0 ‘Mapping the History’: Entertaining ephemera

Exhibition rekindles memories of old Indonesia. Photos, album covers, books and newspapers all archive the past. Open your grandmother’s old photo album and you may see old cars, out-of-fashion clothing or even giant trees that may still exist until today. It is not only for sentimental reasons that the past is so fascinating. Its traces also tell us who we are. A glimpse of the rich history of Indonesia and the country’s relationship with its erstwhile colonial occupier, the Netherlands, is available to the public during an exhibition that has been running at the Erasmus Huis in Kuningan, South Jakarta, since Jan. 8. 

The exhibition, titled “Mapping the History”, showcases a collection curated by the Koninklijk Instituut voor taal-Land-en Volkenkunde (KITLV), better known in English as the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies. KITLV director Roger Tol said the institute brought 36 original pieces and a number of reproductions of photographs, books, manuscripts and audiovisual materials to the exhibition. One of the highlights of the exhibit is a pencil drawing titled Pangeran Sarif Hamid Alkaddrie by the Javanese maestro Raden Saleh. 

The items in the exhibition represent three main themes: water, work and Batavia, the old name of Jakarta. Tol said that the curators looked to the relationship between Indonesia and the Netherlands in exploring the exhibition’s themes. “Water is very important for both them. Work is a socio-economic topic that we like, because we have so many documents on interesting things. Batavia was taken because the exhibition is in Jakarta, so we hope that we can attract many visitors,” he said. Photographs of floods, water gates, dams and hydro-electric power stations are among items that represent water. 

You can learn that floods have been an infamous problem that has been torturing the inhabitants of the capital city for a long time ago. Through some photographs, including Floods at Pintu Besar, Batavia (1872) and Floods in Batavia (1920), we can see how people in the past coped with the same problems that we face today. “From this perspective, we look to the future because Holland still cooperates with the Jakarta administration on flood control,” Erasmus Huis director Ton van Zeeland said. Other interesting things to see in the exhibition are reproductions of a Batak magical text that was written on tree bark and the cover of an album recorded by Indonesian rock titans Koes Plus in 1975. 

There are also some DVDs of local films, including Ada Apa Dengan Cinta? (What’s Up with Love) and Telegram, which show the development of society through film. On the theme of work, there are a number of photographs of charming old Dutch architecture, such as the palace of governor general H.W. Daendels in Waterlooplein (now the Finance Ministry in East Lapangan Banteng) and the home of Raden Saleh, which is now a nurses’ dormitory at Cikini General Hospital. Van Zeeland said he plans to curate similar exhibitions at the Erasmus Huis’ local centers in Medan, Semarang, Surabaya, Ubud and Yogyakarta. 

The effort to map Indonesian history has not stopped with preserving the past. It has continued until today. In 2003, the KITLV, in cooperation with Indonesian partners Off Stream Independent Filmmakers and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), started an audiovisual archive at eight locations across the nation to record the way Indonesian people are living during the 21st century. The long-term documentation project, which is called Recording the Future, was shot in Jakarta; Delanggu, Central Java; Surabaya; Payakumbuh, West Sumatra; Kawal on Bintan Island; Sintang, West Kalimantan; Bittuang in Tana Toraja, Sulawesi; and Ternate. “It’s really recording daily life. We go to pasar [traditional market], ice factories and other places. Nothing really happens in the recordings, but it is very interesting to me,” Tol said The exhibition will run until Feb. 15.

source : the jakarta post