In a three hour vigil in the gallery space of the Asia-Australia Arts Centre in Sydney, known as Gallery 4A, Indonesian artist Dadang Christanto and some 20 volunteers, heads bowed and dripping white clay, stood holding portraits of the victims of what has become known as the Lapindo disaster. The white clay, with its touch of ghostliness, suggested mourning and death.
The performance, titled Survivor, referred to an on-going environmental disaster in the Sidoarjo region of East Java. In May 2006 the Indonesian resources and exploration company, Lapindo Brantas, while drilling boreholes for gas, struck an underground reservoir causing an eruption of hot sulphurous mud. For over three years the mud has continued to flow, burying villages and land, poisoning rivers and destroying communities without any foreseeable likelihood that the flow will stop or be stemmed by any man-made control. Levees put in place to contain the mud are in danger of collapsing, affecting more communities, and as the ground is hollow underneath, the land could collapse. If the disaster is deemed to be the result of human error, Lapindo Brantas is responsible for reparation, but if it is considered a natural disaster, then the government is responsible. The company argues that the Yogyakarta earthquake occurred at the same time as the mud erupted and was a contributing factor, but numerous experts express conflicting opinions and the arguments are endless. The waters are further muddied by the ever present suspicion of corruption, for the family of the minister of welfare at that time, Aburizal Bakrie, controlled Lapindo Brantas. An Australian company, Santos, who was a partner in the exploration, has sold its interest subject to a payment for ‘mud management’, and both the Indonesian and international media have ceased to report the situation in full as it is no longer considered ‘newsworthy’. The net effect has been that the people of the area have been abandoned: their societies dislocated by the loss of public and well as private structures, their communal histories lost, their livelihoods destroyed and their health endangered by toxic mud and fumes. Compensation has been minimal and subject to dispute as ownership is often by custom and proving title to property is difficult, so neighborhood relations are dissolving in suspicion and bitterness.
The performance at Gallery 4A was a repetition of a longer, 12-hour vigil held on Human Rights Day, 10 December, 2008 at Tugu Proklamasi (the Proclamation Monument) in Jakarta, in front of the Sukarno–Hatta monument for independence. Dadang Christanto and the Urban Poor Consortium, a Jakarta-based group of NGOs providing welfare and advocacy for the disadvantaged, gathered four hundred people from Sidoarjo and two hundred people from Jakarta to bear witness to the human consequences of the catastrophe. Covered in brown mud, the participants stood, sat and kneeled, silently holding the photographs of the displaced people of the region whose lives had been destroyed by the mud flow. One observer commented that the scene was particularly powerful after dark when candles were held by the participants.
The performance in Jakarta was a public event at a site loaded with symbolism, a monument commemorating freedom from the colonial control of the Netherlands; whereas the performance at Gallery 4A was an art event. Although the purpose was the same as the performance in Jakarta, that is, to raise awareness of the situation and sympathy for the victims, the effect was different. Within the shifting boundaries between art, life and activism, it was a significant work of art rather than a consciousness-raising experience. Dadang, standing still and streaked with clay, created a powerful image that will last in the documentary photographs that recorded the performance; but sympathy for the people of Sidoarjo was dissipated by the wine and conversation of an exhibition opening, where silence would have been a more appropriate response.
Since the founding of the Republic of Indonesia, a significant number of Indonesian artists have been committed to using their work for social or political activism. Art was harnessed to the struggle for Independence against the colonial Dutch regime after the Second World War but after the trauma of 1965 when President Sukarno was overthrown and the regime of General Soeharto was established, activist art that had been associated with the Communist left was suppressed. Social and political criticism continued to be expressed through the arts but it was not until the last days of the Soeharto regime in the 1990s that activist art could be openly exhibited. In 1998 demands for Reformasi combined with an economic collapse in Asia that severely affected Indonesia and forced President Soeharto to step down, to be replaced eventually by a democratically-elected government. Where art and activism are concerned, the greatest improvement was freedom of expression; but although the victims of subsequent disasters speak of their conditions, assistance has been slow in coming. Indonesian artist Heri Dono, a friend and associate of Dadang, was present at the performance in Sydney. He said: “The people were brought to the gate of democracy but not through it. There have been so many disasters, tsunami, earthquakes, but there is no real contact between the people and the government in Indonesia and the military are used to protect the interests of companies”.
Dadang’s art activism is grounded in his earliest experiences. In 1965 Dadang’s father, a Chinese shopkeeper, was a victim of the mass insanity that broke out across the archipelago following the coup that overthrew President Sukarno. To quote from the catalog of his 2002 exhibit The Meaning of Memory:
I was eight years old and living in a village. I did not understand about anything, and I know in 1965 early one morning my father was taken away in an army truck. The five of us (children) were still sleeping. My oldest brother was 12; my youngest sibling was three years old. Since then I have never seen my father again.
The Chinese were the focus of a racial prejudice that had its roots in their migration to Indonesia over centuries and their subsequent entrepreneurial success. Of all the ethnicities that make up Indonesia, the Chinese are identified as outsiders and, as most are not Muslim; their situation is compounded by religious prejudice. The 1965 coup was blamed on the Communists and many Chinese, being accused of collaborating with them, were among over half a million people who either disappeared or were openly murdered.
Dadang felt himself to be a pariah and unable to speak about his experience of marginalisation and stigmatisation under Suharto’s Orde Baru or New Order regime. In the same 2002 exhibit catalog, Dadang said: “I did not want to talk about these things during the Orba period as this would be the same as suicide.” He developed his activism through art and while studying in Yogyakarta was strongly influenced by the famous poet and playwright, W.S. Rendra, who has recently died. Dadang said “It was a good time for me, raising my awareness of the political and social and to be part of the political opposition”. Rendra held meetings at his Bengkel Theatre and gave classes attended by radical students until he was jailed and his activities banned in 1980. Dadang acknowledged in a 2003 interview in Sydney that Rendra was the theatrical inspiration behind the performances he gives in association with his artwork. After leaving art school, Dadang joined Puskat, or Pusat Kateketik, a Catholic organization run by Father Rudi Hoffmann. Father Rudi, known as ‘Romo Rudi’, was a radical political thinker influenced by Liberation Theory, Paolo Friere and the Brazilian director and political activist, Agusto Boal. From 1986 to 1990 Dadang worked at the Puskat in their communications studio and became a tutor for the Teater Rakyat, or people’s theatre. During this time Dadang associated with experimental visual artists and joined members of Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru (New Art Movement), in their last group exhibition, Pasaraya Dunia Fantasi, or Fantasy World Supermarket, held in 1987 in Jakarta. Art for Dadang was always to have a purpose beyond being just aesthetically pleasing.
By the 1990s Dadang was being selected for international exhibition and his remarkable career has been almost entirely constructed outside Indonesia since then. He has become a global artist, living in Australia but constantly travelling and it has allowed him to speak freely. He said in an interview with Hendro Wiyanto, the curator of his exhibition in Jakarta in 2002, “Isn’t keeping quiet just the same as acceding to something? I hope that the event behind these works can become the basis in commencing a dialogue for healing myself and the general community”. Dadang’s art extends across media from paintings to installations that often include human forms or heads to represent victims. In his performances he often identifies his own position in relation to the victims and, in the case of Survivor, not only participating with the volunteers but a few days previously giving an individual performance titled Litsus. In this performance Dadang sat at the base of a wall hung with old, rusty agricultural implements. The audience was invited to throw small bags of flour at the wall, burying Dadang under white dust. The backwash of dust filled the air and coated both the ‘victim’, Dadang, and the ‘victimizers’, who were the audience, as if persecution has consequences for all involved. The title, Litsus, an acronym from Penelitian Khusus, a special investigation that used to be required for parliamentary candidates, has become associated with demanding a loyalty beyond the human rights and wishes of the people.
Dadang seeks to identify the personal experience within systematic violence and disastrous events, events on a scale that deny individuality. Joseph Stalin was credited with saying “A single death is a tragedy; half a million liquidated is a statistic.” Mass statistics reported in the media become de humanised and our response is, as a result, de sensitised, but effective works of art can summon empathy for the individual victim of violence by re creating a sense of the experience. Some critics have considered that activism though art is ineffective and that public protest in the streets is the way to raise awareness of social and political problems. But for Dadang, there is no choice: an artist is driven to use his skills and the tools that come to hand to reach people, and by travelling with his works and performances he reaches an international audience.