SASA GALLERY April 3 - April 27 2007
Artist: Heri Dono Collaborators: Roy Ananda, Luke Bahr, Margit Brunenner, Sarah Jane Cook, Margo Clark, Sonia Donnellan, Peter Dyson, Robin Elhaj, Billal El-Youssef, Annika Evans, Catherine Evans, Peter Fraser, Liz Hetzel, Matt Huppatz, Sue Kneebone, Steve Leishman, Brigid Noone, Kellylee Paul, Francis Phelan, Jessica Sanguesa, Niki Sperou, Samuel Sperou, Juniper Van-Den-Ende, Tushar M. Wahab, Naomi Webb, Mei Sheong Wong, Ly Yiv, video producers Barry Wraith and Kay Wraith, and the musicians of the Sekar Laras Gamelan Orchestra Curator: Dr Pamela Zeplin, Head, Art & Design History & Theory, SASA, UniSA Editor: Mary Knights, Director, SASA Gallery, UniSA Catalogue Design: Fred Littlejohn, Senior Lecturer, SASA, UniSA, Danna-Lee Stoic, DBVC, SASA; Ryan Neville, DBVC, SASA Catalogue Essays: Dr Pamela Zeplin, Head, Art & Design History & Theory, SASA, UniSA Jim Supangkat, art critic and Chief Curator, CP Foundation (Indonesia) Front cover: Heri Dono, Flying Angels (detail), 2006, Multi media / installation Back cover: Heri Dono, Gamelan Goro Goro (detail), 2004, Multi media / installation
2 Heri Dono, Born and Freedom (detail), 2004, Multi media / installation
Contents 5
Introduction Mary Knights
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Winged horse dreaming: Heri Dono in Adelaide Dr Pamela Zeplin
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Odyssey in the Space of Change Jim Supangkat
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Menjelajahi Perubahan Jim Supangkat
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Acknowledgements
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4 Heri Dono, Flying Angels (detail), 2006, Multi media / installation
The Dream Republic, curated by Pamela Zeplin, is the culmination of a seven week residency undertaken by Indonesian artist Heri Dono in Adelaide. Dono has developed an international reputation for his work that is both unsettling and whimsical. In his art practice, which embraces installation, wayang puppetry, video, performance and collaboration, Dono engages with contemporary social and political issues and explores the position of the individual in society.
Introduction
The Dream Republic includes work that deals with free-speech and art terrorism. Five videos depicting Indonesian artists who have been repressed &/or jailed play simultaneously. Provocatively, a gun has been pointed at each of their heads. A large ramshackle Trojan horse, built in collaboration with others out of cardboard, string, bamboo and other found materials, suggests the capacity of artists to subversively engage in activism and political actions; infiltrate organisations, institutions, and cross boundaries under the cover of art. The Dream Republic is the second in a series of exhibitions that invites external scholars, as well as interstate and international artists and designers, to participate in the SASA Gallery’s exhibition and publication programs. As well as writing one of the catalogue essays, while in Adelaide, Indonesian art critic, curator and theorist Jim Supangkat will contribute to critical debate on the arts through lectures, discussions and talks. Supangkat has gained renown in the South East Asian region for his active support of contemporary art in Indonesia and promotion of Indonesian art internationally. He has been involved in establishing regional art forums and has curated Indonesian art for major exhibitions and international biennials and events. The SASA Gallery supports a program of exhibitions that focus on innovation, experimentation and performance. With support from the Divisional Research Performance Fund the SASA Gallery is being developed as a leading contemporary art space publishing and exhibiting high-quality research based work, and as an active site of teaching and learning. The SASA Gallery showcases South Australian artists, designers, writers and curators associated with South Australian School of Art and Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture in a national and international context. The SASA Gallery has received immense support toward the development and implementation of this exhibition and catalogue. The residency by Indonesian artist Heri Dono has been developed by staff at the South Australian School of Art with the support of the Helpmann Academy. The fine wine served at the opening was supplied by Perrini Estate and the printing of the exhibition catalogue was generously funded by the Gordon Darling Foundation.
Mary Knights Director, SASA Gallery
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6 Heri Dono, Fermentation of Mind (detail), 1994, Multi media / installation
Winged horse dreaming: Heri Dono in Adelaide by Pamela Zeplin It all began in the sky. When the Trojan horse flew low over the city of Adelaide, with small, strange objects spilling from its belly, crowds of people gasped in astonishment, at first mistaking its flight path for that of an inward bound 737. How could this massive, clumsy sculpture that grew and grew and grew inside the SASA Gallery escape? So many artists and students over seven weeks had glued, screwed, nailed, banged, papier-mâché-ed and tied this monster together and tethered it sturdily between the gallery’s two immense supporting pillars. Indeed the construction was so robust, many were cynical that it could ever be dismantled. And now, as if by magic, it was gone. A horse of sorts with wings and a tail plane attached - was this a bird, a plane or a mass hallucination induced by chemical spillage? Or was it even a horse, someone asked, after glimpsing a unicorn horn on its head. After examining the discarded cargo, someone else suggested that either Heri Dono was in town or it was a dream. In fact, Dono was visiting Adelaide at the time. He was constructing a Trojan horse for his exhibition entitled The Dream Republic and, of course, I am writing metaphorically - although I did experience this dream. Flight, whether in oneiric, metaphorical or actual form, has long been a persistent theme in Dono’s work, populated as it is with a throng of sky creatures. At once celestial and terrestrial; terrifying and absurdly humorous, they appear in the form of angels, devils, aeroplanes, garudas1, winged steeds, becak chariots2, dragons, griffins and unlikely combinations of all the above. Even Terry Toons’ flying marble horse, Luno the White Stallion of the 1960s would feel at home in this galaxy. Almost anything can be made to fly in this artist’s cosmology. A frequent and enthusiastic flyer, Dono’s seven week residency and exhibition at the South Australian School of Art was determined by a hectic international flight itinerary between Berlin, Helsinki, Jakarta and Krakow. Uncannily and fortunately, this schedule only narrowly avoided the fateful Garuda Flight GA200, Jakarta-Yogyakarta on March 7, leaving behind in Yogyakarta art work planned for this exhibition. As with much of Dono’s art, flight is always about risk.
On landing safely in Adelaide, Dono set about grounding himself in a local society that was, in large part, already well acquainted with him. This was his third visit, having presented wayang about the 2005 tsunami, Bayang bayang dalam bayangan (Shadows upon shadows) at Flinders University in 2006 and a workshop at South Australian School of Art. Engaging with grass roots as well as broader global concerns in 2007, he attracted an even wider range of people to work collaboratively in creating highflying projects. Along with an installation of seven Broken angels refashioned by local art students and Interogasi, a series of DVD’s featuring persecuted Indonesian artists, the idea of a Trojan horse took wing in the imagination of local artists and in their individual responses. This manifestation of the Greek myth where the city of Troy was defeated by stealth3, however, would, with the addition of historically inaccurate flying apparatus like wings and a tailplane, become subject to further complex layers of contemporary political, social and historical interpretation. What was being smuggled in, by whom and why? The first citadels to be destabilised during the residency were mindsets concerning the artist-as-isolated-hero, centre-periphery models of cultural value, and the global art gospel of new-ness. During his sojourn in South Australia, Dono’s presence has challenged conventional understandings of relations between trans-national art politics, local communities and individual practice. Although small communities such as Adelaide or Yogyakarta might consider themselves marginal and in dialectical relation to metropolitan ‘centres’, meaning, value and agency are not solely determined by the hegemonic apparatus of art world fashionability. Local, regional and inter-regional linkages or nodes of interest (such as Yogyakarta-Adelaide networks) can and do thrive regardless of, or in line with, dominant international trends. Moreover, continuing western fetishisation of originality and ‘the contemporary’ as the sole hallmarks of quality have been openly questioned by Dono’s practice which flies in the face of assumptions about global art production and the stereotypical role of jet-setting, cosmopolitan artists.
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It is often assumed that low cost air travel, multi-national capital and electronic systems of communication have created the recent international phenomenon of itinerant ‘tribes’ of artists, curators and critics, ever on the wing between major biennials, triennials and residencies around the world. Such trans-national art projects facilitate rapid flows of ideas, points of cultural contact - including the ‘slippery lubricants’4 of cultural diplomacy - and, most significantly, markets for a veritable caravanserie of art commodities and related products. The global nomads ‘produced’ by this development participate in a dizzying constellation of major art programs circulating throughout the world, of which Yogyakarta-based Dono is a foremost exemplar. In this residency, however, that’s not the whole story; the taken-for-grantedness of ‘recent-ism’ pervading current art practice is subjected to close scrutiny. In particular, we are reminded that recent internationalisation of contemporary art does not necessarily rupture artists’ originating cultural influences and belief systems, nor does it render them generic. Dynamic and adaptable, many ancient traditions continue to cross-fertilise, as well as problematise, modern concerns, often in surprising ways. In recent times the forces of globalisation have, at experiential, theoretical and metaphysical levels of understanding, accelerated our awareness of global flows of capital and information while the aeronautics industry has opened up sophisticated forms of cross-cultural contact. As these processes collapse the integrity of geo-political borders and and compress the experience of time, cultural groupings within nation states like Indonesia or Australia or localities such as Adelaide or Yogyakarta become increasingly complex and ‘contaminated’. As cultural identity assumes more fluid dimensions, paradoxically, the specificities of place intensify under the ubiquitous pressure of homogenisation and standardisation. We should not, however, assume these phenomena are the exclusive province of technological innovation over the last few decades; trade and curiosity have always stimulated cross-cultural exchange. Similarly, multi-national entities may seem to have arisen as a consequence of late capitalism but international corporations have plied their trade, politically and economically, since at least one and a half millennia before the Dutch East India Company set up its base in Batavia (now Jakarta) from 1619 and dominated world commerce until the nineteenth century. It was, incidentally, within this vast trading enterprise that Abel Tasman encountered that large navigational obstacle later to be named New Holland5, the Indigenous inhabitants of which had been trading and visually recording exchanges, for centuries - and perhaps longer - with sailors and merchants from Makassar (Macassar) which is now part of the Republic of Indonesia6.
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On a lighter note, aeronautical flight is at least as old as marine forms of transport so that, mythologically speaking, artists’ air travel is anything but ground-breaking. Prior to the invention of the powered aeroplane, winged horses, angels, chariots, garuda birds, phoenixes and a fabulary of other exotic beasts regularly transported artists, gods and elixers of creativity across the celestial sphere with frequent stopovers on terra firma. What differs from today’s aircraft, apart from mass flight opportunities, crowded airspace and occasional crashes is less comfort, diminished exhilaration and higher prices (whoever heard of deities issuing tickets?). As well as representing flight from earliest times, artists have been highly adept at negotiating and embracing those principles that are so quintessentially aerial; fluidity, contingency and mobility. This was occurring long before cultural theorists of the 1990s enthusiastically adopted these notions, officially expelled essentialisms and decreed the doctrine of boundary dissolve7. Artistic blurrings often showed scant respect for those demarcation zones so germane to the ‘purity’ of the modernist canon - craft, theatre and the social domain. Artists of the 1960s and ‘70s (and earlier) in the ‘west’ actively challenged divisions between performance and the plastic arts while over thousands of years ‘the rest’ had been invigorating older traditions by violating art form purity and exceeding ethnic restrictions. Artistic mobility and cultural transmission across disciplinary and national borders, then, are not new: it’s just that recent manifestations of globalisation have speeded things up. Dono acknowledges and incorporates these longer histories into his work. For someone who spends so much time hurtling across the heavens between international engagements, his approach appears paradoxical, or, as he explains, ‘dialectical’8. While his methodology of fragmentation and mobility is now widely acknowledged as a model for contemporary art practice, it nevertheless exists within deeply rooted practices and collaborative traditions that sustain and nourish its apparent modernity. According to the artist, the deeper the roots, the more likely is survival during times of drought - climatic or artistic9. In Dono’s oeuvre Hindu literature, wayang puppetry, animism and Javanese metaphysics meet Fluxus10, Indonesian activism and sustainable (but often dodgy11) third world recycling techniques for discarded technologies. And then there are occasional references to Flash Gordon comics. Add to this a wicked sense of humour, a palpable distaste for pretentiousness and abuse of power allied with a commitment to social relations and social justice and the scenario is set for a Dono work of art to emerge. Above all, this art concerns people, politics, the power of humour and a high degree of risk.
Travelling with these aspects of Yogyakarta/Indonesian culture and ‘other’ traditions, his artistic baggage exceeds the conventionally prescribed limits of ‘Biennale International Club Class Art’12 that is usually typified by lightweight postmodern pastiche. As a ‘long-distance cultural specialists traversing the globe in both physical and aesthetic ways’13, Dono’s multi-faceted approach to art making and his steadfast commitment to relational aesthetics ensures that his sojourns in different places, and particularly in smaller regional cities like Adelaide, constitute much more than stopovers on a one-way trans-metropolitan itinerary. Acknowledging the inherent fluidity of culture and its recent rapid diffusion is not to deny important links existing between artists and their immediate local communities, originary or adopted. Nor does it deny lateral connections between geographically distant and distinctive societies such as Yogyakarta and Adelaide. It is not as if globalisation has flung trans-national artists into a state of enforced postmodern placeless-ness: rather, encounters take place within and between expanded concepts of real and ‘imagined communities’14. In addition to the familiar grand narratives of global and national histories, Kanaga Sapabathy has championed local specificities and called for regionalist art histories in counteracting the ‘magnetic pull of the centres on the Atlantic seabord’15 as well as ‘turfs circumscribed by national boundaries’16.
Heri Dono, Gamelan Goro Goro (detail), 2004, Multi media / installation
Space does not permit a fuller study of cultural and political alliances between Adelaide-Yogyakarta regions and visiting artists like Heri Dono but a brief background to this South Australian community’s interaction with the artist and his Yogyakarta ‘locale’ may, hopefully, begin to counter prevailing myths about regionality and larger institutional claims of ‘discovery’. The circumstances surrounding the Adelaide residency came about in the first instance not because of the artist’s international reputation - or his passion for air travel - but through specific and established groups of people or, in contemporary parlance, a cultural ‘node’ connecting two cities. These entangled alliances, essentially modest in scale and layered with traces of conviviality and hospitality, helped to sustain and enrich Dono’s latest visit. Within the whirl of global dynamics, such delicate social webs are too often underestimated in making sense of new ‘fields of possibility’ that transcend national borders. As Nikos Papastergiadis suggests, it is by ‘... considering the little connections that slip between cultures, and the small degrees of overlap between different people’ that we get ‘a glimpse of cosmopolitan consciousness’17.
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10 Heri Dono, Dewa Ruci (detail), 2001, Multi media / installation
Existing since at least the 1960s in Adelaide has been a loose network bringing together artists, craftspersons, academics, dancers, writers, language teachers and others in this city and Yogyakarta. This is often the case with cultural exchanges. Constructed over time, these criss-crossings, re-visitings and overlapping of individual paths are commonly overlooked in the sweep of global art history, even though the tenacity of small scale, people-to people associations and interventions are significant in initiating later and larger institutional traffic. To a large extent, Heri Dono’s wider exposure to Australian audiences since 1993 has been through regular participation in Queensland Art Gallery’s Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT)18. As ‘the’ gala gig on Australia’s art calendar, it has also featured a number of Dono’s Indonesian colleagues, many of whom are based or have studied in Yogyakarta. Prior to this illustrious event which regularly refreshes and expands Australian-Indonesian networks, was another vital but unacknowledged field of expertise that made this participation possible; the Adelaide based Australian Indonesian Association and Perth based ARX (Artists Regional Exchange, 1987-1998)19 brought together many South East Asian and Australian artists and although Dono was the first Indonesian artist to be selected in 1987, he was unable to participate20. Therefore, even before arriving in Adelaide thirteen years ago for the Adelaide Festival of Arts Biennial, Adelaide Installations21, Dono and many residents of this city were already well known to each other, having worked together, shared mutual acquaintances or met in Yogyakarta or at the APT. These affiliations also had an historical context in that Australian political and educational support for Indonesia dated from 194922 and by the 1960s Indonesian ex-Colombo Plan students established the Australia Indonesian Association in Adelaide23. From the 1970s many Adelaide artists studied in Yogyakarta24, including Jenni Dudley25, Colleen Morrow26, Su Elliott27, Brita Miklouho-Maklai28 and Libby Basuki29, and with Dono’s ASRI colleague Tok Basuki who migrated to Adelaide in 1984, they became key figures in galvanizing ‘an Asian [and particularly Yogyakarta] focus’. From the 1970s Indonesian cultural activities centred around Flinders University’s Asian Studies Department30 which hosted eminent Indonesian academics, performers and writers including W.S. Rendra, Sanento Yuliman and Jim Supangkat.
Lectures at the School of Art by Semsar Siahan, and residencies by Dadang Christanto (1991) and F.X. Harsono (1992) were followed in 2002 by artists from the Yogyakarta collective, Taring Padi35. These regular contacts with (mostly) Javanese artists broadened the School’s undergraduate and postgraduate curriculum36 and led to a series of public forums on Asian art from 1998-2003 with industry partner, Nexus Multicultural Arts Centre37. These included key Indonesian critic and art historian, M. Dwi Marianto38 and curator, Rifky Effendi39. Dono’s residency forms an integral part of and accumulates these local strands of association while maintaining critical immersion in contemporary Indonesian culture and critical subversion of indifference, pretension and social injustice at home, abroad and in the host society. It is obvious to many beyond their shores that Australians are not living in a Dream Republic; they may be living in a dream but not yet in a republic. It is important to note that Dono’s approach, while highly socialised, deeply networked and immensely convivial in nature is not a utopian dream. Nor does it constitute community art in a conventional sense. Indeed, the artist’s seemingly irreverent position can be challenging and uncomfortable at times for local diasporic Indonesians and other afficionados of ‘pure’ Yogyakarta culture, for some, traditional ‘authenticity’ is compromised when, with this artist, gamelan orchestras go ‘bangelan’40 and wayang narratives move out of the pendopo to take on current political issues. Relational methodology can present down sides, as well, for the most recently formed of Dono’s communities - those working with him on the current project. Undoubtedly, open-ended processes offer the ‘dynamic of encounter, exchange dialogue & [sic] interactivity’41, with an enormous potential for transformation and ‘sparkle’ of many kinds. Here the artist describes his role within these social processes as ‘making motivation‘ or ‘making brave’42. Alternatively (or additionally), for gung ho proponents of western individualism such ‘amorphous cultural space’43 can represent a ‘foreign’ and even bewildering work environment; there’s mess, uncertainty and exhaustion at times but, perhaps most dangerous of all, there’s the sure knowledge that during this process the seepage of life into art offers a terrifying degree of freedom. A bit like flying, really.
If 1970s Adelaide ‘discovered’ traditional Yogyakarta culture, the 1980s and 1990s saw a second wave of exchange with contemporary Indonesian artists, generated through the South Australian School of Art31, Adelaide TAFE32 and through the efforts of artist and Asialink resident, Damon Moon33. Ironically, this vigorous Indonesian exchange occurred against a local background of little if any mainstream art interest in Asian of Pacific art, compared with other Australian cities’ embrace of art in the region; in 1999 Adelaide was described as ‘the black hole of the Asia-Pacific’34.
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Nicolas Bourriaud has coined the term ‘semionaut’ to describe the artist working in an open-ended and discursive way44, a kind of entrepreneur who ‘...map[s] trajectories between signs’. According to Glenn Bach, however, the term ‘socionaut’ is more appropriate in that, unlike Bourriaud’s designation, the latter word acknowledges the crucial social dimension of this kind of practice45. Extending this definition even further, Dono becomes literally and metaphorically an aeronaut who subscribes to W. S. Rendra’s declaration that artists live somewhere between earth and sky46. This can be a difficult concept in secular western culture as the heavens tend to be regarded as unsafe empty space or, in aesthetic terms, a site of insubstantial (read ‘airy fairy’) goings on. Not so in Dono’s airspace. It is precisely this oscillation between the ineffable and the banal that has attracted so many artists to work, play and negotiate the structure of Dono’s (winged) Trojan horse project. Combined with a staggering amount of collaboration and trust, liberally applied absurd humour and more than a touch of mysticism, Dono’s work offers a significant platform for current socio-political concerns, local and/or international in nature. In particular, the monstrously scaled and ridiculous cardboard horse-creature asserts: the artists’ capacity to subversively engage in activism and political actions; infiltrate organisations, institutions, and cross boundaries under the cover of art47. This is no mean feat in the current Australian political climate where bureaucracy has raised fascism to new heights and universities are suffocating under the weight of corporatised and legalistic systems based on fear and mistrust. ‘Horsefeathers’ might provide a fitting description48. In a bold gesture of defiance, Dono’s winged equine juggernaut offers another platform as well; this Trojan horse literally allows visitors to enter its belly and experience a range of art works and statements by collaborating artists. Created on site in the gallery-as-open-studio, these interventions represent the result of activity that has been organically generated between artists, art and crafts students from three local art schools and Dono’s existing Indonesia-phile local networks. For a time this blended community was able to dissolve disciplinary boundaries and demonstrate what an art school could be, notwithstanding some temporary ‘trashing’ of SASA’s pristine gallery in the process.
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In Adelaide Heri Dono has not only discombobulated notions of nation and community, tradition and modernity, and the so-called global ‘construction’ of high flying artists; he has, at a time of contracted hopes and dashed dreams, expanded our sense of what is possible through art. Given the widespread enchantment of this project and the artist’s affinity with animism, who knows, an aerial sighting of the Trojan horse might yet occur. There is after all, a formidable fart machine attached to the beast’s hindquarters. 1. Garuda. A flying creature from Hindu mythology. that was carrier of the god Vishnuu. It is now the official symbol of the Republic of Indonesia and of the Kingdom of Thailand. Garuda is also the name of Indonesia’s national airline. 2. Becak. Indonesian for pedicab. 3. Lindemans, M., ‘Trojan Horse’, Enclyclopedia Mythica, Online: http://www.pantheon.org/articles/t/trojan_ horse.html Accessed 11/04/2007. ‘When the Greeks had lain siege to Troy for ten years, without results, they pretended to retreat. They left behind a huge wooden horse, in which a number of Greek heroes, among whom Odysseus had hidden themselves. The spy Sinon convinced the Trojans, despite the warnings of Laocoon to move the horse inside the city as a war trophy. In the following night, the Greeks left the wooden horse and attacked the unsuspecting and celebrating Trojans, and finally conquered Troy.’ ‘Trojan horse’ is also the name of a computer program ‘that unlike a virus contains or installs a malicious program (sometimes called a the payload or ‘trojan’)’. Like the Trojans’ ill-fated decision to bring the horse inside their gates, these programs ‘depend on actions by the intended victims’. ‘Trojan horse (computing)’, Wikipedia. Online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_horse_ %28computing%29 Accessed 30/03/2007. 4. Poshyananda, A., ‘The future: post-cold war, postmodernism, postmarginalia (playing with slippery lubricants)’, in Turner, C. (ed), Tradition and Change: Contemporary art of Asia and the Pacific, Queensland Art Gallery, Southbank, Brisbane, 1993. p. 9. 5. Gates, M., ‘Damon Moon/Steven Goldate’, Patterning in contemporary art: layers of meaning, Asialink Centre: University of Melbourne, 1997, p. 12 6. Makassar (Macassar) Straits divide South Sulawesi from Kalimantan (Indonesia). Evidence of sustained contact in the region between Indigenous Australia and Makassar - and which pre-dated western trading blocs - is documented in 1948 and c1974 Indigenous bark paintings from Australia’s ‘top end: See Minimini Mamarika, The Malay prau, 1948, Umbakumba, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide and, Attributed to Nandabitta, Makassan prau and trepang curling, c 1974, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. One of the main trading commodities was bêche-de mer (trepang). 7. See, for example, Bhabha, H., The location of culture, Routledge, London and New York, 1994. See also: Hollinshead, K., ‘Tourism, hybridity, and ambiguity: the relevance of Bhabha’s “third space” cultures’, Journal of Leisure Research, Vol. 30, 1998; ‘Wuthnow, J.,Deleuze in the postcolonial: On nomads and indigenous politics’, Feminist Theory, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2002, pp. 183-200. 8. Dono, H., Conversation with author, Adelaide, 31 March 2007. 9. Dono, H., Conversation with author, Adelaide,
13 March 2007. 10. ‘Fluxus is not a moment in history or, an art movement. Fluxus is a way of doing things, a tradition, and a way of life and death ... The research program of the Fluxus laboratory is characterised by twelve ideas: globalism, the unity of art and life, intermedia, experimentalism, chance, playfulness, simplicity, implicativeness, exemplatavism, specificity, presence in time and musicality.’’. See Friedman, K., ‘Forty years of Fluxus’, p. 1. Online: http:// w.w.w.artnotart.com/fluxus/kfriedman-fourtyyears. html. Accessed 6/04/2007. 11. Dodgy. Australian vernacular referring to something questionable, not quite right, suspect or ‘on the nose’. In this case, many of Dono’s reconstituted motors from personal fans, for example, would not pass western health and safety standards for electrical wiring. 12. Fuller, P., cited in Hill, P., ‘Build on it and they will come’, online: http://www.theage.com.au/news/ arts/build-on-it-and-they-will-come/2006/06/2911511 Accessed 6/07/2006, p. 1. 13. Harris, C. ‘The Buddha goes global: Some thoughts towards a transnational art history’, Art History, Vol 29, No 4, 206, p. 699. 14. Anderson, B., Imagined communities : reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, Verso, London & New York, 1991 (Rev. and extended ed., 2nd ed.). 15. Sapabathy, T. K., ‘A Syncretic Perspective’, Praxis M (‘’Traditions and Narratives: ARX ‘87 Post Event Issue’), No 18, p.25. Sapabathy, spoke of the need to construct new micro-histories to adequately convey the ‘hydra-headed nature’ of ‘multiple, often-times competing, colliding impulses that characterise the art worlds in Southeast Asia’. 16. Sapabathy, T. K., ‘Introduction’, Modernity and Beyond: Themes in Southeast Asian Art, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore, 1996, p. 8. 17. Papastergiadis, N., ‘Glimpses of cosmopolitanism in the hospitality of art’, Broadsheet, Vol 35, No 2, 2006, p. 112. 18. Significantly, Heri Dono is the only artist, to date, who has been invited to participate in three out of five APT events. His work was included in APT1: (1993), APT3: Beyond the future (1999) and APT4: (2002). In APT1 Dono ‘represented ‘Indonesia with eight other artists: F.X Harsono, Dadang Christanto, Ivan Sagito, Nyoman Erawan, A.D. Pirous, Dede Eri Supria, Sudjana Kerton and Srihadi Soedarsono. APT2 did not include Dono. Indonesian artists selected were: Nindityo Adipurnomo, Agus Suwage, Anusapati, Arahmaiani, (Yani) and Marintan Sirait. APT3 positioned Dono as a collaborator with the Elision performance ensemble within the ‘Crossing Borders’ category, alongside Dadang Christanto, the Brahma Tirta Sari Studio and Utopia Batik. Other Indonesian artists grouped by country were: Mella Jaarsma, Moelyono, Tisna Sanjaya and S. Teddy D.
and particularly Yogyakarta since 1977. She maintains extensive links with Indonesian culture and contemporary artists, including Heri Dono. Lawyer and artist, Bill Morrow has also been actively involved in developing Australian-Indonesian relations. 27. Su Elliot is a designer and dancer who has lived in Indonesia and continues to foster these cultural links in Adelaide. 28. Miklouho-Maklai, B., ‘The cryptic image: The ‘Surreal’ in Contemporary Indonesian Art of Yogyakarta’ Unpublished MA thesis, Visual Arts/ Indonesian Studies, The Flinders University of South Australia, 1998. See also ‘Seni Rupa Baru and beyond: Contemporary Indonesian art since 1966’, Unpublished dissertation, Dip. Social Sciences (Asian Studies), The Flinders University of South Australia, 1988. Miklouho-Maklai met Heri Dono in 1991. Lee, B., email to author, 7 March 2007. 29. Libby Basuki (nee Pollard) lived in Yogyakarta and studied at ASRI from 1979 to 1984. 30. Through the work of Keith Foulcher and later, Anton Lucas, these activities were mostly of a political, performance and literary nature. Lucas’ enthusiasm for central Javanese culture resulted in a purpose built Pendopo (open pavillion) for gamelan and dance, in which Heri Dono’s ‘experimental’ wayang performance, Bayang bayang dalam bayangan (Shadows upon shadows) took place in 2006. 31. From 1985 ‘Cross Cultural Studies’ was introduced into the Art School curriculum, followed by ‘AsiaPacific Arts’. Independent artist and designer, Jenni Dudley, with the author, introduced Semsar Siahan, Dadang Christanto and F.X. Harsono to the School of Art. In 1994 Head of School, Max Lyle, with the assistance of the Helpmann Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts, gifted a printing press to Institut Seni Indonesia (ISI) in Yogyakarta. This was followed by visits by the author in 1995 and 2000. In 1995 Lyle taught the first bronze casting workshop at ISI and was invited by M. Dwi Marianto and ISI to exhibit with Dwi Antoro in a joint sculpture exhibition in the grounds of Pak Djoko Pekek’s residence. 32. Barrie Wraith worked in Indonesia in 1981-1982, subsequently taught ‘Asian Art’ at AIT Arts College (TAFE) and organised an exhibition in Yogyakarta of work by Helpmann Academy art students from Adelaide. 33. Adelaide-based Damon Moon is a potter and curator and was an Asialink resident in Indonesia in 1997. In 1998-99 he co-curated the landmark international touring exhibition AWAS!: Recent Art from Indonesia that travelled to Melbourne, Yogyakarta, Tokyo, Germany and Holland. Ironically, this exhibition was not shown in Adelaide, despite approaches to the University of South Australia Art Museum and other contemporary art spaces in Adelaide. See O’Neill, Lindsay (eds), Awas! Recent art from Indonesia, Indonesian Arts Society, Melbourne, c. 1999. 34. Manton, N., Interview with author, APT3, Brisbane, September 1999. A former cultural attaché in South East Asia, Neil Manton was a founding member of the APT Board. See Manton, N., Cultural relations: The other side of the diplomatic coin, Homosapien Books, 2003. Apart from Nexus Multicultural Arts Centre, mainstream contemporary art spaces in Adelaide and the Art Gallery of South Australia rarely showed interest in contemporary art by Asian artists (within or residing outside Australia). The Art Gallery of South Australia had no Curator of Asian Art from July 2001 until the appointment in November 2003
of James Bennett, a curator, scholar and educator of note who curated the landmark travelling exhibition, Crescent Moon in 2006. See Bennett, J., Crescent Moon: Islamic Art & civilisation in Southeast Asia, Bulan Sabit Seni dan Peradaban Islam di Asia Tenggara, Art Gallery of South Australia and Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, Adelaide, 2006. 35. This visit was part of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Adelaide Festival of Arts Cultural Residency Program in 2002. Yustoni Volunteero, Hestu Ardiyanto and. Aris Prabawa from Yogyakarta’s Taring Padi collective presented workshops and lectures and painted banners at South Australian School of Art, Flinders University and AITArts (TAFE). The Adelaide artists’ collective, Indonesia Australia United Artists was also associated with the visit. 36. See, for example, Wraith, B., ’Tragicomedy in the sociopolitical protest art of Yogyakarta’, Unpublished MA thesis, South Australian School of Art, University of South Australia, 2006. 37. These forums were funded by the Helpmann Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts. 38. ISI lecturer, M. Dwi Marianto inaugurated these forums with a lecture on Reformasi immediately following the fall of Suharto. The visit assisted by Damon Moon. Marianto also delivered addresses at the 1998 Australian Art Association Annual Conference hosted in Adelaide by the Art Gallery of South Australia and The South Australian School of Art and has been an examiner for the School’s postgraduate program. 39. Rifky Effendi was an Asialink Arts Administration resident based in Adelaide in 2000 and is now a prominent Indonesian curator. 40. Dono regularly encourages experimentation in wayang and gamelan traditions. In 2002 he conducted a children’s workshop, creating a ‘bang-elan’ percussion orchestra at Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane. 41. Cocker, E: ‘Galleries, artists, art’, The Profession, p. 1. Online: http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache: INVqMWXaVuIJ:www.engage.org/(kutkhx55a4 Accessed 6/04/2007. 42. Dono, H., Conversation with the author, Adelaide, 5 April 2007. 43. Author unknown, ‘Online events’, Tate, p. 2. Online: http://w.w.w.org.uk/forums/message. jspa?messageID=7846 Accessed 6/10/2007. 44. Bourriaud, N., Relational aesthetics, Les presses du Reel, Paris, 2002. Relation aesthetics is defined as ‘a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space’. 45. Bach, G., ‘SoundAsArt: Blurring of the boundaries’, urbanNovember. Online: http://www.urbannovember. org/conference/viewabstract.php?id=19&cf=2 Accessed 6/04/2007. 46. Dono, H., (after W. S. Rendra), conversation with the author, Adelaide, 11 April 2007. 47. Knights, M., Press release, SASA Gallery, University of South Australia, 12 April 2007. 48. Horsefeathers: ‘ nonsense’; ‘makes no sense‘; ‘The fur at the coronet of a horse’s hoof’; a politically correct substitute for horse shit’. Horse Feathers is also the title of a Marx Brothers Film of 1932. Urban Dictionary. Online: http://www.urbandictionary. com/define.php?term=horse+feathers. Accessed 11/04/2007.
Heri Dono, Watching Marginal People (detail), 2000, Multi media / installation
APT4 featured Heri Dono as the sole Indonesian artist. He also participated in the 2002 ‘Kids APT’ program. In APT5 Eko Nugroho was the sole Indonesian artist. 19. Originally standing for Australia and Religious Exchange, the title was changed in 1991 to reflect a less Australia-centric position, Artists’ Regional Exchange. This was the same year John Clark staged a landmark conference in Canberra, Modernism and Postmodernism in Asian Art. Indonesian artists formed a significant part of four out of five ARX programs between 1987 and 1998. Dono’s ARX compatriots included: Tonny Haryanto (1987); Gendut Ryanto, Nyoman Nuarta, Sri Melela, Jim Supangkat (1989); F.X. Harsono, Moelyono (1992); Arahmaiani, I Made Djirna, Moelyono, Totua Magdalena Pardede, Agoes Hari Rahardjo (Agoes Jolly), Enin Surpriyanto (1995). 20. Dono was refused permission to participate in ARX by his art school lecturers at ASRI (Akademi Seni Rupa Indonesia) in Yogyakarta on the grounds that the interdisciplinary nature of the event was too radical. Dono, H., Conversation with the author, Adelaide, 2 April 2007. 21. Dono’s work for this major 1994 visual art program included a large scale outdoor performance with fire, Kuda Binal; Tau Tau, an outdoor sculptural installation along the Torrens River Parklands and an installation, Fermentation of Minds, at an abandoned city warehouse, the Gerard & Goodman building. 22. Australian unions strongly supported Indonesian independence against Dutch colonialism in 1949. 23. From 1950 The Colombo Plan provided aid to the Asian region, mostly from Australia, Canada and New Zealand through technical and educational assistance as well as capital aid projects. By 1967/8 the Plan had enabled ‘8007 Asians’ to study in Australia. Australia’s International Aid, Department of External Affairs, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, January, 1969, pp. 8-9. Cited in Greenwood, G. Approaches to Asia: Australian Postwar Policies and Attitudes, McGraw-Hill, Sydney, 1974, pp. 37 ff. The Adelaide based Australia Indonesian Association attracted a broad range of Australian-Indonesian residents, such as Pak Djako Sutratmo, Pak Nusbar and Pak Suharto (amongst many other) and nonIndonesian Australians with an interest in political and cultural aspects in Indonesia, with a strong focus on Yogyakarta arts and culture. 24. After a period of political tension in the 1960s, Indonesia became a magnet for young Australians seeking alternative life styles during the 1970s. Expanding their travel horizons, cultural curiosity and linguistic skills, many students and artists desired counter cultural experiences beyond the constraints of bland Anglo Adelaide. Bali and Yogyakarta’s rich traditional heritage of visual and performing arts offered ready and convivial access to performance, music and craft skills such as batik, weaving, etc. 25. Artist and designer Jenni Dudley lived in Yogyakarta in from 1973 to 1974 and, returning to Adelaide, was instrumental in teaching batik and facilitating exchanges with Yogyakarta artists, a number of whom she introduced to Australian artists and institutions. From the 1990s, she made two films about Yogyakarta artist, Lucia Hartini. See Dudley, J., Pusaran Nortex: From the kitchen to outer space: The paintings of Lucia Hartini (1993). See also Delandeys, Jennifer, Perbatasan (Boundary) (2000-2002). 26.Artist and textile collector, Colleen Morrow has created significant networks throughout Indonesia
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14 Heri Dono, Shock Therapy (detail), 2004, Multi media / installation
Heri Dono, Dewa Ruci (detail), 2001, Multi media / installation
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Odyssey in the Space of Change by Jim Supangkat At the end of 2005, Artlink announced that Heri Dono was one of the artists who have been most often invited to eminent international biennales or triennials during the period of 1993 – 2005. Artlink reached that conclusion after observing 64 editions of 45 international biennales and triennials in America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Heri Dono was on the second rank, alone. On the first rank were three artists: Yang Fudong, Cai Guo-Qiang and William Kentridge. Meanwhile, on the lowest rank (the eighth one) were such prominent artists as Joseph Beuys, Marina Abramovic, Yayoi Kusama, Gilbert & George, Richard Serra, Gu-Wenda and Trinh T. Minha. Heri Dono managed to reach that rank not only because he is one of the Asian artists who have today gained prominence in the international art world (according to Asialink, almost 70% of the artists who have been most often invited to international biennales are Asian), but also because he almost never rejects invitations for exhibitions. Even in his most hectic schedule, he invariably manages to prepare new works for new exhibitions—especially if it is for a biennale or triennial, which he considers important. Heri Dono is an artist who is actively travelling all over the world. He is a tireless rolling stone. In a given year, he will be in his country merely for a month or two. For the rest of the year, he is anywhere but home. He travels to maintain his relationships with his artist colleagues, with curators, critics, gallery owners and art historians in many corners of the world. Heri Dono has a multitude of friends in the international art circle, and he wishes never to disappoint them. Not only does he respond to invitations for exhibitions; he also travels to join workshops, artists’ exchange programs, meetings and residence programs. Observing his travel schedule, it is hard to imagine how Heri Dono manages to create his works. It seems impossible to have a time to think, develop ideas and create works in such a hectic schedule. Heri Dono, however, has a system that enables him to keep working; a system that other artists might not think about. Heri Dono is not an artist bounded in his studio. He works when he is on residence programs or during workshops. He takes his works wherever he goes. He flies to a place with half-made works, or send the materials for his works to that place. He then finishes his works there, and sends them to yet another place for display. He generally takes some works abroad and comes home with new ones.
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Isn’t it true, however, that he wastes a lot of time travelling from one country to the next, which often takes more than 24 hours of his time every time he goes? Apparently, he even works during flights. The long flights he takes never bore him, because he uses his hours on the flight to note down ideas—in sketches with scribbling—in a little book that he always carries with him. Heri Dono has had the habit of noting down ideas since very early in his artistic journey; it is thus not a new habit acquired to spend time during his many travels. He does not simply note down ideas, but also develops ideas in the form of drawings and sketches. Many of these notes, therefore, are in series. In the beginning of our acquittance, Heri Dono often showed me his sketches. “Why don’t you go making them, then?” I asked him. “No money yet,” he would answer. And indeed he would go buy materials for his works as soon as he received some money. Besides canvasses and paints, he also collects used objects from flea markets. As long as I know him, Heri Dono lives simply and uses almost all his money to create works—some of them are now in the collections of leading museums in the world. “I used to be haunted by the fear of not having enough money to create my works,” he said once. Today, however, I think Heri Dono can be confident that he can create his works whenever he has the chance. I cannot avoid the impression that this artist has an unusual passion in turning the ideas in his notebook into reality. There is a natural drive that makes him dedicate his life to art. I think this is also the basis for his enthusiasm to fulfil all the requests for holding exhibitions all over the world. Heri Dono considers such invitations as a calling to create new works or to turn his myriad ideas into reality. Heri Dono’s daily life for the past twenty years is far from the public image of an artist at work. He does not work in his studio, and even not in his country. It seems as if he does not need a familiar place to maintain the continuity of his contemplations. He works during his travel and almost always in places that are alien to him, in new vicinities where he must meet new people and communicate with them. Perhaps this is why he does not mind the long travels: to find new places where he can work, to seek foreign places and new friends. I think Heri Dono is exploring the possibilities to find the conditions that bring him uncertainties. I think he is on an odyssey.
Heri Dono, Klinic Primata (detail), 2001, Multi media / installation
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This shows that communication is an important aspect in Heri Dono’s creative process. The desire to communicate—the passion to have dialogues with others—is reflected in his works and serves as his forte as the works are on display. His works, therefore, are almost always enchanting—especially his theatrical performance works that almost invariably involve many people. As a vagabond artist who travels to all corners of the world, equipped with the passion to work with communities, Heri Dono acts contrary to the myth about the artist who works alone in his or her studio and focuses on the strength of the individual contemplation. Although he does not wish to prove any art discourse in the contemporary art today—and neither is he aware of such discourses—Heri Dono’s opinions and belief turn out to deconstruct many of the myths that have influenced art developments in the twentieth century. Heri Dono grew up in a certain community—the Indonesian urban community—where many art concepts are mixed up. In such a condition, myths reveal their ugliest impact. Myths, which people tend to believe at face value, are often taken as principles. In such an environment, artists might lose their beliefs and doubt their own expressions, which actually are already meaningful as they arise from their own mindsets or perceptions. Heri Dono tries to break the domination of such myths. He follows his intuition and applies a method that is normal in such a search—i.e. the method of thinking in reverse. “Observing the many peculiar facts using an orderly logic will cause all those peculiarities to appear wrong. If we observe such facts using an upside down mind, however, everything will seem logical,” he explains. Heri Dono emerged during the mid-70s, when the art developments in Indonesia are showing changes. At the time, the belief in the Indonesian identity, which had given rise to traditionalism and veneration to past glory, was being questioned. The practice of de-politicising the art—which had emerged as a reaction against the previous practise of politicising the art—was in turn being criticised. Meanwhile, the principles of modernism, which had influenced art developments at the time, faced strong criticism, as those principles had actually not been fully understood. Such conditions provided an opportunity for Heri Dono. He rejected all the beliefs and opinions existing at the time. With an upside-down mind, he maintained a distance with both the criticised and the criticising views. Such an attitude of not taking sides did not give him a secure place—on the contrary, he received attacks from every possible direction.
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Heri Dono immediately attracted the attention of the Indonesian art world when in the beginning of his career as an artist he took on the theme of cartoons—from the cartoon movies and the comics. People thought that he was not being serious, or even making pranks. The conservatives thought that he was making fun of art because he adopted the theme of kitsch. Meanwhile, the rebellious artists who were the proponents of the contemporary art thought that he was teasing them. At the end of the 1970s, works of contemporary art in Indonesia tended to present strong and even violent social commentaries—inline with the strengthening power of the repressive government at the time. Actually, at the time Heri Dono was simply exploring his intuitions and those allegations could not be further from the truth. He did not intend to criticise anyone. In fact, Heri Dono could truthfully explain why he took on the theme of cartoons and comic art. “I’ve been interested in the cartoons because the world of cartoons isn’t a wholly logical world. There, human beings have no central position, and animals and things have personalities, just like humans do. They also have soul, spirit and feelings,” Heri Dono explains. “This is like the world of the animists, where every object has a soul, the chair can walk, the animals can talk, and the world of toys is like that of humans.” It is through the world of the cartoons that Heri Dono presents humorous works containing social criticism. Albeit being sarcastic at times, the criticism does not seem harsh because it is humorous. Even slapstick jokes are never dramatic on the world of cartoons. “Although the jokes can be harsh at times, they’re never painful—they’re even funny and entertaining,” Heri Dono says. “The cartoon creatures, even if they’re knocked flat, never die.” Heri Dono’s artistic journey did not stop there. He became interested in the Indonesian puppet theatres, and, again, drew controversy. Some observers thought that he took the path of the conservative artists who advocated traditionalism in the search for an Indonesian identity. Again, the allegation was wrong as Heri Dono was actually following his intuitions and viewed the puppets with a distinct, personal view. It turned out that Heri Dono found similarities between the cartoons and the Indonesian puppet theatres. His interests grew out of his meeting with a Javanese puppet master and puppet maker named Sukasman in 1978. He was originally interested because he and Sukasman had something in common. Sukasman, who lived in Yogyakarta, was known as an eccentric puppet maker who had long been creating controversies. People knew Sukasman as a puppet maker who dared to change the forms and symbols of the leather puppets.
Heri Dono, Born and Freedom (detail), 2004, Multi media / installation
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For the Javanese, the puppet theatres—especially that of the leather puppets—is a masterpiece that cannot be further developed. The leather puppet theatre is a form of art whose shapes and symbols are full of religious meanings. Some of these symbols are believed as mystical and sacred. For the Javanese, therefore, their puppet show is no mere entertainment. The show invariably contains moral values and has political power. It was thus understandable that people reacted to the changes that Sukasman had made. There were controversies, because the puppets Sukasman created revealed intricate visual patterns. One could not deny that Sukasman had mastered his art. Heri Dono is a Jakarta-born Javanese. Although he grew up in the metropolitan city, he is familiar with the Javanese culture. His mother has always taken the Javanese culture seriously. In 1980, Heri Dono moved to Yogyakarta to study at the Indonesian Art Institute, one of the two leading education institutions for the art. He left the institute in 1987 without gaining his diploma, but decided to live in Yogyakarta. Until today, Heri Dono is known as a Yogyakarta-based artist. Heri Dono learnt informally from Sukasman for several years since 1978. After that, he helped Sukasman make leather puppets for his shows. Through this, Heri Dono found a concept for his works, which we can see to this day. As we all know, he adopts the forms of the leather puppets in cartoonish and comical shapes. Besides using such forms in his paintings, Heri Dono also shows his cartoon ‘puppets’ in his performance, installation and media works. In 1992, Heri Dono worked on a major performance work with the theme of “Crazy Horse”. In this project, he combined the leather puppets and paper horses, which were the main props of the traditional street theatres known in many Indonesian towns. Working hard in his studio, Heri Dono created all the props for the show—i.e. several paper horses (half-bodied horses), gigantic puppets (used as a kind of banners), and costumes with an emphasis on the masks. In this project, his tendency to work with the community was strongly revealed for the first time. Heri Dono chose to work with the community living around his house, including the children. Heri Dono directed the show. The players were members of the street theatre troupe that usually performed all around Yogyakarta. During the show, performed several times in public places in Yogyakarta, Heri Dono allowed the troupe to distribute an upside-down hat to collect money from the audience, just as they had always done.
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The show was not unlike the usual street theatre performances. It, however, gave a strong impression among the audience, as the dominant properties of the show made it seem like a gigantic painting by Heri Dono, always moving and changing. The year, 1992, also marked Heri Dono’s entry to the international art circle. The first step he took was joining the regional exhibitions in Japan and Australia. His name was becoming well known when he joined the exhibition of New Art from Southeast Asia at the Metropolitan Museum, Tokyo, in 1992. A year later, he made quite a name among the Australian public as he joined the First Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Brisbane. He presented a funny show entitled The Chair, involving local Australian students. Albeit funny, the work contained political issues. In the following year, 1994, the show of Crazy Horse was performed again at the Adelaide Art Festival. Since then, Heri Dono has been receiving invitations to join exhibitions in many Asian and Australian cities. His involvements in the series of regional exhibitions in the early 1990s proved to be his entrance to the international art circle. As he entered the international circle, Heri Dono was again confronted with major changes in the international art world. Armed with the approach he had developed locally in Indonesia, he again showed works that deconstructed various myths, using that ‘upside down mind’ of his. This time, his works deconstructed the myths existing in the developments of the art in the world. Heri Dono did not change his approach. He still followed his instinct and seemed to be neither surprised nor shocked by the developments of the contemporary art. He did not feel the need to adapt his opinions with the popular philosophy, beliefs, creeds and idioms of the contemporary art at the time. He, for example, did not try to adapt his performance with the criteria of the performance art. Neither did he seem to care when people debated whether his show could be categorised as performance art. In the contemporary art developments, performance art is an expression using the artist’s body as the media. This idiom reveals the effort to de-materialise artistic expressions. This philosophy is a strong reaction towards the dominant belief that had held sway until the middle of the twentieth century, especially in Europe and the US, which stated that art could only be meaningful when realised in a material form.
Heri Dono, Political Clown (detail), 1999, Multi media / installation
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Heri Dono was not aware of such philosophy, which mainly arose in the debates on the aesthetics. It was not easy for him to understand the reactions that emerged through the concept of de-materialising art. He thus had no need to follow the concept of performance art that had been born out of such reactions. For Heri Dono, his show was simply the result of his efforts to expand his awareness as a painter. “When I was exploring the world of the puppet theatre, I realised that the audience of the traditional puppet shows actually gained complicated sensations. I then corrected my understanding of art expressions, which had been focused on the fine arts. Suddenly, I felt the need to develop other sensibilities aside from that of sight. I realised that the puppet theatre is an artistic expression knowing no boundaries between the visual arts, music, theatre, and the literary arts,” Heri Dono explains. He then tries to develop a whole awareness on artistic expressions. He concludes that such an expression celebrates the culture, and finds justifications in the art phenomena of the ethnic cultures—the dances, music, theatres, literary arts and the visual arts (which find forms in the props)—that are invariably related to the philosophy of the culture. Heri Dono thus believes that art expressions are statements having a cultural context. “Art borrows signs and symbols from the culture, and must return them to the culture and evolve within the culture,” he says. “Therefore, an artist must have a cultural stance and clear perception about what culture actually is.” He continues, “If we take the culture as, say, a big cake, then the arts will serve as the pieces forming the cake. These pieces, however, can’t be taken away just like that, because if all the artists take these pieces, the cake will eventually be eaten up. On the contrary, the pieces must make the cake grow and this can happen if activating art simultaneously mean activating the culture.” With such a belief, Heri Dono deconstructs the myths that have influenced his perception on art. Previously, he also believed in the myth saying that art phenomena involved specialisations and were not directly related with the culture. He had also been affected by the myth that believed that artistic expressions found their roots in the strength of the individuals. Heri Dono’s efforts to break through the myths turn out to be inline with new philosophies on art that have emerged in the developments of the contemporary art. Such new philosophies even delve deep into the fundamental matters and rethink the art ideologies that had held sway since the nineteenth century and were influential until the middle of the twentieth century.
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The art ideology that is now being re-analysed believe that artists have distinct ways—or peculiarities—in catching the Muse and transfer her into their works of art. A work of art, therefore, is believed as having an intrinsic value. The new philosophy that now deconstructs such ideology arises especially among the neo-Wittgensteinian thinkers who question the definitions of art. Stephen Davies, one of those thinkers, writes: We might question whether the Western ideology of art corresponds to its reality? That ‘artists’ names a spiritual calling? That art making is unaffected by the market? That artworks are appreciated only when abstracted from the moral, political, and social settings within which they are generated? Art charaterize what has come to be known as fine or high art. The fine arts were described and typed at the close of eighteenth century, and associated notion of the artist as genius unfettered by the rules of craft, as well as by social conventions, was presented at much the same time. Along with this went the idea that the aesthetic attitude is a psychologically distinctive state of distance contemplation. (Stephen Davies, “Non-Western Art and Art’s Definition,“ in Noël Carroll [ed.]. Theories of Art Today. The University of Wisconsin Press Wisconsin: 2000.) Davies asserts that art phenomena in all cultures are actually related with story telling, picture making, sculpting, songs, dances and theatrical performances. All of these art practices are related with complicated aesthetic experiences that cannot be detached from the problems of meanings and values. Such art practices, according to Davies, are still being performed in the non-Western world and art, therefore, has social functions. Such practices are connected with rituals and the purifications of objects, which can be perceived as preservation efforts and record making. Davies says that in the Western world, art is differentiated from craft, which is not considered as part of art because it displays beauty that is taken as lowly. Davies himself does not tend to differentiate them into art and not-art; rather, he views it as Art with a capital ‘A’ and art with a lower-case ‘a’. Maserati, Lamborghini and Ferrari are works of art with lower case ‘a’. “Such works are not categorised as work of art because they do not meet the qualifications of the art institutions in the West,” explains Davies.
Heri Dono, Born and Freedom (detail), 2004, Multi media / installation
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According to Davies, in the non-Western cultures Art with the capital ‘A’ and art with the lower case ‘a’ are not differentiated, and beauty is not considered as lowly. Beauty is not only believed as creating feelings of happiness, but also containing values. Therefore, the meanings of art in the non-Western cultures can be far-flung and art itself is closely connected with the culture.
Such theories are trapped within a bipolar frame of thought that places ‘beauty’ and ‘beyond beauty’ in opposing poles. This results in the absence of a standard to explain what is actually meant by ‘beyond beauty’, as such a symptom is diametrically in opposition with ‘beauty—something that is taken as lowly. Confusion easily arises because ‘beyond beauty’ is not the same as ‘ugliness’, which is the true opposition of ‘beauty’.
Heri Dono says, “All the problems within my works are the problems of beauty. In exploring the world of beauty, I immerse myself in the sensibility that enables me to seek spirituality. In this realm, I’m forced to question all my views on the reality, which have been influenced by others’ views.” According to him, such a process does not present a rational awareness; instead, it brings to the fore a cultural awareness that accommodates illogical matters. If we judge such an awareness using our logic only, it will seem paradoxical.
Heri Dono views ‘beauty’ as the ‘root’ of an artistic expression (to which people attribute the label of ‘beyond beauty’). If we take such an artistic expression as the “fruit” of a plant, then this “fruit” cannot be detached from the results of the work done by the “roots”—and there are plants whose “fruits” are found in their roots. Therefore, there are no substantial differences between the beauty and the beyond-beauty. We cannot separate one from the other, much less placing them in opposing poles.
“In Yogyakarta, there are many small workshops repairing transistor radios for re-sale. I invite the technicians to work with me creating works of art, because I think their work carries signs of art that are closely related with the traditions and the culture,” says Heri Dono. Heri Dono views such radio technicians and craftsmen as creative and innovative people. They create toys and ready-made objects from Coca-Cola cans, used cardboards, packaging boxes and discarded broken objects. Heri Dono thinks that the sensibility of such technicians and craftsmen is the sensibility to perceive beauty as has been developed in the world of traditions. “Their works reveal innovations. The objects they make aren’t perfect, indeed, but innovations are never perfect anyway. Perfection is merely a continuation of an invention having no innovative contents,” says Heri Dono. Together with the technicians and craftsmen, Heri Dono creates his best works—e.g. Watching the Marginal People (1992), Ceremony of the Souls (1995), Flying Angels (1996) and Flying in a Cocoon (2001). These works are already in the collections of museums all around the world. Heri Dono’s observations that are inline with Stephen Davies’s views, deconstruct the myth that take beauty as something lowly. The deconstruction of such an influential views brings up the awareness that all the theories supporting such a myth are never actually able to explain what is meant by ‘beyond beauty’—as revealed in the disputes about “what is art”, which goes on until today.
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In Heri Dono’s observations, the aesthetic experience cannot be detached from humans’ experience in understanding life, and here art expressions are the sophistication of the aesthetic experience when one is confronted with the beauty. This, according to Heri Dono, takes place in the realm of emotions. Thus beyond beauty is beauty, when taken as an aesthetic experience instead of visual experience only. Here the fundamental premise of world art is questioned. Jim Supangkat
The Dream Republic, SASA Gallery, work in progress, 2007, photograph: Billal El-Youssef
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Menjelajahi Perubahan by Jim Supangkat Akhir 2005 lalu, Artlink menetapkan Heri Dono sebagai salah satu seniman yang paling sering diundang ke Biennale/Triennale internasional terkemuka, selama periode 1993 – 2006. Peringkat ini ditetapkan setelah Artlink mengamati 64 edisi dari 45 Biennale/Triennale internasional di Amerika, Eropa, Afrika, dan Asia-Pasifik. Heri Dono menempati peringkat kedua, sendirian. Pada peringkat pertama muncul tiga nama yaitu Yang Fudong, Cai Guo-Qiang, dan William Kentridge. Sementara itu pada peringkat terakhir (kedelapan) bisa ditemukan nama-nama besar seperti Joseph Beuys, Marina Abramovic, Yayoi Kusama, Gilbert & George, Richard Serra, Gu-Wenda, dan Trinh T. Minha. Peringkat itu dicapai Heri Dono bukan cuma karena ia satu di antara seniman Asia yang sekarang ini berkibar di lingkaran seni rupa dunia – hampir 70% seniman yang paling sering diundang ke Biennale internasional dalam hitungan Asialink adalah seniman Asia. Peringkat kedua ini dicapai Heri Dono karena ia tidak pernah menolak undangan pameran yang datang dari mana pun. Bahkan pada waktu-waktunya yang paling sibuk, ia selalu bisa menyiapkan karya baru untuk memenuhi undangan pameran, apalagi Biennale atau Triennale yang dalam persepsinya merupakan pameran penting. Heri Dono seorang seniman yang sangat aktif melakukan perjalanan ke luar negeri. Ia seorang “rolling stone” yang tidak pernah lelah. Dalam setahun, hanya satu atau dua bulan saja ia berada di tanah airnya. Selebihnya ia ada di tempat-tempat lain di berbagai penjuru dunia. Perjalanan ini dilakukannya untuk memelihara hubungannya dengan sesama seniman, dengan kurator, kritikus, gallery owners, dan, art-historians di berbagai bagian dunia. Heri Dono punya sangat banyak kenalan di lingkaran seni rupa dunia dan ia tidak pernah mau mengecewakan mereka. Bukan hanya undangan mengikuti pameran yang ia jawab; ia juga melakukan perjalanan ke berbagai negara untuk mengikuti workshops, artists’ exchange, pertemuan-pertemuan dan program residensi. Kalau melihat jadwal perjalanannya tidak bisa dibayangkan bagaimana ia bekerja membuat karya-karyanya. Rasanya mustahil ia memiliki waktu untuk berpikir, mengembangkan ide-idenya dan kemudian membuat karya-karya. Namun Heri Dono punya manajemen berkarya yang mungkin tidak terpikirkan oleh seniman lain.
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Ia bukan seniman yang terikat pada studionya. Ia berkarya ketika mengikuti berbagai program residency atau penyelenggaraan program workshop pada suatu pameran. Ia membawa karya ke mana pun ia pergi. Ia terbang ke suatu tempat dengan karya-karya yang masih setengah jadi, atau mengirim sejumlah bahan karya ke tempat yang ia tuju. Ia kemudian menyelesaikan karya-karyanya di tempat ini, lalu mengirimnya ke tempat lain lagi untuk dipamerkan. Biasanya ia membawa karya ke luar negeri dan pulang dengan membawa karya-karya baru. Tapi, apakah ia tidak membuang banyak waktu untuk perjalanan antarnegara bahkan antarbenua yang seringkali memakan waktu lebih daripada 24 jam? Ternyata bahkan di pesawat terbang pun ia bekerja. Penerbangan panjang tidak pernah membuat ia bosan karena ia memanfaatkan waktu berjam-jam di pesawat udara untuk mencatat ide-ide karyanya –sketsa yang diimbuhi berbagai catatan – pada sebuah buku kecil yang selalu dibawanya ke mana-mana. Kebiasaan mencatat ide-ide itu sudah dilakukan Heri Dono sejak awal kariernya dan bukan kebiasaan baru untuk membunuh waktu dalam perjalanan. Ia tidak hanya mencatat gagasan. Ia mengembangkan ide-ide pada gambar dan sketsa ini. Karena itu, banyak di antara catatan ide ini berseri. Pada awal perkenalan saya dengannya Heri Dono sering menunjukkan sketsa-sketsa ide itu. Saya tanya, “Mengapa tidak dilaksanakan?” Ia menjawab, “Belum punya uang.” Dan ia memang segera membeli bahan-bahan bagi karyanya begitu mendapat uang. Selain kanvas dan cat, barang-barang bekas yang didapat dari pasar loak adalah bahan karya yang sering dikumpulkannya. Heri Dono sejauh saya kenal hidup sederhana dan mengggunakan hampir semua penghasilannya – sejumlah karyanya sudah dikoleksi museum terkemuka di dunia – untuk membuat karya. “Dulu saya selalu diburu rasa takut tidak punya uang untuk membuat karya,” katanya suatu kali. Namun sekarang ini, setahu saya, Heri Dono sudah merasa tenang karena bisa membuat karyanya setiap saat ada kesempatan.
Heri Dono, Dewa Ruci (detail), 2001, Multi media / installation
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Saya tidak bisa menghindari kesan, seniman ini punya passion yang tidak biasa dalam melayani keinginannya melaksanakan ide-ide yang ada pada buku catatannya. Ada dorongan alami yang membuat ia memberikan hidupnya untuk seni. Saya kira, spirit ini juga yang mendasari jadwalnya yang ketat memenuhi semua undangan dari berbagai penjuru dunia. Heri Dono melihatnya sebagai panggilan membuat karya atau melaksanakan ide-idenya yang bertumpuk.
Yang terjadi pada Heri Dono adalah ia berusaha menerobos dominasi mitos-mitos itu. Ia mengikuti intuisinya dan menerapkan policy yang lazim dalam pencarian semacam ini, yaitu berpikir terbalik. Ia mengemukakan, “Melihat kenyataan-kenyataan aneh dengan logika yang benar akan membuat semua kenyataan aneh ini akan terlihat tidak benar. Tapi bila kenyataan-kenyataan ini dilihat dengan upside down mind, semua kenyataan ini akan terlihat masuk akal.”
Kehidupan sehari-hari Heri Dono itu, yang dijalaninya hampir 20 tahun terakhir, jauh dari image umum tentang proses berkarya seorang seniman. Ia tidak bekerja di studio, bahkan tidak di negaranya. Ia seperti tidak memerlukan ruang kerja yang akrab dengannya untuk menjaga kontinuitas kontemplasinya. Ia berkarya “di jalan” dan hampir selalu di tempat-tempat yang asing baginya, di lingkungan baru tempat ia harus berhadapan dan berkomunikasi dengan orang-orang baru. Sangat mungkin ini mendasari kesukaannya melakukan perjalanan jauh untuk mencari tempati berkarya. Mencari lingkungan yang asing dan kenalan-kenalan baru. Dalam pandangan saya, Heri Dono menjelajah mencari kondisi yang membawa uncertainty baginya – suatu odyssey.
Heri Dono muncul pada pertengahan 1970-an ketika perkembangan seni rupa Indonesia sedang memperlihatkan perubahan-perubahan. Ketika itu kepercayaan pada identitas Indonesia yang melahirkan tradisionalisme dan pemujaan masa lalu pada ekspresi seni, dipertanyakan. Depolitisasi seni sebagai reaksi pada politisasi seni pada perkembangan sebelumnya sedang dikecam. Sementara itu prinsip-prinsip modernisme yang memengaruhi perkembangan seni rupa pada waktu itu menghadapi kritik keras karena prinsip-prinsip ini ternyata tidak sesungguhnya dipahami.
Kenyataan ini menunjukkan bahwa komunikasi merupakan faktor penting pada proses berkarya Heri Dono. Keinginan berkomunikasi ini – passion berdialog dengan orang lain – tecermin pada karya-karyanya dan merupakan kekuatan ketika disajikan pada publik. Karena itu, karyakaryanya hampir selalu memesona. Khususnya karya-karya performance yang theatrical dan hampir selalu melibatkan banyak orang. Sebagai vagabond artist yang berkelana ke seluruh penjuru dunia dan punya passion bekerja dengan komunitas, Heri Dono menyangkal mitos tentang seniman yang bekerja secara individual di studio dan memusatkan ekspresinya pada kontemplasi yang percaya pada kekuatan individualitas. Kendati tidak melalui kesadaran dan keinginan membuktikan berbagai pergolakan art discourses pada perkembangan seni kontemporer sekarang ini, pandangan-pandangan dan keyakinan Heri Dono ternyata membongkar berbagai mitos yang berpengaruh dalam perkembangan seni rupa abad ke-20. Heri Dono berkembang pada sebuah masyarakat – masyarakat urban Indonesia – di mana konsep-konsep seni bercampur simpang-siur. Dalam keadaan semacam ini mitos-mitos memperlihatkan dampaknya yang paling negatif. Mitos yang memang selalu diyakini tanpa sikap kritis seringkali diperlakukan sebagai azas-azas. Dalam lingkungan semacam ini, seniman sangat mungkin kehilangan keyakinan dan seringkali menyangsikan ekspresinya sendiri yang sesungguhnya sudah bermakna karena muncul dari mind-set dan persepsinya.
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Kondisi semacam itu merupakan peluang bagi Heri Dono. Ia mengambil sikap tidak percaya pada semua pendapat dan keyakinan yang beredar. Dengan upside down mind ia mengambil jarak dengan pandangan yang dikritik maupun pandangan yang mengkritik. Sikap tidak berpihak ini tidak membuat Heri Dono berada pada posisi aman. Ia malah mendapat serangan dari semua arah. Karena itu ia segera menarik perhatian dunia seni rupa Indonesia ketika pada awal kariernya menyatakan karya-karyanya mengangkat dunia kartun – film dan komik. Heri Dono dianggap tidak bersungguhsungguh. La bahkan terkesan mengolok-olok. Bagi kelompok konservatif, ia dianggap menghina seni karena mengangkat kitsch. Bagi seniman pemberontak yang sedang menegakkan seni kontemporer, pernyataannya dibaca sebagai sindirian. Pada akhir tahun 1970-an karya-karya seni kontemporer di Indonesia cenderung menyajikan komentar sosial yang keras dan berdarah – paralel dengan mengerasnya kekuasaan pemerintahan yang represif pada waktu itu. Padahal, Heri Dono sedang menggali intuisinya dan penemuannya tidak berhubungan dengan kecurigaan-kecurigaan itu. Ia tidak bermaksud mengkritik siapapun. Pada kenyataannya, ia memang punya jawaban yang sungguh-sungguh tentang kartun dan komik yang diangkatnya sebagai bahasa ungkapan.
Heri Dono, Born and Freedom (detail), 2004, Multi media / installation
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“Dunia kartun menarik perhatian saya karena dunia ini tidak sepenuhnya masuk akal. Di dunia kartun kedudukan manusia tidak sentral, binatang dan benda-benda merupakan pribadi-pribadi yang sama dengan manusia. Mereka juga punya jiwa, spirit dan perasaan,” katanya. “Dunia ini seperti dunia masyarakat animistik, semua benda punya roh, kursi bisa jalan, binatang bisa berbicara, ada dunia mainan seperti dunia manusia.” Melalui dunia kartun itu Heri Dono menyajikan humor yang mengandung kritik sosial. Kendati kadang-kadang sarkastik kritik ini tidak terasa keras karena bersifat humoris. Humor slap-stick sekalipun tidak pernah dramatis di dunia kartun. “Walau kadang-kadang keras dan kasar humor tidak menyakitkan, bahkan lucu dan menghibur,” katanya. “Makhluk-makhluk kartun yang dipukul sampai gepeng sekalipun, kan tidak pernah mati.” Penjelajahan artistik Heri Dono ternyata tidak berhenti di dunia kartun itu. Ia tertarik pada wayang, dan langkahnya kembali mengundang kontroversi. Bagi sebagian pengamat seni kontemporer, ia dilihat mengikuti pandangan seniman konservatif yang mengusung tradisionalisme untuk mencari identitas Indonesia. Namun, lagi-lagi dugaan ini tidak benar karena sekali lagi Heri Dono cuma mengikuti intuisinya dan melihat wayang dengan pikirannya sendiri. Ternyata, ia melihat kesamaan di antara wayang dan kartun. Ketertarikan itu berawal pada pertemuannya dengan dalang dan pembuat wayang kulit Jawa bernama Sukasman, pada 1978. Ia tertarik karena Sukasman punya kesamaan dengannya. Sukasman yang tinggal di Yogyakarta dikenal sebagai pembuat wayang eksentrik yang sudah lama mengundang kontroversi. Sukasman dikenal berani mengubah bentuk dan simbol-simbol wayang kulit. Bagi masyarakat Jawa, wayang khususnya wayang kulit adalah karya agung yang sudah tidak mungkin dikembangkan lagi. Wayang kulit adalah kesenian yang bentuk dan simbol-simbolnya sarat dengan makna-makna religius. Sebagian dari simbol-simbol ini bahkan dipercaya membawa tanda-tanda mistis yang dikeramatkan. Bagi masyarakat Jawa pertunjukan wayang bukan cuma entertainment. Pertunjukan ini senantiasa mengandung pendidikan moral dan karena itu dikenal punya kekuatan politik. Maka, tidak sulit memahami reaksi orang ketika Sukasman membuat perubahan-perubahan. Kontroversi muncul karena wayang yang dibuat Sukasman memperlihatkan penataan rupa yang sangat bagus. Tidak bisa disangkal, ia pembuat wayang yang piawai.
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Heri Dono adalah orang Jawa yang lahir di Jakarta. Kendati dibesarkan di kota metropolitan, ia sangat mengenal kebudayaan Jawa. Ibunya sangat memerhatikan adat-istiadat kebudayaan Jawa. Heri Dono pindah ke Yogyakarta pada 1980 untuk mengikuti pendidikan seni rupa di Institut Seni Indonesia, salah satu dari dua perguruan tinggi seni rupa paling terkemuka di Indonesia. Ia meninggalkan perguruan tinggi ini tanpa ijazah pada 1987, namun memutuskan untuk tetap tinggal di Yogyakarta. Hingga kini, Heri Dono dikenal sebagai Yogyakarta based artist. Heri Dono belajar secara informal pada Sukasman selama beberapa tahun sejak 1978. Setelah itu ia membantu Sukasman membuat wayang kulit untuk pertunjukan-pertunjukan Sukasman. Melalui pekerjaan ini, Heri Dono menemukan konsep bagi karya-karyanya yang dikenal sampai kini. Ia, seperti sudah umum diketahui, mengembangkan bentuk wayang kulit ke bentuk-bentuk komikal dan kartunik. Selain dalam bentuk lukisan, wayang yang kartunik ini ditampilkan pula dalam bentuk performance, instalasi, dan media work. Pada 1992 Heri Dono mengerjakan proyek pertunjukan besar bertema “Kuda Binal” (Crazy Horse). Pada proyek pertunjukan ini, ia menggabungkan wayang kulit dan kuda kertas yang merupakan properti utama teater jalanan tradisional yang dikenal di berbagai daerah di Indonesia. Bekerja keras di studionya, Heri Dono membuat semua properti untuk pertunjukan itu, yaitu beberapa kuda kertas (kuda setengah badan), wayang-wayang dalam bentuk besar (menjadi semacam banner) dan kostum pemain yang ditekankan pada topeng. Pada proyek ini kecederungannya bekerja sama dengan komunitas tampil dengan tegas untuk pertama kali. Heri Dono memilih komunitas di sekitar rumahnya, termasuk anak-anak. Heri Dono menyutradarai pertunjukan itu. Pemainnya anggota grup street theatre yang biasa berkeliling di Yogyakarta. Pada pertunjukan ini, yang diselenggarakan beberapa kali di ruang-ruang publik di Yogyakarta, Heri Dono membolehkan grup teater jalanan yang mendukungnya mengelilingkan topi untuk mengutip uang tontonan seperti biasanya mereka lakukan. Pertunjukan ini tidak berbeda dari pertunjukan teater jalanan. Namun, sebuah kesan kuat muncul karena properti yang tampil dominan membuat pertunjukan ini seperti sebuah lukisan besar Heri Dono yang bergerak dan terus-menerus menampilkan perubahan.
Heri Dono, Klinic Primata (detail), 2001, Multi media / installation
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Tahun 1992 itu juga merupakan tanda awal masuknya Heri Dono ke lingkaran seni rupa dunia. Langkah pertamanya ialah mengikuti pameran-pameran regional di Jepang dan Australia. Namanya segera muncul ketika ia mengikuti pameran New Art From Southeast Asia di Metropolitan Museum,Tokyo pada 1992. Setahun kemudian, pada 1993, ia menghebohkan publik Australia ketika mengikuti The First Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art di Brisbane. Ia menyajikan pertunjukan berjudul “The Chair” yang lucu – melibatkan anak-anak sekolah Australia – namun mempunyai muatan politik Pada tahun berikutnya, 1994, pertunjukan Crazy Horse, dipentaskan kembali di Art Festival, Adelaide Sejak itu Heri Dono bertubi-tubi mendapat undangan untuk mengikuti pameran di berbagai negara Asia dan Australia. Kesertaannya pada rangkaian pameran regional ini pada awal 1990-an merupakan pintu baginya memasuki lingkaran seni rupa dunia. Memasuki dunia internasional, Heri Dono kembali berhadapan dengan perkembangan seni rupa yang sedang menampilkan perubahan-perubahan besar. Dengan sikap yang sudah dirintisnya pada perkembangan lokal di Indonesia, karya-karyanya – yang didasarkan upside down mind – kembali memperlihatkan pembongkaran berbagai mitos, kali ini mitos-mitos pada perkembangan seni rupa dunia. Heri Dono tidak mengubah policy-nya, ia tetap mengikuti insting dan tidak kelihatan terkejut apalagi shock melihat perkembangan seni kontemporer. Ia tidak merasa perlu menyamakan pikirannya dengan pemikiran, keyakinan, kredo, dan idiom-idiom seni kontemporer yang populer ketika itu. Heri Dono, misalnya, tidak berusaha menyesuaikan pertunjukannya dengan performance art dan tidak terlalu peduli ketika pertunjukannya dibahas apakah terkategori performance art atau bukan. Performance art yang populer pada perkembangan seni kontemporer adalah ungkapan yang menempatkan tubuh artis sendiri sebagai media. Ungkapan ini memperlihatkan upaya de-materialisasi ekspresi seni. Keyakinan ini merupakan reaksi keras pada keyakinan dominan yang berpengaruh sampai pertengahan abad ke-20, khususnya di Eropa dan Amerika Serikat, yaitu keyakinan yang percaya bahwa seni (art) baru berrmakna apabila diujudkan ke dalam bentuk material. Heri Dono tidak mengenal keyakinan dominan itu, yang pergolakannya muncul terutama pada perdebatan aesthetica. Tidak mudah baginya untuk memahami reaksi yang muncul melalui konsep de-materialisasi. Maka, tidak ada kebutuhan juga padanya untuk mengikuti konsep performance art yang lahir dari reaksi ini. Bagi Heri Dono, performance merupakan upayanya meluaskan kesadarannya sebagai pelukis.
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”Ketika menjelajahi seluk-beluk pertunjukan wayang, saya menyadari sensasi yang didapat penonton wayang ternyata kompleks. Saya kemudian mengoreksi pemahaman saya tentang ekspresi seni yang terpusat pada seni rupa (fine arts). Saya tiba-tiba merasa perlu mengembangkan berbagai kepekaan lain, selain kepekaan melihat. Saya sadar pertunjukan wayang adalah ekspresi seni yang tidak mengenal batas-batas di antara visual arts, musik, teater dan sastra, ” katanya. Heri Dono kemudian mencoba membangun kesadaran tentang ekspresi seni yang tidak terpisah-pisah. Ia menyimpulkan ekspresi ini secara bersama-sama merayakan kebudayaan. Ia mencari pembenaran dengan menoleh ke gejala seni (art phenomena) pada kebudayaankebudayaan etnik – tarian, musik, teater, sastra dan visual arts (tampil melalui properti) – yang selalu berkaitan dengan kebudayaan. Maka Heri Dono percaya bahwa ekspresi seni adalah pernyataan (statement) dengan konteks budaya. “Kesenian meminjam tanda dan simbol dari kebudayaan, dan kesenian harus mengembalikannya ke kebudayaan serta berproses dalam kebudayaan,” katanya. “Karena itu, seniman harus punya sikap budaya dan persepsi tentang apa sebenarnya budaya.” “Kalau kebudayaan dimisalkan sebuah kue besar kesenian (The arts) merupakan irisan-irisannya, tapi irisan-irisan ini tidak boleh diambil begitu saja, karena kalau semua seniman memakan irisan kue ini, kuenya akan habis. Irisan-irisan kue ini justru harus terus-menerus memperbesar kuenya dan ini terjadi bila mengaktifkan kesenian sekaligus berarti mengaktifkan kebudayaan.” Dengan keyakinan itu, Heri Dono membongkar mitos-mitos yang memengaruhi persepsinya tentang seni. Sebelumnya ia ikut meyakini mitos yang percaya bahwa gejala seni mengenal spesialisasi dan tidak secara langsung punya hubungan dengan kebudayaan. Dulu ia dipengaruhi juga oleh mitos yang percaya bahwa ekspresi seni berpangkal pada kekuatan individualitas. Upaya Heri Dono menerobos mitos-mitos itu ternyata berlangsung paralel dengan pemikiran-pemikiran baru tentang seni pada perkembangan seni kontemporer. Pemikiran-pemikiran baru ini bahkan menyuruk sampai ke persoalan paling mendasar, yaitu pemikiran ulang ideologi seni yang diyakini sejak abad ke-19 dan berpengaruh sampai pertengahan abad ke-20.
Heri Dono, Bidadari Turun dari Langit (detail), 2004, Multi media / installation
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Ideologi seni yang dikaji ulang itu percaya bahwa seniman mempunyai cara tidak umum – dipercaya merupakan keluarbiasan – dalam menangkap muse dan mentransfernya ke karya seni yang bersifat material. Karena itu karya seni diyakini mempunyai nilai intrinsik. .Pemikiran yang membongkar ideologi itu muncul khususnya pada kelompok pemikir neo-Wittgensteinan yang mempertanyakan definisidefinisi seni. Stephen Davies, salah seorang di antaranya, menulis, We might question whether the Western ideology of art corresponds to its reality? That ‘artists’ names a spiritual calling? That art making is unaffected by the market? That artworks are appreciated only when abstracted from the moral, political, and social settings within which they are generated? Art charaterize what has come to be known as fine or high art. The fine arts were described and typed at the close of eighteenth century, and associated notion of the artist as genius unfettered by the rules of craft, as well as by social conventions, was presented at much the same time. Along with this went the idea that the aesthetic attitude is a psychologically distinctive state of distance contemplation. (Stephen Davies, “Non-Western Art and Art’s Definition,“ in Noël Carroll [ed.]. Theories of Art Today. The University of Wisconsin Press Wisconsin: 2000.) Davies mengemukakan, sebenarnya gejala seni pada semua kebudayaan berkaitan dengan penuturan cerita, pembuatan gambar, pembuatan patung, nyanyian, tarian, dan pertunjukan teatrikal. Semua praktik seni berkaitan dengan pengalaman merasakan keindahan (aesthetic experience) yang kompleks dan tidak bisa dilepaskan dari persoalan makna dan nilai-nilai. Praktik seni ini seperti ini, menurut Davies, masih dijalankan secara utuh di dunia non-Barat dan karena itu seni mempunyai fungsi sosial. Praktik ini berkaitan dengan upacara-upacara ritual dan penyucian benda-benda yang bisa dilihat sebagai upaya preservasi dan pencatatan sejarah. Davies mengemukakan, di dunia Barat, seni dibedakan dari craft yang dianggap bukan seni karena hanya menampilkan keindahan yang dianggap rendah. Ia sendiri cenderung tidak membaginya menjadi seni dan bukan seni. Ia melihatnya sebagai Seni dengan “S” kapital dan seni dengan “s” kecil. Maserati, Lamborghini dan Ferrari adalah karya-karya seni dengan ‘s’ kecil. “Karya-karya ini tidak terkategori karya seni karena tidak memenuhi kualifikasi institusi seni Barat,” ungkap Davies.
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Menurut Davies, pada kebudayaan non-Barat, Seni dengan “s” kapital dan seni dengan “s” kecil tidak dibedakan, dan keindahan tidak dianggap pesona yang rendah. Keindahan yang dipercaya tidak cuma membangkitkan rasa senang, membawa nilai-nilai. Kenyataan ini membuat seni di dunia non-Barat punya pengertian yang luas dan dekat dengan kebudayaan. Heri Dono mengemukakan, “Semua permasalahan dalam karya saya adalah permasalahan keindahan (beauty). Dalam menjelajahi dunia keindahan saya masuk ke wilayah kepekaan di mana saya bisa mencari spiritualias. Di wilayah ini, saya terbawa untuk mempertanyakan semua pandangan saya tentang realitas yang mengikuti pandangan umum.” Menurut Heri Dono proses ini menghadirkan bukan kesadaran rasional, tapi kesadaran budaya yang mengakomodasi hal-hal yang tidak selalu logis. Kalau kesadaran ini diukur dengan logika kesadaran ini akan terasa paradoksal. “Di Yogyakarta, ada banyak bengkel kecil yang khusus memperbaiki radio transistor untuk dijual sebagai radio-radio bekas. Saya mengajak ahli-ahli reparasi radio transistor ini untuk bekerja sama dengan saya membuat karya seni karena pekerjaan mereka buat saya membawa tanda-tanda kesenian yang dekat dengan tradisi dan kebudayaan,” katanya. Dalam persepsi Heri Dono, para ahli reparasi radio bekas itu adalah orangorang kreatif yang sehari-hari menghasilkan berbagai inovasi. Mereka ini perajin barang bekas yang membuat mainan dan benda pakai dari bekas kaleng Coca Cola, karton-karton bekas, peti-peti pengemas berbagai produk industri, dan komponen barang-barang rusak yang dibuang atau dijual di pasar loak. Kepekaan di balik pemanfaatan barang-barang bekas pada perajin ini, menurut Heri Dono, adalah kepekaan merasakan keindahan yang berkembang di dunia tradisi. “Hasil kerja mereka merupakan kreasi yang memperlihatkan inovasi. Barangbarang yang mereka buat memang tidak perfek tapi inovasi memang tidak pernah perfek. Perfeksi merupakan kelanjutan dari penemuan yang kadar inovasinya sudah tidak ada,” katanya. Bersama kelompok perajin barang bekas itu, Heri Dono menghasilkan karya-karyanya yang terbaik, antara lain, Watching the Marginal People (1992), Gamelan of Rumors (1993), Fermentation of Minds (1993/1994), Ceremony of the Souls (1995), Flying Angels (1996) dan Flying in a Cocoon (2001). Karya-karya ini sudah menjadi koleksi museum.
Heri Dono, Watching Marginal People (detail), 2000, Multi media / installation
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Pandangan Heri Dono yang paralel dengan pandangan Stephen Davies membongkar mitos yang merendahkan keindahan. Pembongkaran mitos yang sangat berpengaruh ini membangkitkan kesadaran bahwa semua teori yang membangun mitos ini tidak pernah sesungguhnya bisa menjelaskan apa yang dimaksudkan dengan beyond beauty – seperti tecermin pada perdebatan “what is art” yang tidak pernah selesai sampai sekarang. Teori-teori itu terjebak pada pemikiran bipolar yang menempatkan beauty dan beyond beauty pada kutub yang berlawanan. Akibatnya tidak ada patokan untuk menjelaskan beyond beauty karena gejala ini terpisah secara diametral dari beauty, gejala yang dianggap rendah. Kebingungan dengan mudah muncul karena beyond beauty tidak sama dengan ugliness lawan sebenarnya beauty.
Heri Dono, Born and Freedom (detail), 2004, Multi media / installation
Pada pandangan Heri Dono beauty adalah “akar” dari ekspresi seni (yang mendapat label “beyond beauty”). Bila ekspresi seni ini diibaratkan “buah” pada tanaman, “buah” ini tidak bisa dilepaskan dari kerja “akar” – ada tanaman-tanaman yang “berbuah” pada akarnya. Maka tidak ada perbedaan substansial di antara beauty dan beyond beauty. Keduanya tidak bisa dipisahkan apalagi ditempatkan pada dua kutub yang berlawanan.
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Pada pandangan Heri Dono di mana pengalaman merasakan keindahan (aesthetic experience) tidak terpisah dari pengalaman memahami kehidupan, ekspresi seni adalah sofistikasi aesthetic experience merasakan beauty. Ini, menurut Heri Dono terjadi di wilayah kepekaan di dunia perasaan. Maka beyond beauty is beauty bila dirasakan sebagai aesthetic experience dan bukan hanya sebagai visual experience. Di sini premis fundamental seni rupa dunia dipertanyakan.
Jim Supangkat
The Director, SASA Gallery, would like to acknowledge the contribution to the development of the 2007 SASA Gallery exhibition program by the SASA Gallery Advisory Committee and Exhibition Programming Committee; SASA Gallery staff; Prof. Kay Lawrence, Head of School, South Australian School of Art, UniSA; Prof. Drew Dawson, Dean: Research, Division Education, Arts & Social Sciences, UniSA; and Prof. Michael Rowan, Pro Vice Chancellor, Division Education, Arts & Social Sciences, UniSA. The Director, SASA Gallery, thanks Tony and Connie Perrini and family for the generous support of the 2007 SASA Gallery exhibition program by Perrini Estate. The Director, SASA Gallery, thanks Indonesian artist Heri Dono; curator Pamela Zeplin; writers Pamela Zeplin and Jim Supangkat; and designers Fred Littlejohn, Lynda Kay, Danna-Lee Stoic and Ryan Neville for their participation and involvement in this exhibition and catalogue. Also Tok and Libby Basuki for generously hosting the artist in Adelaide.
Acknowledgements
Curator: Pamela Zeplin Artist: Heri Dono External Scholar: Jim Supangkat Catalogue Project Management: Mary Knights & Lynda Kay Editor: Mary Knights Catalogue design: Fred Littlejohn, Danna-Lee Stoic and Ryan Neville Bachelor of Visual Communications (Honours) Students Consultancy, UniSA Artist in residency project management: Olga Sankey and Pamela Zeplin Assistant: Margo Clark SASA Gallery staff: Mary Knights, Director, SASA Gallery Louise Flaherty, Gallery Administrative Assistant Julian Tremayne, exhibition installation and lighting consultant Published by the South Australian School of Art Gallery University of South Australia Kaurna Building Fenn Place, Adelaide Adelaide SA 5001 March 2007 ISBN 978 0 9803062 1 7 Printed by Cruickshank Printers © SASA Gallery, artist and writers The SASA Gallery has received immense support toward the development and implementation of this exhibition and catalogue. The residency by Indonesian artist Heri Dono has been developed by staff at the South Australian School of Art with the support of the Helpmann Academy. The contribution by eminent scholar Jim Supangkat has been supported by the Divisional Performance Research Fund. The printing of the exhibition catalogue was generously funded by the Gordon Darling Foundation.
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Experience. The Difference
