For years, Denpasar, its people and administration, has promoted its shared vision of becoming the island’s role model for a creative and multicultural society.
The vision speaks about a city that optimistically embraces the best elements offered by Western modernity and at the same time passionately conserves and develops its rich traditional heritage.
The vision found its first solid manifestation recently in the public New Year’s celebration named the “Denpasar Festival”.
A significantly large group of Denpasar artists and creative workers, hailing from different artistic backgrounds, joined forces to create a multimedia artwork in Puputan Badung Square, the city’s most popular public space.
Titled Ebullience, the artwork proved that creative coexistence among proponents of different artistic schools was not only feasible and achievable, but could also lead to a rewarding experience and a profound art piece.
Most importantly, Ebullience demonstrated that traditional and contemporary arts, long perceived as two forces hostile to one another, could be fused to create a powerful creative energy.
Ebullience: Statues of serene-looking babies are hanging in the air in the bow section of the ark-like installation.
The centerpiece of Ebullience was an ark-like structure designed by renowned architect Yoka Sara, who has designed various eco-oriented projects in Bali and abroad.
The structure was constructed mainly with bamboo and white cloth, hovering above geometrically arranged sandbags to give the illusion of a giant ship plowing through waves.
It was placed in the center of the square with its bow facing east. In Balinese Hinduism, east and northeast are sacred directions, the former because it marks the sunrise, and the latter because the sacred Mount Agung and Besakih Temple lie in that direction.
“It symbolizes the fact that in Bali arts are the vessel for transporting man from the profane to the sacred realm of life,” Ebullience co-organizer Marlowe Bandem said.
It was obvious that in Yoka Sara’s symbolism, the open square stood for the open ocean upon which the ark sailed from the west to the east.
West from the field are rows of government, military and commercial buildings, signifying the baser realm of life, whereas to the east are the city’s main temple of Jagatnatha, the rustic Museum Bali and scores of school buildings, representing the sacred realm.
The installation served both as the setting and the totem for participating artists. Video artists Ridwan Rudianto and Eric Est used the ark’s wall as the screen upon which they projected their latest work, while master cartoonist Jango Paramartha stood on it like a seasoned skipper as he drew the facial expressions of the spectators.
Young talent: Senior high school students perform the swordsmen dance in front of the ark-like Ebullience installation.
During the four-day festival, the ark became a common platform for as many as 30 individuals,
from dancers, painters, poets and DJs, to photographers and textile designers.
At the opening of the festival, eccentric painter Made Budhiana, renowned for preferring primitivism, or sometimes nudism, to modernism, mounted two large canvases on the stern of the ark.
He then treated the site as his own personal studio, where he reflected, drew and painted at his own pace his personal interpretation of the city and its people. A projector continuously threw moving images of Denpasar from the 1930s onto the screen above him, giving the gathered crowd an alternative visual interpretation of the city.
The tempo of the cultural event, and consequently its substance, wasn’t dictated by the city’s administrators, including Mayor Rai Mantra, who gathered in a circle around the stern. Nor it was dictated by any one artist. It was dictated by the dynamic interaction of several participating artists and the large crowd that formed.
As the crowds tried to find meaning in Budhiana’s strokes, several young men took over the site. Dressed only in loose-fitting black pants usually worn by martial arts practitioners, each of them carried two bamboo blades.
In a menacing repertoire they used the blades to slash and stab. The sinister musical composition amplified over the sound system hidden inside the ark was their guide.
The composition was a far cry from the melodious, soothing music our ears are accustomed to. It was a mix between audio samples of various sounds produced by a city, from the mechanical sounds of machines to the spirited voice of a radio broadcaster, and the gritty sounds made by steel swords clashing against each other. It was a brutal and raw composition that shocked both the audience and the artists.
Titled Quatuor, the 21-minute composition was the latest work by I Wayan Gde Yudane, a native of Denpasar who spent most of his creative time teaching and creating music in New Zealand and Europe.
A musical prodigy with a soft voice and short temper, Yudane’s passionate exploration of contemporary music has caused a lot of controversy among his peers and seniors, who believe such music could destroy traditional Balinese music.
To convince his seniors that such exploration isn’t triggered by a clueless personal escape from the traditional arts, Yudane participates regularly in the annual all-Bali traditional music competition, and has won it nine times.
“I don’t like pretending; I always grab the bull by its horns,” he says.
“Quatuor is no different. Some people might call it a glorification of violence. For me, it’s an honest recognition that violence, in all its forms and euphemisms, still exists and has become a permanent feature of our urbanized city.
“Marginalization of the poor, widespread corruption, increased crime rate — all are manifestations of violence, and unless we recognize it we will never be able to address it.”
Surprisingly, the crowd was still unmoved after the terrifying composition ended.
The city’s political leaders and spectators were then escorted through the tunnel inside the ark, where the beautiful endek cloth designed and created by Arsawan were strung from bamboo poles, providing the barren passageway with a touch of feminine beauty.
The short walk ended in a gaping exit at the ark’s bow, where statues of serene-looking infants, suspended in the air, greeted the travelers.
The statues are the last symbolic message of the ark; the participating artists might have had differing artistic views, yet they believed in a similar vision of giving birth anew to the city they loved.
— Photos by Stanny Angga
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