Bengawan solo…. Riwayatmu ini.. Sedari dulu jadi.. Perhatian insani..

I was born and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia and I remember vividly that song Bengawan Solo being replayed in my house growing up as my dad loved keroncong and old-school songs.

During three weeks in April-May 2023, I was given the opportunity to do a residency at the place where Bengawan Solo resides. Throughout the residency, I explored two of the biggest cities on Java Island, Surakarta & Yogyakarta. Where I get to experience a new side of Java and immersed in the way of life, food, culture, museums, and workshops. As part of my deep-rooted artistic practice and research projects surrounding my national background, I also get to see and think critically about my practice and step out of my comfort zone to see other perceptions of being an Indonesian.

This residency was part of my semester that was arranged with the collaboration of NAFA-UAL with Studio Plesungan.

I arrived at Solo on 24th April 2023 and was directly transported to Studio Plesungan. It was such a change of environment and space, coming from Jakarta, Singapore, and lastly London last month.

On my first proposal of coming to Studio Plesungan for a residency,

I have one big goal which is to actually get to know the Indonesian art scene itself. I always make my work outside of Indonesia, having to come to Singapore to study, I never actually had the chance to “get to know” the Indonesian scene.

The schedule in the studio was packed, and having to build a new routine of eating breakfast, was a very nice change of pace. The first few days of arriving I was trying to adjust to the new environment, I met new people like Kak Razan & Kak Verina who are part-timers in the Studio, alumni of ISI Surakarta, and also artist dancers. I met Mas Achri who will also be helping us during our stay in Studio Plesungan.

On the first night there, there was an event at the City Hall of Surakarta, it was an open space and they were having a wayang orang performance in Bahasa Indonesia. A lot of times, when watching wayang performances it will be in Bahasa Jawa (Javanese Language) but this time around, the city wants to reach more people so it was quite interesting to see the play in Bahasa Indonesia, and it was also my first time finishing a wayang orang performance and a great start to my residency journey.

After a few days in, we were joined by Zai Kuning and Xiao Han who are also having a residency with us, they were staying for a week. There were a lot of sharing and exchanges. They ended their residency with a new collaborative performance piece that I get to see live on Studio and helped to document it.

Throughout the weeks in the studio, we visited Candi Sukuh & Candi Cetho in Karanganyar, we did a workshop with the Mangkunegaran Palace on how to read and write Javanese, we got to access a lot of archival materials of the palace, we went to a gong workshop, we experience Solo Menari where the city never stops dancing for 24 hours, we even met the prince and the famous politician Sandiaga Uno…

Solo itself is a city of art and culture, on every corner, there is always something that we can explore and learn from.

We decided to also stay in Yogyakarta for a few days, just to also explore the city because it is near Solo. We took a train from Solo Balapan and arrived at Yogyakarta station just an hour after. Yogyakarta also has a lot of cultural places that we can explore, such as the Taman Sari, Candi Prambanan, and Museum Ullen Sentalu.

I was very excited to get to see the Jogja Archive, where we get to experience the archive in a modern way, like on projection, etc. We learn the history of the palaces in Yogyakarta and Surakarta how we can differentiate them and how it was built back from the New Mataram Emperor.

During my time in the studio and at Rumah Martha, after decompressing the day, I did “mini” works or mini creative responses just to encapsulate what I have been experiencing during the week, either from photos or videos that I took, on what I saw that act as a catalyst to keep my creative engine running.

Life Cycle of A Gong (2023)

Visuals & Poetry

I made and wrote this after we went to a gong making workshop. I saw how the gong was made and it looked like a painting, it looked like the gong was alive. The visuals and poetry depicts a personification of a gong.

Amidst the vastness of the universe's expanse,

The symphony of light unfolds a cosmic dance.

Lies a tale of life's cycle, where repetition treads.

A symphony of moments, a dance of birth and death,

Incused, incused, incused

In the cradle of existence, a soul takes its first breath,

A newborn's cry, heralding a journey of depth.

The gong's resonance echoes, a call to awaken,

As life's path unfurls, its destiny is unshaken.

Incused, incused, incused

Midlife, a vibrant tapestry, woven with hues of gray,

We seek our true reflection, in mirrors worn with age.

The gong of wisdom echoes, resonating deep within,

In twilight's gentle embrace, as the sun begins to wane,

We contemplate mortality, our destiny ordained.

The gong, it tolls in somber tones, a mournful, solemn sound,

Incused, incused, incused

And when the final act unfolds, the curtain starts to close,

We confront the great unknown, where every heartbeat slows.

In death's embrace, we find release, a return to the flow

Kicir-Kicir ini Lagunya (2023)

Performance Video

originally 18 Minutes

excerpt 1 minute

I made this after I discovered an old tape that was supposed to be used in my diploma FYP project. My mom was singing Kicir-Kicir, a traditional song from Jakarta, where it is a mix of Chinese and Javanese influence. The song's message was simple, which is just to live a good life.

The repetition of winding the thread to my body depicts the struggles or expectations that I put to myself. while my mom just wants me to live a good life without burdening myself.

Catalysts

We are also scheduled to have consultations with Mbak Melati Suryodarmo, which always feels more like a conversation and sharing session. I shared a lot of my thoughts on my work mostly about my struggle as a Chinese-Indonesian, or as a woman and what I have encountered so far during the residency.

I shared that in my proposal, I was still a bit vague and my main thing was to get to know the Indonesian art scene. I remember all the conversations always steered back to what is actually Indonesian art? Culture? even though I am Indonesian. Why do I like to use kebaya or batik inside my work, whereas I do not wear the kebaya as everyday wear? I only use them on big occasions and all. I do not have an answer to that except that it was one of the things that I identified as my identity.

I feel like there is this certain complexity to how the template of an “Indonesian” identity is constructed and made. For example, we see Kebaya, Batik, or even Wayang as our national overall culture, while it is only a part of the small culture of Java. And is it because from little, it is what has been taught to us and been asked from us to identify with these? Is it because of the Java-centric tendency from the residue of colonialization? Even though there are other cultures that we identify as, even from the outside world it is the kind of culture that you will see and recognize from this “Indonesian” identity. I have been reflecting on it, realizing how there is this distance between me and the materials that I use in my work. And distance does not always mean bad, it is just that I have to acknowledge this distance and be more critical about it, and find out why.

I feel like being able to recognize this distance and slowly think critically about it, acknowledging, and understanding the “political” ways behind it, even as an Indonesian myself, and as an artist made me realize new perspectives and ways of approaching the topic of national identity, where I can insert the stories of my relationship with the country, the place.

1

List of museums:

Museum Sangiran (Dayu)

Museum Sangiran (Central)

Museum Samanhoedi

Museum Radya Poestaka

Museum Keris Nusantara

Arsip Jogja

Museum Keraton Kasunanan

Museum Keraton Pura Mangkunegaran

Museum Ullen Sentalu

Tumurun Private Museum

Museum Batik Danar Hadi

Museum Pers Nasional

#akucintamuseum

2

https://radarsolo.jawapos.com/pendidikan/20/01/2023/langkah-pemkot-surakarta-kenalkan-museum-sebagai-sarana-belajar-sejarah/

3

http://kebudayaan.kemdikbud.go.id/dpk/unduh-logo-hari-museum-indonesia-2018-dan-logo-museum-di-hatiku/logo-hari-museum-dan-museum-di-hatiku-3000/

4

The museum itself was about the founder of Sarekat Dagang Islam (Muslim Trade Society),

Hadji Samanhoedi.

There is this kind of contrast between the title of the photo series and the actual content of the photos. The photos depicted the broken, the misshaped, the abandoned things inside the institutions that lacked love and care. It is ironic that the title and the campaign are called I love museums, but what kind of half-hearted love poured into this space?

This photo series fueled the questions that I post in the chapter before, with these absolutely absurd conditions what kind of roles do museums actually give to us?

The Archival

5

https://www.liputan6.com/surabaya/read/4484769/ramai-museum-sby-ani-sedot-apbd-jatim-rp-9-m-ini-kata-bupati-pacitan

6

https://studioplesungan.org/program/on-stage/wayan-sumahardika/

On the last day of the residency, we held a presentation and sharing session with the ISI students.

I shared with them my mini works throughout the weeks, my research about the museum and institutions, and pose these three questions to wrap my sharing:

• How do the institutions or museums construct the way we look or view the vernacular national identity and how can the institutions or museums influence the way people from the outside view this identity too?
• is even museums or institutions still relevant?
• What kind of ways we can shift the perspective of a “museum”?

The answers I got were quite interesting, they shared that maybe the museum is not relevant at all in this era and it is about time we make a new construction and foundation of what a museum is. The feudalism and power dynamics are too strong and structured (for museums/institutions in Indonesia) to be considered a non-bias institution to share the real stories of the people or culture.

7

https://www.datatempo.co/MajalahTeks/detail/ARM20180612140374/lambang-dalam-pusaran-mafia-purbakala

Reflecting

My practice itself has always been surrounded by this need of wanting to discover more and resolve certain tension in my national identity and history, whether it came from a political point of view or personal. The residency program in Indonesia especially, I feel like it has helped me to think more critically about my practice and how I can actually shift my point-of-view and look for other alternatives of medium and materials to be expressed inside my work.

I was so grateful for the discussion and sharing session that shaped and helped my research throughout the entire program. Moving on to year three I hope to continue this passage and collective spirit of questioning and research of the personal is political and debunking fabricated history, resurfacing ideas and stories that have not been heard politically outside of an institution.

Museum of ME

Museum of Memang Edan

https://mome.my.canva.site/

click here to visit MoME

*best viewed on desktop

Museum of ME is a creative response and exploration to my residency program at Studio Plesungan, Solo, Indonesia.

According to Kemendikbud (The Indonesian Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology), there are six conditions for establishing a museum* (Syarat Pendirian Museum):

• Vision and Mision
• Collections
• Location
• Human Resources
• Funding
• The museum must have a name

During the artist's three-week residency in Studio Plesungan, the artist was looking at how museums in Solo & Yogyakarta operate and did a site visit to a total of 12 museums private or government, and was very much defeated to see the conditions of the museums outside & inside. Finding out in one of the museums, their collection was almost (allegedly) entirely counterfeit was the last straw.

MoME or Museum of ME is a playful exploration of building a museum based on Kemendikbud's naturally ambiguous conditions. MoME is a digital archive museum for all things about this persona called ME. ME itself stands for Memang Edan which is an expression in Indonesia or Javanese when something is too crazy or too out of line. MoME could also be literally read as Museum of Me, where the museum itself was solely curated by the artist, inside the artist's bedroom as the physical location of the museum, with all the artist's stuff as the collection. The visitors are free to browse through a series of online curated collections (just like in a "real museum") that have been cataloged in the museum to learn more and interpret things about the persona.

Creative Response Statement

Through this exploration, the artist is trying to depict and critique the conditions of museums in Java where there is no clear structure and centralized with one person holding the power. MoME itself has checked all the boxes on what can be considered an established museum according to the Kemendikbud. While being “established” by Kemendikbud's standard, MoME also simultaneously questions and challenge what a museum is and what it could look like or about. Therefore, MoME also served as a catalyst to look critically at how institutions were made, how institutions can construct someone’s identity, questioning the fabricated institutions, non-biasedness, the conditions of building a museum, and how institutions could influence or alter how people look at someone’s identity.

*https://museum.kemdikbud.go.id/syarat-pendirian-museum

Footnotes

I want to thank and extend my gratitude to all the people in Studio Plesungan, Mbak Melati Suryodarmo, Pak Halim HD, Kak Verina, Kak Razan, Mas Achri, Kak Dani, Kak Dimas, Ratu, Fitri, and other people in the Studio Plesungan for their company, help and all of their advice during my residency time. My parents, who are supporting me from Jakarta, and my lecturers Ms Kimberly Shen & Ms Geralding Kang who always helped me along the way!

kenenza michiko hasan