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| AsiaViews, Edition: 21/V/June/2008 |
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| Celebrating the urban Nusantao |
| Goethe Haus Institut Jakarta presents a photo exhibition on Southeast Asia’s major cities, capturing human beings through the city structure and urban architect. These cities turn out to resemble one another. |
IN this area, one major city resembles another. Manila, Jakarta, Bangkok, Singapore, Hanoi, and Kuala Lumpur have similar stories in store.
Wilhelm Solheim II, an 84-year-old archeologist of Hawaii University is one who has spent all his life examining the prehistoric era in Southeast Asia. He has found the Nusantao concept of maritime communication and trading networks, Nusantao being derived from “nusa” or island and “tau” meaning human beings. Solheim believes that since 5,000 years BC, the people living in the entire regions of the Pacific, the coastal areas of the Indian Ocean, South China Sea and Japan, extending to the regions of Southeast Asia, either the archipelagoes like Indonesia and the Philippines, or the mainland areas, have long shared their cultures. Thus, they have a lot in common.
It is these similarities that Peter Bialobrzeski is now capturing in photographs. This German photographer toured Southeast Asia for six months, starting in October last year. He cooperated with 26 photographers from six capital cities: Bangkok, Hanoi, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, and Singapore.
Entitled Mapping Invisible Cities, Bialobrzeski—who spent 15 years as a photojournalist before teaching at the University of the Arts in Bremen, Germany—guided these photographers in a workshop, taking pictures of the urban tendencies in the six capital cities through one common theme: the urban structure. And 106 photos resulting from this workshop are being exhibited at the Goethe Haus Institut Jakarta from June 8-July 3, 2008.
Whether it is realized or not, this exhibition represents the Nusantao in the digital era. After the collapse of colonialism, Southeast Asia is now rising. The six capital cities look beautiful and modern on the one hand but they also hide the latent post-colonial rottenness on the other: the widening gap between the rich and the poor.
Most of the works follow the common theme of city structures that resemble one another. There are skyscrapers. Massive apartments that restrict human lives have become mere neon boxes. Old and dilapidated flats are fenced off before they are demolished. Flyovers divide the cities crowded with motorcycles. Look, the sidewalks have become very narrow, sometimes they are not even 50 centimeters wide and even then they are crowded with sidewalk vendors. This situation, for example, is depicted by Nyuyen Viet Hung in Hanoi. An exact replica of this situation can be found on Tanah Abang flyover in Jakarta or in Metro Manila. The billboards are similar as long as one omits the Vietnamese characters there. The items? Just like what the vendors sell in our markets: watermelons and the gedong mangoes.
Then there are the plywood makeshift sheds for building workers that appear and then disappear when a new building has been put up. “Life is going, life is beautiful!” said Dam Duc Vu, the photographer, who comes from Hanoi. Even the utensils and equipment in this picture—an old towel, a broken mirror, a thermos flask, a plastic comb, and a cellphone charger—are commonly found in similar sheds in Jakarta.
Meanwhile, a photo taken by Nopodon Chotasisi shows a line of tuktuk parked close to Au Bon Pain, an American bakery shop in one corner of Siam Square, Bangkok. Tuktuk is the local version of a bajaj, a three-wheel motorized vehicle, with its driver being as daring as that of a bajaj. “Only God and the driver know when the vehicle will make a turn,” so bajaj drivers are frequently cursed in Jakarta.
Talking about bajaj, take a look at a photo taken by Ricky Adrian of Jakarta. Ricky took his photograph from the top of a building somewhere in a location that looks like Jalan Sabang. He took a picture of a bajaj trying to avoid two cars, one exiting, the other entering a building. The bajaj, squeezed in the middle, was trying to find some space to avoid hitting either car. “Look, everything is moving. There is no collision here. There is harmony here,” said curator Alex Supartono.
One thing that can never be left behind is the origin of all the piles of problems that are yet to be solved, subjected to corruption or simply hidden: the garbage. A Singaporean citizen, who is an executive of a leading Swiss bank, showed great surprise when Tempo showed him the work of Maria Virginia Cruz, where a small boat is sailing along a black, garbage-filled river in Metro Manila. His reaction was really honest: he covered his nose!
This young executive would not have imagined that that was the condition of Boat Quay before the Singaporean government rehabilitated the location where Raffles first set foot on Singapore. In his foreword, Peter also expressed the same impression: “When you smell the picture taken by Gigie from an ecological disaster that they called a river…”
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BEYOND the structure of buildings and flyovers, there are many stirring messages to be obtained from a number of excellent photos taken as an exploration of urban life. Andi Ari Setiadi, for example, represents the traffic congestion in Jakarta with a badly damaged car. Or the photos by Ngo Xuan Phu depicting Vietnamese farmers who will sooner or later be displaced by industrialization. The craze of the Thais for colors—remember that pink clothing sold well after King Bhumibhol donned it—is captured by Dow Wasiksiri in a photograph depicting a combination of urban clothing and the ornaments of a Buddhist pagoda as well as the royal artifacts in Thailand, the only country in Southeast Asia that has never been subjected to colonialism.
The most iconic is the photograph of four women doing gymnastics. Strong determination is reflected in their faces. “They must practice goose-stepping to strengthen the muscles of their legs and rehearse questions and answers so as not to be nervous on the stage,” said Tammy David, the photographer.
This is part of the Philippine culture, which prioritizes beauty. This picture dismisses the assumption that one only need to be beautiful to win in a beauty contest. Without hard work and sacrifices, including taking the trouble to walk on stilettos, they will never win the beauty contest crown.
However, regardless of the bikinis that show the beautiful, slim legs of these Asian girls of Spanish descent, who are uniquely pinoy, the room where they practice gymnastics is not an exclusive fitness center but it looks more like a gymnastics workshop where the air is hot because of the neon light and its multiplex floor. It is a really banal room when it is compared with the glittering stage of the entertainment world.
And last but not least, two works from Singapore that are indeed very interesting as these two show the true face of this country. The two photographers, Lim Hui Xian Janice and Maxine Chionh Jin Lie are both students as Lasalle College of the Arts. Without realizing it, both talk about something empty without an identity.
When the others, for example, show a slum village squeezed between skyscrapers, Lim Hui presents a “cold” photograph of symmetrical buildings. The sky is grey. Even the space between the windows and the floors seems dead and cannot be said to be part of a human life.
Then Maxine’s work, in a masochistic manner, scribbles on the personal artifact left behind from the picture of a kitchen in an apartment. She leaves behind only static objects without a character: a refrigerator, a table, a kitchen cabinet, and window blades. The strokes are rough. The foreword is interesting although discouraging. In Singapore, she said, what is called a house is always vacated on the grounds that the contract has expired or has reached the lease deadline of 99 years. The house can also give way to a government project. “For me this process is very cruel and traumatic,” Maxine said.
Yes, Singapore can be successful as an efficient and hygienic city, but Maxine, who is one of its residents, cannot avoid the sadness of being uprooted from tradition. Or, in other words, she cannot free herself from Solheim’s theory about the cultural entity called Nusantao. Even from the most urban aspect.
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| By Kurie Suditomo |
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| Tempo, No. 42/VIII/17-23 June 2008 |
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