It is 3:30 a.m. I am gearing up for our departure at 8 am. It was postponed for one day to accommodate the schedule of my photographer, Mas Nashir. I spent that extra day in luxury: a large, air-conditioned room in a delicious hotel. With pleasure, I joined the world that I describe as a bubble.
It is a fake world far from the heat and the grime of Medan streets, far from soil and plants, not a whiff of poverty in the filtered air. People transfer from their air-conditioned rooms to their air-conditioned vehicles to air-conditioned malls and back again. It reminds me of Edmonton, Canada, where people transfer in a comparable way without ever having to pull on a coat, even in the deadly cold of winter. It is a comfortable life: a bubble.
I flip back in my notebook to a blog entitled “The Poverty of Wealth” that I never got around to posting. I want to read my thoughts of 2 weeks ago. It was impossible not to be struck, in Jakarta and in Medan (Indonesia’s third-largest city), by the spectacular displays of luxurious wealth. Oscillating between these cities and the Batak villages, it was equally impossible not to be struck by the contrast between the easy expenditure on a first-class hotel room and the difficult earnings of a weaver: a weaver must toil diligently for several months, making one textile a week, to make close to the rental of one of these rooms for a single night. And the rooms, by European standards, are not even expensive.
Superficial “bubble life”, guided by passing fads, comes at the expense of the survival of indigenous culture. Bubble life is our monument to financial success. Everywhere, people scurry to “keep up” with financial demands and trends. Weavers weave ever more quickly, ever more loosely, with increasing division of labour, making ever-more standardized products using faster machinery – and end up not with more wealth (they cannot keep abreast with the rate of change) but with a hollowed-out art form that has lost its indigenous value, and has no allure in the bubble world. It becomes a lost art in every sense. Both integrity and desirability are gone: a huge price to pay for worse than “disappointing” results.
The problem, then, will be at the supply side. No weaver can afford the cost of time and materials that it takes to produce a beautiful, old-style cloth of integrity. She will have to be supported.
But a seed has been planted. Henny Harsha is a member of the Indonesian Heritage Society and a textile-lover. Torang Sitorus has fallen in love with the traditional textiles of his own Batak culture and wants to promote them. The two of them want to combine forces to make a mall exhibit, thereby placing Batak textiles in the heart of bubble culture.
My own work right now focuses on the weavers, handing over to them the visual record of their own weaving tradition, something they could never afford to purchase on their own. Yes, I am distinctly aware that Legacy in cloth could be used to stimulate market demand for the beautiful old items, but I will leave that work, at least for the time being, to creative people like Torang Sitorus, Henny Harsha, Merdi Sihombing and Sebastian Hutabarat and I will continue to plant seeds. Today I head off in my air-conditioned car for the villages.
* Yesterday, I gave Henny Harsha a copy of Legacy in cloth to thank her for her assistance in importing and storing the book in Medan until my arrival. This book was donated with the generous assistance of Henk and Margot van Dalen who wanted to support the project in any undesignated way that would be helpful to me.
** I gave Torang Sitorus a copy last week on Samosir Island in the name of the Soroptimists of Arnhem (see blog “Didn’t pay? It was costing money!”). I think that book has turned out to be an important investment. Moreover, Torang fills high-end requests for Batak textiles and offers many weavers, thereby, a livelihood.
See Back to the Villages - the map!
An idea has something in common with the pollen sacks on a bee's knees. As she goes from flower to flower a bee picks up pollen until the sacks are full and then she carries it all back to the hive. An idea is born through a process of meetings, discussions and ponderings. The idea to write Legacy in cloth, for example, fed partly off the flower of the Ethnographic Museum in Leiden. It was my access to that collection, many years ago, that inspired the plan to write a comprehensive catalogue of Batak textiles.
Yesterday in Jakarta, to my great surprise, I received a telephone call at my new Indonesian number from the S.E. Asia curator of that very museum, Francine Brinkgreve. She informed me that the director of research at the museum had supported her request to participate in the Back to the Villages project. The museum is very strongly in favour of returning the products of research to the indigenous peoples where the research was conducted, and has actively worked on several collaborative projects with Indonesian museums. They feel that my Back to the Villages project dovetails well with their own values and priorities. They wish to donate 5 books!
I am fully convinced that partnerships between museums and indigenous peoples, originating in collections of their material culture, constitute a foundation for the future of both. My Back to the Villages project is precisely that kind of partnership because my book is filled with depictions of museum textiles, many of which are no longer woven or remembered in the Batak area. As examples of the Batak weaving heritage, they can inspire the weavings of the future. Needless to say, I am thrilled with this contribution from Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden. I feel proud of this museum that played such a strong role in my development as an anthropologist and so honoured to have them on my list of donors to the project.
Only minutes after being given with this news from the Dutch museum, I received a visit from the Batak designer, Merdi Sihombing. He had brought sumptuous armloads of his own textile inventions with him for me to explore and enjoy. I saw ancient designs in new colours and materials. I saw cross-fertilization between other Sumatran traditions and the ancient Batak tradition. The Batak textile heritage is Merdi's clay that he is molding into new forms. He is making his Batak weaving tradition vibrant. In his hands it is vitally alive. He brought the copy of my book that had been donated to him by the Indonesian Heritage Society and explained that it was going to be a valuable source of inspiration for him. I was gratified to hear this as I could not have received a higher compliment! Of course this is how I hope the book will be received by Batak weavers as well. This is the reason for the Back to the Villages project!
As I write this blog, I have received my wake-up call. Alas, it is unnecessary. I am definitely awake. It is getting to sleep amidst all of this excitement that is my problem. Today we are off to Medan where the Back to the Villages project will unfold further.
See Back to the Villages - the map!
It is midnight in Jakarta. June 3 has become June 4. I have just finished a plate of spaghetti in a state of jetlag. Time now to reflect on the first event in the Back to the Villages project: a meeting with the Indonesian Heritage Society.
Judy Ryan, the Society’s president has told me that they have 700 members spread around the world. I joined a couple of dozen of the predominantly ex-pat group today in a walled village of luxurious homes in a southern district of Jakarta. Muffins, brownies, cheese-puffs (you can tell that I am still hungry) and every creature comfort. A congenial atmosphere but also a sharp and perceptive audience representing every possible walk of life and, all tallied, vast life experience.
Several members have a passion for textiles; all have an interest in indigenous culture. Enthusiastically and sincerely, they do what they can to promote it. It was a receptive audience with which to share my Back to the Villages plan. It was also an audience that had earned the courtesy of learning more details: they had helped me in crucial ways to prepare for this project, e.g. to import the book.
I shared my motivation to bring Legacy in cloth to North Sumatra, emphasizing the fact that weavers need templates when they set about making a textile. If they no longer have their heritage textiles, they are severely restricted in their capacity to build creatively within their own tradition. The Indonesian Heritage Society donated 3 books to express their support for the project.
At a previous gathering like the one I attended today, the Batak designer, Merdi Sihombing, delivered the talk. He works with new fibres, colours, and techniques, building on ancient motifs and textile layouts. I was delighted that he was present at my talk today.
While I plan to give most books to weavers who assisted me during my fieldwork, there are a few non-weavers who also deserve a copy because of their role in keeping the tradition alive. After all, the ultimate goal of this exercise is to give the Batak weaving arts a boost. Merdi Sihombing was on my list of intended recipients (and his wife is a brilliant weaver). It seemed only right to make use of the opportunity today to present him with his copy. It was a festive and public setting in which to honour a person who is doing what he can to revitalize the ancient, Batak weaving tradition.
the glory of the weave!
My traveling companion Jantine Koobs kindly and dutifully made photographs to pin down the event for posterity. As soon as I have the computer software sorted out for my new camera, I will try to post some shots of the occasion.
Another highlight of the event was the opportunity to finally meet Ed Edwards McKinnon with whom I have corresponded, off and on, for years about Indian influence in Karo prehistory. Our mutual friend, Tim Babcock, who has done much behind the scenes to encourage the Back to the Villages project, orchestrated this meeting. At his suggestion (thank you, Tim!) Ed and his beautiful wife, Sinta, drove all the way down from Bogor to join us. There was an immediate click, the kind that happens only when kindred spirits meet. We sensed that it would be useful to meet longer and more often!
In a few hours, we will be off to visit the Textile Museum here in Jakarta. It will be a good idea to get some shut-eye before the sun comes up.
See Back to the Villages - the map!
I wrote Legacy in Cloth with Batak weavers in mind and the many, many other Batak who showed me hospitality, kindness and patience. I always find it problematic when anthropologists don't take the time and trouble to show their " products" to the hosting populations who gave them their information in the first place, hence my plan to return the weaving heritage to Batak villages in the form of this book.
Of course such a plan has pitfalls, e.g. the errors and misplaced emphases in my book can take on a life of their own. However, what never occurred to me -- perhaps because I never dreamed that the book would be published as lavishly as it was -- was that the book might also engender some wariness amongst Batak readers. I SHOULD have thought of this. After all, while doing my fieldwork, when I showed photographs of museum pieces to the villages in North Sumatra, their reactions were mixed, everything from awareness of unfairness: " How do you get access to these things while we don't? " to distrust, " No, we never wove that way." to covetousness " Please give me the picture when you leave because I find it inspiring." With this book, I wanted to give all Batak the opportunity to own all of the photographs. As I said, this desire was born of my thankfulness to my hosts.
There aren't many copies of the book yet in North Sumatra (the first shipment got held up for 4 months in customs) and I haven't had much opportunity to observe reactions to it yet. However, I already notice a recurring theme, viz. perplexity tinged with scepticism. I am the "belanda" or the " orang asing" who wrote the definitive book about an element of Batak heritage. That doesn't sit right. It was alright to ask my Batak friends and acquaintances for information about their heritage, but who am I to GIVE the Batak information about their heritage?
I also hasten to point out that it is designers like Merdi Sihombing who will take Batak textiles into the future and give the art a niche in modern life. I hope with all my heart that my book might be useful to people like him. If it can contribute to any form of maintenance or revival of the art, then I will be satisfied and happy.
But there is another side to this story. Acknowledging the fact that the Batak weaving arts belong unquestionably to the Batak and that nobody can legitimately appropriate them, then there is still the fact that hundreds of Batak woven textiles have found their way into museums in Holland, Germany, Switzerland, France, Canada, USA, Denmark....where they have been tended (many of them for a century or more), exhibited, researched, documented, used in demonstrations, researched and written about -- essentially played a variety of roles in Western history and culture. Moreover, by virtue of transfer -- through some form of exchange or gift-giving -- they are now " owned" by the West and have become, consequently, part of Western heritage. They are testimonials to relationships of all kinds: colonial, tourist, artistic, familial...
My book, Legacy in cloth is therefore about a Western as well as a Batak cultural heritage. I enjoy the irony that despite the suspect origins of Western museums and my discipline of anthropology, quite unbeknownst to the original collectors (and to writers like myself) our efforts can now be appropriated and used by the original hosting cultures to their own advantage, however they deem fit. To my Batak friends, I say: I do not have the last word. Write your corrections on the pages! Use this book for inspiration! Argue with its premises! Remould it to make it fit your needs! I have written my insights derived from my experiences and I will continue to do that. The heritage that I have written about is not only shared between North Sumatra and North America and Northern Europe, but with the whole world. Let us build together on the legacies of our respective ancestors.
