The Act of Killing

I went last night to the ICA in London to see The Act of Killing, the much-celebrated documentary film that centres on a group of Pemuda Pancasila thugs who were responsible for killing communists in 1965-1966 in Medan and the surrounding plantation belt. This was the director's cut, which clocks in at 2 hours 40 minutes, and the film-maker Joshua Oppenheimer was present after for a q&a. Tapol and other human rights organisations were also around to solicit signatures, specifically for a minta maaf campaign which calls upon SBY to apologise officially for the 1965-1966 killings in Indonesia, which left between 500,000 and 1.5 million PKI and suspected communists dead, and many more imprisoned without trial.

Oppenheimer said before the film that he was not going to say 'enjoy the film.' Indeed, he said this twice. He did add though that it was okay to laugh, and that audiences in Indonesia laugh at moments too. I didn't enjoy the film, though I did laugh out loud a few times, and smiled many more times, as Anwar Congo and his friends Herman and Ari made their film which re-presents their roles in the 65-66 killings. The experience was chilling, brutal, deeply moving.

The director has a bio not too dissimilar from my own - he graduated summa cum laude from Harvard, got a PhD from Central St Martins with a thesis which comprises an earlier documentary about trade union activists in North Sumatra called The Globalization Tapes (available on youtube), some early material collected towards The Act of Killing and a long written thesis (Show of Force, available to download free of charge at http://ethos.bl.uk). The film itself was funded in part by an AHRC grant -- the largest grant the AHRC has given to an Indonesian research project- and Oppenheimer continued to be based in London after his PhD until very recently as a senior research fellow at the University of Westminster. We share a common set of theoretical and areal references -- and in his after-show q&a he cited Indonesian cultural theorists Ariel Heryanto. He was highly loquacious and articulate in his comments, and showed deep respect for his Indonesian collaborators. (Most of whom who could not be credited for safety reasons and are listed as anonymous.) Oppenheimer said it was not safe for him now to go to Indonesia - and when Anwar saw the film for the first time he could only watch it with him via Skype. I felt for Oppenheimer as clearly he remains drawn to the country, and wishes to contribute to Indonesia (indeed, he considers the film to be an Indonesian film due to the huge amount of participation of Indonesians in it).

So it was hard for me not empathize with the film-maker and imagine what it would have been like for me to be in the company of these brutal and largely unrepentant killers for the long time it took to make the film (nearly 10 years, with over 1200 hours of footage collected). I shared also a set of cultural references with the killers themselves, as well. These were thugs who worked as preman bioskop in Medan in the early 1960s, scalping tickets-- and the major reason they cited for their dislike of the PKI was that the PKI lobbied successfully in getting the flow of Hollywood films reduced, which cut into their income as ticket scalpers. They sung popular songs of their youth like Halo, Halo Bandung and Malam Minggu Nonton Bioskop; talked about their admiration for American film stars; and did an absolutely chilling re-enactment of the murder of a victim in film noire style in a Medan office that had indeed been used for killing. (Oppenheimer said that for him the murder by stabbing of a teddy bear, representing the child of a Chinese man, was the most disturbing moment in the whole film.) One of the main characters, a cross-dresser named Herman, was a leading actor in an all-male Pemuda Pancasila theatre group that had disbanded some time before Oppenheimer began filming. (The director said that if it was still around he certainly would have wanted to film it.)

I could go on about this film at some length as it touches on so many things I am interested in -- Indonesia, performance, re-enactment, fantasy, cross-cultural communication, transnationalism. It is something I will need to see again, I think, and would like to teach as well. The DVD is due to come out in November 2013.

Sang Penari (The Dancer)

Last night I attended the opening night of an Indonesian film series Spotlight on: Indonesia, part of the 5th Terracotta Far East Film Festival , at the ICA in London.

The film was Sang Penari (The Dancer), released in Indonesia in 2011 and Indonesia's official Academy Award entry for 2012. The film is set in Banyumas (and actually shot on location in Purwokerto and Tegal) and is a romance set against the backdrop of the traditional art of ronggeng and the political upheaval and mass killings of 1963-1966, inspired by Ahmad Tohari's celebrated trilogy Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk, which has been translated into English by Rene Lysloff and published by the Lontar Foundation.


The director Ifa Ifansyah, who I met at the Rotterdam Film Festival, was present and answered questions during a Q&A after the film led by my colleague Ben Murtagh of SOAS.

He explained that what we saw what was the director's cut, which included scenes cut in Indonesia, one where the dancer's stomach is massaged to prevent pregnancy and her breasts are briefly visible, the cutting of throats by Indonesian army officers, her vagina being 'smoked' before her ritual deflowering. The censors also stood in the way of including PKI emblems - though there is a brief flash of sickles in a market place. When the film was shown on Indonesian TV and as in flight enter

Ifa spoke about how it was hard to finance the film - the novels are very well known but the Indonesian film market is dominated by horror and teen romance - and it took him 3 years in all to produce the film. It garnered critical acclaim in Indonesia but attracted only 100,000 viewers. (His previous film Garuda di Dadaku or 'Garuda on My Chest' about teenage soccer players had 1.3 viewers.)

I found the film to be somewhat predictable and overly melodramatic. While other dance films such as Garin Nugroho's Opera Jawa and Riantiarno's Cemeng 2005 (The Last Primadona) cast actual dancers in lead roles, Ifa cast a Jakarta actress in the ronggeng part, which meant that dance scenes were rather brief and not very exciting on the whole. The best ronggeng from Banyumas are truly amazing to behold. He did, however, work with the Banyumas-based multi-arts group Banyu Biru for the music (all the on-screen musicians with the exception of the drummer were part of this group), and many of the villagers were played by people from Banyumas.

Admirably, the film script was translated from Indonesian into the Banyumas dialect of Javanese, which I enjoyed hearing very much, due in part to its similarity to the Cirebon dialect which I speak. Although the Jakarta lead actors struggled a bit with this (they had only 1 month of vocal training), the extras and minor actors added much authenticity in their dialogue.

Ifa spoke also about who the Tohari novels focused mostly on cultural background and politics, and that he wished to make a romance film about the love affair between the ronggeng and a soldier. I wish there had been a more systematic exposition of the way that the Communist party utilized the folk arts for propaganda purposes. There is a token Communist agitator in the film who gives villagers a radio to keep them abreast of news, has them paint slogans on their roofs, sponsors the ronggeng troupe, and occasionally talks about the bourgeoisie and 'tanah oentoek rakjat' (land for the people). But the ronggeng and other troupe members appear totally ignorant of the politics (and are enticed to perform under the PKI banner only because the agitator promises they will 'panen' or harvest gigs from this), there is not a single mention made of LEKRA, and there are no songs or jokes in the performances referencing Communist ideas or ideals. The Tohari novels have much more in them about the politicisation of the arts that could have been fruitfully mined, and there are people out there who remember this period well and are willing to talk. Something perhaps for another film to explore. Or a monograph.

Gamelan Composers' Forum

Yesterday (14 April 2013) I a attended the Gamelan Composers' Forum at the spacious G2 lecture room of SOAS in London. The event was organised by Aris Daryono, a London-based musician and composer from Indonesia who plays with the Southbank Gamelan Players, with sponsorship from both SOAS and the Indonesian Embassy. The ambassador and his staff were present during the first half of the day and provided food for participants.

Five composers were represented in the event by five compositions, and after each piece. Composers introduced their works and after each piece was played there was ample time for moderated discussion.

The event opened with Robert Campion's Studies for Solo Gender Barung (2007), a very fine etude which explored the possibilities of the instrument. The composer explained that he wanted to write a piece that was comfortable for the hands, idiomatic for the instrument and developing techniques for both players and also composers wishing to write for the instrument. He has written half a dozen etudes for gender, which he says is the instrument in the gamelan most suited for solo playing. One is so hard that he has not mastered it himself and has never performed it in public.

Japanese composer Makoto Nomura from Japan was present via a Skype link and his piece No Notes VI, written on 14 March 2013 on board a train from Kyoto to Tokyo and dedicated to Aris, was played live by four gamelan players in London. (See picture above.) This piece for gamelan instruments and voice had only time signatures, no notes or words. The musicians talked about how it challenged them to think metrically while improvising.

Rasa 2 was a new composition by Aris Daryono which developed ideas that Aris had deployed in an earlier collaboration with Charles Matthews for live gamelan and computer. The peice was scored for flute, oboe, clarinet and cello and 2 gender players (who played in both slendro and pelog). The Western instrumentalists were asked to tune their instruments to the gamelan, so B flat was shaped to become a 6 on the gamelan scale (fairly close), while there was some distance between C and 1. The oboe and clarinet players played into kenong pots to create resonance and an off stage effect. (The clarinet ended up sounding something like an oboe on some notes.) The clarinetist reported that the piece changed his conception of being at home. Home was for him in this piece the moments when his notes accorded to gamelan pitches. The cellist added that it felt satisfying to come together after dissonance. She said furthermore that she didn't feel a clash between Western vs. non-Western instruments. Instead there was a feeling of commonality and shared interest in new music and composition.

After the lunch break, the event resumed with two further pieces.  Jonas Bisquert, a composer originally from Spain but now living in Holland, directed a performance of his piece Su Ilanto (His Weeping, in Spanish), which was inspired by the crying of his newborn baby and was originally written for a Spanish percussion ensemble. The piece used thimbles on fingers striking kenong to replace cymbals, included Spanish style clapping, pair of dueling bonang players who invade each others space substituted for the alternating cellos of Basque music, and had an evolving texture like Javanese gamelan and many theatrical gestures.

The event wound up with a performance of Philip Corner's Dua Uni (2=1) a conceptual piece in his gamelan series. Corner is an American retired professor, a co-founder of the New York ensemble Gamelan Son of Lion who has been living in Italy since 1992. The piece consisted of one high and very loud and sharply played note followed by a low and long and very soft note played ad infinitum. The piece could be played by any single instrument or arrangement of instruments, and was scored on this occasion by Corner in what he called a baroque arrangement for two ensembles of players - 4 gamelan musicians (each of whom played a gong/kempul and an instrument of the saron family) and cello, English horn, flute and clarinet. The gamelan player played first, then the Western instruments building into a tutti and then rejoined by the gamelan instruments. Though very simple in design, it was very effective and challenging in performance.

Corner reported that the piece was a distillation of an idea that had long fascinated him in gamelan - the colotomic structure where low instruments play slowly and high instruments play quick elaborating parts over this. He said that this is found in many music cultures in the world. He hadn't realised that his piece was gamelan inspired until after it had been performed. Only then did he include it in his gamelan series. (His more overt inspiration was the work of Olivier Messiaen and Messiaen's ideas about disjuncture.)

Nick Gray, a SOAS lecturer and composer who hosted the event, reported that there were plans for the event to be an annual gathering. All the gamelan pieces included in this year's event were Javanese, but Balinese Gamelan musicians and composers present said they hoped that the event would be opened up to Balinese, Sundanese etc gamelan composers as well.

Indonesia Kontemporer 2012

Yesterday (13 October) was the second edition of Indonesia Kontemporer, a festival of contemporary Indonesian arts and culture held again at SOAS. At the first edition a year ago, I was an active participant, performing A Dalang in Search of Wayang. This time round I was a spectator, albeit an interested one. There was a fuller programme than last year, and it seems more people in attendance too, and I managed to attend a fair sampling of the events, though I didn't get to see any of the films on offer (curated by SOAS lecturer Ben Murtagh).

I started out by dropping by a small display of UK-based Indonesian artists, mostly students or ex-students. A number of the artists referenced Indonesian traditional arts in various ways. One of them, Arati Sirman, who studied fine art at Central Saints Martins and art business at Sotheby's, showed a series of works based in part on the illustrations of Hardjowirogo's famous wayang dictionary, Sejarah Wayang Purwa. (See above.)

I attended an artist talk by an English community artist named Helen Marshall about an upcoming Arts Council funded project called Tobong, conducted in collaboration with a Javanese photographer named Risang Yuwono who she met while travelling in Sulawesi. Marshall, who described herself in the talk as a contemporary artist who works in socially engaging modes, went off on motor bike with Yuwono and spent a day visiting an itinerant kethoprak troupe performing on the outskirts of Yogyakarta. This offered a glimpse of their off-stage life, living in the Tobong that is both stage and temporary home. She has research and development money from the Arts Council England to return to Indonesia and stage with Yuwono a series of kethoprak-related events in Yogyakarta in November and December of this year. Among these is to produce 'tableau vivant' -- posing the actors in the same figurations as photographs of them.

Marshall doesn't speak Indonesian or Javanese (a video she showed to us had one of the kethoprak actors say on camera that she should be told to learn Indonesian) and has some rather romantic ideas about the life of these artists and the theatre they perform. And she unfortunately talks about this as a 'collaboration' with the kethoprak performers while saying at the same time that she could never explain her intentions to them. But at least the actors will be paid - she has budgeted in 'modelling fees' for their work. And she also hopes to bring Yuwono to the UK - which would be a good opportunity for him, I suppose.

I next went to a performance of a PPI student group playing songs from around Indonesia. The lead female vocalist was fairly talented, but the accompanying musicians were a mixed lot as one might imagine. The group showed slides taken off the web while they played. A strange moment for me was seeing one of my own performances (the York wayang I did last April) during a slide show of images from the cultural attache's website.

While I was at the talk and concert, my daughter Hannah attended an Indonesian language workshop  and I stopped by a couple of times to see how she was doing. A group of adults sat around a circle and were asked various questions by a young man from Jember about their experiences of going to Indonesia and the differences between life in Indonesia and the UK. He encouraged the workshop participants to go to the Indonesian language classes run on Saturday afternoons in the embassy - and there is free Indonesia food too, he said.

I rounded out the day with two Balinese shows on the stage of the Brunei Lecture Theatre. Segara Madu, a gender wayang group run by SOAS lecturer Nick Gray, performed a number of pieces out of the wayang repertoire and a new composition in Balinese style. I was pretty amazed by the huge number of people in attendance.

This was followed by the festival's highlight, a concert of the London-based Balinese gamelan group Lilia Cita and their sister group, the Balinese dance troupe Lila Bhawa, directed by Made Pujawati. Among the items on offer were Jocasta, a new dance drama based on the Oedipus story (pictured above). The audience, very full, applauded all the pieces enthusiastically.

Throughout the festival I was playing around with my new toys - an iPad provided by my department and my new smart phone - and uploading images to Facebook while the event was going on. I tried as well to upload a video of Jocasta, but the file was too large and only just this morning was able to get it into Dropbox. I did think it was rather cool though that I was able to be (in a sense) a live reporter on the spot, putting my status as 'At Indonesia Kontemporer 2012' and posting images and getting responses (including two 'likes' from family members of one of the artists) as I was watching performances. So while much of the cultural materials at the festival felt familiar, this mediation offered a new experience for me.