Ode to the poor packs political punch
By Fathul. A. Husein
BANDUNG (JP): Sociopolitical euphoria after the downfall of president Soeharto in May last year, which recently clotted into ideological masks of political parties, is not over yet. It even takes off on a culminating point, whose form of explosion is uncertain: whether it will turn into a puddle of blood or a mysterious new Indonesia or even spurt into a national dizziness among new phases of a genocide project against innocent people. Who knows.
One thing is for sure, for two consecutive nights (May 8 and 9) the tiny but cool auditorium of the French Cultural Center (CCF) Bandung office suddenly turned ill-fated because of the procession of a performing art, titled "Garbage Poetic".
Opened with the booming sound of amplified music by Harry Roesli, the audience which circled the playing area was startled with a soft-voiced bald child wearing shorts and sandals, who sang parody songs accompanied only with his kecrek (a traditional hand-made musical instrument). For heaven's sake, the boy, a street singer who sings songs on city buses, was obviously honored to become the leading icon of the musical event. He sang the songs under the spotlight with a background of a procession of slides, reflecting "garbage people": street singers, the homeless and people from other marginal groups.
Then three contemporary dancers and Ine Arini, a traditional Cirebon Topeng Mask dancer, moved slowly on stage following the rhythm of Sajarah Carub Kanda Carangsatus, a traditional song about a stoned history and uncertain future, sung by Nurdin M. Noer.
The musical event continued with different kinds of performing art, including symbolic presentation of street demonstrations by Tony Broer, a sarcastic theatrical performance criticizing practices of white collar crimes by Iman Soleh and a euphemism parody, mimicking the acts and attitude of the ruling President.
A stage performer acted as if he were riding a bike for 32 kilometers (in fact he was moving nowhere and remained at the same place) for the whole period of his performance. He was likely revealing the useless period of the now defunct New Order administration.
The peak of the performance was a mixed dramatic choreography of all elements of the stage performers.
Cultural rebellion
Garbage Poetic was likely a metaphorical presentation of a cultural rebellion against useless and deteriorating ideological residue. Garbage does not simply represent unused and nauseating waste, but also a stack of poisonous and dangerous ideological entities.
How sad it is to understand how dangerous it will be if natural bacteria cannot dissolve and recycle the industrial product garbage. Isn't it an ideological problem? Aren't huge stacks of garbage everywhere, together with all social pathological problems, the significant signals of consumerism , which have been successfully planted by the hedonistic practices of capitalistic ideology?
Esthetically, the performing art collaboration can be understood as an implementation of the principles of the aesthetic of plenty, a term introduced by Lawrence Alloway, which means the creation of art products through an iconographic process of daily objects, such as household objects, images of movies and mass media, all kinds of food, beverages and clothes.
The writer is a stage performer and theater critic. His articles have been published in the Pikiran Rakyat, Media Indonesia, Republika and Bandung Pos dailies.