Dutch artists explore Puncak via camera lens

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Tue, 03/21/2006 8:37 AM  |  Life

Sri Wahyuni, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta

A picture is worth a thousand words. Two Dutch artists, Sander de Haas and Frits Dijcks, proved this saying correct when they recently presented their art project, Ini Puncak, at Cemeti Art House here.

Because of a picture, they were eventually convinced that if they really wanted to get to know the object of their project, which is De Poentjak, a restaurant serving Indonesian food in the Netherlands, they had to go to Indonesia.

""It was indeed the picture that finally made us decide to come to Indonesia and have this presentation here,"" de Haas, who is a photographer, told The Jakarta Post.

He was referring to an old photograph from 1947 that they found during their 14-month stay at the restaurant, which is located on Kneuterdijk, a street in the center of The Hague, for their art project.

The picture, a gift from a guest of the restaurant, depicts a view of the now-renowned holiday resort in West Java, Puncak Pass, and a restaurant with the same name as the one on Kneuterdijk, Poentjak.

The guest was a Dutch soldier who was at Puncak Pass in 1947 and gave the picture to the restaurant owner 40 years later because the restaurants shared the same name.

""It's a strange idea. To bring one place to another place, just because the names are related. We liked this idea so we decided to bring our Poentjak to Indonesia,"" Dijcks, a graphic designer, told the audience at Cemeti Art House.

In fact, it was also the picture that later moved Topp and Dubio to think of the old building housing the restaurant on Kneuterdijk as a mountain, with the attic as its top.

This happened when they finally were able to see the picture from 1947 correctly, after someone in the restaurant changed the position of the picture, which previously had hung upside down.

Benjamin Tompul, the restaurant owner, repeatedly told the two that if they really wanted to know about De Poentjak, they had to come to Indonesia. But they didn't believe him.

""This Poentjak at Kneuterdijk is already too big for us. How can we go to Indonesia if we can hardly find the exit of this small place?"" they told Tompul, who is originally from Indonesia.

During their stay at De Poentjak, Topp and Dubio explored every detail of the restaurant, taking pictures of almost everything in it, making notes and composing stories on it. They became artists in residence.

They really did not want to waste any time. They tried every table in the restaurant, and even slept on them. They ate every dish. They listened to the conversations of other guests.

They took thousands of photographs of the building -- by the end they came out with a photographic archive of some 15,000 photos of De Poentjak, only to find that the place seemed to become larger and larger each time a photograph was taken.

At this point they began to wonder why they ever thought that they could map the place photographically.

""We had given up hope of ever finding the exit. The idea that we were just halfway done made us insane,"" de Haas said.

So, they went on exploring the building on Kneuterdijk until they finally realized that they might have to stop taking new pictures and return to the picture that already existed in the middle of the restaurant's bar, i.e. the picture of Poentjak from 1947. So, here they are in Indonesia, for a two-week visit, bringing with them the three huge folding photographic maps of the restaurant, photos and films of the building that houses the restaurant, and of course various stories related to the restaurant.

They really wanted to bring their De Poentjak on Kneuterdijk to Indonesia, especially to Puncak Pass in West Java, where the name of the restaurant back home is believed to have come from.

But when they finally managed to get to Puncak Pass they met with disappointment. The Poentjak Restaurant from the 1947 photo was no longer there.

""Of course we had a certain idea on how Puncak would look once we arrived in Indonesia. But this image was just based on romantic ideas,"" said Dijcks, as de Haas showed pictures on the projector depicting an imaginary building of De Poentjak added over a picture of today's landscape of Puncak Pass.

""Maybe we should look for our Poentjak in different places in Indonesia. Maybe the Poentjak has fallen apart and is spread over all of the Indonesian islands. Maybe we can find some of our Poentjak here in Yogyakarta,"" Dijcks added.

Last week's presentation at Cemeti Art House was the second that Topp and Dubio performed during their first visit to Indonesia. The gave a similar presentation in Jakarta for students of the Jakarta Arts Institute.

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