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Buah Batu Arts Festival

With an energy and an activism that can be seen on campuses throughout the world, Buah Batu Arts Festival opened in Bandung on the 23rd of February at Sekolah Tinggi Seni Indonesia on Jalan Buah Batu. It is the first festival of its kind to be held at the campus conceived by students of STSI Bandung with the aims of opening creativity and dialogue between artists and students from Campuses all over Indonesia. It ran from the 23rd of January to the 26th of January and featured theatre performances, experimental and contemporary music, contemporary dance, traditional theatre, an exhibition and some very strange “happenings”.

One of the senior artists who attended the discussion after the dance event commented that the festival was great because the works in it and the festival itself were student driven where as other festivals, organized on campuses around the country, are led by the works of lecturers with students participating in them.

On the Friday night, there was a solo performance by Sri Erita Desiandari, a student of STSI and a member of Teatre Payung Hitam. She performed the work of Indonesians poet Soni Farid Maulana, “Anak Kabut” a performance that traces the story of woman looking for a reason to live and looking for answers after the rapes and murders of students during the New Order. Emotionally it was quite draining as Sri played the character in quite a monotone way with no highs or lows just a continual sadness. The set design was quite simple with leaves lying on the ground and bracken hanging from the ceiling unfortunately the beautiful set was under explored created by Roni. Whilst Sri is a very talented performer show would have benefited from working intensely with a director who could push her to explore her surroundings, the text and her physical self.

Anak Kabut was followed by Teatre Cassonova’s performance of Machine Hamlet, a translation of the hamlet Machine by German writer Henry Mueller and director by Syamsul Fajiri Nurawat. This was brilliantly directed, designed and acted - a thoroughly professional production. It was performed by a group of actors Irwan Jamal, Ocky Sandilemon and Renny Handayani who are also students of STSI and whose work is informed by and inspired by the theatre research of such practitioners as Gortowoski, Peter Brook and Brecht. The audiences enter the Gedung Dewi Asri to see three actors frozen, their faces slightly whited out almost ghost like. There was a huge sculpture that made out of barbed wire and chicken netting hanging from the ceiling giving sense of time and space – one immediately thinks of the barriers between East West German. The director entered and manipulated the bodies of the actors and the show began.

The actors displayed and incredible amount of focus and discipline in their roles. They barely moved form their positions yet made full explorations of their voices and silence. About half through the actor who played the actor who played Hamlet leaves the stage. He refused to participate in this drama and immediately the audience flew into chaos sarcastically shouting “ Long Live Coca Cola.” I remember in that second thinking that it was a real riot and urging my husband to start filming when in fact it started with audience plants and then carried over to the audience.

The Saturday saw a series of disturbing and disappointing happenings or performance art. There is a trend in Bandung for Jeprut, which in Sundanese means a riope or string that has been severed. It’s an anything goes, shock inducing and self-indulgent work all in the name of “process” and “experimentation”. It’s prime focus is to shock with out any background knowledge of what they are protesting against, angry about or what they are trying to create in the audience: As one artist on campus said – it has no standards in terms of theatre or dance and no visual concept either. It was disappointing to see such a talented performance artist and director Ade Suntara do this kind of work with so little thought gone into it. The first was a Gold Statue, which was reminiscent of people statues all over the world yet with no physical skill basing the work. Another little piece anger was Ade masturbating and playing with women’s menstruation pads. His work was alienating and certainly would have made audiences stay away. It was shock and disgust fort the shock and disgusts sake only.

Other pieces actually carried a clear meaning. Some young men walked the streets of Bandung with a mask connected to car exhaust and walked until they vomited. A clear statement about the pollution problems this countries faces.

The evening was followed by an event of experimental music. Ironically it was the junior artists and composers that held the show and the work of senior artist s that alienated and left the audience asking” Was that music?”

Ensemble Cikini 72 created an amazing piece of music called “ Mari Makan” which was reminiscent of Phillip Glass compositions in its repetitions and cycles. They allowed the shape of letters drawn big across a music score to dictate when and for how long they would play. There was tabla, snare drum, keyboard, bas guitar, conga, trumpet, and computer generated sound effects.

This was then followed by an indulgent improvisation by Kelompok Ketuk performed by Dody satya Ekagustdiman and a chicken called Ayam Ciptaan Tuhan (The chicken created by God) Dody struck the kecapi and invited his friend Yasudah onto stage to feed the chicken and make cute faces. His concept was “ How it was possible to be flexible and full of compromise yet at the same time rely on instinct and nature.” Like someone said, you could bring a dog on stage, kick it, listen to is yelp and call it music.

Greksold played a beautiful piece that fused elements of performance art, story and music. The piece was composed by Iqbal Lagagio at student from Makassar studying at STSI. The piece was inspired by the Bugis of Makassar and their journeys, exploring the full spectrum of emotions that they feel and featured the ancient sounding and hauntingly beautiful Makassar kecapi.

The final performance was given by Yasudah – a senior musician from Solo who was supposedly creating music with plastic bags of various sizes with air like balloons (shaped similar to condoms) and few aqua bottles Music no. An improvisation by a first year drama student exploring his relationship with plastic bags n the style of commedia or clown, maybe yes. I wished that he sang because when he did it was beautiful but to call the sounds that he was making with the bags filled with air music is what gives the word “experimental” a bad reputation.

The final day saw performances of contemporary dance by students form Makassar, Institute Kesenian Jakarta and Bandung along with alumni from STSI Bandung. All were very professional and conceptually different covering a full gamut of styles including contemporary dance in terms of western free expression, hip hop and jazz dance (The Boys Band), modern dance and dance influenced heavily by tradition. Interestingly, the live music that accompanied most of these dances was very experimental and satisfying. The dancer and musicians of Rawadewa created a beautiful soundscape from water, the swooshing of sapu lidih (the brooms made from the spine of coconut leaf frond), percussion with aqua bottles and the whole piece from the music to the movement was filled with the meaning of purification.

The most accomplished a polished piece of the evening was “ Cleaning Service” created by Iman. A very simple story where two cleaners in a building meet and explore their fears and frustrations.

The event was closed by performance of Longser Panca Kaki the traditional yet very topical theatre of Bandung directed by Agus Injuk featuring amazing music and slapstick comedy.

Hopefully, in the future Buah Batu Arts festival, the visual exhibition will be given a a higher priority and the artists will be able to display their works in a way in a professional way that doesn’t distract form the works. The paintings were displayed in front of newspapers that were stuck on the wall and seemed suffocate the artists images. Or in the case. It might even be nice if STSi organized a fundraiser to buy lights that can be used for displaying artworks in the Dewi Asri. One could only feel sorry for the artist and their works who had traveled from as afar away as Kalimantan and Bali to have had them displayed in the way that they were. In terms of programming it might be good to have a variety of performances rather than a single genre - I found sitting through 8 different dances pieces a bit too long and may have been more tolerant to some of the of the experimental music if I hadn’t been expecting such a high standard.

Still it was a great festival and simply adds to the idea that Bandung is the Paris of Indonesia. Hopefully next year there be even more artists and even more challenging and cutting edge works and possibly workshops where artist can share skills and ideas.

Long Live Buah Batu Arts Festival.

Kerensa Dewantoro

Kerensa Dewantoro
Performer and Writer

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