Heri Dono genetically engineers 'wayang'

Heri Dono genetically engineers 'wayang'

By Prasetyohadi and Pandaya

JAKARTA (JP): Lovers of the arts streamed out of Teater Utan
Kayu giggling, grinning and even laughing out loud when
discussing the bizarre shadow puppet show they had just seen.

The one-hour show that correlated the "conventional" Javanese
wayang with the contemporary form of animation is an experimental
art form introduced by Heri Dono, a surrealist painter who
proclaims himself an "art performer".

"Did you enjoy it?" one friend asked another. "Hmmm, I liked
it but I didn't really get it," her friend replied
diplomatically.

For lay people already familiar with the Javanese traditional
shadow puppetry, Heri's wayang is just as mind-boggling as his
eclectic paintings.

Heri calls his latest work wayang regen, or genetic engineer.
Characters are distorted and projected on geber (a cloth screen).
Visual language is used to interpret them. Messages are prepared
on texts read out theatrically by Dono and his assistant, Guntur
Songgolangit.

The characters bear no resemblance to the traditional wayang.
They are all deformed to look like creatures from outer space or
probably a result of cloning between the local traditional and
foreign culture.

The odd atmosphere was felt right after you stepped into the
theater, which is often used to showcase experimental arts. It
was dimly lit. A large white screen dominated the area. Three
kenong (small gongs) were being slowly struck by mechanical
devices, making sounds like water dripping in a silent night.

The walls were wrapped in black cloth. A number of adult
human-sized wayang were suspended from ropes in front of the
screen. Hio incense, used in Chinese traditional rituals, was
burning, spreading a strange smell.

The music and all the noisy sounds were prerecorded. While the
dalang played, the puppets were projected on the screen and the
bare-chested Guntur walked and danced, reading out a text
attached to his chest with by string.

"Indonesia is as difficult as making a glass painting -- you
do it from the opposite side. In Indonesia, facts are twisted and
you will get it wrong if you read it straight." Political leaders
were portrayed as hypocrites.

While the puppets were silhouetted, video images were
projected from the foreground onto the screen: the images of old
Javanese aristocrats, late Chinese leader Mao Tse Tung, funky
dogs, monkeys wearing fashionable hats and numerous icons
appeared one after another throughout the show.

Avant-garde

Heri is among few contemporary artists who have gained
acceptability overseas, more so than in their home countries, for
their avant-garde works. The British Council in Jakarta sponsored
Dono's Tuesday and Wednesday shows.

He debuted as an art performer in 1999 when he performed Kuda
Binal (Wild Horse) in Yogyakarta in 1992. It was a mockery of the
two-yearly painting biennial (he twisted it into Binal) in the
town that he criticized as efforts to "formalize" arts.

Wednesday's performance was titled Lobi-lobi, after a local
fruit. "The present cultural and political conditions is like
lobi-lobi. It looks good and tasty but don't eat it; it's hard
and sour," Dono said in a discussion.

The absurd wayang has the basic idea of the Javanese wayang
performance but they turned the whole cosmological concept into
something that you will no longer recognize.

Heri was inspired by the art of cartoon animation combined
with another Javanese wayang genre called wayang ukur, which is
very rare.

The climax was when the artists set fire to two characters of
the traditional puppet figures of evil king Rahwana and Pandawa
hero Bima. Heri said, in fact, that Bima was just as sadistic.

Observers said that Heri's wayang was an "unfinished" work of
art.

Traditional puppet master Jlitheng Suparman of Surakarta,
Central Java, described it as "having no soul of tradition". He
said Heri had yet to create the theatrical dimension of wayang.

Heri readily acknowledged that all his works were about
"imperfection", as apparent in the deformation that features
therein.

Collaborator Guntur, himself a puppet master, said the
contemporary wayang had nothing to do with tradition. Dono and
himself had created a new genre of puppet, he said.

The artists adopted a metaphor of "genetic engineering" of
court-centered tradition to something completely new.

Heri said one of the new characters of these wayang was that
they had nothing to do with war and violence that is always
important in the wayang stories.

The artists said they believed traditional artists should shun
rigidity if their works were to be accepted by the modern world.