JakArt 2008: A celebration of the 'declining' arts?

Ary Hermawan , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Sat, 06/28/2008 11:55 AM | Arts & Design

Do we need arts when fuel prices are flying high, leaving millions of unfortunate citizens trapped in the vicious circle of poverty?

This is the banal -- yet deeply philosophical -- question that JakArt co-founder Ary Sutedja carefully pondered before deciding to hold the JakArt 2008 Festival back in the capital, where it belongs, in August. Since 2004, JakArt activities have been mostly conducted outside Jakarta.

Those who are fond of quoting the famous hierarchical pyramid of needs from noted psychologist Abraham Maslow would likely answer the negative to the above query. They would probably jeer that it would be direly unbecoming for those in hunger to listen to Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 earnestly.

But that view -- reductive as it is -- according to Sutedja, will only put arts in the ivory tower for then they can only be experienced by the select few, be they artists or the haves. Art is culture, she says, and culture, to put it briefly and broadly, is an attitude.

"Culture is more than just playing music, dancing or watching theater. It is our way of thinking, making decisions and representing ourselves in the world. Decision making is cultural. We should ask, for example, why corruption persists in this country. Does it happen because of the system? Or is it simply part of our culture? Decision makers have culture. They have values," she said.

JakArt is more than just a festival to Suetedja. It has the ambition to make Jakarta, which has seen a rapid increase in the number of malls and high-rise buildings and the closure of a number of art centers in the past few years, a "cultural city" of the world.

This, of course, leads to another question; is there space left for arts in a city pervaded by materialistic culture?

"We bring art to balance and refine that materialistic culture. It is not going to be easy, but we have friends and volunteers that will help us. We are aware that there are people who cannot eat or afford to buy gasoline because of poverty. Nevertheless, we have to know that we also need arts to develop our imagination and sensibility," Sutedja, who is also a renowned pianist, said.

Since they started their cultural mission in 2001, the JakArt founders have become used to unresponsiveness and rejection. If not for their belief that art is as necessary as other aspects in national development, they would have long abandoned their mission due to the "ignorance" of the government, which is ironically the main stakeholder of arts.

The murals the JakArt artists made in their previous festivals have been wiped off and replaced by artless gravities and advertising leaflets. The art centers in Jakarta's municipalities they supported have been "downgraded" into mere "art schools". The letters they sent to the ministry of culture and tourism and the city administration were never answered.

"We are aware that the dream of turning Jakarta into a cultural city is far from reality because not only do we lack the appropriate infrastructure but also the funding and political will required to achieve this goal any time in the near future," JakArt committee members said in their JakArt 2008 profile.

That is why the theme for the upcoming festival -- Forbidden, Forgotten, Forsaken: Reality Begins When Fantasy Ends -- sounds more like a ringing bell to the nation of more than 200 million people about the real condition of the arts.

The events in the upcoming festival will be divided into three categories; the imaginary ones, the real ones and the combination of the two. The division is made on the conviction that people are no longer able to tell the difference between the imaginary and the real as they simultaneously live in the two distinct worlds.

"We spent trillions of rupiah for the monorail to overcome traffic jams but it has not yet come to materialize. It is therefore a fantasy. We hear about the construction the eastern and western canals to avoid flooding in the city but nothing is done. It is also a fantasy. We may not realize this, but we do live in a world of fantasy," festival committee member Radhar Panca Dahana said.

In the 30-day festival, which will coincide with the annual meeting of the Association of Asian Performing Arts Festivals (AAPAF), of which JakArt is a member, participants will be taken into an aesthetical realm where the real and the imaginary are deliberately intertwined.

Despite its clear pessimistic tone, Sutedja refused to regard JakArt 2008 as a celebration of the decline of arts and culture in the country. "There is hope," she said, shortly.

The festival, she explained, would be a good opportunity to showcase the rich culture of Indonesia before AAPAF participants, opening the possibility of presenting more Indonesian traditional and contemporary arts abroad, which JakArt has already done in the past few years.

She declined, however, to disclose the list of the real international and local artists that will take part in the festival as it will continue to be updated. But what is real and what is imaginary anyway?

Will the prestigious New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra be invited to the festival? Will Jakartans be exposed to the greatest works of arts by Van Gogh, Leonardo da Vinci, Andy Warhol and Shakespeare? Will they be real or imaginary events?

"There is always satire and tragedy behind comedy. We hope that people can grasp the message of the upcoming festival," said Radhar, who is a poet. "If they miss the irony, then it shows that we perhaps have lost our ability to look at and to laugh at ourselves."

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