Aesthetic Response in the Aftermath of the Bali Bombing: Story of a New Batik Village
Cok Agung Kusuma Yuda packed his stuffs. He would return with his family to his village of Pejeng-Gianyar, north of Ubud, he would live and start a business, a craft business. It was in 2002, in the aftermath of the first Bali bomb.
I’d never forget the smell or the scene at the bomb site.
The island’s second bombing occurred on October 1, 2005, in Jimbaran. Four years earlier, on October 12, 2001, a larger explosion occurred in Kuta, killing more people. The bombing killed about 200 people. The perpetrators were caught and brought to justice, some were sentenced to death.
I came to the bombsite eight hours after the blast. I would never forget the sadness and nightmarish look of the place.
The next few days, prayers from different religions walked into the streets. Bali responded to the bombing with prayers.
But the island was hit by a multi-dimensional disaster. In the aftermath, many urban residents returned to their villages of origin. No, there was no back-to-village movement. Bali's economy was massively hit and drowned. Returning to their home village was a reaction to the decline in the city’s economy. Many players of the urban economy would go home to find shelter in their village, waiting for the economic storm to go.
Hoteliers in the rich Nusa Dua area told local reporters the occupancy was down from 80 per cent to 9 per cent.
There was a massive increase in unemployment. In a rush of finding new economic ways to survive the aftermath of the bombing disaster, Cok Agung started a business which was also intended to alleviate the tension of poverty in his village Pejeng, north of Ubud.
He established a batik-making garment studio, using natural dyes.
Skills and Traditions
Crafts is the island’s long tradition. Bali was promoted as a paradise of cultural creativity since the beginning of the island's tourism. Before that, it had been given a savage image by its colonial past.
On the island of Sumba, situated about 800 km east of Bali, I once met a different kind of Bali’s reputation around a nobleman’s tomb, decorated with a huge monumental stone carving. When the nobleman died in 1995, there was only a 70-year-old sculptor who was sick. No other sculptor was skilled enough for the monumental task. So, the traditional party sent their members, visited to Bali to invite some stone carvers. It was a solution indeed, the carved stone erected, the nobleman spirit as respected as the monumental tomb.
Artistic skills are inherited, but in Sumba island, imported world views have made new cultural symbols and techniques denied the native past.
Nevertheless, one culture can revitalise another.
In Pejeng village, Cok Agung would enrich his tradition with other traditions. He and his fellow villagers would learn to build new batik village.
Culture of Learning
“Batik is not originally Balinese culture,” said Tjok Agung in our conversation many years ago, “It’s from Java.” Bali, in fact, is an area of weaving culture.
Batik is an ancient art of colouring fabric with a wax resist technique. This means that the fabric is covered in wax and then dyed. The parts of the fabric that are covered in wax will remain their original colour, while the dye will permeate the rest of the material.
Batik cloths have been decorated with Javanese ornaments which represent symbols from their culture. There is also some batik with influences of Chinese or Japanese aesthetics in Java.
As they make their own batik with the style from their culture, Pejeng villagers pioneered a Balinese batik. The mother is from Java, the child is Balinese.
Cok Agung urged to make the business environmentally sound, his batik would be naturally dyed with plants. Indigo was then his main colour.
He invited villagers to study together. They gathered, discussed, and agreed to start learning the techniques and creating their style.
The trainers and tools, the knowledge and skills, initially came from a town in Central Java, about 700 km westward. After some time, however, villagers learned from each other. In about six months, an estimation of 200 people learned the how-to of making batik, but the number of active batik-makers decreased in the following years. At least, quite a lot of people have been familiar with the techniques.
This is actually the general character of a craft village in Bali. In a carving village, for instance, the number of people who can do carving far outnumber those who work as carvers. That way, the village may have many reserved craftspeople. It determines the “depth” of the tradition.
Natural dyes were chosen for environmental reasons. Cok Agung learned the tradition of natural dyes from Sumba and various cultures.
Pejeng is located between Ubud and Tampaksiring, Bali.
This is a village with more than sixty temples, encompassing more than 1000 years. There is a prehistoric bronze drum, an ancient meditation ground adjacent to various temples from the 7th to 15th centuries, and of course some newer buildings, such as the ones from the colonial era.
Every architectural site keeps a reserve of ornamental decorations. This legacy creates a rich collection of ornaments needed for creating the typical batik of Pejeng.
With the legacy of ornaments and newly introduced aesthetics, a creative Batik style was born. It was initially a response to the condition of terrorism.
In Pejeng, violence was not responded by anger, but with beauty.
