Culture and Arts in Yogyakarta #1: Reflections 10 July 2017

Zayd Minty
Jul 10, 2017 · 7 min read

Its 15 minutes before the start of the performance of “Smelah/God Bless” at Taman Budaya (Garden of Culture) in Yogjakarta, Indonesia, and I need to take a leak badly. But there is a guy cleaning the only toilets in the decaying building that was once a Dutch built theatre, within this larger Indonesian government run cultural complex. I get in eventually, following another desperate patron. The floors are wet. I look into the stained toilet, release, and look up to see a large roach on the wall in front of me. The place stinks, it has clearly not been renovated in a few decades. I am glad all I needed was a piss. I get into the theatre in time and experience a visual and aurally exciting collaborative production by renown Indonesia artists: Eko Nugroho and Gunwan Maryanto utilizing puppetry, music and performance. Although I don’t understand the Bahasa, the images and sounds are intriguing and I can sense the deep cultural issues being explored and the allusions to spirts, the everyday and local traditions. Its humorous too judging by audiences giggles. The performers are outstanding, the costumes, sets and music dynamic. The artist I am sitting next to later explains that the piece deals with the history of religous change in Indonesia, from its pantheistic past to the syncretic Islam in place today.

This contradiction of the space and the deep and arresting content of the piece is reflective of what makes this city so interesting. Yogja, as its fondly called, is a complex and bewildering city at first, with its smog filled traffic packed with scooters, and cars as well as horse and carts, cycle/scooter buggies and the odd bus. The pavements are pretty fucked and its not an easy place for pedestrians. Scooters park everywhere. Public transport is a problem and the TransJoga Rapid Transport system is crowded and does not cover the city well — hence scooters are ubiquitous. Despite the unfriendly public space, the streets are alive with people at various times with street food vendors, book sellers, people playing cards and chess, eating on the floor, cleaning ingredients for meals and sorting coal. In the tourist areas, the largely European and predominantly Dutch backpackers are sitting in bars and restaurants, eating local food and drinking beer, swopping stories of visits to Bali and the famous ancient Borabudur and Prambanan Buddhist temples, while Muslim Indonesians pack popular ice-cream parlors.

In the tightly packed kampungs (hamlets) there is a mix of middle and working classes — wealthy and poor cheek to jowl. People smile and greet as you walk past and the walls are filled with graffiti and beautiful street art. There is a smell of food being prepared and the air is filled 5 times a day with sounds of the adhaan (call to prayer) from the many mosques in the city. It feels safe, accepting and the community spirit is obvious.

I am here because Yogja is known as a deeply cultural and educational city, with a rich history. Its been intricately connected to Indonesia’s liberation struggle against Dutch colonists, who overstayed by over 350 years and tried to retain control well into the 60s after being weakened by the war. This after many other colonies attained independence. Java shares a history with my own city Cape Town. Around 23% of all of Cape Town’s slaves were from this landmass, brought by our common Dutch oppressor to build Cape Town to what it is today — their ancestors mixed with slaves from Angola, Mozambique, India and elsewhere contribuute to around half of Cape Town’s current population of 4 million people.

I’m attracted to this city because Yogja is famous for a number of collectives working in socially engaged arts practises, edgy urbanists working on issues of sustainability and a vibrant music scene which includes proto-punks/hardcore, reggae as well as traditional Gamelan music. It has a vibrant set of alternative spaces, regular art exhibitions, performance art and interventions. There are many exciting festivals taking place throughout the year and the arts scene is bouncing to say the least. Over the next week I will be meeting various people from a few scenes and reflecting regularly. I am trying to understand more about its cultural scene and to learn from the arts, academic and civil society sectors.

Government here seems to be a challenge like everywhere else in South East Asia. While the city rides on its cultural profile, government has not played a significant facilitation role, but it does support through limited funding and spaces. Taman Budaya and other government owned spaces, like the Jogja National Museum and others, I am told by arts bodies, are not efficient and in a poor state institutionally. Its very apparent not just in the physical state of the buildings, but in the shabby museum displays like those in Fort Vredeburg, the old Dutch Fort, now a museum of independence. While these are state owned spaces, they seemingly charge significant amounts to artists wishing to host events there. I am told they were built by the state recently and like many other cultural facilities around the globe south especially, have had little budget allocated for operating costs and development.

Local government, I am informed,has recently received a large sum of money for culture from national government and funding has been given to a range of organizations, including some of the long running spaces and events, as well as neighborhood arts festivals. But the support is patchy and the system cumbersome. Its partially the reason there are so many collectives at work — it’s a necessity in a scarce resource environment, particularly after many development agencies cut back on their funding. There is a lot of communication and support amongst the various arts groupings and much cross pollination, building on a long history of community engagement and development that stretches back decades in the Yogja arts world. This ability to collectivize is also probably deeply embedded in the city’s DNA if one considers the ways in which communities participate in managing their kampungs and villages. The struggle against and the overthrow of Suharto’s oppressive New Order regime (1966–1998), marred by xenophobic violence against Chinese, ushered in the Reformasi which was a spark for much of the growth in the arts sector and galvanized a great deal of co-operation between different sector. What’s interesting to me is that there is such a wealth of activity and collaboration, and original cultural responses in Yogja, making it quite different from some of the other SE Asian cities I have recently visited, many with similar challenges.

But its not all easy going in civil society and its very friendly and hospitable people. The city has many divisions and societal challenges — clearly there are massive environmental issues (waste, water etc), high poverty, and deep and growing racial and religious intolerance. It’s a deeply patriarchal and sexist society, women are often marginalised in decision making and seen as lower in social status. The treatment of animals is deplorable (large numbers of caged birds, exotic reptiles, horses and even cats on leashes).

Its an interesting place politically as the city is still run feudally within a democratic country. The Sultanate which had a big hand to play in the countries liberation is still in place and the constitution enshrines that the Sultan is also governor of this “Special Region”. Democracy, freedom and culture as both a enabler and block, are some of the things I am thinking a great deal about while here.

In the next weeks, before I leave, I will try and understand the city, its contradictions, its challenges and its dynamism further and will be sharing these thoughts as I go along. A series of articles on Yogja is planned for trhe Creative City South blog later in the year, these are working notes as I go along and I look forward to seeing how my perceptions are adjusted through further meetings. In the meantime, I continue to gather a wealth of articles and media that speak to the cultural dynamism in the city and make contact with some highly innovative organizations, while I slowly begin to meet artists, activists and organisers.

Zayd Minty

Written by

I am a cultural development management professional, curator and researcher based in South Africa. My current project is Creative City South.

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