I’m no fan of local TV channels but lately I’ve been tuning in on TVRI, our national TV station, for its surprisingly interesting programs. Admittedly, this is not due to the creativity of the people at TVRI, but due to the Ministry of Education and the imagination of its Directorate-General of Culture, led by Dr Hilmar Farid, initiator of the Pekan Kebudayaan Nasional (PKN) 2020 – National Culture Week.
For a whole month, not a week, PKN 2020 is showcasing Indonesia’s rich cultural heritage featuring 93 performances by traditional and contemporary artists of all art forms: five exhibitions, most notably that of painter Affandi at the National Gallery and recently acquired heirloom paintings of Prince Diponegoro at the National Museum; virtual competitions of traditional games; 27 conference themes discussing our cultural resilience as reflected in our daily lives; 16 practical workshops on how to creatively process our agricultural produce, including a talk on our traditional wines. In total, 4,791 artists are participating in this festival and every evening, TVRI with its motto of unifying the nation, airs many of these events.
This is not the first PKN. The inaugural PKN was held last year in Jakarta for a week. Its range of activities at the time was already impressive and the number of attendees ran into the thousands, descending upon Istora Senayan stadium in droves. With Covid-19, such an event is no longer possible. A new format had to be adopted, taking full advantage of social media such as Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. The new normal has turned out to be a blessing in disguise because by using technology, a wider audience is captured. Now, this mind-blowing array of Indonesia’s best can be enjoyed in the comfort of our homes, at leisure and practically no cost.
With globalization and technology opening up the whole world to us, giving us access to other cultures and worldviews meant to enrich our individual perspectives, we instead find ourselves lost. We adopt other worldviews and abandon our indigenous values, local wisdom, and heritage in search of an elusive global identity and a misconstrued modernity detached from our cultural roots. Under such circumstances, this cultural festival becomes more urgent for us Indonesians. PKN reminds us of who we are as a people: a nation of 1.331 ethnic groups, 652 local dialects, 285 different local costumes, 2,117 cultural heritage sites scattered around 16,056 islands. That is what being an “Indonesian” means: a complex individual with an identity influenced by the diversity and richness of Indonesia’s heritage, bound to its land and environment, not one defined by a single ethnic identity much less just by one’s belief.
The simplification of Indonesia’s identity into a ‘country with the biggest Muslim population in the world’ belies our multi-faceted identity characterized by openness, tolerance and acceptance. If this narrative, favored by increasingly more people and not just foreigners, is left unchecked, the polarization of simplification will become a self-fulfilling prophecy as reflected in national politics of recent years.
To counter this, in 2018, the Government formulated a cultural strategy for the next 20 years. The objective of this cultural strategy – formulated through extensive and intensive dialogue among a wide range of stakeholders at the national and local levels – is to harness our local wisdom, give voice to our inclusive cultural heritage, and elevate our profile on the international stage. Culture is therefore not just for culture’s sake but a unifying force to achieve happiness and prosperity, support the people’s economic welfare, and also protect our ecological biodiversity.
The cultural festival now underway is a step in the right direction towards operationalizing the lofty ideals set forth in the strategy. Crucial to the success of the strategy is engaging youth, our future generations. Besides reaching out to them through social media, the festival uses creative means such as a storytelling technique combined with video-mapping to convey the heroism of Prince Diponegoro: a life-size hologram recreating the scene of Diponegoro with his trusty steed, Kyai Gentayu. Most beautiful is the use of video mapping to bring the vibrant figures of Affandi’s paintings to life.
The reason why PKN is so important is that it reinforces the centrality of the diversity of our being, reminding us that it is our source of creativity and strength. It also makes clear, however, the fragility of our nation and that our unity cannot be taken for granted, requiring a conscious and concerted effort to stay bound together as Indonesia.
Ernest Renan, a 19th-century French theorist, who inspired Soekarno’s notions of nationhood, believed “a nation is a soul, a spiritual principle.” Its soul is “the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories” while the spiritual principle is “the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form.”
The PKN reveals our soul in all its depth and splendor. Our responsibility today is to continue to nurture the desire to live together and build upon this extremely rich cultural heritage to realize a shared destiny. If we fail to do so, the Indonesia of the future will no longer be the one that we have reveled in thus far.
NATALIA SOEBAGJO Bali resident & writer
