ART FROM DISLOCUTION
IDENTITY, GLOBALISATION & TODAY’S INDONESIAN ART
by Farah Wardani
(download the exhibition document 40 kB)

Globalization & Identity in Indonesia

The unlimited-ness offered by Globalization, inescapably delivers some serious impacts. Apart from the economy crisis which, as can be vividly seen, has been shaking developing countries for the past 6 years, one underlying impact is definitely a crisis of values, which covers areas of social, culture and politics. This crisis of values, inevitably, includes problems concerning the issue of identity.

In Indonesia in particular, identity has become a buzzword which has been excessively jargonized in every medium of governmentally-enforced nationalism propaganda. Yet, it also remains as one issue that has been endlessly argued and requestioned. The search for ‘Indonesia-ness’ has become a tiring and sceptical journey, for what is defined as ‘Indonesia’ itself has always been vague.

In the following, as a background I will at first briefly describe about the problem of (verbal) language in Indonesian nation building and identity constructions, and its relation to visual culture. I am completely aware that identity itself is a broad subject and in this case I have to limit my focus on ‘identity’ as in ‘Indonesia-ness’, relating to the Indonesian nation-building process and cultural-political constructions. Then, I will move forward to describe and read back the situations of a new generation of Indonesian artists and the position of growing alternative spaces in dealing with the issue.

The ‘Indonesia-ness’: Language, Visual Culture and Dislocuted Identity

Language is one great factor in Indonesian identity construction system. The Indonesian language is relatively a new language derived from many languages, initially being formulated just at the end of the 19th century. The implementation of this language as the lingua franca of the archipelago is very much related to the issues of power, and its development also has been trapped too much in the hegemony of (foreign) text.
Historically, ‘Indonesia’ was a newly invented word, a great signifier of an idea covering a construction of linguistic system, nationality and territory, which was a combination of former diverse constructions. ‘Indonesia’ is a word signifying what Ben Anderson called as ‘imagined community’.
On the other hand, as development progresses and globalization takes place, there has been transformations of medium.

Visual culture is rapidly growing as an effect of globalization and capitalism. The construction of Indonesian language and the process of visual culture are clashing onto one another. Here I am borrowing a term invented by Sarat Maharaj, a dislocution (a play of the term ‘dislocation’, replacing ‘locate’ with ‘locute’) a conflict between the signifier and the signified, or in other words –of text and context. It can be seen that in this globalization era, hybrid meanings are emerging, and also hybrid existences. Built upon double standards and the tension between traditional-modern values, a new hybrid generation of Indonesians are emerging, with questions on their identity that has been continuously developing, yet never been eloquently articulated, whether visually or verbally.

Finding the Language: Indonesian Young Artists of Today

Indonesian visual art can be said as a product of the tension between traditions and modernity. Modernization that conveyed Western influences then has produced a transgression in the concept of identity of the artist itself, in which individual existence is the most significant. What happened afterwards as an effect was various ideological conflicts in the formulation of Indonesian national cultural identity in relation to the development of art, with many polemics surrounding the issue. What is left today is an ‘exhaustion’ of the search of ‘Indonesian art’.

From the Indonesian art historiography, it is visible that there has been a great obligation for art to function to mediate reality and that in a way also includes to take part in the identity construction. This is what should be requestioned. Art has been regarded as being able to become a channel of reality representation and even an instrument of (national/cultural) identity construction, even in practice it is mostly so far has been distant with the reality, and in the end, due to the rapid movement of modernization, it is also often trapped in the paradoxes of the construction and representation systems.

Of course, when speaking about representation, one cannot escape from the problem related to the factor of language as discussed above: to represent Indonesia, which or whose Indonesia that the artists represent? We have to be conscious of the fact that the Indonesian art scene so far in general, whether in the market or discursive areas, has been developed only around Java and Bali, which still posits questions surrounding the issue of localities.

Some issues that have been the target of sharp criticism is the tendency of art internationalism (like in the biennales/triennials) to be a vehicle of discourse commodification and identity politics, particularly relating to social problems and identity politics, with ambiguous standards between the local and the global.

This problem becomes a great point of consideration of contemporary visual artists, especially the ones coming from the post-Indonesian Art Movement era who has been greatly active during the ‘90s and continue until today, and also the emerging young artists from the recent generation who enter the scene in the late ‘90s and the millennium.
Focusing on the latter, it is interesting to see how young Indonesian artists of today try to articulate their existence through their visual strategies. They can be seen as coming from the dislocuted generation with ambiguities and hybridities. Yet, the ambiguities itself might as well reflect the shifting process of the young generation, in coping with their restlessness of being raised in multi-dimensions, with so many polarities and confrontations of values.

Slide show

One arresting point of these exhibitions is that the artists in general rarely bear the echoes of the cultural identity representation or Post-Reformation political activist-art, that was once a major trend in the Indonesian contemporary art world, which reflects the exhaustion of selling such theme and their urge to explore other things, may it even be the most trivial things in their everyday life. There is a tendency to move beyond ideologies and grand narratives, choosing interdisciplinary creative processes in trying to create their own visual communication, taking inspirations from everyday lives and small narratives.

Here, identity is no longer the real issue to be defined, but more to how to identify medium, contexts and the contemporary existence. Cosmopolitanism and the urban issue slowly replace the theme of tradition/tensions, or in other words, more to the issue of how to deal with modernity, and also a more interactive and collaborative manner of cultural exchange, supported with more opportunities given through various artists-in-residence programs.

The emergence of alternative or peripheral cultural spaces that have been mushrooming in the world in general and in Indonesia in particular is also a phenomena on its own. Several things that can be explored from this are, firstly, alternative spaces as a signifier of socio-cultural movements that prioritize the context of locality in facing the totalitarian grip of globalism, and also reflecting various counter-culture strategies of independent movements to deal with what is regarded as the mainstream, (as in aesthetics, infrastructure, governmental/institutions, commercial galleries and the art market, and even the international art circle). Furthermore, it also indicates a transgression (or perhaps, a ‘return’) from capitalist-oriented individualism to communalism/collectivity. Lastly, It can also be seen as a reflection of a growing new generation.

Even though the emergence of alternative art spaces in Indonesia has begun in the late ‘80’s – one of the most influential and has still been sustaining is Cemeti Art House that was established in 1988, most alternative spaces initiated during the past five years are founded by younger artists and cultural practitioners who were born in the ‘70s and early eighties.

Slide show

Some of them participated in the international forum of artists’ initiatives, ‘Fixing The Bridge’, which took place at Kedai Kebun Forum, Yogyakarta, December 2003. The forum invited representatives of around 20 city-based art and cultural spaces from 11 countries, with Globalization as the key issue. This event tried to re-analyze how alternative spaces and art practices take parts in requestioning the issues of local/global identities as well as proposing a decentralization of the Centre and acknowledgement of the Peripheries.

As an addition, I feel necessary to point out particularly the role of foreign cultural centres that spread around main cities of Java, which most of them are from the 1st World countries, such as GoetheHaus, Centre Culturél Français, Erasmus Huis, The British Council, Cultura Instituta de Italiano, and Japan Foundation. One thing that can be seen most clearly from this situation is the consciousness of such institutions of the fact that the local art infrastructure is greatly lacking and not accommodative, and so there they have been increasingly supportive to local art practices, becoming another kind of alternative spaces in itself.

Redefining Positions and Identifying Contexts

Above all, is identity dead in this globalism era, or has never existed? The best way to look at this issue is not to get trapped into reductive oversimplification. There is a thin line between ‘identity’ and ‘identification’. The point that can be taken from here is to raise a consciousness on identity as something created, therefore what is more significant is to explore how the process of identification is done in every construction. From this perspective, it is not about what is identity, but what are there to be identified.
The question follows next is, to what extend the young artists and alternative cultural spaces are conscious enough of their own positions among the great flow of Globalization and internationalism, and to identify their own interests within the local contexts. On the other hand, it also has to be realized that the existence and emergence of artists and spaces can mean as an action/reaction toward Globalization, yet on the other hand, in some cases they can also be products of Globalization itself. Or in other words, how to face the crisis caused by Globalization, while all of us are still parts of it?

This is a challenge for art practices to develop every potential of art in being a medium of analysis, with its ability to offer new perceptions among existing and remaining values. The language and practice of art now has been going further beyond aesthetic transformations, penetrating into deeper socio-cultural realm. Yet, how far can art and cultural practices of today take part in finding the ‘in-between’ paths, or ‘fixing the vulnerable bridge’ built by Globalization, and continue to develop conducive discourses and practices in rethinking local contexts, without at the same time entangled in politicized universal humanism or shallow counter-culture ideological warfare?

Artists today still have to face the haunting question of whether art or cultural practices can actually contribute to change, to be an agent of change. Yet at the same time, we have come to an era when everyone seemed to be made sceptical to the modernistic faith of linear progress, where every move is made to reach a better, or ideal state of being in one homogenous concept.

Perhaps, it might be more likely to replace progress with process, and in this case contemporary art can still work as both a reflection and medium of various growing processes, which cannot be seen through linear and totalitarian perspective, since diverse contexts are created both within and around it. In a greater scale, it has become an entrance of departure point to explore all the tendencies in our contemporary culture: a huge assemblage which is packed and crowded with things, objects, noises and paradoxes, which seem to be always in transience, transforming before even reach their meaning – or before we can identify our own existence in this ever-changing world.