author
of Behind the Postcolonial: Architecture, Urban Space and Political
Cultures in Indonesia (Routledge, 2000) and Penjaga Memori:
Gardu di Perkotaan Jawa (Gatehouses in Java: A Political History)
(Ombak Press, 2007) He is completing a book on spatial politics and
historical memories in the post-Suharto Jakarta titled Appearances
of Memory and New Times in Indonesia to be published by Duke University
Press.
Gareth Barkin is an assistant professor of Asian Studies and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Puget Sound. He was previously on the faculty of Centre College, and has taught at Washington University and the University of Missouri. Barkin earned a B.A. from the University of California, and a master's and Ph.D. from Washington University. His research concerns commercial television production in Indonesia, and how religious, government, and economic exigencies shape the development of national identity models in popular media. He has been conducting ethnographic research among producers in Jakarta since the late 1990's, and has published a number of articles on the subject; he is currently working on a book manuscript titled Producing Indonesia: Derivation and Domestication of Global Media.
Aryo Danusiri is a Ph.D.
student in Visual Anthropology at Harvard University. His ethnographic
films, documentaries and short films have been screened at various
festivals including Amnesty (Amsterdam), RAI (UK), The Margaret Mead
Film Festival (USA), as well as in Singapore, Brisbane, Taiwan and
Rotterdam. Danusiri is executive director of Ragam Media Network,
an NGO that develops visual media as a catalyst for cross-cultural
learning and community knowledge management. His current projects
are "Connexxcreen for Countering Fundamentalism in Indonesia"
(sponsored by HIVOS) and "Playing Between Elephants", an
ethnographic film about Aceh's reconstruction processes.
PANEL 1
Landscape and Memory in Indonesia
Tony Day, Independent Researcher
I'm interested in the relationship between
landscape, memory, and history. Simon Schama and Edward Casey, for
example, have demonstrated the centrality of the concept of landscape
to Western understandings of history. "The depositions and traces
of historical action modify local geography," writes Casey; "…there
are some places in England where, if you were a child…, people
who had stood on the same spot centuries before would suddenly and
inexplicably materialize," Schama muses. What kinds of memories
do landscapes in Indonesia contain, historical or otherwise? In my
remarks I want to look at representations of landscape from early
Java, the colonial Netherlands Indies, and contemporary Indonesia.
My examples come from Hindu-Buddhist temples, Javanese narrative poems,
Dutch colonial novels, Indonesian poetry, and contemporary Indonesian
films.
Excavating Fragmented Memories:
Contemporary Indonesian Films on the 1965 Coup
Intan Paramaditha, New York University
This paper will focus on the ways in which the new
generation of Indonesian filmmakers engages with national memory,
particularly on the bleak narratives of the 1965 coup that marked
the rise of Suharto's New Order regime. By analyzing films such as
Pasir Berbisik (2001), Mass Grave (2003), and Gie
(2005), I attempt to examine the strategies used by the new filmmakers
to challenge the official history found in Suharto's important visual
projects: the Pancasila Sakti monument and the iconic Pengkhianatan
G30S/PKI (30 September Movement Treason, 1984), a state-commissioned
film aired annually on the national television until the end of the
regime in 1998. I will argue that fragmented bodies and identities
interwoven within personal memories are deployed to show ruptures
within the nation that is no longer imagined as coherent. I wish to
situate these 1965 films within the larger questions of how post-Suharto
Indonesian cinema envisions time and space after the end of cohesiveness
and how the discourse of nationhood takes shape in new cinematic imaginings.
PANEL 2
When a "Dhalang" Reads Al-Fatiha in His Wayang Performance
Sumarsam, Wesleyan University
My paper discusses the impact of socio-religious
and political circumstances on Javanese wayang kulit and gamelan.
I will begin by examining the perspectives of Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul
Ulama toward traditional Javanese performing arts. Generally, the
former sees traditional performing arts as an obstacle to Islam, the
latter is in defense of traditional arts. However, dynamic debates
occurred in each of the organizations in locating the role of performing
arts in the society; the meaning and context of performing arts were
scrutinized. When the New Order regime actively exerts its influence
into both religious and cultural sphere, the meanings and contexts
of performing arts became more complex. I will show instances of musicians
and dhalang (puppeteers) responding to this socio-religious
and political circumstances in their performances.
Gongs on the Move: Positioning Toba Batak Musical History
Julia Byl, University of Michigan
Interconnected
family histories have long been a touchstone of Toba Batak society,
and serve to frame both present-day interactions and understandings
of the Toba past. Yet this web of connections is not often traced
beyond North Sumatra, and the Toba's status as a unique minority group
is often stressed at the expense of recognizing larger cultural affinities
within the region. This paper investigates what musical expression
tells us about these positions, and uses performance to illuminate
Toba history and how it is recruited within contemporary Toba identities.
PANEL 3
Architecture and National Imagining in Post-Suharto Jakarta
Abidin Kusno, University of British Columbia
Ten years have passed since the fall of the New
Order and a sense of hope and concern has developed in regard to how
things have changed since 1998. This presentation seeks to focus on
the attempts of architects to represent and transform the capital
city of Jakarta. What kinds of urban ideas, historical narratives
and national memories have been set in motion for the city? According
to what rationalities are they put into play?
The Foreignizing Gaze: Élite
Ways of Looking on Indonesian Television Gareth Barkin, University
of Puget Sound
Based on ethnographic
research among producers and broadcasters, this paper proposes that
Indonesian commercial television production relies greatly on media-bound
forms and narratives borrowed from those local and global sources
that compromise the broad mediascape accessible to industry decision
makers. It focuses on a particular case study -the pilot episode of
a travel program that was aired at a new station's first broadcast
- in an effort to demonstrate how derived form and narrative can be
strategically and creatively repurposed in 'local' programs, while
speculating on the resultant semiotic shifts and changes in audience
subjectivity. The travel program, in which a sophisticated, urban
Indonesian plays the role of visitor to one of the country's top destinations
for 'cultural tourism,' is emblematic of how producers position audiences
relative to their own relationship to the 'traditional.' It is concluded
that producers heavy reliance on global media narratives, combined
with the production community's emphasis on certain forms of prestige,
has led to content that positions audiences as foreigners when looking
toward regional Indonesian culture groups and markers of tradition.
This "foreignizing gaze" is argued to be latent across a
large spectrum of the Indonesian mediascape, including some genres
of domesticated foreign programs.
DOCUMENTARY FILM
LUKAS' MOMENT
An ethno-documentary by Aryo Danusiri
Norway/Indonesia (2005)
60 min/Mono/48Khz/Color/DVCAM
Indonesia w/ English Subtitles
Synopsis
This is about a piece of contemporary everyday life in West Papua,
one of the conflict areas in Indonesia. Instead of reproducing Papua
with stereotyping in chilling and horror images of conflict, the filmmaker
is more interested to treat his camera to create an intimate, observational
and emphatic story about Lukas, a young Marind fisherman who is trying
hard to finance his own education. He starts a small business with
the support of a development project. Starting with a slow and atmospheric
rhythm, this film follows Lukas' attempts to sell his catch to the
market in capital city without going through middlemen, which apparently
causes difficulties. In the post-Suharto regime that has seen the
growth of an emergent independence movement in West Papua, this film
chronicles the drama of an indigenous people, the youth whose cultural
identity and livelihoods remain marginal to the Indonesia nation-state.
Co-Sponsored
by the Council on Southeast Asia Studies
and the Department of History
YALE UNIVERSITY