Arts & Sciences

Letters. Silent words on a page. How can they capture the enormity of life? Arifin C. Noer's critique of a mass-produced alphabet, no longer fully calibrated to remembered tones, suggests the poet's disillusionment with New Order political imaginings, and the ensuing loss of faith in the Indonesian printed word.

Something must be lost in any narrative for it to unfold; if everything stayed in place, there would be no story. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Freud observes his grandson playing in a pram. The infant's metaphorical comprehension of his mother's absence is encapsulated for Freud in the simplicity of a game called fort-da. Throwing a toy out of the pram, the boy shouts, "Fort!" (gone away); reeling the toy in again as if on a string, he exclaims, "Da!" (here). Fort-da has been interpreted elsewhere as "the first glimmerings of narrative."² An object is unleashed momentarily, only to be seized again from silence to sound.

This persistent, metonymic movement of desire entailed in Freud's assessment of his grandchild's diversion can be compared to the Balinese concept of bah-bangun. While bah means "to fall," or "to chop down," as in a tree, bangun suggests "waking up," rising like the force of the sun pushing up through the clouds. The expression refers to a certain persistence of spirit, the willingness to work hard for one's convictions, not to surrender at any cost.

In 1981, on a junior year abroad, I had the good fortune to study Balinese classical dance with the renowned performer and teacher, the late Ni Ketut Reneng. One afternoon, while teaching me the rudiments of Legong—all the basic movements arguably contained in the introductory role of the condong, or maid servant—Bu Reneng described the concept of bah-bangun (see plate 1). She compared the feeling to an invisible thread, secured around the ribcage, which, as the dancer simultaneously descends to ascend, is stretched taut almost beyond its limits. The condong's highly energetic solo entrance reflects her role as a kind of guardian of the door; as the physical threshold to her mistress' imminent arrival in the dance, she must keep watch (menjaga, the Indonesian term suggesting a dual meaning: "to guard" and "to wait.")

Door guardians, often portrayed in groups of twelve, eight, or four (lokapala) or as a pair (dvarapala), are generally the first sculptures a visitor will encounter when entering a Hindu or a Mahayana Buddhist shrine or temple complex. Typically envisioned as male warriors, framing open doorways, these formidable images usually carry weapons or emblems, which in India are sometimes indicative of the sectarian affiliation of the temple. Whether found in South or Southeast Asia, dvarapala are rarely without their sacred threads (upavita), often in the guise of snakes that encircle their waists or knees, suggesting the focused potentiality of supreme force in a perpetual state of suspension.

In mirrored opposition to each other, the liminal position of two Javanese guardians on bended knee from Sewu's 9th century temple complex in Central Java, for example, betrays the poised gesture of one fist raised, wielding a mighty club, while the corresponding fist is pressed downward in the act of unleashing/grasping a writhing serpent, which looks as if it could transform at any instant into a legendary kris. Apart from their brute physicality, these fluid thrusts of corresponding fists in a state of suspended motion suggest comparison with the philosophy of bah-bangun (see plates 2 and 3).

The art historian A. J. Bernet Kempers has outlined the development of the guardian figure from Central to East Java and Bali. Referring to the dvarapala as demons (raksasa), he establishes a series of visual comparisons. Beginning with Candi Sewu's guardian, he remarks:

These "ugly creatures" described by Bernet Kempers were no doubt the magnificent dvarapala from the 14th century Singasari Temple complex near Malang, East Java, and distantly related cousins in Bali (see plate 5). With similar features, but considerable variety, Balinese guardians, with one elbow raised over a curly mane of unkempt hair, conceal lethal weapons behind their backs. Often these raksasa stand with one foot raised about to crush a comparatively tiny adversary (see plate 6).

While the Sewu dvarapala were intended to flank the entrances to the temple complex of the same name, those excavated in 1925 in Kalasan were thought to have been associated with a former monastery attached to the temple. As guardians over a monastic center for learning, Bernet Kempers describes, the Kalasan dvarapala were moved, one set to guard over the gates of the Museum Sana Budaya in Yogya, the other set, escorted first to the governor's residence in the same city and transferred soon after to the Presidential Palace in Jakarta, to oversee what would be anything but a poised transference of power from Old to New Order in 1965, and, more recently, from New to still Newer Order, a transition that awaits further definition in the upcoming elections, barring any military interventions, in June of 1999.⁴

Landing in Bali, Indonesia, in May of 1998, one week after President Suharto's public resignation, I was struck by a revelation, simultaneously imbued with the game of fort-da and the immediacy of bah-bangun. The atmosphere on the island was everywhere transformed as if the entire Indonesian archipelago, like a giant organism, had suddenly begun to cough, splutter, spit, and attempt to speak after a long and imposed silence. During the summer months that ensued, newspaper vendors, many from neighboring islands, poured into Bali's urban centers. Braving congested traffic with their death-defying skirmishes at vehicular windows, these aggressive youths hawked, hot off presses, current issues of Bali Post, Jakarta Post, Nusa, and Kompas. There was a palpable hunger in the air for reading newspapers, a longing in the full force of reformation politics to secure outspoken voices with constructive ideas for Indonesia's uncertain future. Journalists, whose work had been censored in the past, expressed the hope that they might now reclaim some of those so-called "lost letters no longer accommodated in sound." In the Bali Post, a special column was introduced as of June 20, 1998. Stamped in the left corner, the logo for the column revealed a clenched fist with a ribbon wrapped loosely around it, emblazoned with the word "REFORMASI" in bold capitals. This image was intended to direct viewers' attention to the title: "Your Choice for Total Reformation (Giliran Anda Reformasi Total)." Readers were encouraged to send in their ideas and opinions as to just how this total reformation might be implemented on Bali. One writer, Enjang Rachmat B.A., encapsulated his vision in "A Poem in 14 Letters (Puisi 14 Huruf)," [June 13, 1998, p. 5], each line beginning with a letter, which ultimately spelled: R.E.F.O.R.M.A.S.I. T.O.T.A.L. The majority of published opinions sent in during the months of June and July merely reinforced the need to get to the bottom of the acronym on everyone's lips, K.K.N.K. (Corruption, Collusion, Nepotism, and Cronyism). It seemed that with the promise of each new day the contributors could not release themselves from the deadening hold of these silent letters, bandied about in conversation until even the words these abstract symbols represented became increasingly vague and, for some, virtually meaningless.

Weeks later, passing through the village of Batubulan en route to East Bali, I was greeted by rows of stone statues facing the street. Carved from soft volcanic tuffa, these strangely familiar images of deified kings and queens with their attendant guardians of the door evoked curious amalgamations of Central and East Javanese Hindu Buddhist prototypes. One dvarapala in particular caught my eye. Tied around his ornately carved, multifaceted club was a red silk sash inscribed with black quadrata script reading: "REFORMASI" (see plate 7). Its appearance suggested the strings we tie around our fingers to remember something important: a variation on the sash that Balinese must wear around their waists when they enter a holy place, a token of the protective tri-colored threads tied to the wrists of Balinese children, that imagined thread encircling the ribcage in Bu Reneng's embodied description of bah-bangun, or perhaps a modern parallel to the snakelike upavita writhing at the knees of our politically correct Batubulan guardian. Awaiting their ultimate purchase and transport to virtually any kind of entrance, sacred or secular, these stone entries suggest the poised proliferation of tiny threads, visible and invisible, cast like a suspended net over the entire archipelago. But while here, on this busy street, as yet undefined with respect to his cosmologically positioned responsibilities, this guardian with one fist rising, clenching a club wreathed in the rhetoric of reformation, the other fist descending, unleashing/retrieving a writhing snake about to align itself for its immediate transmutation from meat to metal, became for me a visual resonator for a series of articles written in the Bali Post. Each contribution, attempting to give sound to letters long silenced, was intended to encourage constructive action and not violence in the surrounding ambiguity inherent in what Arief Budiman has more recently called "the half-way reformation."⁵

In the months that followed from June to August, I began to hear the expression bah-bangun used frequently by young pro-democracy students speaking out about their struggle: "Fight for the reformation!" they cried. (Berjuanglah bah-bangun dalam reformasi ini!) Many remarked that in this time of economic crisis and physical and moral suffering, the only figure that could save Indonesia would have to be a maternal one, the metaphorical absence of the mother clearly regained in Bali through the increased popularity of Megawati Sukarnoputri and her Democratic Party [for Struggle] (PDI Perjuangan). Increasing anxiety about potential clashes between student demonstrators and security forces, leading to a return to the violence displayed in Bali in 1965, led a number of artists/educators to submit suggestions for peacekeeping measures.

Two pleas resonate with our Batubulan Guardian of the Door. In "Weapons and War" [Bali Post, July 7, 1998, p. 5], Drs. Nyoman Gelebet, architect and teacher, reveals the moral dilemma inherent in fort-da and bah-bangun. He assures his readers that they can fight empty-handed. War requires weapons, but to be armed does not necessarily imply that one must go to war. Attempting to clarify the distinction between the roles of the police and the military in Indonesia, Gelebet confronts the important prerogative—to watch and wait in a state of suspended animation. In conclusion, he suggests that the police as a force must return to their original function, presumably as guardians of the door, maintaining the peace without provocation.

Twenty days later, in a section of the Bali Post called "Culture/Kultur" [Bali Post, July 27, 1998, p. 7], the internationally renowned painter, teacher, and collector, Drs. Nyoman Gunarsa, who in 1993 was honored by President Suharto as a symbol of the New Order because of his service-above-self, submitted "Artists Require a Moral Reformation." He exhorts artists to act. Informing them of their strategic role in the reformation, Gunarsa maintains that art can teach society how to be honest and pure. Though Gunarsa does not offer concrete suggestions as to how this good social governance might be achieved through art, he pleads idealistically with young artists to apply for the honor, as if they are being called up for military service, and to seize their positions as "guardians of the door" (garda depan), watching over art in the service of moral reform.

No matter how police or artists are encouraged to define themselves within reformation politics, many Indonesians fear that it will be difficult to retain an honest election in June. The challenge will be to hold a fair general election under the government of B. J. Habibie because many see him as Suharto's right-hand man, an extension of the Orde Baru Regime. In the suspended nature of this "half-way" reformation, many candidates are rising to the challenge. Both Gelebet and Gunarsa would appear to be encouraging the populace to watch and to wait for what will happen like guardians of the door. Even the Sultan of Yogya, Sri Hamengkubuwono X, has asserted that succession need not be violent and bloody as espoused in the ancient myths. If Suharto can finally be made to fall (bah), the Orde Baru tossed away (Fort!); the question remains for the upcoming elections: who will rise (bangun) and who, stretching sacred threads of all the religious denominations well beyond their limits, will rein in/reign here (da!).

Kaja M. McGowan is assistant professor in the history of art and Asian studies.