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Copyright 1999 by Astri Wright

Appearing on Javafred with kind permission of the author. "Thoughts From the Crest of a Breaking Wave," in Timothy Lindsey and Hugh O'Neill, Eds. AWAS! Art from Contemporary Indonesia. Melbourne: Indonesian Art Society, 1999, pp.49-69.

Part 2 of 2
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Thoughts from the Crest
of a Breaking Wave
Part 2

by Astri Wright

“Nothing ever comes by itself. Each and every thing is a result of human labor.”
Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Soliloquy of a Mute.

In April 1999, Pramoedya Ananta Toer left Indonesia for the first time in forty years. After attending the huge Pramoedya conference in New York, he travelled across the USA and Canada. Speaking in Vancouver  on May 25th, after a reading from his Buru Quartet and his newly published Soliloquy of a Mute (his first work of non-fiction, his personal memoirs), Pramoedya, partly deaf, sat small and mostly immobile on stage, with his one good ear facing the interpreter. Pram, as everyone calls him, said: 

For forty years I haven't been able to leave Indonesia. Now I regard this trip as a victory, because the Indonesian fascist and militarist system could not stop me.

Suharto's regime, Pramoedya said, has for decades named his thought and action “marxist-leninist”, because they couldn't afford to name it “freedom”. His second victory, he said, was that he had been able to come to America, “a country feared throughout the world.” The strange thing was that, after being unable to leave Indonesia for so long, when he applied for a visa to the USA, not only did they give it to him, but they gave him a triple entry visa good for five years! (Here the crowd laughed and clapped). 

“And being invited to a country which I have hated for a very long time,” (here the Canadian crowd roared and clapped even louder), after I got the invitation to come to the US, other countries started inviting me too.” (Everyone claps again, but less sure than last time.

  Pram had the crowd in his hand. Despite the constant accolades and praise paid him by the evening's organizers, like the Dalai Lama, he insisted on deflecting them and speak simply, from the heart, on a current fuelled by humour. To the audience it felt like an intimate chat, a dialogue between equals, binding us all in a feeling of mutual solidarity rather than leaving us seated as respectful witnesses to a distant, brilliant man. With an economy of words, Pram made analytical observations succinctly, without becoming black-and-white but also without dissipating the stark realities he addressed into complexity. While he expressed his humble gratitude to all who had worked to bring him to North America and to everyone present that evening, Pram deftly managed to keep the political analysis in focus rather than allow his gratitude to dissipate into sentimental politeness. When bated by Canadian neo-nationalists criticising US arms policies, Pram pointed out that, while the US supplied the weapons which killed Indonesians in 1965-66, and many of the weapons that still kill Indonesians, Canada is the fifth largest supplier of weapons to Indonesia today; hence also Canada is contributing to the killing of his countrymen.

Pramoedya is perhaps the most important rolemodel for the activist artists I have spoken with.  Yos Suprapto, an activist painter living in Australia, brought me to Pram's house in December 1994, saying Pram was like his father and his home like Yos' own home in Jakarta. Yos included a lifesize bust of Pram as a centerpiece in an installation in his solo exhibition at TIM in Jakarta, January 1995. This coincided with Pram's 70th birthday. 

Also Semsar has said that Pram is like a father to him, as close as his own father (personal conversation, February 1999). “And he really likes my work,” he added, a statement that resonates with more weight when one knows that Semsar was considered a “failed son” by his parents when he was expelled from the ITB Fine Arts Department in the early 1980s, due to a political act of his which offended the faculty (Madjiah 1995).

Activist artists often refer to Pram to support their ideas. “To quote Pram,” Semsar said in an interview, “when philosophy and politics are in a deadlock, artists are expected to find the solution. This means artists are actually expected to offer additional (human) values.” (Madjiah 1995). 

“I know Pramudya Ananta Toer,” Arahmaiani writes. “I met him a few times and we had some conversations. I think he is the best and most brilliant author coming from Indonesia. -- I have great respect for his clarity of mind and sharp analysis about social and political structures and reality in general. And he is also [an] expert on Javanese culture and conceptions of power. His criticism of Javanese decadence and [other] weaknesses is some of the most direct and honest I know” (Letter from the artist, 8 June 1999).

“I really admire Pram.” Dadang writes, “Both his work and his person, who refuses to surrender to the regime which oppressed him. Refuses to surrender; this sentence is one which I would like to see realized in my own life”  (letter, 30 May 1999). Pramoedya's travel to the United States and Europe is another example of Indonesian political activist views expressed abroad in the post-Suharto era. Indonesian activists' awareness of his views and personal ways of expressing their relation to him as a way of legitimizing their own and building their philosophical genealogy, indicates the ways allegiance is expressed in familiar terms and how such ties remain active even across a huge geographical expanse.

An Activist Artist Goes Canadian

In February 1999, Semsar Siahaan arrived in Canada as a visiting artist and speaker with the author's department. Since June, his status changed to that of a one-year political refugee, with the possibility of receiving permanent refugee status after his one-year hearing. Semsar's visit was arranged via nightly letters, faxes, memos and phonecalls back and forth to Singapore after he contacted me, sick and in need of help, in early January. He arrived thinner than ever, his hair all grey -- not at all like the energetic young fighter I had met eleven years earlier while doing my PhD research. After the first days of setting him up in a rented room and in a studio-classroom, where Visual Arts generously gave him space for three months, as well as catching up on news, the task of networking and advertising to draw people to his talks, began. His story had to be presented in a simple but also comprehensive way and disseminated across campus, the city of Victoria and the region. 

As luck would have it, Semsar's first week here coincided with the week-long visit of radical young writer-journalist Seno Gumira Adjidarma, and the brief visit of another Indonesian writer-journalist living abroad, Dewi Anggraeni, from Australia.  Semsar's three months hosted by the University of Victoria brought many people into contact with this artist from what to many was a completely unknown context beyond the issue of East Timor. To those who had experienced Indonesia through travel, work or activist lobbying, Semsar's presence provided a shot of vital new energy and perspectives and opportunities for meeting other likeminded people. Professors of art history and writers living in exile in Canada from South Africa and elsewhere, students of bahasa Indonesia and the Asia-Pacific region, activists and local artists staging a solidarity exhibition for the struggle in Chiapas -- most of those who attended, were moved by Semsar's public appearances. His public speaking style abroad appears perfectly balanced between the informal and the informative, packaged in a charistmatic blend of humour and stubborn adherence to principle and humility. 

As soon as we could purchase art supplies for him, Semsar began to paint and sketch, both indoors and outdoors. Saying that he wanted to paint landscapes -- the beaches and forests and mountains of British Columbia -- and perhaps have an exhibition of these paintings, I began to envision, with some trepidation, yet another local show of local landscapes. And the question arose: what does an activist painter paint after he has become completely worn out by his political and personal traumas? What does an activist painter who has “lost his nerve” (as the artist admitted before eighty people on March 1st, 1999) and left his country, whether temporarily or for good? 

In mid-March, Semsar finished his first painting while in Canada, a large canvas (ca.200 cm x 140 cm) which he had started only six weeks earlier. Entitled “Black Orchid”, this painting was presented at a university colloquim (see footnote 32).

image Semsar and "Black Orchid",
Victoria, March 2000
(photo: AW)

The composition centers around the artist's selfportrait. As the focal point in the canvas, it binds together the disparate, turbulent scenes represented around the artist's face. In the upper left of the canvas, a mother screams in pain with her head held back and her arms flung out to the sides: her breasts are shrunken and milk-less and the infant who desperately clutches at her body is clearly dying. In the upper right of the canvas, men with threatening manners and arms raised, shout and point accusing fingers. Below the artist's face is a pond which reflects Semsar's features. But beneath the reflection, under the water, the outlines of a bouquet of still bodies are visible; these represent the sixteen activists Semsar knew who "disappeared" during the year before.

In the early stages of painting, when he worked in pale washes that were later be painted over till the canvas glowed with bright colours, Semsar depicted himself with his mouth closed. In the final painting, his mouth is open. Having placed himself in the middle of the events depicted, he claims the role of witness to history in the present. But repainting his mouth, the artist makes the statement that merely witnessing, visually, was inadequate; only actively speaking, urgently, telling and retelling the history experienced up close, even to the farthest corners of the world, can fulfil the responsibility of the artist-as-witness. 

Pointing at the water in the lower half of the painting, Semsar said, "This is Canada.” He painted several studies of the pond behind his lodgings during the preceding two weeks. On a deeper level, the pond, with its reflective surface and revealing depths, represents the artist's time away from Indonesia with the chance to withdraw, reflect and work, living without the constant fear caused by extreme social turmoil and state-sponsored violence. “Black Orchid” shows how the internal and external mix and merge in Semsar's work. While this was often a feature of his earlier work, it appears now with the addition of metaphors of distance and reflection, and the incorporation of memory and commemoration into his statement in a way seen only in some of his earlier work (such as in “Homage to Christo's Mother”). It shows how Semsar's memory and present experience tie together the political and the personal, the distant and the immediate in his work. 

What, one wonders, does an activist artist in exile, enforced or self-imposed, dream at night? How does exile change their work?

Basuki Resobowo's art never changed its focus, even over thirty-four years in exile. Revolution era artist Sudjana Kerton's mature work, throughout twenty-seven years in the USA, even as he continuously probed new media and stylistic approaches, for the most part persisted in depicting Indonesian themes and subjects. Hendra Gunawan, while in prison and after his release, continued to paint history paintings of local battles against the Dutch colonlizers, revolutionary guerillas at rest, and women going about the business of selling and buying and nursing the children of the nation.

At least in terms of ideas for future art work, Semsar has some very clear ideas rooted in his experiences over the last twenty years. One of these is for an entire exhibition with paintings and installation which could not be realized in Indonesia under Suharto or Habibie, but which may see the light of day in the near future. At the same time, Semsar is dealing with the shift in identity which seeking domicile in a new nation involves: in June-July he painted a huge canvas entitled “Confusion”, which depicted human figures, including his own and ghosts of people in his past, reclining, struggling and reaching across a space defined, from left to right, by a banana palm tree and an oak. On the question of exile and artistic focus, Dadang writes from Darwin:

I believe that as of yet there are no changes, because until now, my spirit is still the same as when living in Indonesia. My struggling, wrestling thoughts and feelings are still directed towards Indonesia. If, nevertheless, there has been a change, it is that I feel I can be more courageous when it comes to expressing my thoughts in Australia, to whoever I want, about the themes/content in my work, compared to when I live in Indonesia. I feel less hampered and more bold and able to sharpen, intensify, the themes in my work. For example I am beginning to dare to think about themes around "Indonesia 1965-1966", which till now -- these events of bloody butchering have not been touched by the reformists. This is the insight I am developing now, living in Australia, [which is] a chance to reflect (Letter of 4 June 1999).

It is not unlikely that Dadang voices the feelings and realities also for other activists, writers and artists outside of their country at present. Hopefully these will also increasingly become current, after the present election, for his peers living in Indonesia. But it will take a long time before the accumulated memories of, and psychological, social, political voids left by, the violence allowed or perpetrated by the state over the last thirty-two years.

Voices in a Story Which Winds On

We're still battling here, trying to keep a stock of basic materials.  The sinister political situation really gets to us at times. It's almost surreal as we look around this beautiful countryside and then remember what kind of brutal politics are going on right now. It makes everything seem so unreal. At the heart of it, it is really difficult to believe that people would put all humanity aside just to grasp ahold of political power.  But this is the reality that we face and it isn't a pleasant lesson.  I suppose my anarchist attitudes have come from an intellectual understanding of this.  But as always the reality is ever more poignant than the intellectual concept (Letter from Nia Ismoyo, Yogya, Nov. 4, 1998). 

I and my family are in fine condition, but there is one unhealthy thing - that we live in Indonesia...ha..ha.
Indonesians are very rich in everything, we are rich in natural resources, but there are many corrupt leaders, we are rich in culture, but we are rich with destroyers, we are famous as soft heart people, but there are many wild 'animals', yes, too many contradictions in my country.
I cry every time watching this foolishness on this earth, but I and my family must live with this condition. I still can smile with this bad situation, because I am an Indonesian. I just want to fill my life with creating beauty, which will tend people towards the beauty, hope they forget that they have a great anger, and peace will spread all over this small world, amen...
(Letter from Priyo Salim, Silver and Jewellry Designer, Kota Gede, Yogya, 20 February 1999)

You should have been here yesterday. Hari PDI. The whole city was red, red, red. It was a carnival, a party, and a feast to remember (but the air, the air...). Today is Golkar, and nothing yet... 
(Letter from Hans Antlöv, Program Officer at the Ford Foundation in Jakarta, 4 June 1999)

Like earlier work of mine, this essay aims to offer an example of a marriage between disparate desires: my interest in (a) art historical documentation where such documentation is otherwise scarce or non-existant; (b) cultural/discourse analysis based on this first and second-hand data; and (c) finding a place where academics and advocacy intersect. Perhaps one of the aspects of my role as researcher/writer is not so different from that of the activist artists: as a story-teller who is entrusted with peoples' stories, I have the opportunity to create vehicles for voices and experiences so they can ride further afield, to new places and new publics elsewhere. In terms of discourse analysis, only time and ongoing first-hand involvement with many different activist groups (which entails finding ways to avoid casting one's loyalty in with one small group of individuals), and acute listening, observing and analysing their activities on the terms by which these are presented by the actors (not the terms set by academics living far away), will paint a picture of broader relevance than an individual's bid for tenure or intellectual status. And only the same will lead to an art historical evaluation of relevance as to who are the true activist artists. 

An art centered discourse analysis will show, in years to come, who in this liminal period of Indonesian history were ‘Orbaba' artists,  continuing the Suharto era's legacy of ‘establishment art', which is dominantly individualist, decorative, or formalist according to well-established western schools; who are ‘Sok Sadar' artists,  following the fashion of being ‘political' without a significant degree of personal commitment or insight; and who are the ‘Tabas' artists -- the ones who pick up where politics leave off, building bridges of awareness between the politics of power and the power of ethics and conscience and local and international communities.  One conclusion that will emerge more clearly, when this time period is studied with more complete and multilayered information, is that this last year has most likely awoken, conscientized and mobilized larger numbers of artists and people than at any one time in the last thirty-two years of Indonesian history.

Writing on the eve of the most important presidential elections in Indonesia in 40 years is like trying to say something sensible or of lasting value from the crest of a breaking wave. Will it descend back into the ocean of ‘Same-As-Ever', again, or will it break against a new beach, casting its shells and ocean life onto a peaceful shore where they can build a new existence?

The broad outlines (perhaps with new additions, minute or momentous, or perhaps mere continuations of old ones) will have been drawn in the sand by the time you are reading this. It will remain for Indonesians at home and abroad, and engaged people of the world, to fill them in. In consort, Indonesians in particular, will choose the appropriate materials. Will it be charcoal or magic markers, bamboo or coconut shells, or will it be something entirely new?

Bibliography

 Arahmaiani. 1999. Artist's Talk given at “Women Imaging Women” Conference-Exhibition, Manila, University of the Philippines, 11-14 March.

______.          Personal letters to A.W., 25 May, 28 May, and 8 June 1999.  

Behrend, Tim. Forthcoming 1999. "The Millennial Esc(h)atology of Heri Dono:"Semar Farts" first in Auckland, New Zealand". Indonesia and the Malay World, No. 27 (November 1999).

Berman, Laine. 1998. Berman, “Ayam Majapahit,” Inside Indonesia, July-September, p. 30.

______.          Personal letter to A.W., 25 May 1999.

______.          Forthcoming 1999.  "Comics as Social Commentary in Java" in John Lent (ed),  Illustrating Asia:  Comics, Humour Magazines and Picture Books.   London: Curzon Press (in press). 

Budiman, Arief.  1999. “New Order Old School,” Inside Indonesia,  April-June, p. 7.

______. ed., 1990. State and Civil Society in Indonesia, Melbourne: Monash University, Monash Papers on Southeast Asia No. 22, 1990.

Christanto, Dadang. Personal letters to A.W., 21 August 1998; 25 May 1999; 30 May 1999; 31 May, and 4 June 1999.

Conroy, Bec and Janet Parker, “Marsinah's song heard around the world,” http://www.en.com/users/herone/Ratna.html

Ewington, Julie.  1994.  "Pameran Untuk Marsinah: The Exhibition that Never Opened," Art and Asia Pacific, Vol. 1, No. 4, (1994), pp. 34-35.

Hatley, Barbara. 1999.  “Lightning!” Inside Indonesia,  April-June, p. 27.

Hill, David. 1993. Basuki Resobowo: creative energies in Exile, Inside Indonesia, September, pp. 38-41.

Kompas. 1997. "Warta Payung Dua Ribu". 2 February, 1997. 

______. 1999. “Tumbal-tumbal di Negeri Batu,” Sunday 23 May.

Madjiah, Lela E. 1995. “Semsar takes the system to task in life, art”, Jakarta Post, Sunday, July 9, p.8.

Maklai, Brita M. 1991. Exposing Society's Wounds,  Adelaide: The Flinders University Monograph.

Museum of Contemporary Art. 1997. Glimpses Into the Future: Art in Southeast Asia 1997, Tokyo: The Japan Foundation Asia Center.

Queensland Art Gallery. 1996. Catalog   The First Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art.  Exhibition Catalog.  Brisbane: The Queensland Art Gallery.

Salim, Priyo. Personal letter to A.W., 20 February 1999.

Sarumpaet, Ratna. 1998. Quoted on http://www.patweb.com/ 

______. “Marsinah Accuses,” http://www.en.com/users/herone/ Ratna.html 

Singapore Art Museum. 1995.  Modernity and Beyond.  Exhibition Catalog.  Singapore: The Singapore Art Museum.

Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art. 1997.  Glimpses into the Future: Some aspects of Contemporary Southeast Asian Art.   Exhibition Catalog. Tokyo: Museum of Contemporary Art/the Japan Foundation.

Waters, Benjamin.  1993. "The tragedy of Marsinah: industrialization and workers' rights," Inside Indonesia, No. 36, September 1993, pp. 12-13.

Wright, Astri.  1994. Soul, Spirit and Mountain: Preoccupations of Contemporary Indonesian Painters. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.

______.          Forthcoming 1999. “Difference in Diversity: Women as Modern Artists in Indonesia,” in Laura Summers and Bill Wilder, Eds. Gendered States; Modern Powers: Perspectives from Southeast Asia. England: Macmillan Press, St. Martin's Press.

______.          1998a. "Resistance in the Visual Field: Activist Artists in Indonesia in the 1990s," in Ing-Britt Trankell and Laura Summers, Eds, Facets of Power and Its Limitations: Political Culture in Southeast Asia. Uppsala: University of Uppsala Studies in Anthropology 24, pp. 115-146.

______.          1998b. "Dadang Christanto: The Art of Protest," International Gallerie, (Mumbai, India), Vol. 1, No. 2 (October) 1998, pp. 34-45.

______.          1996. "Body Abroad, Soul at Home, and the Heart in Both Worlds (Sudjana Kerton in America)". Sudjana Kerton; Changing Nationalisms.  Retrospective Exhibition Catalog, Jakarta: National Gallery, November 22-Dec 12, 1996, pp.162-185.

 ______.          1993. "The Contemporary Indonesian Artist as Activist", in Laurel Braswell-Means, Ed., Cultural Environments in Contemporary South East Asia, Vancouver: University of British Columbia: Institute of Asian Research, Center for Southeast Asian Research Monograph no. 4, 1993, pp. 47-66.
* A version of this essay was published in  Australia's Northern Territory University Journal, Northern Perspectives, Summer (Wet Season) 1993, pp.1-15. 

 ______.          1992. "Djoko Pekik: Painter of the People," Inside Indonesia, (Northcote, Australia) No. 30, March 1992, pp. 27-30. 

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