wayangkancil

In 2010, I went for Papermoon Puppet Theatre’s puppet festival, Pesta Boneka #2, in the festival’s early beginnings, missed #3 and #4 – and was very sad both times! – so I was so pleased to go for #5, themed “Home”.

Here are two poems inspired by the bazaar and Papermoon Puppet Theatre’s performance, The Old Man’s Books. #pestabonekabloggingcontest #pestaboneka5

1. Handmade Home

Inspired by Pesta Boneka #5’s bazaar.

I used to think that home was a place you take

Take with you, in your heart, and in your mind

But now I see that home is a place you make,

Thanks to Pesta Boneka number 5.

Walking through the bazaar, you see

Paintings on shirts, beanbags, notebooks,

their covers recycled from cartons of milo, coffee,

Emptied of energy. But now –

Given a new lease of life thanks to a bit of thread, and belief.

Because a walk through the bazaar, you see,

Makes you realise home is where canvases are drawn on

Where rest is waiting, and ready,

Where trash turns into a brand new beginning,

Empty pages filled with opportunity.

I used to think that home was a place you take

With you, leaving the past behind

But now I see it’s a place that you make and unmake,

And are remaking all the time.

Achebong’s (Instagram: @achebong) stall selling handmade notebooks (with recycled carton covers), cards, and gifts. This was my favourite.

2. They Tell Our Stories

Inspired by “The Old Man’s Books”, by Papermoon Puppet Theatre.

Set for The Old Man’s Books, designed by Anton Fajri

Walk into Papermoon’s world of shadow and light:

They’re tapping on boxes, creating new beats

Men and women are reading newspapers,

Collecting the stories of the street.

A girl is reading her book aloud,

While a boy and dog fall asleep

Forgetting that action can, too, be found

When you’re still, and in your seat.

Animals pop out from between the book’s pages

Colours and shades lifted up to the light,

Now you see a cat, then a fish, and a story –

As paper and darkness are brought to life.

With the skillful hands of the puppeteers

They make and unmake our hopes and fears

When the team arrives to take a bow,

You see a family together now,

Weaving our stories together, you and me

In the light and shadow of our humanity.

Puppeteers creating a person out of old newspaper

Shadow theatre: a fairy emerging from a book

Meeting Dr. Ashraf reminded me of this video I came across a few weeks back – looks like someone tried to build a software to catalogue Wayang Kulit puppets:

Pak Surjono, an Engineering prof I met in Indonesia in December, was in the process of building a “story-generator” software that could preserve the stories narrated by the dhalangs (most are passed on orally and not written down). Technology can be used to facilitate different stages of puppet making and performance – making it (ideally) more accessible and less intimidating to everyone.

Also, here are several links to websites on Indonesian culture (Which would probably give a more in-depth perspective of Indonesian performance than mine!)

1. Matthew Isaac Cohen: Indonesianperformance.blogspot.com

Dr. Cohen is currently a senior lecturer at the Department of Drama and Theatre Studies from the Royal Holloway, University of London. He has spent six years in Indonesia, and is familiar with both the theoretical and practical aspects of Wayang shadow puppet theatre. You can read more about him here.

2. Wisnu: wayangkancilwisnu.wordpress.com

Wisnu is a very helpful friend I met in Jogja. Recently, he has also started several other blogs on Indonesian cultural resources – you can visit one of them here.

Of course, for all the merits of digital conservation, it’s most necessary for a cultural artefact to be understood in the context of the society that it’s a part of.

Used to the architecture of shelves brimming with books, Dr. Golam Ashraf’s office came as a surprise to me. It was the first lecturer’s office I’d seen that had shelves lined with toys: there were action figures of Batman, Ben-ten…He must have an secret obsession, I thought.

I was proven wrong when I found that he used these models as the basis for his

Dr. Golam Ashraf, School of Computing, NUS

research experiments. Born in Kolkata, Dr. Ashraf had his first encounter with puppets at a school festival. That led him and his friends to begin a small group called “Precocious puppets”, which even had a performance broadcast on television. He eventually began another puppetry group (also called “Precocious puppets”) when he came to Singapore at 18.

See that pair of glasses? He pointed out a pair of safety goggles – it has a sensor stripped on so it can function as a remote in games. It costs less than five dollars to make! By lowering the bar through technology, he commented, more people now have access to art forms and games that were previously thought difficult because of the dexterity required in their manipulation or construction. Puppets can now be designed, manipulated; even collaboratively designed and manipulated, through the use of new software and mobile technologies.

Talk about serious fun.

(P.s. you can read more about him here)

When I met Mbah Ledjar at his studio in December, he was in the middle of innovating a new Gunungan (a large leaf-shaped puppet used to mark the opening and closing of a Wayang performance): instead of painting the conventional Javanese architecture, he was painting a Dutch house.

Mbah Ledjar's latest innovation (Dec 2010)

I was very impressed by his youthful spirit of experimentation despite being 73, and willingness to play with Wayang conventions to create even more amazing art. He even made a puppet of himself (and Nanang, his grandson):

L to R: Nanang and Mbah Ledjar (with Nanang and Mbah Ledjar puppets)

At present, Mbah Ledjar and Nanang are in the Netherlands performing the “Willem van Oranje Wayang” – made in the image of William of Orange, who is recognized as founder and liberator of The Netherlands – at the Museum Nusantara.

The Willem van Oranje Wayang is a masterpiece creation of Ki Ledjar Soebroto, a Yogyakarta’s well known puppet-master and the creator of the very unique wayang kancil, specially made on the order of the Museum Nusantara in Delft, the Netherland. Ki Ledjar made the wayang designs based and according to the faces of characters found in the historical epic of William’s battle taken from paintings that are already hundreds of years old, still preserved in the collections of the Prinsenhof Museum. Aside of making the design of the characters, Ki Ledjar also designed some wayang forms of artifacts found in Delft such as the Nieuwe Kerk (the New Church), where Prince Willem and the Dutch Kings were laid to rest.

[…]The making of this wayang which depicted Prince Willem’s battle at the same time his leadership of the revolt against King Phillip II, Netherland’s ruler from Spain, have as its purpose the education of children to gain more knowledge of Dutch history. Besides the exhibition of the wayang forms, there will also be the screening of the Willem van Oranje Wayang animation film, made by Ananto Wicaksana (the grandson of Ki Ledjar Soebroto). – “The Williem van Oranje”, Jogjapages.com 3rd March 2011

(Emphasis mine. Click on the pictures to follow the links to the articles!)

Mbah Ledjar even transposed the clown from traditional Javanese Wayang Kulit culture into this performance to make it even more engaging:

"Wayang with a touch of Dutch"

The hundreds of audience members burst into laughter when an old puppet character Jan Klaasen appeared on stage as an intermezzo in the middle of a war.

Jan Klaasen’s funny voice, humorous chat and silly movements became an instant ice-breaker. A Spaniard soldier tried to attack his head to no avail because it was so flexible — it could rotate, turning forward and even backward.

Ledjar said Jan Klaasen was an additional character that was comparable to Punokawan — four royal jokers in the regular puppet shows.

“I inserted the Jan Klaasen character so the audience did not only have to stick to the story, but be entertained by the humor as well,” he said. – “Wayang with a Touch of Dutch”, The Jakarta Post 22nd May 2011 (emphasis mine)

The traditional Wayang Kulit performance was also adapted in terms of the music and medium (Nanang created an animation for it!):

“At first, I was thinking of full gamelan for the music, but then I changed my mind because this was a European puppet show. I don’t want to make it an ordinary wayang purwa [traditional puppetry],” he said.

His effort paid off. The Willem puppet show performed in the Karta Pustaka was far from boring.

The music was a collaboration between pop orchestra and traditional gamelan. Some of the conversations in the show, which included an English translation, were even set to opera-esque music, such as during a romantic chat between William and his fourth wife Louise de Coligny.

Ananto, who has been a wayang puppeter since he was four years old, said the Nusantara Museum’s visitors could also watch his 15-minute animated film of the William puppet show in addition to enjoying the real puppet performance.

The museum also plans to tour the puppet show around several cities. Ledjar said the marriage of modern and traditional genres could attract young people. The most important thing, he added, was to preserve the traditional nuance. – “Wayang William – Wrap the Dutch History in a Wayang Story”, Tourjogja.com. 15th March 2011 (emphasis mine)

Congratulations! 😀

The Internet has matured as an ecosystem that bridges cultures and communities. This is made evident particularly in times of crisis.

1. Teknologi as a means of disaster response: Japan

Remember the viral Facebook note on Japan’s earthquake as seen through the eyes of Twitter that began its circulation slightly over a week ago? On his note, Jun Shiomitsu, an MBA student at the Judge Business School (University of Cambridge) posted English translations of Twitter status updates by the Japanese people who have been affected by the disaster.

Even that’s old news by now.

Shiomitsu has since received thousands of emails and mobilized his Facebook group of 800 people to act as “eye-witnesses from the ground”. He has created a data structure to consolidate these testimonies on his blog, Voices from Japan:

Voices From Japan - voicesfromjapan.blogspot.com

Photographer James Macwhite, an American videographer who lives in Tokyo, has also started his own Facebook community page, Sendai Tsunami through Western Eyes. On this page, he keeps a log of the Japanese response to the quake, particularly commenting on media coverage in Japan and from the West. He also engages his online platform for a good cause by encouraging his readership to donate to relief efforts on his website.

James MacWhyte Facebook Community Page

These two examples demonstrate how average Internet users become newsmakers and key go-to persons in times of crisis through harnessing social media. The urgency of relief efforts becomes intimate and immediate through the dissemination of viral (not to mention vital) messages through online communities. Internet users are also offered convenient avenues where they can make a difference in alleviating the damage from the comfort of their homes. Reading first-hand accounts of the disaster from those who suffer in its wake, we feel for them. We feel like we know them. We ask: what can we do to help?

Andy Carvin, Senior Strategist for National Public Radios Social Media Desk, addresses this phenomenon, as well as how the Internet has evolved to meeet the needs of disaster crisis management, in his talk “The New Volunteers: Social Media, Disaster Response, and You”:

(Slides from the talk are available here)

2. Teknologi as a means of reconstruction and rescue: Indonesia

In Indonesia, updates from the eruption of Gunung Merapi (Mount Merapi) in November 2010 still continue today, and they are available on Facebook and Twitter.

Jalin Merapi Facebook Page

Jalin Merapi Twitter Page

In an article dated 21st November 2010, the Jakarta Globe reported that Twitter was the key tool for mobilization efforts at the point of the eruption. The founder of Jalin, Sukiman Mochtar Pratomo, remarked that “Within a very short time, we had more than 9,000 followers (Now 33,520 followers). We share links from various sources and re-tweet information from people related to the crisis of Mount Merapi.”. In one week, the Jalin Merapi account mobilized nearly 500 volunteers to assist relief efforts around the area.

The posts continue even months after the eruption. Some messages are attempts to gather resources to hasten evacuation – reads a post from Jan 12th: “RT @jalinmerapi #URGENT #DEMAND C:Alvin JMCode 081804033244,need 4 spotlight-flash lights, 2 megaphones to do the watch&evacu” – while others connect people with skills to those who are in need. Reads a post on 4th March: “Elementary Students w. Certificate & unable to continue education, contact Ade Andria Outreach Sampoerna Foundation 085691”. Regardless of the content, these channels provide an readily availble strucuture in which information can be shared.

Furthermore, the Internet has also empowered young people to share their skills and to help the victims of Merapi:

As the government grapples with coordination problems in the disasters’ aftermath, tech-savvy young people are on the front line of volunteers ready to save the day.

Equipped with mobile phones and social networking accounts, they have become a powerful force for aid distribution and operate at a speed that no government officials can match.

“Twitter helps us to inform who needs what — and where, as well as who has the stuff and how much they have,” said Zaki Habibi, 28, a volunteer at Demangan shelter in Yogyakarta.

Zaki told The Jakarta Post how he had collected 500 flood aid packages with only a few posts to his Twitter accounts. Within minutes, he found out where he could find the supplies.

“It is just so quick. I got responses from two people I never met before,” said Zaki, who helps administer  the Merapi Rim Information Network, which has gained a reputation for providing reliable information on Merapi and aid distribution over Twitter.

Young people are also use social networking for fundraising. Several young girls in Yogyakarta used Twitter to raise more than Rp 70 million (US$7,910) for Merapi victims.

“We plan to do it over the long run, dedicating funds for recovery programs also,” Dian Paramita, 22, the group’s spokesperson, told The Jakarta Post recently.

Read the full article here.

3. Relief 2.0 to Tradition 2.0?

Can we apply the same principles of disaster crisis management to the management of cultural resources?

Certainly, the urgency and necessity of preserving tradition (arguable, given how fluid culture is) cannot be compared to the intensity and scale of these natural disasters, and the cost of inaction.

But perhaps the understanding of another culture could be a point of entry for us to be aware of our neighbours. Perhaps this would help us to care about them even before tragedy strikes.