Your say

Australian—Indonesian artists collaborate

Australian artists James Hancock and Alice McAuliffe are currently conducting a three month exhibition tour of three cities in Java –Yogyakarta, Bandung and Jakarta. The exhibition, entitled ‘Gang’, incorporates both the English meaning of ‘gang’ and the Indonesian meaning ‘alley’ and is comprised of exciting new video and visual art projects from Australia. Throughout the tour, they will collaborate with artist-run spaces in each city to present the exhibition. In Yogyakarta they will exhibit at the Taring Padi gallery, in Jakarta at the arts collective Ruangrupa, and in Bandung at IF Venue. In each of these venues, the artists will also give talks and exchange ideas about new forms of collaboration. An innovative arts-music festival in Sydney will follow this Indonesian leg of the Gang project in January 2006. It will offer a unique insight into the underground art world of our nearest neighbour.

Visit our website (www.gangfestival.com).

Alexandra Crosby
Sydney (thegang@gangfestival.com)
3 August 2005

Research to be deposited in archives

Adrian Vickers’ comments in Inside Indonesia No 83, July—September 2005 (p 3) point to the paradoxes of Indonesian studies in Australia. Just a little more than a century after Federation, Australia and its citizens are still coming to terms with our country’s geographical location. Indeed, in a short play I wrote last year to mark the retirement of the last (and final?) lecturer of Indonesian language at the University of Western Sydney, I drew attention to some of these paradoxes yet again.

But whatever the vagaries of the Indonesian-Australian story, one thing is particularly clear to me. Future generations of Australians will not be able to look kindly upon the remarkable efforts of the current generation of Australian Indonesianist scholars and commentators if their record of work, scholarship, and correspondence does not find its way into the national libraries, whether through donation or bequest. Despite the temptation to look at only ‘a sea of despondency’, it is the very uniqueness of the position of Australian scholarship, translations and commentary on Indonesia that makes it so important to ensure that this is done now.

I think it was Soekarno in 1959 who reminded Robert (‘Pig-Iron Bob’) Menzies that our nations were destined to be neighbours forever – notwithstanding subsequent Australian government actions to ‘excise’ territory for migration purposes!

Ian Campbell
Postgraduate researcher, University of Sydney
11 July 2005

Independence Day in Holland

You will be interested to know that after sixty years the Foreign Minister of Holland, Mr Bot, will attend the Independence festivities on 17 August in Jakarta. He was invited by the Foreign Minister of Indonesia Mr Wirajuda. This is the first time that a high Dutch official will attend this day. The Dutch always kept as the Independence Day of Indonesia 1949 when they signed the treaty with Indonesia. So this is a big breakthrough in the thinking of the Dutch.

You can read about the development between the two nations yourself on www.linggarjati.org.

Joty ter Kulve-van Os
2 August 2005