|
REAL "I
tell you I've got to paint. I can't help myself. Good or bad -- one of the most frightening duets in this world. Do they frighten Yani, though? No, not yet, and hopefully they would eventually belong to the never. It is a comforting notion that probably God has really created all people equal, yet each one of us is a lone star in the milky way, every one of us dreams extremely personal dreams, the banalities of conversation manual couldn't paste our inner stories on somebody else's mental screen. We learn and unlearn every minute of any day with no other human being to stand witness. Everything else is only a series of attempted murders on our own inwardness -- a flight back to the realm of the masses, to the lull of conformity, to swallow our share of the collective fears. We call the rare mammals that dare to defy his or her own fear of threading the path alone a "non-conformist"; but there are so many compounds of non-conformists and there is nothing they despise more than a non-conformist that doesn't take their particular brand of non-conformism. Prying into our own souls while this country is in a mental, social, political, cultural cesspool is non-conformism enough. When it is so tempting to take sides and merge our voices with the mobs', individual noises are hard to find. That was why when Ugo Untoro had his very personal messes displayed to public scrutiny earlier this year, some people who are in the know, in the so-called art world, offered nothing but amazement at the daring run outside the convention, and some others criticized him for being self-centered, an anomaly in this little patch of human habitat called Indonesia where everything is as close to individualism as a bedbug is to the moon. Probably they would resort to the same comments again now, attending Yani's expo -- so far there was one reaction that was full of enlightenment as he showed off the works to his closest buddies: "Wow, great....What is that?" What Yani calls realities are his realities. No way we could be sure of what are they supposed to be. Our capacities are just as limited as his when he tries to figure out what goes on inside anyone else's head. Three and three make six; but dare we stipulate that it is the same number in anybody else's mind? Yani, though, is sane enough to imagine that it is possible to get out, it is within range to speak out, it is worth trying. Just what is real, actually? What is real to you, what is real to the well-groomed man talking to his cellphone inside the shiny cool BMW on the hot road in midday, what is real to the little boys who clutch the unspeakable dirty rags and try to fake cleaning up the car and get some coins while the driver is not looking? Things don't stop anywhere. Listening to the same song we download different senses, feasting upon a painting each spectator gets different impressions and feelings to the point of innumerable. Yani has been nagged by his inner realities that want a way out of him and a way in the so-called social sphere. He also has been absorbing and digesting the realities on the outside, and acts like that are bound to yield still other realities -- his own version of the ones he has got from the world. When we pull shirts over our heads and put on lipsticks and shoes and go to his expo, we pack our own realities too, and those are with us as we try to appreciate what is it that Yani tries to say to us -- or does he at all? No, maybe it is more likely that he tries to talk with us, as any artist should, regardless of his or her intention, a dialogue is what comes out of the art and the viewer. He packed up his realities, poured them out as wholly as he could into the cloth and canvas and whatever else, the result was another range of realities, then he packed those up again and now show them to us, we look at them with our own realities in mind, and this interaction between our realities and what he perceives as his gives birth to still another set of realities. Or it may only produce this: "This guy's nuts." Whatever. Illiteracy becomes worse when written, so our state of not-knowing-ness becomes unbearable when visualized. Yet persons like Yani try to even convey this maddening fact that things elude our embrace all the time and that there is always something that lays dormant, detached, untouched, refuses to be understood or got materialized into some communicable stuff. Is it good or is it bad, saying that we don't really know what real is, saying that we don't know what is there to know, saying that this is a mere wish that somehow our realities could have a handshake with others'? Each artist's work is a communication with his or herself. Each exposed artwork is a communication between the work and the viewer. Each morsel of communication is never beyond a mere attempt at communicating. We have different frames of reference, tools, signifiers and decoders. With the lack of uniform mental radars and transmitters, anytime something beautiful and great and worthwhile creeps into us, we say instead that it looks like it's going to rain and the burly man next door hasn't returned the umbrella yet. Such is the "real" world of ours. There must always be something left unsaid. But at least we could try. Footnote:
HAPPINESS
IS A BLUE CHAIR He eyed Eddie HaRa's newer artworks from a skyscrapper's cubicle, summoned his air-conditioned guts, and said, "Okay, if you say he doesn't plagiarize what Faisal does, so be it, but I've seen Faisal's paintings first and that's where he's gonna be." Collectors are never a nice bunch of people, I guess. You'd never want to take them to dinner (unless they pay), or to take them to meet your mother, or to introduce them to your sisters, or to take them as your sons in-law. And they are responsible for so many catastrophes such as the social suicides of certain young unknown artists and the price of Djoko Pekik's Celeng paintings. And it is their fault too that the debate between those who uphold the revered "art" and those who embrace the commonly called "market" bores us to death. But even collectors were invented with a dash of beauty. God is merciful (or if it were you, I'd say careless). Because -- market? What is it to you, anyway? The odd maestros dabbling in some largely incomprehensible, unnecessarily intricate stuff usually known as the Renaissance dealt with markets and so did all their descendants to this day. Be it a flock of Noble Ignorants, be it a series of Popes, be it some Enlightened Art Lovers, what's in a name? A segment of the population seems to always be into art. Any segment like that is a market. This is no stuff to spark a debate. The so-called art critics don't know that. Collectors do. And the collector I know saw Faisal's art first before he came accidentally around Eddie HaRa and Heri Dono and he firmly established Faisal's place in his tuned-to-art personal sphere as the inventor of such a style. Ignorant? Of course he is nothing else. Yet he is also the one that buys virtually any piece of artwork by anyone as long as he likes the thing. He doesn't care a straw about the socio-political pamphlets out there sold as "reform art". He doesn't give a darn about the works that are hailed by myriad critics as "good art" out there. He knows what he wants. And no matter how perverted he might be, he's among the few that I know of that value artists' very personal output. Ugo's, by the way, is almost always personal. I even heard somebody once referring to his previous expo as "romantic". I guess this might offend him -- but to me it's nothing bad -- can you give us a list of artworks that started as romances between the artists and themselves and ended as anything else but that? No? The list is too long and the lust for such a reminder is incredibly low. Within a savage world, where explosives have made a substitute for words, romance is more than just a rare species as it has always been before. It has sunken into a sphere for which no name has been invented yet. Always belongs to a somewhat esoteric ground, romance is then bound together with unicorns and blue fairies and several trillion dollars in a jealously guarded Swiss bank account -- namely, the privilege of the wealthy, even if severely insecure, few of the initiated. I know a depressingly prosaic guy who wants the class of the not-so-privileged to be eradicated the way the paid piper of Hamelin did. Still harboring a filmy worldview caused by jetlag, he concluded the trip from the airport as a journey to enlightenment -- "Those people," he said, "Those people are not in any way nice. Don't they have anything else to do than envying, visually, a better-off person, like me?" Nice is what tourism brochures relentlessly said about us Indonesians, even Asians in general. But there are times when no one could afford being nice. The ancient regime of France be nice in humid dungeons during the pre-guillotine hours as a defiant class action -- that was a different story. In the street, where everyone is a potential enemy, being nice is never the option. It was not even the way to be for the ragged, oppressed republicans, not even to each other, way back in time. A roof above the head, a steady flow of what makes bread, is always better than romance -- in this world, this is the way things tick. What wealth, though, for the ones who claim to know romance? Poets are waiting tables and painters do five jobs, singers polish shoes and writers make pawn shops some permanent refuge. But they believe they are richer than most outside. Including the jetlagged guy who doesn't draw any line between them and anyone else. Envy -- this exists and real. Yet you have to pull a gun or a fat IOU to these artists' heads to extract an acknowledgement of the fact. Even then, a confession in falsetto would not be convincing. The two worlds are, for the most part of history, segregated. When they occasionally merge, the result might be a disastrous, fiery affair rather than a tidily managed joint-venture. The financially deprived are not nice. The monetarily privileged are not nice. The wealthy souls that yield art are not nice. The big fishes dabbled in worldly riches are not nice. Nobody is nice. Everyone envies everybody else. The borderline is probably just the kind of merchandise. It is about knowing the price of things, the business of growing up. Maybe when we were six the most expensive things were a bicycle, an everlasting supply of candy and a whole day without little sister tailing us around -- plus of course without mom chanting her favorite proverbs and our arch-enemy in the neighborhood got himself locked up in his room for whatever he might (should) have done. These changed with the passing of years. Maybe then silence became the thing beyond our ceiling. We could not afford it. Or it was fame. Or whatever is "success" to us -- including a happy family, perhaps -- or a "true love", or we be Gates-like enough to want all of those at once. When we were kids probably it was perplexing not to get a luxurious something as we hoped so hard to. We did some lousy bargain. We felt cheated. Mom got her tidy bedroom (ours), but where the heck was the hours she promised that we could use to roam outside? We helped washing the dishes and no chocolate bar was in sight afterwards. This often stays as we become older. Or it changes slightly. But once in a while we simply wouldn't want to pay the price -- even if we could afford it. From time to time we feel that we deserve some luxury for free. Unfortunately life is not a good grandma. It never was, never has been, never will be. For every little thing it gives, we have to fill up the role of a client. We must pay. We are expected to do so. Nothing is gratis. Even love comes with a price. Compromises, commitments, responsibilities, and other things within the same package -- without all these, maybe life still gives us the merchandise, only it wouldn't be as good as we might want it to be. Well, "goods are exact mirrors of their prices," -- a Javanese saying. Though it is not their prices, actually. Prices are what the vendor wants from us. It is what we are willing to pay for them that determines what we get. Once in a while we would meet a person that looks like nowhere and everywhere at once -- a hobo, a rover, nomad, vagabond, wanderer -- not a traveller, and not, certainly, a pilgrim -- those two have some clear destination and a definite place to start from. Why? Maybe they were born out of place, out of time, or even both, and so they long for a home they know not. This might be alright. To the persons themselves and to us who are somewhat concerned. What I fear is just one little thing. I have known people who, when they were unable to locate a drug store or a doctor that opened for business on a Sunday-full of headache, they made a note to marry somebody or at least to carry their toothbrushes and pajamas and buffalo-snores to someone's place -- simply to fend off the sense of vacancy. At some point probably the endless journey looks aimless and a lousy substitution is then in practice. So hard it is to love what is infinite. Infinity, above all things, is certainly not nice. But life is not political protests and cheers and applause and fat cheques. Ugo's art looks minutely personal and is never claimed as anything it's never been. And to notions like "But oil paintings sell, man!" he shrugs. He made fabric dolls instead. So to me, through all these crawling years, Ugo has never been one that loves infinity either. He simply lives the infinite. Footnote:
IN
DEFENSE OF THE WORLD As a notorious misanthrope it is only natural that I am also a world-hater. And why not? The so-called world is by and by a human creation as is everything else. I mean, of course, not this blue and green ball that spins around for no reason at all within the galactic realm. I mean, of course, this thing as differs from the planet. My playground is after all this world, Stephen Hawking's is the planet. The world, so far, is more interesting although nobody would love to live in it; they just do, and night after night they wake up in cold sweat wondering why on earth they do what they do, namely being in this world. Being in this world, as a rule, is different from being; the latter is supreme, it is my preference, but I have strayed too far now and we must go back to the task at hand, my hand anyway, which is to defend this world from you, by the act of interweaving it with the planet. In an art discussion a few days ago I have met with a flock of Indonesian artsy aspirants, you know the types, there are not many of them, namely dorky haircuts, filthy clothes, dog-chewed footwears, oldsmobiles, Harley Davidson bikes, lately accompanied by cellphones they cannot operate without consulting the manuals every time a call comes in, and they need a professional help any time they want to make a call. I do not belong to the art-discussion-goer category. It was raining cats and dogs -- strange omen because it was supposed to be our long dry season -- my umbrella was hijacked by somebody -- with a pack of cigarette in my bag and nowhere to go, I thus stayed and listened. Contrary to my creed, I also blurted out a few words, among which was this famous line: "Where the heck is the toilet?". Thus we rubbed shoulders but I can safely assure you that we did not rub anything more off on each other, the reason of which is elaborated above and below. They hate the world and suddenly I realized that I was born with a divine mission to be there and then as the knight in rain-drenched business suits to defend it. Mind you, this is August. The Republic of Indonesia celebrates its birthday. Nationalism, the fiction of modern age, runs high at several zillions km/h. The topic of the discussion, unsurprisingly, was artistic nationalism. Take a second look: artistic nationalism. Knowing that the curious phrase is a hybrid, in which not one but two fictions are woven together, you know it spells trouble. And it did. They hate the rest of the world and I had to unsheath my sabre. Though not before they served coffee. They attacked Indonesian artists who are "Western-minded" and at the same pitch they put the ones who are "Indonesian-minded" on pedestals (without ever acknowledged the need to dust these gods and goddesses later). I am not an artist and this fact is what builds my immune system. But, nonetheless, I happen to know those unpatriotic sinners that they hate so much after every second bottle of tamed vodka. One is my only sibling, and blood is heavier than water, although this is too scientific to say there. About this particular painter's work, they gave nothing but condemnation, showered so lavishly the rain outside lost its might and stopped. "Who is she?" they asked, "Is she living in London? No, she lives in here and it is nothing but silly fantasy to paint like that. Mickey Mouse, yuppies, gala parties, grand living rooms? That is Western. That is not art." Painting Mickey Mouses is, as far as I know, not a sin, although as a matter of course the Disney's lawyers think very differently. The young professionals who are upwardly mobile are not copyrighted, however, and they are factual beings commonly found among concrete jungles of New York, Vancouver, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Capetown, Tokyo, Beijing, Canberra, Tel Aviv, Port Said, Moscow, Budapest, Stockholm, Port Moresby, and Jakarta, as well as any other city around the globe. Gala parties are not patented in Los Angeles, either -- India holds one every other night, being the host of the largest film industry in the world, produces more than 700 movies each month (at least that's what a statistic report concedes) -- or in Washington, D.C., where political hocus-pocus is the form of daily entertainment -- galas like this is everywhere else too. Grand living room? Every Indonesian who holds a Swiss bank account has one. And they are too many. In fact I know at least half a dozen of people who belong to this species, and I am not even a local bank's client. The point is, you cannot categorize art that way, and not only because my sibling is victimized if you do. The nineties is the decade of identity politics -- we have witnessed Afro-Americans struggles and their counterparts like the Latinos/Latinas', gays and lesbians' rights protesters, pro-life versus pro-choice movements, the collapse of Eastern European leftist unity, the emergence of new republics, the voices of all kinds of ethnicity get louder everyday. This is the era of decentralism, of dissent, of fragmentation. A more honest observer/participant, such as the American comedian Jerry Seinfeld, would say it nicely, "This is the me decade, so I do me." Unfortunately most of laypersons like us cannot get away with that kind of remark. Thus we carry the banner of we-ness, not me-ness. We cannot afford to be honest in this fierce game of survival of the fittest. At the same time, the nineties is also the one-world decade, as envisioned by Willy Brandt a long time ago. You can talk with anyone anywhere with the tricky devices like satellites and digital superhighway, you can sit at your own messy desk in Jakarta and tap something out of the library of Dar-es-Salam, Africa, or join a lively chat with Pamela Anderson Lee and her husband's band while your poor wife does the laundry and your kids break loose right behind your back. The interwoven realities produce the mixed effects. Because this world is one, Amnesty International nags Indonesian government to free all political prisoners and stop the mindless killings in East Timor. Because the world is one, the Greenpeace protests against the nuclear plant in Japan. Because this world is one, East Timorese feel that they have to gain independence from the Republic of Indonesia. Because the world is one, the Amnesty International and the Greenpeace are not 'us'. Because the world is one, it is getting harder and harder for you to accept that you cannot get in line to shoot Tommy Lee and to admit that this world of your laundry-laden wife and stupid kids is not the world of Sox the official White House cat and the university park where Jerry Yang created Yahoo! in a trailer. Thus the biography of our insecurities, thus the history of our odd anti-western attitudes. Insecurity was the thing behind Indonesian first President, Sukarno, when he cried out loud "America, Go To Hell With Your Aid!" and when he pulled this wretched country out of the United Nations. Insecurity is still here, as we know that some people out there are shrieking the same. But, on the other hand, the more sophisticated brains in Jakarta are working hard to seek a way out of the pitfalls that come as one package with the great advantages of being in one world with the rest of the Homo sapiens. Because we cannot elude this fact. Because when the ice melts in Alaska our shores too will suffer something as its effect. Because when the Dow Jones index plummets our stock market in Surabaya too will be changed. Because when the rainforests of Sumatera and Kalimantan are burned to ashes, Paris and Oslo will nail us as murderers of their oxygen-generator and ozone layer-protector. Because this world, whether you acknowledge it or not, is one. The fact that we all, around the world, suffer the equal mistreatment, is Exhibit #1. The fact that all of us inhale a more or less clunky air quality is another. The fact that we all have conspiriologists everywhere is still another. We are one. As an Indonesian, the claustromania as avidly demonstrated by the artists was appaling to me. Someone in East End, London, or in Austin, Texas, may justly be so, xenophobically speaking; but not us. Our educational system is among the most abominable in the world, but it excels in one area: every Indonesian schoolkid, age 9, knows where everything is in this world. Just ask any American, Scandinavian or Canadian kid about the same facts and you'll see how smarter our children are, geographically. And this kind of knowledge is retained until we lay on our deathbed. I have met with all kinds of people on the Internet, with whom, after the conventional how-do-you-do's, I exchange notices of location -- only one in a hundred knows where Indonesia is. Incredible, given the fact that all they have to do is look up a map. We, on the other hand, do not even need a map after we finished Elementary School. When we watch the imported TV show Homicide, we know we are watching the dramatization of the police work in Baltimore, U.S.A., and we know exactly or vaguely where this Baltimore is. We read about a serial killer who scattered his victims around Lake Erie, we can imagine where on earth the lake is. Bill Clinton is from an impoverished state of Arkansas, we know where outside earth Clinton is. We cherished Nelson Mandela's victory more earnestly because we know where his prison was. When Saddam Hussein invoked his ancient bloodline, we know what he meant while George Bush thought it was an invite to the NATO missiles. Meanwhile, no one knows where Java is, and the old Indonesian joke: "Where in Bali is Indonesia?" has been proven to be a sad repackaged truth, over and over again. Thus said, it is wrong for us to embrace the identity politics blindly. We know this world better than many peoples, we have a much broader horizon, we should not thin it. It is true, of course, that the rest of the world assign the Third World nametag to us for no decent reason, it is true that the 'West' (this politically incorrect term is still better than the correct one, that is 'the North') gives us their worst export commodities along with the best ones, among which are the Central Perks and Clinton's scandals and Oasis . Yet, if we swallow the worst of them, whose fault is that? Can we sue the vendor when it is us who buy the things after we picked them ourselves? In art, freedom means freedom, period. You are free to absorb and rebuild, to borrow, even to steal if not too obviously, and certainly if not to end the art and start a legal case of copyright infringement. One artist may digest his or her local realities as he or she pleases. One may paint or tell of becaks or a 'Western' wedding ceremony or mere colorfights on canvas. One thing is always true in art: all things are true. It is not even right, actually, to provide lengthy explanation like "Why I Paint Some Western Lifestyle". The proper and legitimate reaction if condemned by others because of the selected topic should be intelligent sentences, such as: "So what?". It is not a question of patriotism, and not of faith in one's own people. Back then, listening to the artists, I was tempted to scapegoat the post-structuralism that swept Indonesian minds briefly a few years ago, which was digested so hastily and which left no trace behind it but this kind of fragmentative mode of thinking. Identity politics can be not only ugly but downright disgustingly idiotic. I am sorry if some of you are offended by this remark -- believe me, I have exerted all of my faculties to get any other kind of acknowledgement, but failed miserably. Do not hate this world, please. It is one everywhere and you are irretrievably in it together with all of those emptyheaded arrogant 'Western' people. Do not condemn this world too harshly, please. I will do it for you instead. Keep creating your art and nevermind the dogs -- more often than not, they bark at the wrong trees. |
|
|||||||||||||
