This is my poem.

An emergency appeal.

What is the meaning of art,

If divorced from the world of suffering.

What is the meaning of thought,

If separated from the troubles of life.

(Rendra,  Sajak Sebatang Lisong)

 

 

Street art has been at the vanguard of Indonesian consciousness from the colonial period on through to the Reformasi era because of the very fact that the streets are the domain of the rakyat (the vast majority of Indonesians, the ‘little’ people, the masses). Yet as far as academic preferences and scholarly studies of art and art movements are concerned, the streets remained virtually invisible[1]. The street is more than just a metaphor for the rakyat and the pressing inequalities of everyday life that become so glaringly visible on its steamy asphalt. The street is deeply symbolic and conveys powerfully real meanings which are locally interpreted in terms of ingrained spatial boundaries of social economic disparity. The streets of Indonesia are where the daily trials and tribulations of urban life are played out. This is where the rakyat ply their various trades as they sweat and toil to support the backbone of Indonesia’s economy – an economy that permits them no secure status and little opportunity to escape the stranglehold of a subsistence lifestyle. The street is where idle becak drivers patiently await a much-needed fare[2] – mostly napping, reading a borrowed newspaper, or chatting with whoever is in the vicinity. Others pass their time along with local toughs as they gamble away their daily earnings in huddled groups. Right on the streets is where many grab a quick cheap meal in a portable warung (food stall) under its makeshift plastic canopy. On the streets many Indonesians buy their clothes, spare engine parts, second-hand goods of all variety, freshly butchered meats, gifts, or any other household or personal need against the competing scents of stale urine[3], diesel exhaust, and fresh spices. Dust, I have often been told in jest, is the secret ingredient that makes Indonesian food so delicious. In the streets, kampung residents sit and chat to escape the heat inside their cramped homes. This is the daily grind, fully exposed to the natural elements and not-so-natural whims of the powerful, where the incessant whining and droning of passing traffic become the musak of life.

The wealthier classes shield themselves from the streets behind their glass enclosed, barred windows, high garden walls topped with razor-sharp wire and glass, and the knowledge that the rakyat are too overawed (sungkan) to penetrate these sanctuaries. Shopping malls, post offices, office blocks, and the homes of the wealthy have armed guards stationed at their entrances to deny admission to anyone whose poverty, appearance, or class might frighten the better-off[4]. In cities all over the nation these same so-called public spaces have barb wired portable barriers in their parking garages and easily accessible corners for just those seemingly expected moments when the rakyat swarm in a destructive, vengeful mass, and thus, transform both physically and semantically into the fearful massa. Here, as we investigate the positioning of the rakyat in images of Indonesian streets, we will tread a precarious path. The rakyat remain the distant ‘other’ through an economic need to control them, an affection for the authentic simplicity of rakyat lifestyle, and a paternal responsibility to ‘protect’ them. On the other side of the same coin is a profound fear of them and their vast numbers, their poverty, their ignorance, their spontaneity, their potential for savagery, and their lack of discipline. This is where rakyat become the dreaded massa (Susanto, 1993; Nursyahbani, 1999).  Along such divisions as these lies the key to interpreting an Indonesian version of cultural identity, an identity given form through socio-spatial inequality and made legitimate through interactions with the street. Indonesian social order is most easily recognized by how individuals react to this most public of public spheres. Indonesians know their place and most are reluctant to overstep those boundaries. Yet, no one would dispute the fact that the streets belong to the rakyat.

 

Figure : Malioboro, the main street of Yogyakarta, on a quiet afternoon.Yogya.

 

Rakyat are central to Indonesian artists’ debates too. Yet scholarly writings about art almost entirely focus on the so-called elite or high arts, the great traditions of the courts, the museums, the galleries, and five star hotel lobbies. These works can only be enjoyed or bought by those who normally frequent such establishments. The majority of Indonesians would not be allowed to enter these domains of the wealthy and educated, while many others would feel reluctant or even afraid (sungkan). Yet in a country as widely diverse as Indonesia, it seems rather ludicrous to assume the preeminence of a perspective that recognizes ‘one art, one people’ (see also Yuliman, 1992:42). For the majority of the ordinary people, who are also referred to in the Javanese vernacular as wong cilik [the little people], or orang awam [the uninformed common people], there are the popular, ethnic, mass, or applied arts. These include much of the kitsch, handicrafts, or cheap reproductions of so-called high cultural symbols produced or presented for the broader population and through the mass media. Folk and ethnic art or the ‘little’ traditions are usually created anonymously and include functional, household items such as ornamental roof tiles, pottery, baskets, and children’s games, as well as masks, puppets, painting on glass, and other ‘naïve’ carvings or paintings (see Fischer, 1994). These are considered just ‘crafts’ and rest on the diligence and seriousness of the anonymous artisan who supposedly was not motivated by personal expressions of creativity (Soedarso, 1990:81). Alternatively, ‘hand-woven, traditional’ Sumba blankets are mass produced in factories in East Java and sold to tourists, both international and local. Walk down Jalan Surabaya in Jakarta on any day and see ‘authentic’ ethnic Balinese, Dayak, and Dani sculptures or Javanese courtly ‘antiques’ being made to order right on the streets.

 

 

Figure 2: A Jakarta street corner near Thamrin, where bajaj and ojek await a rider.

 

Indonesian art history (like any other history) is anything but a straight line. Yet, the inevitable starting point for any book on Indonesian art history is the Hindu prehistory and its temples, statues, and bas relief. From this grand tradition, grand because of the respect and attention it attracted from westerners who ‘discovered’ and resurrected it from natural obliteration, there is a huge leap right into the western conventions as Indonesians fell under the influence of the more sophisticated European styles of painting and sculpture. Anything outside of this European inheritance is considered ‘traditional’, which locally means old-fashioned, quaint, interesting, but not important. Influenced by the far grander, i.e., courtly and religious European esthetic traditions, Indonesian critics and historians too focus more on painting than on other forms of art (Yuliman, 1992:42). This is despite the fact that the people themselves do recognize the many ‘branches’ of art, which to each ethnic division have their own set of standards or values very different from Europeanized elite values. From its birth and development, Indonesian art was heavily influenced by the more advanced industrial world and the consumerism that supports it. Thus, as elsewhere, art became an inevitable product of this exclusive world and market – at least in part. But Indonesia always adapts what it borrows on its own terms. It is at this juncture of high and low, elite and common that a purely Indonesian discourse needs to emerge.

While many denigrate the popular or folk traditions, as seen quite simply in the evaluative metaphors used to describe them - that is, in opposition to the high, formal, elite, pure and expensive, and described instead as popular, low, applied and cheap, - intentioned interaction and borrowing between the ‘levels’ are fundamental for much of the development of modern Indonesian art. In fact, the direction of transmission is always from the ‘bottom’ to the ‘top’, from the folk to the popular to the elite, rather than the other way around (see also Fischer, 1994). Folk art is commercialized through mass production or other types of borrowing as a conscious manipulation of a definite tradition, which then maintains a family’s meager existence despite political and economic upheavals. Thus, many of the objects used on a daily basis by the rakyat gain folk art status and trend value among the upper classes. Kendi (earthenware drinking vessels), caping (bamboo conical hats), kebaya (women’s blouses) all appear for sale in Jakarta art shops and boutiques at hugely inflated prices. Meanwhile, the rakyat also have a need for art in their lives as seen by the reproductions of palace symbols, religious iconography, and other mass produced images found on their walls. This broad discrepancy in art taste and access is obviously not unusual or even limited to the developing world. What I do want to explore here, however, is the very notion of crossing these boundaries between high and low, worldly and uninformed, protected from and restricted to the street, and what it means in terms of Indonesian cultural knowledge and national identity. While basic financial, social, educational, cultural, and political barriers prevent the rakyat from entering the more formal art worlds, the predominantly middle class Indonesian artist, however, searches for cultural roots and identity as part of a conscious strategy of self-knowledge. For seventy years now, this search has turned to the domain of the rakyat, i.e., the streets, for its legitimacy.

Within the periodic upheavals that have marked Indonesia’s development from colony to independent nation, and from poverty to economic tiger and back again to a situation of unrelenting chaos and crisis, artists have asserted their awareness of their own sociopolitical environment by borrowing from an imagined grass-roots culture which oscillates between rural and urban mass culture. Most notably, however, artists borrow from an idealized public realm which I refer to here as urban street culture. This turn to the streets is a sign of moral condemnation of the ‘status quo’ for supporting the immense power, wealth and greed of the elite and the institutionalized inequalities and injustices that support them. Artists and students of the art academies proclaim their social concern for the oppressed masses through the rejection of fine art labels and marks of elitism. Instead, they reproduce images of rakyat life and they embrace the emblems of the streets: poster art, comics, graffiti, stickers, post cards, peasant clothing, and T shirts, which are either incorporated into their work or become the end product. For others, interactions with the streets become more direct through street theater or other means of public art. Then, there are those who make their street performances even more intimate through protest alongside factory workers, pedicab (becak) drivers, coolies, street kids, and peasants battling the odds that deny them the minimum wage, a safe work environment, a daily crumb from the giant economic pie, or rights to the land they have farmed for generations. Such posturings have occurred repeatedly in Indonesian history as a mark of concern for the desperate plight of the rakyat. Repeatedly, however, this search for a culture of unity beyond the boundaries of artist-activist-intellectual and peasant-farmer-laborer has been limited to a highly dubious success. Meanwhile, in the mass media, peasant reality competes daily with the preferred images of shocking wealth and excess.

The following TV advertisement for clove cigarettes appeared frequently on Indonesian TV in the year 2000:

Open on a close-up of a handsome, young man showing all the signs of wealth: he drives a BMW, he wears a white, dress shirt, he has Indo features (i.e., of mixed blood, whitish skin and large nose). He slams on his breaks to avoid a herd of water buffalo in the road as the camera features his late model BMW skidding slightly in the pouring rain. He emerges from his car in the rain and removes his suit jacket rather dramatically in the back-light of his high beams. As the music changes to a Latino beat he tangos, mocking bull-fighter motions as he helps the rather surprised, elderly, toothless peasant couple move their slow herd off the road. Next scene: young man inside peasant couple’s bamboo shack, clearly having a wonderful time and enjoying each other’s company. The slogan for the brand of cigarette: Transcending boundaries.

 

Transcending such boundaries, and doing so with such mutual enjoyment and clear satisfaction, is not common. More likely, wealthy distributors come to the villages to buy a farmer’s harvest or wares at vastly undervalued prices. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s activists would come to villages and factories to train the peasants to protest the confiscation of their land or an illegally low salary justified in the name of ‘development’. As the military swoop in to ‘stabilize’ the area, the activists race back to their safe offices armed with a great story of violent abuse for the international human rights media. Unlike the direct abuse perpetrated by the authority and wealthy classes, activists and artists practice a very different type of exploitation as they venture down the social ladder to help the poor in their no-win battle against their oppressors. In New Order Indonesia, crossing such seemingly innocent social boundaries in a vain attempt to either ‘unite with’ or ‘speak for’ the dispossessed other was illegal. The Suharto regime maintained its order by monopolizing not just rice, cloves, rattan, and other nationally grown assets. It also monopolized public discourse, through which it imposed its own brand of ‘national culture’ as a redefined version of the Javanese hierarchical order. Communication of any sort was under constant surveillance and subjected to the strictest regulations. Popular forms of cultural expression reproduced the national culture and its preferred identity, and often gave examples of the dire consequences of resistance (see Hill, 1994; Berman, 1999 on the news; Sen, 1994 on film; Foulcher, 1986, 1990; Hooker and Dick, 1993). Those who are active in oppositional cultural activity sought to unite with the silent dispossessed rakyat by assuming a position of ‘speaking on behalf of’ them, which ironically often serves to further the distance between the ‘spokespersons’ and those spoken for. This dilemma of ‘location’ is a potent one, which requires a leap across social, cultural, political, economic, linguistic, and spatial boundaries. It often leads to tension and frustration among artists and intellectuals precisely because it involves ‘speaking for’ another, who may or may not understand, or hear, or respond appropriately, or even care.

This essay attempts to trace the link between modern Indonesian art and the popular dialog it strives for by exploring art movements through their connection to the streets. In this sense then, this exploration of local creative expression in the art centers of Java[5] seeks to identify the function of the streets and their influence on art and power more than the aesthetic structure of an ‘art for art’s sake’ ideal. Brushing against the age-old debates about art as part of a broader strategy of oppositional engagement, I will explore local means of contesting form against content, beauty against politics, and subjective experience against objective representations in the dialogs and practices of artists and critics as they attempt to break down the rigid boundaries between class and experience, knowledge and power, official and popular culture. Specific to Indonesia, we will also see how local understandings of creative movements shift their focus from privileged sites of representation and display to those sites of learning that encompass daily experiences (see also Giroux, 1996). Indonesian artists and critics have shifted their gaze toward these more public realms precisely because of their comprehension of the important role of art in society. Yet it is the definition of that society that often comes into contention within Indonesian contexts. From its modern roots in westernized traditions of decorative and universal images, Indonesian art has grown through its attempts to locate an ‘Indonesian’ core in its representational capacity to broaden, stimulate, and intensify the public’s understanding of both art and society, regardless of how unstable both may be.

This investigation begins, then, with an examination of the search for legitimacy artists and the authority undergo as they both characterize their different versions of ‘Indonesian-ness’ by focusing on the public realm - the streets. Yet, while such lofty aims - to provoke a renewed sense of identity, to stir controversy and debate, to broaden the rights to question reality - are rarely met in supposedly pluralistic and democratic societies, Indonesian artists have achieved some fascinating new dialogs despite overwhelming obstacles. In reverence to these emerging acts of creative interpretation, generosity, and bravery, this essay focuses on the communicative purposes of Indonesian art in, for, and as influenced by the public sphere through the public interaction it generates. Since much of the public art produced this century emerged as a direct attempt to ‘transcend the boundaries’ of a deeply ingrained, hierarchical order of roles, rights, and responsibilities, the discussion will highlight the irony underlying current concerns over conceptions of national and regional identity by looking toward the street rather than the more formal or ‘traditional’ locations (see also Berman, 1998 for a similar approach to Javanese discourse).

There is an irony of enforced separation from - and at the same time dependency on - the rakyat which underlies the power of the authority as they target the streets in their campaigns of social control and modernization. Yet modern artists too require the rakyat for their legitimacy and power as seen in their mainly unrequited concerns for unity and demands for intimacy. The street, as the domain of the rakyat, is essential to the negotiation of meaning that underlies the construction of the Indonesian state, her people, and their sense of self. It is actually such a dependency that bridges communities, despite the profoundly diverse systems of meanings and values that intersect in every ideological sign (i.e., Volosinov, 1973). We begin and end on the street, because this is where the symbols of meaning are most recognizable. Yet, underlying this dependency and romanticized longing for unity is a vast separation that is enhanced by the self-absorbed narcissism of both artist and authority. The myths of a united Indonesian oneness planted in a relentless campaign of persatuan dan kesatuan (unity and conformity) indoctrination are simultaneously undermined by unequal access to knowledge, power, consumerism, modernism, economic opportunities, and the valued westernized appearance. Ironically, the powers of the state and the values of modernization gain their significance precisely through the very existence of the rakyat: either their sweat and labor or as the epitome of loathing via the middle class disgust for the hard life of the peasant. It is precisely this irony of dependency versus fear, legitimacy versus repugnance, indigenous authenticity versus westernization, the quaint, docile rakyat versus the terrifying, murderous massa, that has repeatedly emerged to prevent artists from successfully transcending the boundaries of class, identity and communication.

As an attempt at a holistic investigation of art as contextualized discursive practice within modern Indonesia, we will see that this journey involves an ongoing struggle to discover, if not shape, identity. The street is both the key to interpreting these struggles as well as the main obstacle in the realization of reformasi.