Finding humanity in scrap metal

Matheos Viktor Messakh , The Jakarta Post , JAKARTA | Thu, 04/23/2009 1:14 PM | Arts & Design

Teguh Ostenrik will never forget his professor’s definitive assertion: “Creativity is when you make gold out of pig’s excrement.”

He received this pearl of wisdom in the late 1970s when he was doing a master’s degree in fine art at Berlin’s Hochschule der Kunste. Perhaps it influenced his artwork, as his usual materials of choice are scrap metal and waste.

In the spirit of recycling, he even designed a pyramid using bricks made from plastic bags in Munduk, in the north of Bali, in 1994.

The painter–sculptor’s latest works will be gathered together at Jakarta’s National Archive Building on April 26 and 27, under the theme “deFACEment”.

The Way I Approach, iron (Courtesy of Teguh Ostenrik)

What makes these works unique is that all the materials involved are scrap metal.

Teguh claims he does not believe in mood in art but in technique and management.

Nevertheless, perhaps an acute awareness of his origins and mortality has contributed to his consciousness of the importance of preserving the environment through recycling.

“I asked myself, what have we given back to Mother Earth? Don’t forget that all hazardous waste is human-made. I didn’t need prodding [to do this]; it came from myself as an artist,” said Teguh, whose sculptures and paintings have been exhibited at galleries and museums across Europe and Asia.

The artist spent the past six months in a metal factory in Tangerang, Banten, preparing his works for the exhibition, with the help of two assistants. They used metal obtained from old keys, knives, wire and other items no longer of use, all provided by the factory.

Fresh from the oven (metal): Recently finished art works of Teguh Ostenrik line up on the yard of a metal factory, where the artist has been working at, in Tangerang, Banten. (JP/ Matheos Viktor Messakh)

“It’s a metal factory and they always have metal waste from production or from broken machinery,” he said.

“I’m lucky that the owner of the factory allowed me to use this metal waste.”

Teguh prefers metal to wood because although metal plays such a big part in our lives, it is not biodegradable.

“I once used wood when I was in Germany but it was used wood,” he said.

Other works that form the “deFACEment” exhibition were made in Penang, Malaysia, where Teguh was selected for the Artist in Residence program organized by ABN-AMRO Bank and the Wawasan Open University in 2008.

Teguh aims not only to use scrap metal but also to save energy during production.

“We usually attach pieces of metal together to create artwork with welding,” he said.

“I try to respect the initial form but sometimes we have to cut them using a cutter or plasma cutter.”

To produce the corrosion effect, new scrapmetal creations are sprayed with a chlorite substance to render them rusty, to reflect the character of Mother Earth.

Humanity has always been at the heart of Teguh’s art. Indeed, he said it was because of his interest in humanity that he left his medical studies in Jakarta in 1972 to study art in Germany.

Since his work was first displayed at Berlin’s Galerie Am Parkhaus in 1977, it has presented interpretations of various themes in human life, thought and existence through the employment of universal human figures.

And so, while God created mankind from dust, the artist creates his work from scrap metal.
Thus, we find a human figure with hair made of wavy wires titled Belon Disasak (Not Teased Yet), a figure made from tubing and wires that seems to embrace itself titled Self Indulgence and a multi-faced figure accordingly titled Dasamuka.

“The closest object to us is the human figure,” Teguh said, explaining the concept behind his human-centered works.

“We even have one and interact with them all the time.”

This collection reflects a further exploration of his early works from 1976, themed Homosapiens, but Teguh, who likens creativity to naughtiness, tends to continue deconstructing the academic structure he learned.

“Creativity is going beyond your own limits,” he said.

Urban planner Jo Santoso said Teguh’s works are very relevant as a reflection of the decomposition of human life in modernism.

“All of his works have human spirit. It challenges us to admit we are part of nature, the earth,” Santoso said, during the discussion of Teguh’s works in Jakarta on Saturday.

“He is a genius who uses modern art to express his criticism of modernism, but at the same time, he invites us to look at ourselves as part of nature.”

Santoso said something traditional is usually regarded as an opposition to modernism but Teguh refused that kind of modernism.

“He [Teguh] wants the kind of modernism that is friendly to tradition, earth, and humankind,” he said.

Communications expert Kafi Kurnia, who first met the artist more than 20 years ago, found Teguh’s works had changed.

“Back then, he was a very angry man and his works were also raw and full of anger. Now, they are sweeter and reflect maturity,” Kafi said.

Some of the works at this month’s exhibition were displayed last year during the artist’s solo exhibition at Alpha Utara Gallery in Penang, Malaysia, at a group exhibition titled “Self-Portraits of Famous Living Artists of Indonesia” at Jogja Gallery in Yogyakarta, and in a group exhibition themed “Dari Penjara ke Pigura” (From Jail to Picture-frame) at Jakarta’s Gallery Salihara.

Some of the items currently at the National Archive Building have already been sold, at prices starting from Rp 10 million (US$881). Dasamuka sold for Rp 100 million.

Teguh finds an interesting correlation between the way he makes a living — manipulating metals into human form — and the way others do.

“I have a routine that is not about manipulating people, as politicians usually do, but manipulating waste materials.”

Teguh Ostenrik: You need to be naughty to be creative

Matheos Viktor Messakh , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Thu, 04/23/2009 2:00 PM | Lifestyle

Artist Teguh Ostenrik does not believe in talent. For him creativity is about skill and hard work.

"Experience is a collection of mistakes. Make millions of mistakes but don't repeat the same ones," Teguh said, when emphasizing his philosophy on nurturing creativity.

Teguh is one of the few Indonesian artists who has exhibited his sculptures and paintings at prestigious galleries and museums around the world, from Galerie Lichtstudio and Der Oper in Berlin, Germany, to Fukuoka Art Museum in Japan.

Even when he was still a student at Berlin's Hochschule der Kunste, or the Berlin University of the Arts, he held his first solo exhibition at Galerie Am Parkhaus in 1977, followed by 39 solo exhibitions, 50 group exhibitions and 27 performances around the world over the next 32 years.

His commissioned work is also displayed at 29 museums, public landmarks and corporate buildings worldwide, including sculptures at the ultramodern Church of St Mary of the Angel at Bukit Batok in Singapore, terracotta art at Klinik Am Ring in Cologne and a gigantic 10-panel mixed media installation at the ASEAN Secretariat building in Jakarta.

Born in Jakarta in 1950, the sixth child - in a family of nine - did not have a place he could call home for years. Teguh's and his family spent many years following their father Ostenrik Tjitrosunarjo - a policeman - around the country from Makassar in South Sulawesi to Semarang in Central Java.

He inherited the unusual name of Ostenrik from his grandfather, Surakarta palace's official artist who once painted a portrait of a goodwill ambassador from Austria. The ambassador was so pleased he bestowed upon the painter the name Oostenrijk.

Later on, due to growing anti-western sentiment during former president Sukarno's era, the name's spelling was changed to Ostenrik.

After the alleged September 1965 coup or G30S, his father moved to Jakarta while Teguh was still in Semarang, spending three more of his senior high school years in Surakarta. Everything seemed fine with Teguh until he joined the School of Medicine at Jakarta's Trisakti University to prepare for a successful career as a doctor.

But Teguh's heart was elsewhere.

"Within the first two years, I realized I didn't want to become a doctor.Medicine sees humans as merely organs, everything is memorized," said Teguh, who spent the first two years at the university mostly drawing anatomy, cells and organs.

After corresponding for a year with his high school friend Robert Gunawan who studied in Aachen, Teguh left for Germany in 1972 with the money he had saved while driving a night taxi and 1,000 marks his late mother Marsini gave him - the only person who supported his decision to leave Indonesia. The dream was to study drawing at Hochschule der Kunste.

He spent three weeks learning German in Munich before moving to West Berlin to continue studying the language while working at a Balinese restaurant as a dishwasher.

He was only accepted at Hochschule de Kunste's department of fine arts after his fourth attempt in 1974 and finished his Meistersch*ler degree in fine arts in 1980.

His first terracotta pieces were already on display in Jakarta by 1980 at Mitra Budaya gallery, which was when his father started to understand his decision to become an artist, he said.

Teguh traveled to New York in 1981 for about three months, contributing 1,600 sketches to Ann Wilson's Faust Project while also taking part in dance performances.

In the same year, he moved to Amsterdam where he shared a studio with artist Sebastian Holhuber from Vienna.

A year later, he moved to Cologne in Germany and married Donata Dengler, who gave him two children, Lovis and Celine. He spent six years in Cologne, where he was involved in Robert Salomon and Mathias Von Welck's dance performances and taught slow motion movement at a model agency.

Teguh might be a famous painter and sculptor but not many know he took part in 27 performing art collaborations, stage and lighting designs around the world since 1978. These experiences inspired him to direct a dance composition titled Biarkan Mereka Menjamah Langit (Let Them Touch the Sky) at the Jakarta Archive Building in 2000.

But the year 1988 was perhaps a turning point for him, as he was forced to take the most difficult decision of his life and return to Indonesia for good.

"At that time, I was 38 and thought I would be too lazy to move back there at 40," said the man, who owns Bilik 3Dharma studio in Cilandak, South Jakarta.

Teguh never considered himself merely a painter or a sculptor. He thrives on exploring different media and materials, ranging from the conventional pencils, pastels, oils, acrylics to the more experimental ones.

His adventurous spirit took him back to Berlin in 1989 to witness the fall of the Berlin wall, of which he bought four sections for an installation in Jakarta.

After the May 1998 riots, he became intrigued with video and made a number of video art pieces.

Teguh, whose life art historian Barbara Asboth penned in 2000 in a book titled Transcending Time, believes art is like religion.

"If you are creative, you create your own dogma. If you are not, you need a dogma from other people," he said.

The creativity of many people, he said, was killed as early as their childhood. "Our parents forbid us to make any mistakes and if we do, they usually blaming someone else rather than teach us not to make the same mistake," he said.

He believes creativity does not differ much from naughtiness.

"Only those who are naughty enough can go beyond their limits," he said. "If I hadn't been this naughty, I wouldn't be where I am today."

Ani Widyani Soetjipto: Women in politics

Matheos Viktor Messakh , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Tue, 04/21/2009 2:16 PM | Lifestyle

For lecturer and activist Ani Widyani Soetjipto, the 2009 legislative elections were a big loss for the women's movement.

They were a real political loss, as female candidates who many were former activists failed to win the elections, she said.

"It turns out what we called the women movement is really fragile. Many activists have been working at the grass root level for decades, which is supposed to be the place to raise awareness among constituents and get votes," Ani explained.

"But the election results appeared to show there was no correlation between years of work at grass root level and actual voter support. It's very sad."

The woman who co-founded the University Network for Free and Fair Elections (Unfrel) in 1998 said women and civil society movements in general needed to reassess their strategies before deciding on any kind of policy intervention.

"What we don't have is the determination to stay in the course of the struggle and we don't have the people's mandate either. That's why the women's movement is easily shaken," she said.

Ani, who gained a master's degree in international studies from the Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, Seattle, said a better problem-mapping and role sharing between the movement's stakeholders could create better coordination and synergy.

"But we know the women's movement has very diverse agendas and interests," said the 48-year-old woman. According to Ani, although many activists became involved in community economic development, their intervention was not successful at gathering votes for the elections.

"We are assuming when the people are economically independent, they are able to cast their vote independently. It doesn't seem so. I guess many people who have empowered themselves economically have not done so in a political context," she explained.

For a long time, Ani has been advocating the 30 percent legislative seat quota for women since she became the head of the women's division at the Centre for Electoral Reform (Cetro) in 2002.

One of the obstacles the women's movement faces - when pushing its political agenda - is opposition from activists fighting against the state, she added.

"There is always tension between those who want to disengage from politics and those who want to take part in shaping politics."

There are at least three solutions to such a problem, Ani said, adding that prior to deciding which course to take, the women's movement needed to reassess itself in a holistic way in order to prevent the movement from failing again in future elections.

The first option is to withdraw from politics for a while to rebuild political power from the grass root level.

The second option is to reconfigure how constituents engage with and support a number of select activists that play a role within a party or in the House of Representatives. Such support should be a full package from supplying them with conceptual ideas to financially supporting them.

"We have seen that without money, many activists struggle to manage their campaign and maintain their connection with their constituents.

"It *support* can't start only one or two years before the elections. It has to start now if we want to see changes in the 2014 elections. It has to be a long-term, systematic and localized support for selected activists that will be expected to become the agents of change," she said.

The third option is full intervention at the legislative, executive and judiciary levels, said Ani, adding any intervention at the national level always had a bigger impact.

"However, we have to be prepared for the risk of total failure at any level."

The women's movement has had little impact at the executive level since early political reforms in 1998.

"We have no control whatsoever at the executive level. Even if the House speaks as loud as it can, the executive won't listen."

The movement needs to ensure its candidates have integrity and are competent enough to be appointed at the executive level.

Participating in parties' internal reform is also another option, said Ani, because parties are at the upstream level of the political process.

The House will not improve until parties reform themselves, said Ani, who in 2008 successfully pushed for the adoption of affirmative policies for women in parties and election laws. Many activists have been preoccupied with their democratization work and failed to notice the state was still repeating some of its old antics, she said.

"What we see is the recycling of political elites. We see the same faces. The old enemy returns with a new face while we are not ready to face it." If the women's movement did not immediately come up with a common strategy to tackle the current political situation, the movement would fail once again and gain nothing from the political process, she said.

Although many women had already enjoyed greater opportunities to emancipate, said Ani, they still faced cultural and structural challenges. Therefore women should not be perceived as already equal with men.

"Cultural intervention is a long-term process because people's mindsets have to change. In order to accelerate it, we must intervene at the structural level by supporting passing laws and regulations ," said Ani.

"They could speed up the process."

For Ani, who has already had years of experience fighting for women's rights, celebrating Kartini's day is about remembering the essence of her struggle.

"The issues she fought for, like education for women, economic empowerment as well as political representation or the issues she fought against, such as polygamy, are still relevant. These issues are even more complicated now and we still have to do something about them."

Elena Surdu Stanescu: Sculpture deeper than face value

Matheos Viktor Messakh , The Jakarta Post , JAKARTA | Thu, 04/16/2009 12:43 PM | People

(JP/R. Berto Wedhatama)

Elena Surdu Stanescu likes to speak of her mind. The debut of her work in the country is not the only reason why this Romanian sculptor is thrilled to be in Indonesia.

She is excited by the country’s rich tradition of sculpture, which she refers to as a personal “spring of inspiration.” But, at the same time, she laments the poor preservation and development of the country’s artistic heritage.

With just a few days in the country, the 67-year-old artist and art critic has noticed the Indonesia’s diverse and rich wooden sculptures, which although probably familiar to many people, go unnoticed.

“There are lots of symbols and a variety of traditions. A huge cultural background has been imported into the sculpture tradition here but I believe that Indonesia fails to explain its own cultural heritage to the world…,” she said. “You have a lot more to show.”

Stanescu said that before she came to Indonesia for her exhibition, she visited the Indonesian embassy in Bucharest to find information about Indonesian art - but to no avail. “They had just held a tourist exhibition and ran out of books about Indonesia.”

The prominent Romanian artist, who has had more than 50 solo exhibitions around the world, said the main problem with the development of Indonesian art is not its substance but its management.

“I saw a lack of cultural management and there use to be the same problem in Romania after the fall of Communism. Financial problems and lack of knowledge on how to do a cultural event, how to promote or represent an artist at an international level is a main cause,” said the woman, who was once a director general of The Romanian Ministry of Education’s art department.

Stanescu said Romania solved their problem relatively easily as they had the great fortune of being able to learn much from their European counterparts.

“It was quite easier for us because Europe is much more interconnected and the distance is not that big,” she explained. “But Southeast Asia is not that much integrated.”

What Indonesia needs to do, she said, is simply to improve cultural management. “Because the substance is there, the artists are there, they just need to get better management.”
Stanescu praised the existence of the puppet museum but she said the knowledge of how to make puppets should also be preserved.

“It’s a pity that the wooden carving was not given the same treatment. Where is the wood museum, craft museum? Indonesia has a very strong and very rich tradition of wood sculpture but there is no museum of traditional working techniques, especially in wood.”

The woman, who organized an international art competition in Bucharest between 1992 and 2000 also criticized Indonesian’s museums, as she says that while they are beautiful and have large halls, many of the rooms are empty.

“I have been to a fine art and ceramic museum recently and three big rooms there are just empty. It can be better if you rearrange them,” said the woman who owns Bucharest’s Fundatia Culturala Elena Surdu Stanescu, a cultural foundation which organizes exhibitions and cultural exchanges between French, Italian and Romanian artists.

Born in Bucharest on Sept. 15, 1942, Stanescu finished her study in fine art at the Institute of Pedagogy’s faculty of fine art in Bucharest in 1965 and then became a teacher of sculpture, a position she held until 2000.

In 1980 she studied sculpture at the Nicolae Grigorescu Fine Arts Academy in Bucharest and ten years later became a full member of the Romanian Union of Plastic Artists.

She has also been a member of the International Society of Artistic Education Teachers of Insea-Unesco since 1970 and is the founding member of the “Elena Teodorini” Foundation.
Her works have become part of private collections in France, Italy, Malta, Switzerland, The United States, Hungary, Romania and Ireland.

Her works of art – in clay, wood, bronze and marble – with titles like Taking Flight, The Art of Conversation, Moment’s Thought and Erosion of the Thought, always come out of deep meditation and love and point to the multi-faceted nature of the human mind.

“I’ve always loved watching human faces, the emotions and the expressions. They form the basis of my craft,” she explains.

Stanescu said Romanian artist Constatine Brancusi influenced the modernity seen in her work, which is combined with a strong influence from classical Egyptian and Greek art.

From the age of 20, she has traveled extensively throughout the world and this experience has
created what she calls an “interior laboratory.”

“All the images that linger in my head are the most influential in my life than the other antique or classical influences. They are reminiscent of me. If I see a beautiful legs or beautiful hand, or beautiful idea, they do not immediately translate into a work of art but they will eventually come up later.”

Stanescu says her works are always personal.

“I’m getting the idea from one side or the other but I decide my own path. What lies ahead, I don’t know, but what always matters to me is to express my true feelings.”

“It’s the only way you can communicate with the public. If you try to create an art work that does not express your thoughts or your feelings, the public and the critics will eventually realize that it is something fake and that you are not connected with it.”

From Romania with love

Matheos Viktor Messakh , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Thu, 04/16/2009 2:17 PM | Lifestyle

With more than 45 years of artistic endeavors under her belt, Romanian artist Elena Surdu Stanescu decides to play with universal symbols of love, affection and spirituality for her Jakarta exhibition.

The artist's works have been displayed in major galleries in Romania and abroad - from Asia to North America - but this is her first exhibition in Jakarta, and in Southeast Asia.

A series of torsos of man and woman in deep love and affection titled Couple, a series of torsos titled Beach and a series of graphics titled Birds, as well as bird sculptures, and windows with curtains are on display at the exhibition titled "Soul & Light", and have been brought all the way from Bucharest, Romania.

Like most of her works, the recurring motifs in Stanescu's pieces at the exhibition, held in cooperation between the Romanian Embassy and the French Cultural Centre, are human emotions.

"My works deal with life and love," she says, pointing to sculptures depicting couples in various moods.

Stanescu plays with universal symbols of love, affection and spirituality through the form and material of her works.

Her use of birds symbolizes the departure from the real world into a spiritual dimension; windows also symbolize communication or transcending to another dimension, while man and woman symbolize love.

"Nudity is a universal symbol of beauty; birds are general symbols of departure throughout the whole history of art. Birds are also symbols of silence and purity," Elena says, citing Pablo Picasso's Dove of Peace as an example.

"Woman and man are natural representations of love. It's easy to observe, which makes my art more accessible. Audiences will easily realize men and women mean love. Of course, there are other symbols of love but you can't make it any more obvious than men and women.

"If we symbolized love with man and man that would not necessarily be a symbol of love. It could be a symbol of sexual freedom, or of human rights, but it would not focus on love as a general symbol and as a normal way of perpetuating the species."

Stanescu's human figures never have complete bodies. The removal of some volume in sculpture is influenced by Greek sculptural elements.

"In sculpture, you talk of volume. The cutting off of some volume also represents a detachment from the real world. The idea is that the body is not eternal but the emotions are eternal. That's why you can easily cut some part of it. It doesn't matter, it will disappear anyway, but the sentiment will always be there. It sends the message that they don't have to look at the body to understand the soul, to understand what is behind it."

Stanescu emphasized that dimension of spirituality has been missing from the cheap, commercial presentation of art.

"Apparently some works of our contemporary artists tend to circle the same idea of sex. While they present embraces, the author endows it with an interpretation that does not deny sensuality but orientates toward tenderness, and to spiritual living," she says, quoting a well known Romanian artist and art critic, Adina Nano.

In some of her Couple torsos, Stanescu used silver as the material for man, symbolizing moonlight and creation, while using bronze as the material for woman, symbolizing warmth and life.

While mixed materials have their own meaning for the sculptures, Stanescu has always included what she refers to as "graphics" in her exhibition. Stanescu feels sculptures and graphics perfectly complement each other. She says graphics should be included because they are part of the process.

"It is the beginning of an idea. It's very difficult for me to separate them as art works. I always make a sculpture by referring to a graphic," she explains.

Like in many of her works, Stanescu's collection of the Couple torsos has a strong connection to her personal life. Since her husband died of illness at the age of 75, four years ago, she mostly creates human figures in couples.

"He was the love of my life and our 54 years of marriage were the best years of my life," Stanescu recalls.

Stanescu's artworks are not only a self-expression but also have taught her about life. Art has become a spiritual process for her, as deep as the commitment she brings to it. All her experiences feed her art.

"Soul and Light"

A Sculpture and Graphic Exhibition
By Romanian Artist Elena Surdu Stanescu
April 7 to 20, 2009
French Cultural Center
Jl. Salemba Raya 25 Central Jakarta.

Music meets politics

Matheos Viktor Messakh , THE JAKARTA POST , JAKARTA | Wed, 04/08/2009 12:54 PM | People

JP/Matheos V. Messakh

Tere might seem like an unlikely candidate for the nation’s legislature, but the 29-year-old singer insists she is not just another celebrity dabbling in politics, whatever the skeptics say.

Tere says her political sympathies lay with the Democratic Party and its leader Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono even before Yudhoyono became president in 2004. However, she had no plans to run for office until she joined the party’s forum for female artists early last year – around the same time the election law was made requiring parties to ensure 30 percent of their candidates were women.

“The first and foremost reason I joined the Democratic Party is that Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is the central figure, and since I’ve gotten to know more about the party I believe that it is a middle-of-the-road party that can look after a range of interests.”

Although the quota may not hold since the Constitutional Court made changes to the election law, Tere says the regulation triggered her decision to put herself forward as a potential candidate.

“For me, I see my participation as part of my social responsibility as a woman and a citizen,” she says.

The 2009 legislative election has attracted a sweep of singers and actors to politics, with 61 such celebrities among the total 11,512 candidates across the country.

Tere is forthright with her view of the current batch of lawmakers, pointing to their “lack of goodwill” and “tendency of looking for economic benefit”. “The formulation of the law and the Constitution is in their hands. I think we need a higher standard for the quality of lawmaker.”

She hopes that better quality politicians will also be able to achieve political balance between the branches of government.

“It’s disappointing that when the executive has been making some positive efforts, the legislative had been getting a bad name. It’s a shame we can’t manage to bring balance between the two.”

Her main political concern, she says, is for education, and especially the empowerment of women and children. Her first act if elected will be to launch a campaign against the new law on BHP.

“The new law is about making education more and more a commodity, which means it will fail to emphasize character building,” she says, adding that the Democratic Party will support her in this.

Tere, whose full name is Theresia Ebenna Ezeria Pardede, started her career as a backing singer for various bands. She reached stardom with hits such as “Awal Yang Indah” (The Lovely Beginning), and recently released her fourth album. All this, she says, is not as far removed from politics as some might suppose.

“My background as a musician and my studies in communications do have some relation to politics. Politics cannot be perfect without communication skills, which include diplomacy, negotiation and persuasion.”

Her only criticism of the Democratic Party is the management of party’s lowest levels, “but,” she says, “I think it’s a classic problem for a new party”.

Tere is the Democratic Party’s top candidate for election region II West Java (Bandung and Bandung Barat Municipality), where she is up against such political heavyweights as Taufik Kiemas, Ferry Mursidan Baldan, and actors Rieke Diah Pitaloka, Rachel Maryam Sayidina and Derry Drajat.

But being an underdog doesn’t bother her because for her, it isn’t about winning. “From the very beginning I have seen myself as someone who doesn’t want to gain a seat so much as wanting to educate people that everyone has the right and access to politics.”

Therefore, she has “nothing to lose because my main intention is to bring political education”. As such she has made no special preparations for the election except “mental preparation and trying to be creative and optimistic”.

Indeed, she doesn’t even refer to her activities over the past several weeks as a political campaign. “What I was doing is not a campaign. I studied communications and I know that a campaign needs a sponsor and lots of funding, involving the mass media.”

In all, she has spent only about Rp 10 million (US$890) on her campaign, mostly to produce notebooks and name cards; she believes posters are “useless”. “What’s the point of displaying our posters among 11,512 candidates from 38 parties?”

Instead, she has been spending her time visiting people in her electorate.

“I mostly talk to them about their concerns, about what they need, but I did not hold any mass meetings. We usually choose a particular place which we think didn’t come to the attention of other candidates and speak to people there.”

She uses these meetings to inform people about the role and function of the legislature and how to vote, rather than trying to persuade people to vote for her.

“Because my main mission is political education, I’m not doing a lot of persuading,” she says. Rather, she tends to talk about the party and its leader.

She believes in political education, and is disappointed political parties don’t do much in this regard, simply pushing their agenda near election time.

But if she does find herself with a more permanent role on the political stage, it will be the only stage she treads; she will move behind the scenes of the music industry.

“For me the configuration of the music industry is not too different from the configuration of politics,” she says. “If I am elected, it’s no big deal for me to become one of the people behind the scenes of the music industry.”

Steven Starr: For love of water

Matheos Viktor Messakh , THE JAKARTA POST , JAKARTA | Tue, 04/07/2009 12:04 PM | People

JP/J.B. Djwan
Bob Marley’s anti-war activism was an inspiration for Steven Starr, but the US filmmaker went one step further, taking on a problem that causes more deaths worldwide than war: Lack of access to clean water.
Starr first met Marley in 1978; he became the concert promoter for Bob Marley & The Wailers and worked with the Marley family on various projects for 20 years, which, he told The Jakarta Post, was an experience that “changed my life”.
“Something in me shifted and from that point on all the work I have done has taken the form of helping people to express themselves, to find a way to communicate with others and to solve problems.”
Starr was in Bali and Jakarta last week for a lecture and screening of the award-winning film he produced, Flow: For Love of Water, a feature-length documentary about the global water crisis by French-born American director Irena Salina.
Starr, born on Long Island in 1957, studied media at university, before going on to build a career at William Morris Agency. He left the agency in 1991 to produce Johnny Suede, which won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival. His other credits include writing, directing and producing Joey Breaker, which won an Audience Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and the Ace Award-nominated series The State for MTV and CBS, which he co-created and produced.
He became well known for his approach to media democratization. As well as co-founding the Los Angeles Independent Media Center, Starr founded AntEye.com, a user-generated video site where video creators, voted for by their peers, were awarded micro-pilot budgets, and ChangeTv, a user-generated digital cable network designed to filter online video onto cable and reward creators.
One of Starr’s most acclaimed projects is Revver, a video-sharing website launched in 2005 that helps creators make money from their work by attaching short ads to their films. In 2006, Revver was named the Most Influential Independent Website by Television Week, nominated for an Advantaged Technology Emmy Award and praised by Red Herring as one of the 100 most promising startups.
“I’m a crazy man,” Starr said of his innovative projects. “I tend to approach a project from whatever curiosity I have.”
In June 2007, Starr stepped down as Revver’s CEO to concentrate on the postproduction of Flow, which he and Salina had begun in 2003.
“It was the time when all the filming has been finished and we have to do the postproduction work. It requires a lot of attention and focus and we were hoping that we might be invited to Sundance Film Festival. We really wanted to make sure it came out well.”
The film, released in cinemas on Sept. 12, 2008, premiered as a Grand Jury Prize nominee at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. It has won numerous festival awards, including the International Jury Prize at the Mumbai International Film Festival and the Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary at the United Nations Film Festival.
Part of Flow’s success, Starr said, was “because many people are now using the film as an awareness tool”. As such, it was screened for the UN General Assembly on the 60th Anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and triggered a call for people to sign a petition seeking to include access to clean drinking water as a basic human right.
“We are lobbying them to open up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was written in the late 1940s in a time when water wasn’t even a consideration,” Starr said. “There is no mention of water at all in the articles. It is the single most important substance on the planet and our future is at stake.”
The 84-minute film maintains that the privatization of fresh water is unethical, a topic that Starr discusses passionately.
“Absolutely the film is anti-privatization of water. When you turn water into a commodity, your
responsibility is to shareholders and not to the people who need it,” Starr said.
“You can’t rely on commercial interests for your water supply: Water is more than commerce, water is life. If you hold up a bottle of water and you hold up a little bottle of gasoline — which do you think costs more?”
Flow not only identifies the problem and names the culprits, but also looks at the people and institutions providing local and practical solutions.
“Many issues around water are extremely local but the crisis around the world is similar: Limited water supply. It is not reaching the people who need it the most, and there are corporate interests that are aggressively trying to gain control over the local water supply.”
Starr hopes that the film will educate people about the planet’s water crisis, pointing out the film itself was never a for-profit venture.
“A documentary is an active passion. If you want to make a documentary, it cannot be from a hope to make money. It has to be from an opportunity to do something useful for others,” Starr said.
“The only reason we picked up our camera is because we wanted to learn, to answer a question. So you have to have a really good question and a lot of passion to carry you through whatever it takes to run around and get your question answered.”

Tience Sumartini : On the wings of a dream

Matheos Viktor Messakh , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Wed, 04/01/2009 2:57 PM | People

Tience Sumartini is one of those lucky people who can build their businesses around their passion - in her case, flying.

Tience fell in love with flying when she was about 26. One day, in the late 1970s, she and her husband saw a glider in the sky. They followed the glider to where it landed, and asked the pilot for more information about gliding.

Later, with a group of friends, they set up a club and hired professional gliding instructors so they could learn in their free time.

So in the 1980s, when many housewives passed their time in malls or salons, Tience Sumartini hung out with her friends - mostly men - at Pelita Airport in Pondok Cabe, Tangerang.

"We really wanted to be pilots but we couldn't go to Curug flying school. Most of us had our own jobs and couldn't be locked up in a dormitory such as in Curug, so we hired instructors."

Tience did her first solo flight in a glider at Pondok Cabe in a schweizer aircraft. "I remember the instructors didn't tell us about it in advance so I was very nervous. But I did it anyway."

Two years after learning how to fly a glider, Tience went on to train to become a pilot of powered aircraft.

Her passion for flying also led her to learn how to make her own aircraft - she has built three planes - as well as set up a series of aviation-related businesses, such as PT ATS Buana Airtech, a company for aviation engine components. She also owns five private aircrafts, currently parked in Australia.

A busy schedule means Tience, now 55, has not flown for a while - her pilot license has expired - but her heart is still firmly within the aviation world.

So she did not hesitate when her colleagues and former Garuda Airways directors Robby Djohan and Wiradharma Oka asked her to join them in establishing a flying school in Bali.

"I had always dreamed about this flying school but it never happened because I was busy with a few businesses," she says. "I agreed to be part of it because I knew they were not only businessmen in aviation but also liked flying. Working with people who are passionate about what they are involved in means we speak the same language."

Tience, who is on the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry's advisory board, says that despite a series of accidents and the current economic crisis, the aviation business climate remains strong because of the nature of the country and people's need to travel. Airlines have failed because of poor management, rather than decreasing demand, she says.

"Not all *airlines offering* cheap flights are managed badly but one should question why a flight is so cheap," she says. "The worse thing is if they cut down on maintenance, which is vital, to be able to win the price war."

Tience says that, according to world aviation data, the number of air travelers has been increasing: In 1998, six million people flew, while in 2007, 30 million did.

"We are as big as the US but we are archipelagic country," she says. "There is no choice if more and more people need to travel fast. They need to save time no matter what the price is. They can't spend days at sea."

Although there are several pilot schools in Indonesia, with about 140 pilots graduating each year, Tience believes the country "actually needs 400 pilots a year".

"Take for example Garuda Airlines, which is now in the process of purchasing 50 Boeing 737 new generation aircraft and 10 Boeing 777 aircraft. It will need more than 200 pilots."

The quality of pilot schools is another reason for her interest in setting up her own.

"What can we expect from schools that do not have their own runways and have only a limited number of airplanes and instructors?" she says. "The only thing they can do is to wait for their turn to use other people's runways, which of course lowers the quality of their training."

After about two years of preparation, the Bali International Flight Academy (BIFA) was opened in February. Twenty-one students have enrolled as the first batch of cadets, including one from the UK.

The academy offers the 16-week Private Pilot's License course, which qualifies graduates to fly a single engine aircraft in the noncommercial category, and the 48-week Commercial Pilot's License course, after which a pilot can fly professionally.

BIFA has its own training facilities at Letkol Wisnu Airfield, 65 kilometers west of Singaraja in Buleleng. The 7,000 square meter complex includes an aerodrome, a training center, a hangar, a dormitory and the latest generation of Frasca 142 flight simulators, which meet the US Federal Aviation Administration standard.

The academy, which is certified under the directorate general of civil aviation and the International Civil Aviation Organization, has a fleet of five Cessnas; 10 more will be provided by the end of the year.

The school hopes to gain international recognition immediately.

"I believe in less than 10 years we will able to attract students from all around the world to enroll in the academy," Tience says. "We must prove that we can sell more than just maids to the world. We can also sell pilots."

How the stars stay in shape

Matheos Viktor Messakh , THE JAKARTA POST , JAKARTA | Wed, 04/01/2009 12:57 PM | Body & Soul

Stay in shape: Actress and director Lola Amaria goes to a gym, practices yoga and consumes balanced diet to stay in good shape. JP/Berto Wedhatama

We might forget it sometimes, but celebrities are human too. Like the rest of us, they have to work hard to stay in shape, even as daily pressures, professional requirements and advancing years work against them.

And even though they have different strategies for staying fit and healthy, a common theme emerges – that no matter how busy you are, you should always find time to look after yourself.
Actress and director Lola Amaria, who once had to pile on six kilograms for a role, stays in shape through regular gym workouts, yoga and a balanced diet.
Lola joined a gym near her house in Bintaro, and tries to get there for a workout at least two or three times a week. But even if her busy schedule makes getting to the gym impossible, the Ca Bau Kan star still makes sure she does some kind of exercise every day.
“It doesn’t have to be excessive physical activity,” says Lola, who shifted her extra weight by jogging daily for six months. “A brisk half-hour walk every day will keep you healthy.”
The actress also finds yoga an important part of her routine. She learned yoga about five years ago and still practices it regularly. “It’s good for stress release,” she says. “Initially I was helped by an instructor but now I do it by myself at home.”
Yoga, she says, makes her more relaxed during the everyday life, “especially you get stuck in a traffic jam”.
Getting the recommended amount of sleep is generally out of the question for the busy filmmaker, so she naps when she can. “I try to sleep at least six hours a day but it’s quite impossible, so what I do is I have a little sleep in between, in the breaks.”
And when it comes to what she puts in her mouth, Lola admits she is very strict, and rarely touches greasy food or junk food. “If possible, eat fruit and fresh vegetables at least once each day,” she says.
She points out that vitamins and supplements are helpful for people living in a polluted city, but adds that even those who have no faith in supplements can do themselves a favor by consuming fresh and healthy food and drinking lots of water.
“Nutrients are not only from capsules,” she says. “We can get them in fresh water or fresh food.”
Actor and presenter Ferdy Hassan is one of the many celebrities who work with professional personal trainers to stay in shape.
As he entered his 30s, Ferdy noticed something common to pretty much everyone: His body was changing, and he needed to take action.
“I realized that as I’m getting older, it’s not as easy to control my weight,” Ferdy says. “That’s why I need a trainer.”
The 36-year-old, who never fails go to the gym at least twice a week, has followed a regime for two years, in which his trainer helps him with complete body training and dietary advice.
Ferdy had joined a gym in high school but then quit. He didn’t give it another go until his weight exceeded 90 kilograms. It took him four months of tailored workouts to lose 10 kilograms.
“I have tried many ways to lose weight but the gym is the most effective. After doing exercise, we can focus better on other things,” he says.
“We often can’t be bothered to exercise but believe me, you will feel so much better if you do it. There are lots of good effects. It’s also a life investment for us.”
In short, he says, “If you love your family, then do your exercise.”
He also finds reflexology beneficial, calling a massage therapist to his house in the Blok M area in South Jakarta about once a week. “All the reflections of our physical health are in our feet,” he says. “When you are getting [a massage], you fall asleep and when you wake up, you feel much more relaxed and refreshed.”
Ferdy does not worry so much about his diet, but when he feels he has been eating too much fatty food, he makes an effort to balance his diet, although that doesn’t stop his love of eating.
“I’m Sundanese and I like to try anything,” he says.
Similarly worried by the way his weight crept up with the years, actor and presenter Farhan also hired a personal trainer almost two years ago, shocked into action when the scales tipped 95 kilograms.
It took him about a year to get into the habit of doing jogging, weightlifting and crunches for 30 to 60 minutes a day.
“I needed a trainer at the beginning but now I do it myself,” says the star, who believes that when we’re young we can do whatever we want, but have to “pay everything back
after 30”.
The first thing that needs to be paid back, he says, is our diet. “I rarely eat rice at the moment,” he says. “I skip carbohydrates, sugars and meat. My friends say I’m like a goat that eats lots of vegetables but fortunately I never get constipated anymore.”
As part of his new healthy lifestyle, the 39-year-old also skips alcohol and cigarettes and always gets to bed early. “I only bergadang [stay up late] if I really have to,” he says.
But the gym and other forms of indoor exercise are not for everyone. Jazz singer Syaharani prefers to head for the great outdoors to stay fit and healthy.
Courtesy of Queenfireworks
“Fitness is boring,” the 37-year-old says baldly. “Our space is limited and we repeat our movements like ironing.”
A brisk early morning walk is Syaharani’s favorite fitness habit. Three to four times a week, she heads out in the early hours for a walk around her housing complex in Bintaro, South Jakarta.
When she finds time in her busy schedule – about once every two or three months – Syaharani and her friends get together to go hiking or trekking, most recently in Curug Panjang in West Java.
Also beneficial to her health, she says, is meditation, which she learned years ago when she lived in Bali. “I do it as much as possible because it’s simple but it clears your mind. Mediation and stretching the body … make us relax because they maximize the oxygen in our body.”
Syaharani says that when she moved from Bali to Jakarta in 1995, she stopped meditating, and noticed big changes in her daily life.
“I was trying to work out why I got tired and bored so easily,” she says. “Then I took up mediation again and I felt better. Mediation is good and it works for people in all sorts of professions, especially for a singer like me.” She now wants to learn more about yoga.
Syaharani likes to eat but she recognizes the importance of staying in control.

“I always remind myself that eating is not only for enjoyment but also for the needs of the body,” she says. “If in a week I have been having too much fatty food, I will balance it by having fresh fruit and vegetables.”
The singer especially likes mushrooms and broccoli because they are high in antioxidants and easy to prepare. “I always buy them when I go to the supermarket or ask for them if I go to a restaurant.”
For Syaharani, who has a medical checkup at least once a year, the first step in keeping healthy is stress management. “Stress contributes a lot to health problems,” she says. “Everybody has their own way of dealing with stress but they have to do it immediately.”
The second step is to do light exercise and the third is eating properly, she says. “Never skip breakfast because when you busy in the day, you will forget everything.”
Too many people lead lives that are out of balance, she says – overeating and under-exercising, often because they are under stress and use food as comfort.
The most common mistake, according to Syaharani, is focusing on appearance rather than on health.
“In fact, the important thing is your behavior: Stay active, eat right and feel good today,” she says. “The results will follow.”

Franki Raden: Building cultural bridges

Matheos Viktor Messakh , THE JAKARTA POST , JAKARTA | Tue, 03/31/2009 11:29 AM | People

JP/R. Berto Wedhatama

Franki Raden knows what it’s like to see the world from the other side.

With extensive experience and more than 16 years studying and lecturing around the world, he has earned the authority to judge the social engineering of Indonesia’s art and culture.

He agrees that the country’s indigenous art and culture have been abused by the state for propaganda about our heritage, but he does not agree that foreign scholars and artists should be permitted to exploit or study that heritage without contributing anything to its preservation.
“After all this time, we are so proud of our traditional art and cultural richness, we talk about it all the time, everywhere, but we do nothing about it,” Franki says.

“On the other hand, many scholars and foreign artists come here to learn about us. Some take their material from our culture and built their portfolio and work without even mentioning Indonesia.”

Concerned that the country’s art and culture were being undervalued by Indonesians and exploited by outsiders, Franki and his colleague Serrano Sianturi founded the Sacred Bridge Foundation in Jakarta in 1998.

“My concern is with empowering people who have been living with their culture for hundreds of years. It’s so ironic if these people have tremendous expertise but they can’t make a living out it,” he says.

“Why is it people who study computers for five years can make a living out of their expertise but not these people?”

The foundation has attracted the attention of many people concerned about the preservation of world culture, including Japanese national living treasure Tsutomu Yamashita, who become chairman of the advisory board of the organization, and the former director of Unesco Jakarta, Stephen C. Hill, who is a member of the advisory board.

Franki, whose real name is Franki Suryadarma Notosudirdjo, is an ethnomusicologist, composer, cultural critic and multimedia artist who has received numerous awards and fellowships from prestigious research and arts institutes including the Social Sciences and Research Council (SSRC), The Ford Foundation, The Henry Luce Foundation, Asian Cultural Council, The Arts Council of Jakarta (DKJ) and The Indonesian Film Festival (FFI).

Franki finished his studies in his music composition at the Jakarta Art Institute (IKJ) in 1986. Two years later, he became a visiting artist in New York sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. He later studied composition with Chou Wen-Chung at Columbia University and Stephen Dembski at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned his PhD in 2001.

His research has always focused on issues at the intersection of the arts, religion, the media and politics in Asia, as well as colonial arts and culture in Indonesia, and Asian-American contemporary arts. He spent two years researching jazz in the Afro-American community in Chicago, as well as teaching in the Fine Arts Cultural Studies program, at the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University in the UK and the Visual and Performing Arts program at the University of Toronto in Canada.

His studio work, which demonstrates his strong interest in combining elements from both Western and non-Western cultures, has been performed in Indonesia, Japan and the United States.

After years overseas, Franki decided to bring his family back to Indonesia, stopping for one year at the National University of Singapore, where he was a lecturer on studies in Asian Art and Popular Culture in Southeast Asia.

During his 10 years of back and forth to Jakarta running the Sacred Bridge Foundation, Franki and his colleagues designed and organized numerous events on a global scale, such as the legendary Sacred Rhythm Festival in Bali and Kyoto, the Interfaith Music Clinic and Concert at Borobudur Temple, and Cultural Healing for the Tsunami Survivors in Aceh.

The foundation’s programs, all of which take an interdisciplinary approach, are based on four domains: Intercultural dialogue, cultural education for children, preservation of indigenous arts and capacity building.

Franki believes Indonesia has great potential to contribute to world music but that no significant steps have been made.

“It takes the whole continent of Africa to have a variety of music heritages but it only takes one country, Indonesia, to have a thousand musical traditions. Why shouldn’t we do something?” he says.

“We don’t want to just be hired as an instructor if one of our original instruments is taken by a foreign artist or institution.”

Franki said his long-term goal is to bridge groups or cultures around the world to bring about a better future. “Indigenous cultures everywhere are a huge repository for cultural values and civilization, but they have been neglected everywhere.”

The best way to approach these cultures as an ethnomusicologist, says Franki, is to become an insider and work with people to empower their culture. He himself once lived in a Dayak community in Tanjung Manis, East Kalimantan, to reinvent their long-defunct mouth organ, which was generally used in rituals.

“We are not going to represent anybody or any culture, because every representation has its own bias and that’s very dangerous.”

But, he adds, indigenous peoples should not be left to deal with these problems on their own.

“They won’t be able to solve their own problems because it has become too complicated, requiring a multidisciplinary approach. They need people who understand their problems, understand how the system works and help empower them,” he says. “Government
can play a role here. They can think of a system where the economy is integrated with art and culture.”

Mining the world's musical riches

Matheos Viktor Messakh , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Tue, 03/31/2009 3:23 PM | Features

On the move: Musicians practice during a rehearsal session of the Rhythm Salad Music Clinic held at the National Gallery Jakarta in 2008. Eighteen people from various musical backgrounds, both traditional and modern, gathered for a few days to find new possibilities for musical practice. (Courtesy of The Sacred Bridge Foundation)

In a world stuck in a musical rut, the rich traditions of Asia - especially Indonesia - could provide fresh ideas, with one group of musical experts setting out to make that happen.

Ethnomusicologist Franki Raden, who has spent more than 16 years studying and teaching world music both in Indonesia and abroad, says the world is waiting for a feed from Asia, especially from Indonesia, as artists in North America and Europe stagnate, regurgitating similar ideas in their work.

"Indonesia should make a larger contribution to world art and cultural heritage," Franki said.

He points out that Indonesian artists and musicians rarely come up with new work based on the country's tradition heritage, and that any such work rarely attracts international attention.

Only a few artists now in Europe or North America have been able to produce relatively new, interesting and original ideas and work, he said, adding that critics who have recognized and spoken out about this stagnation tend to be alienated by the larger community, "especially in Europe, with its old establishment, *where* new ideas are not easily accepted."

Indonesia, he said, should stand up and be heard on this point. "We should come up with something original but which has a global impact."

But this issue, he added, is too complicated and too big in scope to be managed by a few concerned parties.

"It is impossible to let it become the concern of a few countries or people only. We need collaboration between people who realize the importance of reformation in the musical world."

The concern about the lack of innovation in music, said Franki, began sporadically in the 1970s, but getting people together to come up with a solution was not easy.

But neither is it impossible.

Involving children: Children learn Saman, a traditional Acehnese dance, during an event for the cultural and psychological healing of tsunami survivors at an art center in Gampong Pande in Kuta Raja, Banda Aceh. The program, called “Rising Above the Tsunami”, was held by the Sacred Bridge Foundation in 2006. (Courtesy of The Sacred Bridge Foundation)

The Sacred Bridge Foundation, which Franki established in 1998, is setting out to address the issue by holding a workshop and musical clinic with the aim of providing directives for musicians of the 21st century.

"Gaung: 21st Century Global Music Education", to be held at the Bali Classic Center in Ubud from April 23 to May 2, will bring together internationally renowned experts in music and music-related sciences and technologies.

During the 10-day program, the experts will share and discuss their work, visions and experiences, ranging across topics such as musical and spiritual practice, acoustic science and technology, and creative musical thinking.

Among the facilitators and gurus involved in the workshop are percussionist/composer Stomu Yamash'ta, French composer Jean Claude Eloy, acoustician and scientist Yoshio Yamasaki, jazz-rock pioneer Larry Coryell, Zen Buddhist monk Yamada Sosho, Sufi maestro Marzuki Hasan and Kejawen spiritual guru Sumarah.

Franki Raden said the workshop and the clinic would focus on music, but approach it from the perspective of multiple disciplines, such as "the science of music, performance of music, the business side or cultural economics of music and even the ritualistic side of music."

"We are trying to combine the very advanced side, which is science, and the spiritual side of music," he said. "As far as I know, this is something very new."

Training ground: Musicians practice during a rehearsal session of the Rhythm Salad Music Clinic held at the National Gallery Jakarta last year. (Courtesy of The Sacred Bridge Foundation)

As well as classroom sessions, field work and self-exploration, the musicians will rehearse for concerts to be held. The concerts will be performed by different groups of participants as a means of exploring new combinations, based on technical capability, musical orientation and interest.

The performances will be presented as works in progress, with live audiences invited to provide direct feedback.

Ubud in Gianyar was chosen as the venue because of Bali's long contribution to the development of modern music, starting with performances at Europe's 1931 World Exhibition - most of the musicians who participated in the exhibition came from Ubud.

Franki said that many foreign artists who drew on Indonesia's musical heritage or collaborated with local artists produced phenomenal work although "some did not even mention Indonesia as the source of their work", he added.

One such internationally acclaimed work is Robert Wilson's visionary piece I La Galigo, a dramatic work inspired by an epic poem of the Bugis people of South Sulawesi.

I La Galigo has been performed in famous theaters around the world, from its world premiere at Theatres on the Bay in Singapore in March 2004 to its last production at the Teatro degli Arcimboldi in Milan, Italy, in February 2008.

It was also performed at Het Muziektheater in Amsterdam, Teatro Espa*ol in Madrid, Les Nuits de Fourviere Rhone France in Lyon, the Teatro Alighieri in Ravenna, Italy, NY State Theater in New York, Teater Tanah Airku in Jakarta and Melbourne's State Theatre.

I La Galigo features a cast of 50 Indonesian performers, with the music researched and composed by Indonesian Rahayu Supanggah. The project was by a team of scholars, from Sulawesi and abroad, who advised on the development of the epic for the theater.

"So far, the people who have drawn on Indonesian heritage have not been Indonesian," said Franki. "This is because we don't see ourselves from the outside so we never know what our position is."

No one can predict the final output of the workshop and clinic, said Franki, but it is expected to alter participants' perspectives and deliver new ways of performing music, or even a new instrument.

"It doesn't have to be a mainstream at all. What is considered mainstream now might have been alternative once," he said. "We are initiating a new thing so we do not expect it to be popular straightaway."

AMONG THOSE AT THE WORKSHOP

Stomu Yamash'ta will speak on musical synthesis, including about the spiritual, scientific and technological foundations of music.

During his career, Stomu has experimented with various musical genres including rock, jazz, avant-garde experimental and world music. In the 1970s, he founded a super group called "Go" in Europe; the other members were Al Di Meola, Klaus Schultz, Michel Reeve and Steve Winwood. In the 1980s, he developed a stone-chime orchestra called Sanukit. Since then, he has devoted his life to practicing Zen Buddhism.

Composer Jean Claude Eloy will speak on possible directions for music in the 21st century in the context of East-West cultural encounters. In the 1970s, Eloy co-founded an electronic music studio called Xemamu. Much of his work has been inspired by Asian philosophy and culture, and his orchestral pieces have been performed extensively in Europe and beyond.

Yoshio Yamasaki will be speaking on the development of music and technology, as well as new and future directions in music

Yamasaki is known as the inventor of the 16 and 1 bit digital portable recorder. A professor in physics at the Global Information and Technology Institute at Waseda University in Japan, he has been active in research in the field of music and acoustics.

John H.G. Soe: Nobody's child, everybody's man

Matheos Viktor Messakh , The Jakarta Post , JAKARTA | Wed, 03/25/2009 1:59 PM | People

Some blame their parents for their misfortunes, others blame God. But John H.G. Soe has never blamed anyone for mistreating him, or for the polio that shaped his life.

It was because of this polio that his parents abandoned him at a hospital in Medan when he was four months old. The nurses took care of him for a few years, before sending him to a Catholic orphanage in the same city.

But when he was in the third grade, renovations to the dormitory meant families had to take the children home. No one came for John, who was then called “Kong”; he was nobody’s child.

“Not only that day, but every school holiday, other children were picked up by their family, but nobody ever asked me even to go outside the orphanage’s dormitory …,” John told The Jakarta Post.

A nun found his parents, but his mother rejected him, but the nuns couldn’t take him back because of the renovations.

“I was crying because I felt more comfortable with the nuns. I had no feelings whatsoever for my parents.”

He spent “a very bitter week” with his family. They kept him in the small backyard and he was not allowed to play with his sisters and brothers. He slept on the floor where the others had beds, and was fed differently.

“I was given rice and a bit of vegetables while my brothers and sisters got chicken or duck,” John recalled. He also remembers an occasion when he was dragged to the back of the house when a guest asked who he was.

After 10 days, his brother took him back to the orphanage. The nuns, shocked at his condition, never sent him back to his parents again.

In 1973, Dutch-Italian businessman Ted de Ponti, a Singapore-based Rotarian and former Red Cross volunteer, visiting one of the nuns at the orphanage, said he wanted to adopt an orphan who was “really abandoned but academically bright”.

“I want him to be someone,” he said.

The obvious choice was the boy who was crippled by polio, a boy who had never had anyone visit him, but was so clever he could repair his friend’s broken radio. “I remember it was Sunday June 13th. The nuns said ‘an uncle’ would come and meet me to adopt me.”

John put on his best clothes and dragged himself to the parlor to wait. “I felt so happy when he hugged me. He took me to the shop to buy me my first new clothes ever and a Timex watch, and held a dinner at a restaurant where he introduced me as his son to his friends.”

De Ponti covered all the boy’s expenses and visited him regularly, before arranging for John to be taken to Singapore for surgery.

When the nuns got papers from John’s parents for the passport, he finally learned his birthday — June 17, 1959 — the names of his parents and his eight siblings, and his own birth name: Soe Hian Ghe.

In December 1973, De Ponti brought the boy to Singapore. The Rotary Club had decided to pay for the operations and Rotarians in Zevennar, the Netherlands, sponsored the trip.

He underwent four operations; after eight months in the hospital, his right leg, which was bent like a bow, began to improve. His ankles started to function, and now he can even drive a car.

After the first operation, The Strait Times ran a story about him, including a picture of him munching chocolates. The chocolate company, pleased with the free advertising, sent him dozens of boxes of chocolates, which he sent to his friends in the orphanage in Medan.

Everything was done at no cost — even Singapore Airlines provided a return trip for free. The money Rotary had committed for his operations now went to his education.

A month after the final operation, John returned to school in Medan. As he was 14 years old and had a disability, only a girl’s school would accept him. “Only two of us were boys, we both had polio.”

He later studied architecture in Singapore and interior design in London. He planned to return to Singapore but because of the 1985 economic crisis, his foster father advised him to go to Jakarta instead.

The first thing he did was to look up his family, who had moved to the Indonesian capital. His mother was still cold to him. “I told them that I only wanted to make a family bond and had no intention of making them feel bad.”

A year later, his family asked for forgiveness. John felt the request was unnecessary. “The past is the past, let’s look to the future,” he said.

John soon began his career in an architecture firm, and within five years had set up his own architecture and interior design company, which he still runs.

He married in 1988 and has two children. Ted de Ponti died in 1990, two month after John’s first child was born.

“I still remember he was very happy when my son was born. My son was like a first grandson to him,” John said. “Ted gave me confidence and love. He changed everything in my life.”

Because of the help Rotary gave him, John wanted to become a Rotarian, a dream realized when a client recommended him for membership in 2003.

Since he was indicted in 2004, he has held several important positions, including club secretary and club president; he is now the assistant governor for the Jakarta region.

He was been active in Rotary’s fight against polio, especially during the joint Rotary–Health Ministry campaign for the national immunization program in 2005 and 2006.

Looking back, John has no regrets or bitterness.

“I always think there is always someone who is experiencing something worse than me,” he said. “Everything is a blessing in disguise. I wouldn’t be what I am today if my parents did not leave me at that hospital.”

Comments (5)

Emmiwaty L (not verified) — Fri, 03/27/2009 - 12:39pm

Leonard Theosabrata: Simply the best

Matheos Viktor Messakh , THE JAKARTA POST , JAKARTA | Mon, 03/23/2009 1:08 PM | People

JP/Matheos Viktor Messakh

If anyone has proved George Earle Buckle’s assertion that “to simplify complications is the first essential of success”, it is Leonard Theosabrata, whose philosophy of simplicity in his furniture designs has brought him international acclaim.

The 31-year-old is now recognized as one of Asia’s top product and interior designers, the only Indonesian to be included in the hefty 2006 German publication Young Asian Designers.
His designs have won him several prestigious international awards, including Germany’s red dot design award in 2003 and Italy’s Well Tech Award in 2006, and his work went on display at the Science and Technology Museum during the 2006 Milan Fair.

For his achievements in design, he was chosen as one of five young Asians to be the face of Deutsche Welle’s new channel, DW-TV Asia+, launched in Jakarta last Wednesday.

Leonard’s path to the international stage was not immediately obvious. After he graduated from high school in 1997, his parents sent him to the United States to study graphic design at the Art Institute of Houston in Texas.

“Ever since I was in high school I was always interested in art. Not necessarily design but art,” Leonard says. “It sounds very typical but it’s true. Because it develops into an interest in design.”

But after two years of studying and working in Houston, he found he did not enjoy graphic design as much as he had expected.

“I started to think about changing my major but I still didn’t know what was best for me. Whatever, I wanted it to be in the best school in the US.”

His father encouraged him to move into product design and “I thought ‘Why not’.”

A search turned up the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, but without a product design portfolio, he could not enroll into a product design major.

“I only had a graphic design portfolio at that time, so I enrolled in night school for six months preparing my product portfolio.” The night school was provided by the college. “Apparently there are a lot of people like me who have an interest but not necessarily have a portfolio to show.”

After finishing the three projects necessary to meet the entrance requirements, Leonard was accepted in 1999.

He studied product design for three and a half years, during which time he won several competitions at the school including a team project doing the interior design for an Airbus 383, sponsored by Singapore Airlines. He also had the opportunity to do an internship at Japanese toy manufacturer Bandai in Tokyo.

“At that time it was difficult to get a job and also very competitive,” he says. “I didn’t even bother to look for work.”

He was close to getting an offer from Apple but, being an “entrepreneur type” and unwilling to work for other people, “I thought that going back and starting on my own would be much more valuable.”

With personal reasons helping the decision – “My sister was getting married at the same time” – he returned to Indonesia in 2002.

Soon afterward, he started his own brand of furniture, Accupunto, making chairs – lounges, dining chairs, benches and stackable chairs – based on the principles of acupuncture. The pieces are characterized by a simple form that can fit any room. For Leonard, it was an idea already tried and tested: “I used it for my final project at university.”

Leonard says his designs are greatly influenced by the Bauhaus movement in Germany from the 1920s to early 1930s, one of the most important design movements of the 20th century which influenced subsequent developments in art, architecture and design.

“One of the principles of the Bauhaus movement is that ‘form follows function’,” he says. “It simplified radical forms, emphasized rationality and functionality, and initiated the idea of mass production.”

The experience of creating his own brand took him to Europe, which he calls the center of interior design and product design.

“Even though I studied design in the US, I always wanted to go to Europe. Finally, I was able to live my dream of taking part in European shows and being alongside the brands that I admired.”

During Accupunto’s second year, Leonard took part in one of Europe’s biggest design shows, the International Meuble Messe in Cologne. There, his design won the red dot award, whose recipients regularly include established brands such as Nikon, Sony, Ferrari, BMW and Porsche.

Leonard became the second Asian, and only Indonesian, to win the award, defeating nearly 1,500 entrants from 28 countries. Winning was, he said, “a huge honor” because the award is “becoming a symbol of excellence in design everywhere”.

The Accupunto Arm Chair won several other awards such as the Interior Innovation Award 2004 from the German Design Council, G-mark from Japan and the 2003 Indonesia Good Design Award.

Leonard has since expanded into interior design and counts international companies among his clients. He and some colleagues have also set up D5, an interior and architecture design consultancy.

“As a designer, I like a design to be functional, simple but with added value,” Leonard says.
Influenced as he is by the Bauhaus movement, aesthetics are not his top priority.
“A good product should prove itself. If it sells, it means the design works.”

Swara Maharddhika is back with a new face

Matheos Viktor Messakh , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Sat, 03/21/2009 2:22 PM | Entertainment

After a break of more than 20 years, Swara Maharddhika is back - but with a new face and without their maestro and founder Guruh Soekarnoputra.

The members of the group, known for its spectacular musical, dance and dramatic performances during the 1980s, will perform a musical drama based on the East Java fable Jaka Tarub at the Graha Bhakti Budaya, Taman Ismail Marzuki, on March 27.

Swara Maharddhika gained a reputation for glamorous Broadway-style shows, but this time, said artistic director Tanti Horii, the group would present "more traditional Indonesian art flavored with some contemporary touches".

"There are so many high-quality contemporary art performances, but traditional art is our strength," she said. "If we are too contemporary, probably many out there are far better than us, but nobody will go to see it, especially younger people, if we present an excessively traditional performance."

As many of the original members of the group are too old to take part in the musical performance, said Tanti, only 10 percent of them would perform. The other dancers were selected through auditions.

The theater company members were provoked into a comeback by the fact that many performances brought from abroad receive a great response here in Indonesia.

"We want to prove that what we have here is as good as anything brought from abroad or even better," Ai Syarif, one of the performance directors and a member of Swara Maharddhika, told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

The performance will use traditional dances from around the country such as the Balinese legong, pendet and lasem, the piring dance from Melayu, the giring-giring dance of Kalimantan and the pakarena dance of Makassar, but with a modern twist.

"Eighty percent of the dances in the performance will be traditional dances but we combine them with new choreography and also a new combination of costumes so they will appear as contemporary as possible," said Syarif.

The choreographers are Frank Rorimpandey, Kris Suwardjo and Ai Syarif.

Frank, from the group's XII cohort, works for Liga Tari Krida Budaya at the University of Indonesia and is a member of Sumber Cipta ballet group. He performed as one of the emerging young choreographers during the 2008 Indonesian Dance Festival.

Kris Suwardjo, also from the XII cohort, is a dance lecturer at the Jakarta Art Institute and the Jakarta National University (UNJ). He took part in Robert Wilson's adaptation of the Bugis epic I La Galigo.

Ai Syarif has worked for Namarina Dance Company since 2002 and has been a fashion stylist for 16 years.

The music will be performed live by musicians from the Jakarta Art Institute, some former members of Swara Maharddhika and several freelancers.

Costume design will be supported by noted designers Adjie Notonegoro, Anne Avantie, Samuel Wattimena, Barli Kusuma and company member Jazz Pasay.

Swara Maharddhika, which Guruh founded on March 27, 1977, had it last performance in July 1987 with a colossal show titled Gempita Swara Maharddhika at the Jakarta Convention Center, which was then known as Balai Sidang Senayan Jakarta.

The group later became a foundation, Swara Maharddhika Foundation. Since the group halted its activities in 1987, many of its members went off to make their own paths, although most of them remained in the dramatic world.

Guruh, for example, continued his work with dance and musical performances through his company founded in 1989, Gencar Semarak Perkasa (GSP). His colleague Denny Malik formed Pentasindo Dancers, and Ati Ganda established her Studio 26.

"Fortunately we had time so we prepared well, and we have decided to keep going after this," said Syarif, who said the group had received several invitations to perform for Indonesian embassies abroad.

Although Guruh will not be at the event, his songs will be used, but with new musical arrangements by music director Anusirwan, who was also music director for Robert Wilson's I La Galigo.

The play's protagonist, Jaka Tarub, said to be the ancestor of the kings of the Mataram kingdom of Mataram, appeared in Babad Tanah Jawi, the traditional text on the history of the kingdom. Jaka Tarub is a son of Ki Ageng Kembanglampir, who was raped by Jaka Kudus.

Kembanglampir dies after giving birth to her baby. After being abandoned a number of times, the baby boy is finally found by a woman called Nyai Tarub, who names him Jaka Tarub.

One day, young Jaka Tarub goes hunting in a jungle and comes across seven angels bathing in a pond. He steals the selendang (clothes) of one of the angels so she cannot fly back to khayangan (heaven).

Jaka Tarub marries that angel, Dewi Nawangwulan, and they have a daughter Retno Nawangsih.

Later on, Nawangwulan discovers that her husband was the one who stole her selendang. Angry, she decides to return to khayangan, but plans to return occasionally to breast-feed her child.

Although the original tale has a sad ending, the Swara Maharddhika performance, said Ai Syarif, would be modified so that it has a happy ending. "Jaka Tarub will have to accept the fact that every encounter has its end," he said.

"We don't want people to be sad," said Tanti Horii. "We called it *artainment', which is a combination of art and entertainment. We don't want people to be serious as if they were watching an opera, but we also don't want it to be too light as a mere entertainment."

The beauty in the tragedy

Matheos Viktor Messakh , THE JAKARTA POST , JAKARTA | Mon, 03/16/2009 4:27 PM | Lifestyle

Undak Langit, Drepung Monastery, Tibet, by Krish Suharnoko

It is rather ironic that a photography exhibition about Tibet and Dharamsala is being held in Jakarta.

It is ironic because Indonesia is guilty of having done the same thing that China is still doing to Tibet. And it is ironic because even as the world professes to care about the plight of Tibet, it clutches more and more tightly at China's economic and political power.

The exhibition, titled "Heaven in Exile", displays the works of four Indonesian photographers - Enrico Soekarno, Jay Subyakto, Krish Suharnoko and Yori Antar - who visited the Tibetan capital Lhasa in 2003, and then the Dalai Lama and his followers in exile in Dharamsala and Ladakh in India in 2006.

"We have held several events as a show of solidarity for the Tibetan people several times but this time is special because it is held around the time of the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising that began on March 10, 1959," Enrico Soekarno told The Jakarta Post.

"We mean for the exhibition to tell our people that freedom is the right of every nation, as stipulated in our own Constitution. We have been accused by many as being agents for Tibet or anti-China. That's not true. We are only trying to be on the side of the oppressed."

What makes these pictures stand out is that they were taken by four different people from different backgrounds who have all caught the spiritualism and intangible exotic heritage of Tibet in their photography.

The images by Yori Antar, an architect and photographer whose major concerns revolve around the preservation of heritage buildings, for example, capture the magnificent Potala Palace from a beautiful angle without sacrificing the impression that the palace has been infected by the Chinese government's modern constructions.

Yori succeeds in capturing the deathly quiet of scenes around various monasteries in Ladakh or mountains, all with nothing but Tibetan religious attributes and flags. The shots send a message about the prettiness of Tibet, while at the same time standing witness to the absence of the Dalai Lama from his land.

Yori's images of life in Ladakh, India, which mostly portray children, clearly hint at the enduring hope in exile, even though nobody knows how long it will last.

In his work, noted director Jay Subyakto plays with black and white, focusing mostly on the presence of people, but still managing to powerfully convey the cold and sunny sights of the land known as "the roof of the world".

Tarian Gunung, Shanti Monastery, Leh, Ladakh, India, by Enrico Soekarno

Enrico Soekarno also plays with black and white but with a stronger political flavor. Included among his shots are the barbed wire surrounding the Potala Palace, a military building with a Chinese star and a child in the street holding a picture of the Dalai Lama.

The journey to Tibet, Ladakh, Nepal and Dharamsala was originally planned for more than 20 people, Enrico said, but in the end only the four of them made it there.

The sophisticated setting and the installation of the photographs adds to the exhibition, thanks to the members of the Antara team that decided the size and installation of each picture.

In the doorway of the gallery, a poster covered with transparent cloth reads "China's record in Tibet. More than a million killed! More than 6,000 monasteries destroyed! Thousand in prison! Hundred still missing! China, get out of Tibet!"

"The oppression of Tibet was caught in a very subtle way by the young Indonesian photographers," said Mudji Sutrisno during a talk on "Visual power in moral movement" on Tuesday, held in line with the exhibition.

"The language of photography leads us to silence and contemplation that in the 21st century, there is still much oppression in many parts of the world," he later told the Post. "These pictures of Tibet as taken by the four photographers are pictures of a dying culture."

The pictures, Mudji said, succeeding in conveying the inner voice of the Tibetan. "It appears in the emptiness and striking silence, which makes the sky seem to be endlessly crying."

However, he said, the pictures still caught the beauty in the tragedy. "These photographs reveal that one civilization can injure another civilization, but they still caught the beauty inside every part of them."

The weakness of the works, according to Mudji, is that they are not accompanied by enough narration.

"They will not become a bridge for those who know little about Tibet, or could become a barrier for those who are skeptical about the issue, especially young people. They might say *Why not look at the nearby problem we have with the mudflow in Sidoardjo instead of Tibet?'"

On each Saturday during the exhibition, eight documentaries on Tibet provided by Yayasan Atap Dunia (Roof of the World Foundation) were screened.

The films were Leaving Fear Behind by Dhondup Wangchen and Gyaljong Tsetrin, Shadow Circus; The CIA in Tibet, A Stranger in My Native Land, Dreaming Lhasa, The Reincarnation of Khensur Rinpoche by Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, as well as classics such as Wheel Of Time by German anthropologist Werner Herzog and the award winning documentary Cry of the Snow Lion by Tom Piozet.

One of the films, Leaving Fear Behind, is an undercover movie directed by autodidactic Tibetan filmmakers Dhondup Wangchen and Gyaljong Tsetrin. The 25-minute film exploring Tibetan sentiments about China, the relevance and symbolism of the Olympic Games and the return of the Dalai Lama was smuggled out of Tibet before the March 2008 riot. The two filmmakers are still in jail.

Another film Dreaming Lhasa was directed by Tibetans Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam. It tells the story of Karma, a female Tibetan director from New York who went to the Dalai Lama's place of exile in Dharamsala in India to make a documentary of political prisoners who fled from Tibet.

One prisoner she interviewed is Dhondup, a former monk who came to India to fulfill his mother's final request to find a long-lost freedom fighter. The journey leads not only into the history of Tibet but also into the discovery of oneself.

It seems that the exhibition, held as it is in a historic building in a busy part of the city, resembles the situation of the Tibetan: Once inside, one can see clearly the loneliness of the Tibetans, while the world outside is too busy to truly care about their plight.

But more or less, the four photographers have brought home the message needed to be shared, as the Dalai Lama once said: "World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not the absence of violence. Peace is the manifestation of human compassion."

- photos Courtesy of Geleri Foto Jurnalistik Antara

Heaven in Exile

Galeri Foto Jurnalistik Antara No. 59 Pasar Baru, www.jtja.org, Central Jakarta

Until March 21