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The Voiceover List (for this excerpt)
1. Main narrator, Sulastri: Nuning
2. Quotes: Dina, Ferdi
3. Instruction: Damayanti
4. Suwarsih’s ending: Gita
POINT ONE
STAND IN FRONT OF SULASTRI’S MANNEQUIN (EDICATION IN EAST INDIES). YOU CAN CHOOSE TO STAND IN THE POSITION WHERE YOU CAN SEE ALL THE BOOKS AND OTHER TEACHING MATERIALS IN NETHERLAND EAST INDIES THAT KEPT ON THE VIRTRINES. OR YOU CAN ALSO STAND IN FRONT OF THE SCREEN THAT PLAYS THE FOOTAGE OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE SCHOOL DURING THE PERIOD.
My name is Sulastri, or at least that is the name that was given to my current body by this museum. I have more than one age. As a nameless wax mannequin, I have reached 86 years of age. Before arriving to the museum, I was first displayed at the World Exhibition Forum in Paris, 1931. I was first created as a tobacco sorter, then I became a food seller in an exhibition on Food and Hygiene in Amsterdam. Then in this museum I was turned into an herbal drink vendor, then a batik maker. And all along this time, I remained nameless, except from the social positioning that was attached to my body inside this museum space. During these times also they always put me in a shabby kebaya, it had not been changed since 1931.
It was only since 2003, that I was given a new role. I am now a semi-fictional character of an autobiographical novel that is written by an Indonesian woman, her name is Suwarsih Djodjopuspito. Suwarsih first wrote her novel in Dutch language in 1940, the book was titled Buiten het Gareel, or in English, Outside of the Border. Then in 1975 it was translated to Indonesian using a new title: Manusia Bebas or Free Person. Hmm… a free person, I wonder what is the relation between having all these random roles attached to my body for so long with being a free person?
WALK TWO STEPS TOWARDS THE TEXT DESCRIBING SULASTRI.
It was never clear to me since when did the sound of the audio fragment located below me went broken. Just try and press the green button underneath my name tag. Can you hear anything… The voice that you are listening to now is basically the first time I got my voice back again. Of course this is not fully my own voice. You can also hear somewhere deep inside, the voice of the person who made me as this mannequin, you can also hear the voice of Suwarsih Djodjopuspito who created my character, and then there are the many voices of the group of researchers from Yogyakarta who recorded my voice. They have been busy trying to piece together these words, so that I can speak to you with a different voice. I can’t do anything but to let them to borrow my body. As a mannequin, I live and I die again for so many times. I was made so that I can walk through the time tunnel of history, and luckily with this body I don’t have to be afraid of getting tired by this entire journey.
In Madam Suwarsih’s novel, my destiny has led my fingers to start writing. The creator of my fictional character is a wife, a mother, an activist, a teacher and a writer. My destiny in the novel got entangled with Suwarsih’s biography as she struggled with the chances and burdens of Dutch colonialism. There is an one eighth, one quarter, or half of me in Suwarsih’s life story, as much as there were parts of her in my own being. Through this voice, I shall guide you through to listen to the dreams and memories that are revolving around me. Perhaps my body is stiff, frozen through time, but my voice is fleeting, flowing the course of time.
The piece of paper captures the shadow moving from Sulastri’s hand which writes swiftly. A row of letters turned into words, words into phrases that try to confine memories into innumerable lines of sentences. She fails to feel the movement of time. Her body does not go tired. On that night, she starts with a new leaf of paper. (Djojopuspito, 1975: 14)
I understand that I belong to more lucky ones. My family was able to put me through a vocational education at the European teacher training college in Surabaya. On the other hand, I was benefited by the Ethical policy of the Dutch colonial government. This policy has shaped new routes and redefined knowledge production processes in the Dutch East Indies. But to me embarrassment is just one of many feelings that emerge for attaining social privileges.
With my husband Sudarmo, we chose to move and fight. We built a wild school. It was a place where we throw the seeds of freedom. Freedom from oppression. Freedom should be the main life force on this land. But how must freedom be positioned in relation to modernity?
Follow my voice… I will take you through some detours through my reveries. I will introduce you to some of my friends here: other mannequins, the paintings, the writings. We are all brought here to give life to a theater of colonialism, a play staged in a museum structure which was built to enclose the institution’s property claimed on a territory far far away, a land which is now called Indonesia. Who owns the stories of Indonesia? Who owns its history? Who owns the knowledge on Indonesia?
Take a look at the building. It looks like a castle that collects artifacts and archives. I often think whether the youth in my motherland could ever access all of the things that are kept here. Honestly I doubt it. The problem is once again the distance. But this time it has to do with the distance, which is systematically organized, stretched through the logic of exhibiting propriety and safeguarded by the bureaucracy that controls it.
Yesterday afternoon I saw a group of high school students entering this place. They went here as part of their school assignment. I could hear their steps passing through while chattering. Some of them stopped in front of the paintings, the maps, the other mannequins, then they scribed something on their little notebooks. A few halted in front of me. What ran through the minds of these young Dutch people? How much do they know about my motherland that is still referred to as Netherlands East Indies in these premises? How much do they know about VOC – Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie? In our history books, the narratives about Dutch colonial history in Indonesia are full of names of people and places, dates and events. They exist as something that all of us have to memorize, inscribed to our brains, treated as if they were mantras or magical charms. They pretty much shaped the ways Indonesians perceive the Netherlands. I am curious about what kind of history books the students here read. How the Dutch is described in the colonial era in Indonesia? How is Indonesia being represented in these books?
I am only a teacher in a wild school who does not have the power to change the direction of how history as a subject should be taught in school. Within my own limits, what I can offer through this audio guide is to reveal things that are hidden beneath what seems to be obvious. I want to voice something that could create ripples, big or small; things that could disrupt the gaze of colonial history that I often felt is too flat in this country.
Now, turn your head to the right. Do you see the room next door? That room is full of bizarre objects, things that perhaps you could not find anymore in the place where it came from. They call it a cabinet of curiosities. Let’s walk there; towards the figure with the long silvery hair working behind the desk, his name is Rumphius.(註1)
POINT TWO
STAND ON THE ROOM CALLED “CLOVE AND POWDER”. WALK 25 STEPS TOWARDS THE RUMPHIUS’ MANNEQUIN AT THE CORNER OF THE ROOM.
Rumphius was born in Germany, year 1627. When he was 26 years old, he applied for a job at the VOC. Then he travelled to Java, then moved to Ambon. There he resided until his death. Poor ol’ Rumphius. He is a German scientist who had remarkably collected, named, and categorized thousands of plants and various species of seashells in Eastern Indonesia. Throughout his entire adult life he was obsessed with finishing a compendium of the dizzying variety of tropical life in Ambon.
I felt pity about him because his life was also filled with a series of tragedy. Indeed, if you want to have a respectful place in this museum, you either had to be a big winner in life or had a very tragic fate. If you are only destined to have a mediocre life, you will only become a nameless mannequin such as what happened to me in the past.
So why do you think Rumphius’ figure is exhibited here? One thing, he is visually impaired. By the age of 43, before he was known by the scientific world, Rumphius suffered glaucoma. He was trying to feel the seashell through his hands (fingers). Rumphius named his collection of plants and seashells in Javanese, Hindi, Portuguese, Chinese and Dutch.
Rumphius is a peculiar scientist. His works are a mix of scientific rationalism and the imaginative mind of an adventurer. He brought up things that exist beyond rational knowledge. He gave the seashells very funny names, such as Little Dream Horn, The Prince’s Funeral, Peasant Music and Double Venus Harp. What do you think the name of the seashell on his hands could be?
Rumphius’ gaze is the imaginative gaze of a curious mind. Expeditions, travel to faraway places, exotic sensation and
fascination are elements of a vision beyond the real. Aren’t curiosity and fascination things that we all share? In the past we used to call Hollanders as “Corn haired” or “Cat eyed” because most have hairs as blond as a corn and eyes blue as a catʼs. We were fascinated by the physical difference between Dutch people and natives. But when we wrote about this in my husband’s newspaper, the colonial police shut down his business because they felt insulted. But my husband also responded angrily, he said he was only describing what he saw. It is what it is. Unfortunately, in the past only European’s gaze and imagination were allowed to roam freely on our land.
To come to think about it, actually the gaze of Dutch colonials are worse than Rumphius’ who had trouble seeing. Rumphius still made some efforts to ask from native informants about plants and seashells that exist in Ambon. On the contrary, the colonial force tends to turn a blind eye on the realities faced by people who were different to them. Some of them were more interested in creating their own fantasy world as they pleased.
Forgive my grumpiness, but take a look to your right. Look at that huge map and the cannon below it. This map was made thirty years before Hollanders first arrival to Java. They bombed the royal complex of Jayakarta and replaced it with towers in Dutch architectural styles. They built canals and fortifications. The map is a tool to govern space. After occupying the motherland for long enough, the gaze of colonial fascination was replaced by the gaze of colonial knowledge. The kind of gaze that has ferociously scorched down all other knowledge that had long been existed before.
Let’s leave Rumphius alone now and move back to the other room. I will show you a colonial gaze that still prevails in the minds of both Dutch and Indonesian until now.
POINT THREE
WALK SOME 28 STEPS BACK TO THE AREA WHERE SULASTRI IS STANDING, THEN TURN LEFT TO THE AREA LOCATED ACROSS SULASTRI.
SIT ON THE BENCH WHERE YOU WOULD FIND RUMPHIUS’ BOOK ON THE TABLE. THE BOOK IS TIED WITH A CHAIN TO THE TABLE, SO THAT NO ONE CAN STEAL IT.
Look at the paintings that are hanged on the right corner across you. What do you see? What do the pictures remind you of? In those paintings, everything looks beautiful, everything felt so peaceful. So dreamy isn’t it? It’s a repertoire of tropical dream world and fantasy. The same images had driven a generation of European to move to the new colony named East Indies. They painted my motherland as a lush, filled with abundant natural resources and figures of beautiful women. Some of those paintings portray the development of colonial infrastructures – trains and railways, asphalt roads, bicycles, cars, hotels. They are all the necessary infrastructures to ensure comfort lives in the tropical land.
Do Hollanders know that there are a lot of spirits and ghosts living on the strings of coconut palm trees and inside the overgrowing banana trees? Do they know that the smell of jasmine often brings to me a nostalgic feeling? Or I should not say that because it might give impression that I am not a modern woman. I come to a point where all this natural beauty is nothing more than a mortal existence. What remain are the politics of gaze that people use in perceiving things. And this politics is there to ensure that this gaze continues to operate.
Nineteenth century panoramic paintings of Indies landscapes thus both utilized and reproduced the instruments of colonization, sharpening the skills of map-makers, surveyors, and navigators while serving as cultural tools of conquest in themselves, narrating a particular story of Dutch expansion that claimed new lands while depicting the process as uncontested. Nowhere is the visual discourse of naturalizing Dutch conquest more evident than in genre known as mooi indie(註2) (beautiful Indies) landscapes, a staple product of nineteenth-century Dutch colonial painting from the Indies, (Protschky 2011: 82-83).
The mountain, the coconut palm, and the sawah have become the Trinity (trimurti) for these painters… And if a painter is audacious enough to paint subjects other than the Trinity, and attempts to sell such paintings at the galleries here, then a dealer will say: “Dat is niet voor ons, meneer.” (This is not for us, sir). Meaning: “Dat is niet voor de toeristen of de gepensionnerde [sic] Hollanders, meneer.” (This is not for the tourists or the retired Dutch [orang Belanda], sir). And such painter, if he wishes not to be consumed by tuberculosis, may be better off becoming a teacher or looking for a job as a statistical clerk… (Sudjojono 2000, in Protschky 2011, 83).(註3)
That is why I always look at the mooi indie panting with a little suspicion. It stops being something that can provide a critical view of its surrounding. The ideal representation of my homeland hides so many problematic things. It was used to heighten the sense of control over space and to shape the vision of European rule in the colonized land. But at the same time I understand that the preservation of colonial gaze occurs in many ways. I remember how my own students also reproduce these picturesque images. Every time I asked them to draw something, my students always make the same picture: one or two mountains, with a sun perched over the horizon, a winding road passing through the yellowish paddy fields and vanishing behind the horizon. Mooi indie as a politics of colonial gaze trickles down, transmitting way through different generations that came after it.
Sometimes a thought crossed my mind, maybe it’s useless to ask my students to stop drawing the same landscape: the mountain, the sun and the paddy fields, again and again. What matters more to me is how to create dialogue so that we can begin to undo this colonial gaze. What matters to me is how to bring back other things that were pushed aside or concealed underneath this pretty 49 landscape. But what kind of things that are actually being erased? This question can be answered by knowing first the right context.
(Book opening sound) Now please flip to the first page of Rumphiusʼ book which is chained to the table. What do you see? Do you also see what I see? Yes, that’s what I mean, the picture of the small picture of a male genital. Two weeks ago I saw a young woman scribbling something inside the book. Maybe she was just messing around. Turn to your back and see the markings on the floor, do you see the blue dots there in the shape of dog paw prints? Maybe someone else also did it as a prank. But it was seemingly much harder to get away with the act of painting the footprints of a dog on the museum floor. Can you imagine what one had to do so that he or she could smuggle in a can of paint without being seen by the museum securities?
These are all of course plain vandalism. But they also gave me an idea on how to disrupt the logic in which the objects are arranged here. One of the main problems in the discourse of colonial history in the Netherlands is the lack of attempts in addressing them through everyday conversations. I think what we can do is to actually make these traces of colonial history more visible.