“Is it OK if we do the interview in the car?”
Indonesian performance artist Melati Suryodarmo needs to get to Bali’s Neka Art Museum to catch the activation of an artwork by artist and singer Monica Hapsari. Boasting a decades-long career and fame in the international art scene, Suryodarmo is the Artistic Director of Indonesia Bertutur, a twelve-day art festival that spotlights Indonesia’s cultural heritage through visual art, performance, music, and film.
Between her packed schedule and my whirlwind two-day press trip, this might be our last chance to speak, so I immediately agree and hop in.
Indonesia Bertutur 2024
Initiated by Indonesia’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology, Indonesia Bertutur’s first edition took place in Borobudur in 2022. For its second edition, the biennial, multidisciplinary festival descends upon the island of Bali with a slate of exhibitions, performances, talks, and programmes featuring both the traditional and contemporary arts.
The festival’s theme this year is Subak: Bersama Menuju Harmoni (Subak: Together Towards Harmony). “Subak” refers to a Balinese system of cooperative water management that was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2012. Dating to the 9th century, subak involves a complex network of canals, water temples, and terraced rice fields dotting the island’s volcanic landscape. Besides being an agricultural system, subak also reflects the Balinese Hindu philosophy of Tri Hita Kirana, or the “three causes of wellbeing,” which promotes harmony with God, other people, and nature.
En route to the Neka Art Museum — one of seven venues across Batubulan, Ubud, and Nusa Dua supporting the festival — Suryodarmo tells me more.
Why is the festival in Bali this year?
There were some discussions with the General Director of Culture from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology. So of course this was not my own idea — it is a Ministry project.
We needed to discuss which form of cultural heritage we saw as having a relationship with crucial issues, like climate and environmental issues. And then we came to subak.
The reality of subak in Bali is very complex. Subak is not only about the rice fields, water, and earth — it’s also about society, community, togetherness, and agreement, deciding how much water each farmer gets and why. It also involves spirituality — there are many rituals regarding subak, mainly based on keeping or seeking harmony. So the harmonious cycles within subak are, I think, a potential philosophy that we can share with the world.
We don’t just talk about Bali with subak, we talk about bigger issues, like environmental issues. We also talk about relationships — human with human, human with nature, and human with god.
One thing that really stood out in the opening ceremony and throughout the festival was how the traditional and contemporary are presented side by side. What to you is the relationship between the traditional arts and the world of contemporary art?
Sometimes, we only learn to see our own traditions by borrowing eyes or perspectives from the West. This is because, in school, we are very Westernised. Through colonialism, we are distanced from our origins, and see ourselves as lower than the West. I’m an artist myself, have experience in the international scene, and grew up with a career in Europe. I have experienced empirically what it is to survive as a diasporic artist in the West.
It’s not just about decolonisation, but about new learning — the process of unlearning and relearning. The whole setup of the festival is to break the distance and create a bridge, to relearn what we have lost.
But we cannot be like pseudo-anthropologists or scientists when looking at our daily practices, because we still have a very close relationship with nature and tradition. And tradition is not a conserved thing — it’s a moving thing.
We should be learning again about subak, created by our ancestors in Bali, and how they survived through a close relationship with the rice fields and water. We should also respect the farmers. Although Bali has a social caste system, farmers and agrarian life are very important.
In the Balinese system, the kingdom, the village society, and the subak society are equal. So it’s not kingdom, then community, then subak society — it’s like this. [Here, Suryodarmo gestures to indicate a horizontal line or horizontal relationship.] It’s very interesting to compare this to modern democracy, because Bali has a strong democratic system too. It’s not called democracy, it’s called subak! It’s called banjar [neighbourhood]! This is something that we have missed, because our education has detached us from our traditional roots.
The festival empowers artists to make new creations or present works that represent this way of seeing tradition. In the performing arts, for example, tradition is always present.
Traditional dance here is mostly related to ritual. In the colonial era, they put dance on stage and made it into entertainment. But although ritual can be entertainment, it belongs in the local social atmosphere. So, I asked the performing arts people to rethink it.
Yesterday, you saw a film at the opening. This is a sacred dance; we cannot displace it onto a stage. So, we just showed it through a moving image.
As for contemporary conceptual art — ritual is very conceptual, right? Of course, we are informed by Dada and Fluxus, all this Western history of contemporary art. But personally, I have been learning and observing and observing rituals as a conceptual practice. I was educated in the West, but actually I understand the concept of traditional Javanese rituals more than, for example, John Cage!
How did you go about selecting the artists, whether local or international?
We select artists by considering previous works and new works. We have four commissioned works, and also outstanding existing works that relate with our curatorial subthemes.
Since the beginning, I had the idea of calling the Visaraloka [one of the festival segments] an “expanded media” exhibition. Conceptual and experimental works and immaterial works, like performance art, are very rare here. Art shows here are more commercially oriented. But here, we are not collaborating with commercial aesthetics at all. We are using this opportunity as best we can, because it’s a government-funded event.
It is important for Indonesian visitors and young people to understand that art is not just painting or sculpture — that it is not just visual. So we have selected many multimedia works.
How do you hope different audiences will respond to Indonesia Bertutur?
I think we have provided enough possibilities for viewers with different levels of knowledge. Good art speaks for itself, right? No matter the audience. You and I see art differently, because our senses are different. So there are many possibilities for the public to interpret the works we have selected.
What longer-lasting impacts do you hope the festival will have?
The first edition of Indonesia Bertutur was in Borobudur, the second in Bali. For the third one, we will move to another place, probably outside of Java and Bali. Hopefully, it will be in Borneo or Sumatra, to bring the spirit of Indonesia Bertutur to a wider public.
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Indonesia Bertutur 2024 runs from 7–18 August 2024 in Ubud and Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia. Entry is free. Learn more at indonesiabertutur.kemdikbud.go.id.
Responses have been edited for clarity and length.
Header image: Melati Suryodarmo. Image courtesy of Indonesia Bertutur.
