Artistic Direction as Thought Leadership | ADN Satellite Symposium 2018

CR: Good evening. Good afternoon. Thank you all for being here. Welcome back to those who’ve been here earlier today and even yesterday. This is the final session, public session for the Asian Dramaturgs Network 2018 at TPAM. We’re very very happy to have for this panel which is titled “Artistic Direction as Thoughts Leadership”. Hiromi Maruoka herself who we are very glad could join us, as well as Bilqis Hijjas and Linda Mayasari. My name is Charlene Rajendran and I will be moderator-provacatuer for this session.

Just a announcement that some of it will be in Japanese, and so for those of you who would need translation, please pick up one of these over there. For those of you who would like to have one of these because there is simultaneous translation into Japanese, please go and pick one up as well. You just need to give your registration card or some form of identification so that they can make sure you return it.

We’re very excited about this afternoon’s session because we want to open up the discussion further, it has been the point of Asian Dramaturgs Network in many ways. And we began this morning with 6 very different kinds of presentations,  provocations, ideas to think about, and questions about the role of the dramaturg, what is dramaturgy, as part of continuing topics in dramaturgy.

So I’m just going to introduce a little bit, some of the thinking behind this session. And how it continues on from what we’ve already been thinking about, but just to give you a frame. Then I’ll invite Bilqis, followed by Hiromi and then Linda to speak for a while, and then we will have time for dialogue. And there’s plenty of time for dialogue. So we really hope to hear from you about your thoughts on this topic but also in relation to some of the things, and ideas and questions, platforms that our presenters are going to talk about.

So this notion of arts leadership is becoming increasingly important for me and I think many others as well to ask that question: What does it mean to be a leader in today’s environment? Particularly an arts leader perhaps, but when we are so burdened with issues of uncertainty and precarity, then the notion of being a leader and having vision and being clear and wanting to be bold about your suggestions, what is needed and what is necessary become complicated by this idea that, well maybe it’s not so sure, maybe it’s not so certain. Maybe we don’t have to take one way of doing things, of course then this question of multiplicity in leadership, collaboration, collectives, ways of understanding leadership become important, and I think the arts has led the way very often without being recognized for the kinds of dialogical spaces that are opened up by artists, producers, curators, artistic directors, and a range of other people who decide to work in ways that contest the political environment as they see it, as works that are not necessarily overtly resistant, although sometimes they are, but which raise questions about what it means to be a citizen, what it means to be a human being, we talked a little bit about this in the morning, what it means to take on leadership without having to be this almighty, charismatic leader that still seems to garner a lot of attention, even if it’s not very respectful attention, yet it attracts a certain kind of interest and unhealthily so sometimes, I think.

So what does it mean to be inclusive? How do we engage in languages that are arts-based in order to do this? The work of the dramaturg or those who are involved in dramaturgical thinking is obviously not new to these questions but in terms of providing actual frames, in terms of providing spaces, platforms, ways of thinking and working vocabularies, this is something that I don’t think we recognise enough or we pay attention to enough.

So we’re very pleased that this afternoon we have three people on the panel but also that we’ve had a range of people as part of ADM who have been looking at this question of what am I doing and why am I doing this and why does it matter? Why does it matter not just to the artist I’m working with but to the socio-political environment, to the cultural environment, to the personal environment. Why does it matter in relation to my own understanding of my own work. These kind of reflective and reflexive questions, maybe, sometimes bring up troubling information themselves, sometimes they lead to ideas that are not very pleasant. How do we deal with that when we are sometimes meant to be complicit and we don’t want to be? Or we are inevitably complicit and we don’t even know that we are. So, it picks up from some of the things that have been talked about. As I said yesterday, Oburan [check name] talked about a certain kind of cacophony that is needed or an anarchy that is needed. Not always the case, sometimes it’s about very orderly programmes and systems that introduce resistance or alternative. Sometimes it’s just about spontaneous and open ways in which a site or a location, which was talked about yesterday afternoon in the Japanese panel, becomes in itself a way of thinking through how the politics is at work. And how then certain choices, certain decisions are works of leadership. So we’re not looking at these charismatic, big names as leaders in our discussion today, we’re looking at ways in which people like Hiromi, Bilquis and Linda are taking on the work of providing platforms, spaces, thinking frames, ideas, challenges and asking questions through these platforms and frameworks that challenges all. So that is a kind of overarching frame that we invite you to participate in thinking through.

I’m going to introduce our speakers very briefly because I think that the work that they do will articulate who they are much more eloquently. But nonetheless, Bilqis Hijjas writes, produces, performs and teaches about dance in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As the President of MyDance Alliance, a membership organisation supporting dance in Malaysia, she has programmed and produced recurring performance platforms, dance festivals, and mentorship programmes for emerging choreographers as well as various other local productions and workshops. Bilqis also directs the dance programme at private arts centre Rimbun Dahan, which I think you will see in a minute, outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which offers residencies for contemporary dance choreographers. This is a venue for the annual Dancing in Place weekend of site-specific works and the Southeast Asia Choreolab for emerging contemporary dance choreographers from the region. Bilqis teaches, lectures in Dance Criticism and Performing Arts Theory at University Malaya and she runs something called Critics Republic, an online platform for written criticism of Malaysian art which seeks to encourage critical discussion among the audience. Bilqis is also the Vice President for Southeast Asia for the volunteer regional organization, World Dance Alliance Asia-Pacific. So she continues to build bridges and negotiate between various communities in the art-making, dance-making world.

Linda Mayasari is Director at Cemeti –  Institute for Art and Society as well as an Associate Curatorial Assistant for the Indonesia Dance Festival. She is currently completing a masters programmme in Religious and Cultural Studies at Sanata Dharma University. While pursuing personal research and writing exploration at the intersections of art, politics and post-colonialism in Indonesia. Occasionally, she works collaboratively with artists from various fields, particularly dance and visual arts, to produce independent research-based projects. For those who were there this morning, she kindly translated for us as well.

And last but no means least, Hiromi Maruoka is the President of the Japan Center, Pacific Basin Arts Communication (PARC) and Director of the Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama where we all are, at TPAM. Hiromi provides opportunities to connect people with people and people with places, both at home and overseas. In 2003, she set up the Postmainstream Performing Arts Festival to bring foreign productions to Japan. Hiromi also conducted the Asia Satellite Meeting in 2008 and 2011 of the International Network for Contemporary Performing Arts and in 2012, initiated the festival, Sound Live Tokyo. She is Vice-President of Open Network for Performing Arts Management or ONPAM and also one of the founders.

I think just the range of things that our panelists do and think about is so full of options and ideas and potential. Thank you again for being here. We’ll going to start with you Bilqis. Thank you.

BH: Thank you very much Charlene. Thank you very much for the Asian Dramaturgs Network for inviting me and always to TPAM for the wonderful hospitality.

Thank you for the introduction. As you probably noticed, I wear many hats and so I am only going to be talking about a few of them today.

[slide – MyDance website] This is one of them. I am the President of an organisation called MyDance Alliance, which is a non-profit volunteer membership-led organisation for dance in Malaysia. It’s very small. We have a 10-person committee. But despite how small we are, we do manage to do quite a lot of work, and it’s always very heartening. This I suppose is the situation in which I can most clearly be identified as a leader because I hold the very blown-up title of President and of course being President now is quite a contested idea and does not really constitute leadership but if we can perhaps apply ourselves to the idea of a previous President, which was that one can lead from behind. This is something that I hope to be able to get to on later today and talking about the work that I do.

[slide – Rimbun Dahan] I also run a dance programme at Rimbun Dahan, which is, you can see is a private arts centre outside Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. It is private because it belongs to my family. My parents live there. I don’t live there. So obviously, I am incredibly privileged to be able to both have this space and have the capacity to be able to run arts programme in that space. Most of the other programmes that are run there are residencies, mostly for visual artists, but it is very flexible. If you want to know more about it, obviously that’s the website.

I want to talk to you about two particular projects that I’ve been working on.

[slide – SEA Choreolab] One of them is the Southeast Asian Choreolab which I’ve been running since 2014, which is a project that brings together 14 emerging contemporary dance choreographers from the Southeast Asian region for a 9-day residential workshop together at Rimbun Dahan led by an international facilitator. [referring to slide] This photo is from 2015. I’m using 2015 because it’s the only one I have photos of on the internet. You can see them all there having fun in our studio. That on the side, you may recognise, is Arco Renz who was mentioned earlier today as a dramaturg. So he was, in 2015, our international facilitator. At this points to the way that this project is run, in fact, the only way that this project can be run. It is funded by money from international cultural agencies.

Malaysia, if you may know, or you may, you will quickly know, has almost no funding for the arts and certainly has no reliable, recurring, application-based funding for the arts in any way, shape or form. But the international cultural organisations do and they tend to be exposed [? 13:54 not sure] to be extremely active and extremely generous in their work in Malaysia and so we work extremely frequently with Japan Foundation, Goethe-Institut, the British Council and other international organisations and it is incredibly rare to find an artist of any standing in Malaysia who has not in some point work with a German artist or a Japanese artist for these reasons.

So, the way that the Choreolab is run. Every year, I approach a different cultural organization and find an established choreographer to be partner, to be the facilitator and then I ask the cultural organization for money for food, which in Malaysia is very cheap. And then all of the choreographers, it’s an open call, and then we go through and we select 14 choreographers. All of the choreographers pay for their own flights to Malaysia. Once they arrive in Malaysia, we provide them with accommodation at Rimbun Dahan and all of the activities happen at Rimbun Dahan and then I use the money to buy food and we eat and then the international organisation funds the facilitator and they teach or facilitate and that’s how we roll.

And it wouldn’t be possible to do this without the involvement of the international cultural organisations because of the way that the, because if you follow the money, that’s how it works. Which when you look at it, it’s something that I feel very strongly about in Malaysia and also in Southeast Asia in general, in that many of our cultural encounters are structured inalienably by the structures of our funding as, of course, you know in every part of the world this is so and the structures of our funding are mostly that they come from these various different cultural organisations. So, it is so much more common to be a Malaysian choreographer who has worked with a composer from Tokyo and a sound or a stage designer from Berlin than to be a Malaysian choreographer who has worked with a dancer from Jakarta and you know, a sound designer from Bangkok, even though those are enormous cultural capitals that are only an hour away by plane.

We have very little engagement with each other because a lot of people think and say because we don’t have the money, none of us have any money, except for Singapore, and sometimes we all meet in Singapore. The last time that I met was in Singapore, fully funded by the Goethe Insitut, in that case.

So, you can see how this plays out on the ground in that we continually have incredibly influential and incredibly encouraging, and growth opportunities but with very certain cultural players from very certain parts of the world. So, my intention with the Choreolab was to try and slightly disrupt this pattern by also using the pattern as it exists. This is something that we have to think about doing, how we are both complicit in the terms of power and how we also strategically negotiate that, in order to achieve perhaps, slightly different outcomes.

So, half of the day during the Choreolab is spent with the choreographers, with the participants, them [points to slide], leading their own sessions about their own arts practice with each other and then we have some days where they go on trips into the city and learn other things. But my intention for the Choreolab is that it is as much as, if not the most important thing, for the choreographers just to meet each other, than for them to learn from the experts who come from Japan, or Australia or the UK or Germany. And I think this is also one of the main thing that they take away from the project is this experience of having met and suddenly becoming energised by the idea that: There are other people out there like me who are excited by dance like me, who are not that far away and Gosh! we could do something together. Everyone leaves the Choreolab with this great feeling like “Yeah! We’re going to work together!” and two years out, nah! nothing ever happens because there is no money. So, this year I felt like I would try to do a development project leading on from the Choreolab. We’ve now done the Choreolab three times, so we have an alumni group of 45 people, many of whom are extremely interesting members of the regional contemporary dance community.

[Refers to slide] This dude, you may recognize if you go out into the lobby, he’s got the video in the corner, there’s an interview with him. “Buddha” [Thanh Nguyen Duy, name from website] from Hanoi. [Scrolling photos] And who else can we see. There’s lots of people in there. There’s Eisa Jocson.

So, I wanted to bring them together to actually work with each other and to actually do more things than just make nice friends and then go home. Which is also good and also which I’m fully in support of. So, I run a annual site-specific dance event called Dancing in Place, which I’ve run since 2009, off and on, at Rimbun Dahan where people come to make short works and we open it for free. It’s for general public, people come in and watch. So I invited the alumni of the Choreolab to self-propose their own groups of people that they had met at Choreolab or from a list of alumni that they wanted to work with and then invited them to come back, spend five days working in the space and then present what they wanted to present or not as just, an initial, you know, toe in the water kind of engagement with each other which actually, gently, presses towards a product.

I guess this is where the idea of, for my responsibility as a dramaturg comes in. I offered to provide “light” dramaturgical support because there were five groups of them and I couldn’t really provide heavy dramaturgical support by myself. But it ended up that most of the dramaturgical support, they provided to each other. So, they were rehearsing during the day and in the evening we would go out and we would eat together and they would talk about their works to each other and invite the choreographers from the other group to come and see them rehearse in the morning and give them feedback and tell them what they thought and this. So, in the end I did extremely “light” dramaturgy. Basically, just sort of talking them through the sites and the way the audience was likely to react and that kind of thing. But they dramaturge each other, which was an outcome that I didn’t predict in the beginning but which I think worked extremely well. And I think this. Allowing..

First of all, allowing the artists to choose their own collaborators so that you are not forcing them into a situation where they are collaborating with people that they don’t know. Putting them in a kind of “easy-win” situation where there is not that much pressure on what comes out of it. We haven’t poured a huge amount of money into this project. Again, they paid for themselves to come to Rimbun Dahan to be part of this project. I again just had to front the money. That’s the tab to front the money for the food. It’s very important to feed your choreographers as much as possible, so that all of you know this.

And then to allow them to make their own decisions about whether or not they create something that they want to present. One of the groups came up to me halfway through and said, “Oh, we don’t know if we will have anything”. I said: “That’s fine, you don’t have to have anything.” As an actual first step, well, you can afford to fail and also it’s very short, five days. Doesn’t go well, group implodes, you hate each other by the end, doesn’t matter, you’re fine.

[Slide of works] Surprisingly they all came up will all these beautiful pieces, some of which there are photos of here. This is Siko Setyananto from Indonesia and Al Bernard Garcia from Philipinnes in a duet that they made. But I think it’s, it wasn’t my intent for them to necessarily come out with work. [Slide of works] This is Otniel Tasman from Indonesia working with Chai Vivan from Malaysia. That’s the dog’s house that that they are in. There are no dogs in it at that moment.

Coming into this discussion, I was thinking very much about the question of how do you, how does your direction, how does your dramaturgy advocates certain ways of thinking and I guess, I think the ways of thinking that I’m trying to privilege [23:17 not sure of meaning].

First of all, the feeling of flexibility and adaptability and self-sufficiency. Don’t think that just because you don’t have the money, you can’t do it. Or don’t think because of the way funding structures are structured you always have to make things exactly according to what those funding structures want.

Secondly, I guess, my,  I would like to advocate for the values of the local, the values of personal networks, of creating webs of personal obligation which are much more proximate to you, rather than going halfway across the globe to what are, let’s face it, our former colonial masters, and the fact that we are still having our cultural organisations and our cultural products largely dictated by funding provided by our former colonial masters, I think is incredibly disturbing and something that we really have to think about, something that we have to strategise around, something  that we have to choose to negotiate.

Also I think it is important to think about the idea of engaging with the markets and how we are working with artists themselves. I mean I’m more of a producer than anything else, so I think in terms of logistics and I think in terms of money and you heard me mention money many times in this very short presentation. But I think also how am I complicit in enforcing a kind of oppression upon artists whom I’m not paying. None of these artists were paid, they did not receive an honorarium, they received nothing. They received food. They had to pay for their own flights, I didn’t, you know, I gave them absolutely nothing. The entire project of 16 international artists and 2 days of performance with 300 audience members which was all took part over 10 days cost me US$1,700 – in cash. Cost me, because that doesn’t take into account all their unpaid labour and how much they paid to be there. So, despite the sort of, ra-ra-ness of self-sufficiency, you know it’s self-sufficiency at what cost? Yes, we get these beautiful works out of them but you wish that they look dead[??25.49 referring to slide?] but they, this is perhaps, maybe, this IS the most sustainable model or maybe it is a totally unstainable model, maybe it’s a totally unfair model. And I think we need to think about that. Yes. Thank you.

CR: Thank you Bilqis. Many, many questions to be considered and thought through and not necessarily solved in this session but percolated, perhaps, and kept simmering somewhere. Hiromi, over to you, please. Thank you.

HM: TPAM. I’m the Director. I’m Maruoka Hiromi. in this session. Thank you for inviting me Charlene. I appreciate all of you. Especially last this ADN Session. Thank you for doing it two years in a row in TPAM. Artistic Direction As Thought Leadership. All panelists are female, women. Charlene, ADN, how we have great thought leadership has been proven already I believed with our presence. We have beautiful presentation by Bilqis and with a lot of good pictures. I will be presenting at TPAM, so you’re here, so no pictures for my presentation if that’s OK.

TPAM, you may be familiar, performing arts professionals, this is a festival that we are presenting for you. And I create the event for all of these people. People who work in theatre and artists, of course, the producers, people who work in theatre or festivals, arts managers, critics, researchers are the people that I try to work with. Today’s leaders, future leaders are the ones that we think are important. There are hundreds, thousands, of audiences beyond or behind every single one of you. How, what the experience of TPAM is going to be fed back into their local ecosystems and their local events is what I always try to think about when I’m working on creating TPAM together with my team.

It’s difficult to think about where to start from, but the basic premise is whether it’s publicly funded or not. Arts and culture, I believe, must always be regarded as something which is public. For the public sphere, making work, providing it to the public sphere, means that.. I think it’s an action in itself which is really questioning or raising issues or points to be considered relating to the current situation. The world in our society is always continue to change, we are always going to be caught in double binds and paradoxes, which sound pessimistic, I know. My hope is that we can try to think about these issues and about the circumstances and try to bring about some change or something new, some kind of a tweak. That is basically what I always have in mind when I’m trying to think what we can do.

So I like to talk about this year’s programme instead of reducing it to abstract terms. TPAM started out as a market. We now called ourselves a meeting. When you are a performing arts market, of course we’re thinking about selling our product, we wanted people to pick up what you are creating and we still have that aspect, of course, because it will provide new opportunities, new places where the work can be shown. But at the same time, our value systems and our ways of thinking need to be always reaffirmed and also to be revisited, I think, because there are so many dramatic and tremendous [31.11, guessing only, can’t really make out English translation] changes occurring in terms of what people do. So, the ways of thinking that we think is important, what we had believed in, can change overnight. Perhaps, what we believed in developly [31:23 can’t make out English translation] until yesterday, we can no longer believe in that, just in the space of one day. At the same time, perhaps we could look at questioning what we had previously regarded as being absolutely worthless or what we have continued/considered [31.44 wakaranai] to be a negative. I think we’re trying to prepare for that. It’s very difficult to explain about everything, we have 4 of female panelists [31:53 wakaranai].

Have you seen Khoo Jahye’s work which is a surrature [32:00 wakaranai – sculpture?] created by a Korean woman. It’s one of those works that doesn’t shout out its presence and this was directed by Koh Jooyoung who’s from South Korea. It’s one woman talking about her own life, an actress who is not fair well-off. But in order to understand that work, you need to have the understanding of the power/cloth? [32:32 not clear ] struggle inside you, otherwise I think you will not be able to understand what the work is trying to do. And after seeing that work, people probably will have discussions about whether it was a good work or not, and then by discussing what you have, what the other has, what we each possess, I think we always thinking of undergo change [32:58 wakaranai – not clear translation]

Jessica Zafra and Raya Martin performances were presented yesterday and the very last scene takes place in a Filipino restaurant. But in order to be able to capture what is occurring there, you need to have an ideological trigger or something that you need to protect, that you need to guard. And whether or not to have that or will you have that kernel of thought within yourself that you want to really keep to is going to be something that you going to have to face up to and to think about. And if you have that, then you can understand that, I think.

I think that the works which I bring to your attention have really been kinds of work which will change your perspective of how you experience work in the past and also in the future as well. We hope that all the work that you experience will be a trigger for that sort of change. Also in the debates, there are some which are productive, at the same time, there are unproductive discussions. So, as professionals, what we are doing is, in effect, feeding into a consumer cycle by delivering the works to audiences, which theatre professionals will look at in horror because they tend to really not like the concept of consumption. But then I’m also aware that we need to really question whether we really understand the concept and limitations of this ???tion [34:53 not quite clear as interpreter spoke very fast] of consumption.  This is an event which is created with performing arts as a basic premise but during this ???[35:05 wakaranai, mumbling] period of time, 9 days, I really try to heighten the experience, and make it into an intense experience which I thinks helps to edge [!!! 35:19 wakaranai] too the impact, that.

CR: Thank you very much. Thank you, very very much Hiromi because that takes us into another way of thinking about consumption. I mean Bilqis talked about food, and that’s one kind of consumption. And I think it’s important to bear in mind that we use that term “consumption” very liberally or illiberally and yet sometimes we perhaps need to take stock of what we mean whether we’re consuming food, or otherwise. We seem more open about talking about food consumption nowadays to a point in which it becomes strange. Yah, what kinds of healthy consumption, unhealthy consumption are raised in this shift from the market to the meeting.

Linda, over to you.

LM: [Slide title: Leadership as an Agency Practice to Identify and Negotiate with “the Master”]

Well, thank you.

Um, well, actually this is very hard for me to carry on this theme and leadership because as long as I’m working in the arts scene, both visual arts and also performing arts I never put myself in a certain position, hierarchy or even call myself as a leader but I mostly working organically collectively, both even I initiating something and then people come and join or I also following as a supporting system for other people’s initiative. I think that is also because of the cultural background where I’m coming from, in Jogjakarta the social capital, it is very, very important aspect for artists to struggle and to survive. So here I would like to delivering my reflections related to this theme. Maybe it will be a bit obstruct or pessimistic but I hope then we can elaborate it in the discussion.

So, I would like to say that sometimes for having position as an institutionalized leader seems to be the beginning of debate of the real leadership subjectively [?? not clear 37: 51] unless someone has courage to negotiate with the master because that sometimes must be taken by somebody for certain reasons. Through my personal reflections, actually realise that there is always the master before someone has instituted as a leader. When someone has instituted as a leader, then they getting closer to the master.

The master througsuareh…??? [?? Not clear 38:16] competing with other master to get us in their side. Indeed, we usually do not realise the presence of the master who has been calling and speaking to us, unconsciously our thoughts, reasons, directions, pace, feelings, desire and all of our humanity fairly leaded by the master that we love unconsciously. That’s my personal reflection.

But then the point is how we identify the master? So then we can divine [??] our agency and negotiate with the master.

I would like to share a brief story about our struggle in Cemeti and deals with that also a small chapter of practices outside of institutional fences. I already preparing some of the images and then let’s see how far we can go with the limitations of the time.

[Slide: Cemeti – different slides of Cementi]

So this is Cemeti, the first building. As Cemeti has been existed for almost 13 years, and passing through several eras and changed it’s name and platform for four time from Gallery Cemeti, Cemeti Gallery, Cemeti Modern Art Gallery, and then changed into Contemporary Art Gallery and then changed into Cemeti Art House and recently last year, we launched our new platform as Cemeti Institute for Art and Society. Of course in this changing, not only change of the name, but also of our approach, the way how we engage with the artistic practices and also our strategy to dealings with the situation in Jogjakarta and Indonesia.

At that time, Indonesian visual arts infrastructure was inadequate with the development of artist, artistic practices. Most of the exhibition spaces were under the sub-regional government with unclear directions. While some commercial galleries in Jakarta still focus on the paintings from fifties. [Refer to slide] That’s in this era.

Ligitimation outfield of [??? 40:26 not sure of word used, speaking too fast] the art into Jakarta was in the hands of the former art education institutions and senior artists who were affliated [??]  with around 1918 until 1992 if I am not wrong, remember the exactly years.

The Indonesian art experience unpredicted [??? 40:48 unclear about meaning] bomb painting lasted which for several years and has influenced artists and also artists’ directions. All the artists want to be someone in the market.

In the same time, artists faced Suharto regime that was becoming more and more strict repressed and a kind of potential resistance. Additionally, the socio-political conflict related to the Communist Party in Indonesia has contributed the impressionate [??? 41:16 not sure – imprisonment?] at the numbers of leading artists and strict censorship for various mass media and media for the public expression.

In that situation, the young artists tend to be critical.

[New slide]

They were looking at what’s happening, learning from it, respond and develop projects relevant to this condition while struggling to survive their life in terms of literally, economic and social life.

I have to note that there was a criticism addressing both artisticmohney????? [??? 41.49 not clear] within the arts scene and also social political situation in Indonesia long before Cemeti exist. We can call Persagi, Pipa, Geratan, XXXX XXX , [42:00 Indonesian, last names too fast] the new art movement and so on.

In the other side, Internationalism and regalnalism [42:06?? Regionalism?] has been emerged in Indonesia. The purse [???42.09] of new economic force in Asia affected the interaction [42:13 ????] group of visual art. In that era, county in Asia Pacific region used visual art as part of their political strategy. Indonesian visual art were often involved in the events organized by A.P.T. [42.27?? check] in Australia and also Japan Foundation.

However, inspite of being the extension of the respective governments, the relationship between Indonesia and the institutions have almost never been built through the formal Indonesian governmental way. In Indonesia, the absence of the state cultural strategy lead to the role of cultural diplomacy change hands to the non-profit agencies, artists, non-government organisation, galleries, independent curators, arts managers becoming the dominant force to drive the dynamic development of contemporary Indonesian art in the global art arena. They are invited to participate the various international art events as well as presentation of state but without a stage [43:16 to check]

The patrons of networking continues to be reproducted [??] till now with a diverse forms. Cemeti is still working on a residency programme. We invited artists from Australia and also Netherlands and now we also working together with the Goethe Institut. The idea is to encountering this kind of artists with Indonesian artists for having exchange, living together for three months, sharing studio and you know have a discussions.

Well back then on that period, ilstead departed itself from readily invention [??? 43:52 unclear grammar], Cemeti try to find alternative model of mediation. Created a space for artists to meet and exhibit their works in the local context but at the same time riding the wave of cosmopolitanism too, shows modality, potential support, sources of knowledge and keddle [44:08 cradle??] a part of its survival strategy to hex stagnation and outwit to the authorities by mobilizing the artists’ critical ideas.

[Slide] And this is several projects that has been done in Cemeti. [Points to slide] Melia Jaarsma and Nindityo Adipurnomo is the founders. It was when they were still young. Of course now they are very different. [Slide] This also already happened. [Slide] This is our gallery [Slide] and this is residency [Slide] This is the artist talk. We usually using mat and sitting on the floor for that.

I would like to brief give you my analysis, on, what I mean with the master. At the same time, new spaces are emerging around 2000 and Cemeti got critical voices from the people as a, they called it like the alternative spirit has been rolling for more 10 years is considered as established and Cemeti becoming the agents of neo-liberalisms and also just only working on exporting and importing artists all the time, becoming disconnected locally. So that point is becoming critic, which is very good for us to reflect. And Melia indeed at that time trying to gather people who are close friends, and also some people who are keen with this issue to find new directions. and then they change the platform into Cemeti Art House and again the criticisms also happen again during our celebrations of 15 years. Finally, they decided to not only focusing on the exhibition and promoting the artist but more into laboratory, then why we then open residency as a my project [?? 46:47 grammar]

In the market predictma [46:53 Indonesian word?] changed very drastically after the demand of the Indonesian painting increased rapidly around ‘90s. Cemeti then grow along with the Indonesian art market pace that are formed of the most actual social-political artworks. Anie Supriyanto, [check name] one of the prominent curators in Indonesia, stated that in 1997 to 1998, such works represented the identity of Indonesian contemporary art, the political art.

The global art scene then marked the practice of Indonesian art in general that is closely related to the social political issues and the notions of human rights. The acceptances for the global art work the new Indonesian artworks present a new image of exoticisms from more indie [47.44 ?? not sure ] to the social-political art.

After Melia formation’s [47:49 not sure what this is] era, life is no longer tu-tu-land[47:51?? Indonesian word?]. The common enemy has collapsed. Then who will pin the opinion? This situation bring a major change in our field which has no clear directions. Artist as of African sort [48:05 ??? Cannot understand. Name?] begin to ask himself: Who am I? That I should always relate my art with the social and political situation? Agung Guniawan [name, check] also feels that the loss of the motivation to work after the turmoil of the various social political change. He feels no longer has strength and contribute some things for improvement. Optimisms of the, dissemination of critical standpoint in our new environment as it was leaves some years before it’s now evaporated. This is a reflection he made awards [?? Towards?] that show his cynical standpoint towards the social political themes ward that tour out to be the packet [48:48??? Completely tak faham] of the curator from the contemporary art institution in Europe, America and Japan. And Agung thinks that the critical sound [??? 48:55] that should drive the change is nothing more than a commodity to the global contemporary art scene.

From that chapter of historical note of Cemeti, we can see that the authority of the power relations and state, and also in our system, has changed. Then the cosmopolitanism and international has been occupied the master position. But the market has transformed into another shape and still becoming one of the masters till today. Of course, as the world has been becoming more complexed and difficult for us to identify between reality and fictional identity, I want to deliver some questions for all of us. Do we need a leader, at least for ourselves? Or actually we are an institutionalised leader who is leaded by a certain principal master? Who, what is the master who lead us in our context now? Or do we really courage to negotiate with the master? If yes, then, how?

That’s my brief reflection. Do we still have the time?

[Slides]

That’s just only brief image, just to give you the images what we did and how our space is.

[Slide: Crossing the Border Line …and other things

I would like to continue briefly to the things I called as institution and managerialism as the master for me now as one of the Cemeti staff.

I’ve been working in Cemeti for 8 years. That institution has well accumulated capital in terms of cultural, symbolic, social and also economical from the global and Indonesia art scene for long time. Therefore, I would like to say that all the capital doesn’t guarantee social and cultural impact in every step we take as a cultural agency. When we are.. I get attracted to be the comfort zones and want to be to move forward [or for what???] then that means of the end of ourselves as an agency and also as an institution.

The managerial system as a master within the institution sometimes makes me helpless to do something that I think is very urgent has to do now, like now. Sometimes I have to do something outside of the institutional fences. Then I take a multiple strategy dealing with my responsibility and commitment with the institution but keep trying for not being co-opted by that. As this far, I have found that myself need two kinds of strategies to fight my concerns.

First of all, to engage with other institutions or initiations in a particular involvement such as Indonesian Dance Festival, because I also working there now together with Taufik Darwis as Associate Curator Assistant. And then I also will host ADN in Jogjakarta. This platform is interesting for me and in these negotiations, if I can also manage to connect it with Cemeti, I will be very happy. But if not, then I will do it by myself.

The second thing is experimenting and testing out the idea outside of institutional fence. For example [refer to slide] this is a small thing that I’ve been done, my independent research. This is the last research that I’ve done about the first institutionalised residency in Jogjakarta. We can talk more about this, maybe after, after I finish this. [refer to new slide] And also SPASI [check: name] this is a study group of art history and cultural practices. Since there is no educational platform on art history and collaterals [?? 53:10] in Jogjakarta, we  think that we need to navigate and develop our practice. We create our own study platform, formulate curriculum, study method, collectively. We are 13 people, consist of curators, artists and researchers and art managers who are freelancers or affiliated with certain institutions. We get together every two weeks, after working hours, nomadically, sometimes in Cemeti, and sometimes we using IVA, Indonesian Visual Art Archive space or in someone’s house, move all the time. The group members take turn presenting the reading materials or observations upon matters related to the artistic or curatorial practice and continue with the discussion.

[slide] This is I called it as Think Thang [sic] Partnership for Performing Art Artist Collective. This is also part of my concerns about an alternative economy and support system because we face some problem, there is no funding body, is very limited, very hard to access money from the government. Very hard to get the access for the institutions. There are foreign institutions that working a lot for the contemporary art scene in Indonesia but it is very hard for us to access it, it’s only like.. young people, have no idea what to do. I create this thing. Once more, I want to make small description about this thing. Alternative economy support system that I make with the Delapan Studio in Jogjakarta. The idea is how to get the money and distribute the resources among the artists. So we make a direcion [directory ?? 55:09 Indonesian word??], often left [leftover?] materials, for stage, or even old costume or whatever related to the stage with a consignment system.

[slide] And then I also involve with some of the artists coming from other backgrounds like visual artists. I ask them help to donate not money but their drawing and we create like merchandising and then we sell it. [refer to slide] Something like this . Help a lot for the small projects, many projects, the artists can adjust the financials and also get little support from these things. Thank you

CR: Thank you.

There’s really a lot and I’m going to ask you to join me in a round of applause for the speakers already because partly Hiromi has to leave at 3.30pm and we should give her her applause now because otherwise she will leave in the middle of discussion.

But we really do have time for discussion and I’m going to start the ball rolling because I hope that that will lead to time for you to think through what the speakers have said and then ask your own questions or make your own comments. I was just about to sort of think, Oh OK, Linda is not going to talk about funding and this idea of consumption and food but then she ended with garage sale. So, here we are back again, you know, dealing with the pragmatic questions of how art is made, unmade, distributed, supported, clarified, thought about, critiqued, etc. But also responding as all three speakers have said to the changes that they aspire towards and want to advocate shifting from simply allowing people to come together and talk together to wanting to actually shape, and this is the word that Janice use this morning, Janice Poon, that the role of the dramaturg in her view is to be involved in a shaping process. And here, I think we see some very clear shaping processes, not overt shaping where you literally take the mould or the clay and you mould it in the way that you want but by making things available, by making things possible, by making food possible, by making performances possible, by making change in terms of the kinds of willingness to say OK we might stop here and finish with this and start something else. So, I want to ask the three panelists if they would, to talk about then what you do when you have an ethical dilemma? [To Bilqis] You talk about fighting your conscience and you talked about wanting things to be different because of the complicities that we are involved in. And Hiromi, you talked about how in shifting from market to meeting there is a shift of values as well that you want to bring into the discussion, the concepts, into the experience, if I may say, what this public sphere means and that the public sphere is not just commodified in simple term. If you can speak a little bit about that and I’m going to ask Hiromi to begin, if you may. What do you do? What do you think about? What kinds of processes you go through if you can share with us.

HM: Well, I’m not so clear about the question. The contributing to the public value how to go through that?

CR: The first question is what do you do when there is a decision you have to make that creates conflict, ethical conflict like you feel you should do this but you have to do something else because for you the shift from market to meeting is also related to how you want a public sphere to rethink the values of market, if I understood you correctly. Clearer?

HM: Yes. Something unethical would not be the choice but it may be related to the degree of how unethical it is. Fortunately, there was no big conflict. I have never encountered the decision-making which forces me to go against my ethical value. But when you’re managing this kind of project, there are two facets, two phases. One, one is to pursue your idea and then by doing so you may develop, you may grow. The other one, the other work you have to do is to survive, you have to make yourself survive. In order to make it happen, sometimes you need to make some compromise. It can happen but this is for the purpose of survival. But in order to make sure that we protect the core value, we may sacrifice the other lesser values. For example, contributing to the public value or to change from market to meeting for the TPAM at that it time was logical. Consequently, we found that it was not our decision. We only responded to what TPAM members wanted to go. In order words, to be more simple, at that time, what TPAM, TPAM was, its mission was to introduce Japanese works to outside Japan, and to where, mostly to Europe, at that time. And then contemporary performing arts players, they came to see the market but they hated market.   The participants wanted something else, not the market and just we responded to their desire and that’s why we change from market to meeting. I’m not sure if I’m answering your question very positively but that was what’s happening.

CR: Actually, it’s a very valuable response for me because sometimes one reads what has happened without realising and think that it’s a big decision. What you’re saying is it’s actually a response that emerges from the ground, it’s about listening to what has happened or what is happening to the change that is ongoing. So, thank you very much Hiromi. Linda? Bilqis?

BH: On the contrary, I feel like I’ve had to deal with many ethical dilemmas. I’ve often made the wrong decisions. They are dilemmas perhaps because there are no right decisions that can be made. I think, as Hiromi says, perhaps, they are dilemmas because you are balancing two ethical values and, in the end, you have to choose one over the other and you are in a position where you are forced to make a choice.

We could go back to this idea of funding. Do you take the money? This is something that I think about very frequently, especially in Malaysia where when there is any funding, it is necessarily somewhat “tainted”. One of our major funders of, especially dance, is Sime Darby Corporation which is an enormous corporation in Malaysia and as some of you may know, is probably responsible, the most major player responsible for deforestation due to palm oil plantations in the world and, probably one day we will all die from it. But Sime Darby gives a lot of money to the arts. When you take Sime Darby’s money, then you know that you are helping with that brainwash [?? 1:04:12 Sounds like grainwash]. When you take our Prime Minister’s money, our Prime Minister who is the most corrupt autocrat, not autocrat, maybe, but the most corrupt political leader in the world in terms of absolute dollar terms. When you take his money or the money that he has earmarked for the arts, does that make you complicit in his regime? Or when you take Goethe-Institut’s money or when you take Japan Foundation’s money? Does that make you complicit in the expansion of particular geopolitical soft power in the region? And so, you you’re constantly kind of, I’m constantly constantly feel like I’m wrestling with these ethical problems and I’ve taken the money. Quite a lot. And do you feel like a total sell-out? Yes, sometimes you do.

HM: That’s quite interesting and very good example, thank you. That’s quite interesting, very, very good example. 2011, 2011 in TPAM discussion like that did take place. You know, in this society and then sometimes you feel guilty when you are paid to give some performances, lectures. Some artists started to talk about it and then we discussed that. And there was a writer, a Canadian writer who came from Canada and he asked a question: Why, why Japanese people hesitate to put hands on public money which comes from the taxpayers’ money. What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with spending that money? That was the question coming from Canadian writer. Yes, I just remember this discussion. Yes, this kind of conflict did exist, yes, among the players in the theatre sphere. Before the war, they refused to spend any of this kind of money. How did they survive? What they did is that they earned money by working for TV drama and they refused to receive any money from the government. Now it’s different, of course. Maybe I’m a bit hypocritic but by spending public money and doing what I’m doing now, and on the other hand, I am criticising the government on the ground, on the condition that we are allowed to criticise government, we received the money. But actually, by receiving the money, if I criticise the funder, next time, he stop funding. It can happen quite often and I’m aware of that, but we need some strategy to stop this from happening. For example, particularly when I started focus on Asian activities, I feel this very keen, for example I criticise the government sometimes, and then by making some strategy stopping them from criticizing our work.

CR: We do need some strategies.

LM: I want to share. I just remember, well, when I was fighting really hard with Lindy Teo [name check] in 2013 when we have our celebration in 25 years. We want to do young curators’ forum, and there is no funding from other place like international funding is very hard to access at that time. Because we got a lot of money from Dutch government and they have a financial regulation, and then they cut off the money for the cultural and art. And then I told them [1:08:53, not clear, spoke very fast] I have to make approachment to the local government. And Lindy is really angry because then I just know that for 25 years Cemeti never get any, any, any money from the government and its like “What”!!? It’s like very dilemmatic for me. In one other hands, maybe the ideological strategies in terms of economic but in the other hands, the regime has changed. You know, the situation, the condition, political situation, conditions has changed. As a young generation, I say that this is the time for us to engage with the government because that’s the public money. With the corruption, blah, blah, blah, it’s better that we access it. Indeed, it is not for us, this is for the public programmes. So you know, this kind of things, oh my god, and finally, he agrees.

CR: How did you persuade him? Can you remember?

LM: Two months, I think. [Laughs]

CR: But I think, I mean, I think this is part of it, isn’t it? It takes time and sometimes its only in hindsight that you recall, or you know, you’re talking about a conversation. Hiromi, you’re talking about a conversation in 2011. You recall now, that, perhaps, triggered this, that and the other and a range of ways in which you talked about. You may have made different choices, in hindsight. But that idea earlier, Taufik talked about “ingataan”  “beli ingatan”, you know, “buying memory”, which symbolically is about recognising the value of what cannot be commodified in some ways, in terms of a memory, I mean, you can concretised it but you can’t really, commodify the memory.  What this means to recognise its value in your knowledges and in how you then now respond or choose to respond. Hiromi used the word “compromise”, or at least that’s what I heard in the translation, but it’s more than that, it seems like a complex negotiation. I‘m going to borrow a term from writer, scholar Baz Kershaw, he talks about “radical inflection” in terms of how the politics in performance work. The idea of inflection, it’s a slight change, it’s not a major big change sometimes, it’s just a radical inflection that leads to something else, and then something else and something else and so. [Hiromi you wanted to say something?]

HM: [signals no]

CR: OK, a lot to think about, a lot to respond to. There is loads of time for the floor to raise more questions and I include in that, the panelists asking each other questions, that’s part of the process of the dialogue as well. So, if you have any questions, please raise your hand because we are recording the session. We will bring a mic to you. Yes, there is a hand already. Please.

June: Hello, thank you very much. My name is June, I am a producer from Malaysia. I really enjoyed listening to you guys. Actually, I thought that we were talking a lot about structures and frames and mechanisms. I grew increasingly confused with the discussion because it then became a question. “Artistic Direction as Thought Leadership”, that initially, I felt it was a statement. So, I think to maybe, you know, like kind of address my confusion. It’s a really fundamental question is: Do you, the three of you, and I see you as actually like power houses, do you see yourselves as thought leaders? And if not, if you feel uncomfortable about that, why? Actually, is thought leadership something in mind [?? 1.13:07 not very clear] of opportunity for you guys, girls, thank you.

BH: I don’t think I will articulate myself as a thought leader as I also don’t articulate myself as a dramaturg usually. I would like to think of myself as an action leader in that I hope that the projects that I do can inspire more projects in a similar direction, working regionally, working towards a regional audience, rather than an international audience, incorporating perhaps sometimes overt political dissent. So, I offer these things as, I guess, by leading by example through action but I don’t think of myself as leading necessarily through thought. Maybe I don’t think enough.

LM: So do I. I feel really funny when, if I call myself a leader, you know, like because, because, I feel in Indonesia we are overwhelmed with these kinds of terms, leadership. Everybody wants to be leaders. Everybody wants to have a glory. Everybody wants to have a power over other peoples, you know. So overwhelmed. And I prefers to, you know, like working organically. Of course, sometimes there has to be like a structure and positions but if you call as a Director of Cemeti Institute for Arts and Society, the Director’s title is not the title at all for me. That is just the name of responsibility that I already agreed to take. That’s my point.

You know, like for example when I am working with the artist, this is small things, I’m working with visual artist for his solo show, I’m mostly doing curatorial practices and when we want to put my name in the publication, so, oh, shall I call you as a curator here? No, it’s too mainstream. Because, just because his project about working for the agency of the religion and how the spirituality operated in the society, what about if you call me as a spiritual agency? The other project where I now starting with one choreographer from Bali and visual artist from Jakarta, because the idea is about the death and they plan to make an outdoor [?? 1:16:01 not clear] funeral ceremony, where I put myself as funeral, master ceremony instead of curator. So you know, I really like to juggling and playing among this kind of structure and jargons and institutionalized titles and whatever, and I enjoy to do that. Make me free, make me relaxed, make me focused, and can do many things that might, I have to do.

CR: Hiromi?

HM: In the field called PARC, I’m the Director, so as a representative of this organization, I need to be a leader, I guess, ethically I should be leading. That part I am leader, yes. When I do TPAM, rather than calling myself thought leader, I am trying to go towards a certain direction I recommend. I have opportunity to recommend certain direction, so I’m just one of the ones contributing to that thought. I wouldn’t be the exact thought leader that June is referring to.

CR: I will just respond to June’s question because I think there is a distinction between the thought leader and someone involved in thought leadership, much like there’s dramaturgical thinking at work even though there may not be a dramaturg in the room. I think in this instance, what we are trying to excavate and  bring out of the grounds a little bit more is a recognition, identification of some of the strategies that you have talked about, some of those instincts, some of those ways of even reading the landscape, that your responsibility, to use an important word, [ referring to LM] pushes you to do and when this kind of work is left implicit tacit and not sufficiently recognised, I think we lose something.

The idea of a thought leader is slightly different for me from being involved in thought leadership. And I think that the, I mean, one can of course refused to be associated with thought leadership and that is something that I am not going to dispute. But I think it’s just one of my curiosities and I think it’s something that has made me think about this a little bit more. What is it that creates impact? This is a word that is used a lot now, whether you’re doing research or whatever because of this wretched KPI that plagues the life of so many people, in so many industries, right, Key Performance Indicator. The kinds of things, or the kind of people, the kind of platforms, movements, organisations, programmes, situations that have had powerful impact or continue to have powerful impact and sustain that are very often linked to at least a few people, if not one person sometimes, who is doing some very significant thinking and doing. For me, that is leadership. And sometimes, that person is not even recognised, but that is a gap that I think is important to fill. Because that kind of thinking is profound knowledge, insight, that needs to be unpacked, but also needs to be demystified, it didn’t happen by magic, such that if this person is no longer there, and for me sustainability is an important question in this. This person is no longer there, what are the skills and strategies that can then be shared across other people for the work to continue, for new work to continue, for the kind of changes that you’ve talked about to emerge. So, I think that for me, that is part of where your contribution in this panel, but also on a day-to-day basis as with other people in the room, invokes deep questions about how we talk about it and what we don’t know enough about, is my question. Other questions please. [BH wants to comment] Yes, of course.

BH: I think it’s interesting listening to Linda and Hiromi’s response, and then thinking about my own and noticing our discomfort with adopting this label of ourselves as leaders and I wonder if, you know, you could put a positive spin on that and think that are ducking the label somehow, an example of resistance against the sense of very established hierarchy in which you have the master. Or perhaps, because, and I often think this, because there is some vestige of the fact that we are all Asian women and we are uncomfortable claiming our position of leadership and labelling ourselves as leaders, and I think this is perhaps not, not a small thing in this conversation.

LM: Well actually, if dealing with my gender, I have no problems with it actually. All this time, I’m working, maybe just already beyond gender and my body limitation because I’m starting working in the theatre as a lighting man. I’m working as a crew. So this kind of thing maybe is a stereotyping, Oh Japanese woman, patriarchal, blah, blah, blah. Sometimes that is a construct, like something constructed by something that outside of you, and if you will agree then you become what they want. But I prove it into my practices that I already have no idea with that. My conscience about why I am not really telling myself as a leader even if I have a certain position in institutional level, it is because I already overwhelmed with the power games and power contestation in my country. Everybody wants to be leader. Everybody wants to have power over other people. But then, the only thing is they just only be there, we have no vision, we have no heart to peoples, other people and wider society. So, I think now it is time for us to re-contextualise what does leadership means in our context and our situation, which is very diverse, of course, in Asia.

CR: June, you want to respond there?

June: Sorry, I just want to say thank you for all your responses and I just want to say you’re all mad [? Or rad 1:24.00]  because you are clearly thought leaders for me. The people who reads your blog, as a dance critic, people who are on your platform Hiromi and people who listen to you Charlene. I mean, you’re all mad because you’re clearly thought leaders to me. Thank you.

A: I come from Okinawa Arts Council. My name is Nomura. Hiromi has to leave I understand. So, I’ve got a question I have to ask her beforehand. This title when I saw it, thinking about the fact that this is in TPAM and also it’s the Dramaturg Network, the thing as I really want to ask Hiromi about was. At TPAM, you spoke about how it’s been changing from a market to a meeting.  But it’s already been a number of years since it became a meeting and lots of different kind of people have been gathering together. You can be on the receiving end. You can also be sending out messages, we have the space and opportunities, which I think is truly outstanding. I will look forward to taking part in it every year. Probably in creating a space like this, if there is artistic direction on the side of Hiromi, I think that the structure and who is to express things in that particular place is probably where artistic direction comes into play because that’s where you’re asserting [1:25:55 ???]  it. My actual question is: TPAM had been changing to be a meeting. I’m wondering what is the ideal TPAM that, Hiromi, you want to see, you want to aim for? Where do you want to go in the future? Because really to understand that, the dramaturgy of TPAM is going to become more evident or apparent.

HM: Well, I can talk about the past, particularly when we changed from a market to a meeting. In Japan, there was some sense that we were able to launch these very popular creatives here in Japan abroad, and we weren’t able to provide major support which sort of meant that the impression was that they weren’t seen as having value. There was that sense of stifflement [??sounds like this] and I thought that the target audience is different when you’ve got. What is popular in the domestic audience, the domestic context or abroad and even if you talk about that, people who don’t understand are not going to be able to get the message even if you talk to them. So, in the case of TPAM, our mission, we identified it as a place of international exchange. So, saying that it’s a place for doing commercial transaction is going to make things happen, so you want to say that in order to change the situation in Japan that we needed to have encounters, to get people to meet each other, to expand our networks. In those days, Toshiki Okada was sort of a key name that people are thinking about, and so there is creators and people supporting them working at the core of to whom provide him support [1:28:39 not sure speak too fast] … and we want to bring about transmissions centred around these people. As for TPAM, the constitution [translator: consti-uation] and what is being expected from us, I think I continue to work on TPAM by trying to mould it to responding to demanded or what is being hoped for from us. I don’t think there is any such ideal or platonic [??? Translator word]  ideal of TPAM. But this platform is something which is there to be used [translator very fast]. Use it. That is the main thing. The organisers do not have the ability or the authority to say we are not going to do this anymore. So, what has always driven me is really how to ensure that TPAM is going to continue to happen. How do I ensure that it is not going to be up to the whim of the organisers? So how do I ensure that it is going to continue after 2020? That’s the thing that is really foremost in my mind now. Am I responding to your question?

[1:26:35 -  1:29:40  Translation of Hiromi’s answers not that clear and fast at times or Hiromi’s answer was unclear]

N: I will change the question then. Now, this year, what is the change from last year? Next year, what are you going to change? How about that question?

HM: Well, firstly, it hasn’t really changed but what we’re really aware of is, as far as I know, the past few year, TPAM is being regarded as outstanding, even better than before, even though it was always great. In order to continue TPAM on this trajectory, in this situation, is not just upon the participants to, I think it is necessary for other people, in addition to the participants, to be able to perceive TPAM in this way. ADN, I think the organisers know that we haven’t done anything. ADN has done everything, they utilising what TPAM has to offer till ‘20 [??]. That is what make it possible for ADN to happen and to their activities. So, we need to secure the money. [too fast/gibberish translation] So we have to think about how do we actually secure the money. I think this is something here that I can do. [translator quite fast] Build in the content. It’s really important. There’s not enough time to go into that I’m afraid. We’re not selling our souls or anything like that, it’s difficult to put it into words but, how do I say it. This kind of platform has any [? Or many] number of targets or audiences, there is outstanding performances, outstanding productions all around the world. In that situation, ensuring that there’s going to be a format or a way of supporting it or supporting what’s going on and continuing to do that. Thinking about the future, I think as long as you have the exchange [gibberish/fast translation] in the platform, it will survive. The Direction element is something that is added on. It’s really a great deal of direction [speak too fast] that we have here because we have the TPAM Direction, which is a tremendous luxury that we have. It’s at the same time what makes TPAM TPAM. It’s part of our identity. Then you want to protect everything, but the Olympic funding, despite my opposition, is what makes this possible. So, when the situation surrounding cultural policy in Japan changes, I need to think about how we can ensure that it is going to be sustained. If we could ideally have about seven [too fast/gibberish translation] sustaining the momentum which will continue to shape us forward and continue to bring us forward, I think that will give us the possibility. For example, we think that the registration is really pretty low, but we have a very restricted list of people who are invited. Many people probably will assume that they will get the invitation but the list of invitees or the people on the invitation list is very limited. The reason for that is that every bit that is paid actually support this activity. It also provide the safety [?? Translation not clear] argument and logic for saying: everybody chips in which is what sustain the platform which I think can also sustain our argument for XXX [gibberish] on this side of funding and also supporting people. I’m sorry [cut off as Charlene came in]

[1:30:10 -  1:34:08  Translation of Hiromi’s answers not that clear and fast at times or Hiromi’s answer was unclear.]

CR: We realise you have to go. Please join me in thanking Hiromi for being here despite having so much on her plate at the moment. We do thank you for allowing ADN to be part of TPAM again. Thank you, Hiromi. Thank you so much. Thank you.

We have time for more questions, comment from the floor that can involve responses to what have been said and not just the new questions necessarily, in relations to either the ideas that have been brought up by the speakers or your thoughts on these questions of dramaturgy, leadership, facilitation, structures, ethics, etc. If not, I will continue to ask the panelists questions because I have more. Bilqis has a question.

BH: A couple of people have earlier mentioned the idea of succession. And I guess this is something that inbuilt into the idea of leadership also in that, the sort of the best leader is the one who puts themselves out of a job by enabling other leaders to grow up and mushroom in their own presence. So, I would like to ask everybody, actually, about structures to do with succession that have worked in your arts community because I think it’s something that we are struggling with in the Malaysian arts community at the moment, some organisations, and I guess, I would hasten to say that some of those organisations that tend to be more equitable, that tend to have flatter hierarchies, have managed to, or seemed to be able to negotiate succession with greater success than those that depend upon a single charismatic leader. So how do we, especially, if we might be the single charismatic leader, how do we do about that?

CR: [to LM] You want to start, Linda? [to audience] Does anybody want to respond?

BH: [to LM] You’re the successor.

LM: Yea, I’m the successor. Well. [Pause] Of course that’s very hard, very hard. Even I already working for 8 years in Cemeti, it doesn’t mean that I understand everything about the structures, the strategy and the history behind, and so on. It’s like a double-work for me, going forward and going back because to prepare some things for future nowadays, sometimes we forget about the things that, about the connection between our idea, and the platform that we imagine, and the audience, the public, that imagines. Sometimes, we think that, Oh, it might be meaningful for the people, blah, blah, blah. It not, you know, because then we realised that we have a history, but the sphere outside is also rapidly changed; people who come to the gallery, the new curators came, comings, new artists emerge and their practice is very different. We have now, two curators from abroad, one from London, one from Netherlands, both are, have very different practices and also concerns.

And I together with two other friends, as old staff of Cemeti, also have our own, you know, attachments with this organisation. How then we are, make ourselves empty and then, OK, this is our new page. But it doesn’t mean that we forget about the history that we already have. It is to make it easy, not being you are an old guy and I’m a newcomer, this kind of frictions always happen. Now, we can deal with that. In the first of encounters very hard, because those kind of, not only about differences of the practices but also the way how we imagine the public, and then as a local person, I and two other friends always, you know, remembering each other steps. Or because we are local doesn’t mean that we know our local context, so we have to build the knowledge together. So, we have to elaborate our dreams, our conscience together as a team. Then, we set up a working system organically. The initiatives can come from everyone, not has to be always curators. Sometimes Dzulqornain [1;39:36 name check, this is from current website] the archival and design manager wants to do something, then we elaborate among 5 of us and then we agree, and other people become the support system. If I have something, other people will have. It’s kind of cyclical actually.

So, from the distance, of course, Cemeti Institution, very old, very established but in the inside, its very, we really trying to be more organic and elaborative [?? Collaborative].

CR: I think another thing, I can just add is, even the word “succession”, I don’t know the etymology, but somehow it’s probably linked to success, I guess. Which means that there’s no place for failure. And yet what Cemeti is telling us, what Linda is telling us what is happening in Cemeti is that there is room for failure so that there is adaptability, flexibility and the possibility of an ending not being a failure. So, it’s almost like the logic has to shift, it’s like dramaturgically if there are options and I think Jay Lee was talking about this earlier today. If you allow for things to happen in an exploratory, experimental laboratory process, [referring to Bilqis] like with your Choreolab in a way, then if nothing comes out of it, that’s not necessarily a failure because the  nothing is a productive nothing, we hope, or it has come as a result of a process, and so how to think through those inflections, those ways of reviewing the notions of success and succession. Sustainability has a slightly notion right because succession suggests legacy you now bestow upon somebody else, and then off you go with your legacy, to fulfill the demands of legacy. And would it have made a difference if the title today was “Artistic facilitation as thought facilitation” and then, what would have happened? I mean, how would we have spoken to it? Because I mean I take on Bilqis’es point about a certain idea of the Asian female not wanting to assert leadership or being a leader. Not that there aren’t any, of course, there are historically there have been for a long time but as part of a resistant subversive alternative politic [polity?] is there a need to then find a different way of articulating it? I think these are questions that are emerging in the process. Any other comments or questions from the audience because we don’t have to continue until 4.30pm. We can have more time for coffee and tea.

Yes, there are two. One at the back and one at the front.

Public: Just on the topic of succession that you brought up. Actually, I’m really highly aware of that. I’m the front of a group here in Yokohama that existed since 1900 and I’m really the last person standing at this point and I’m acutely aware that this, I’ve got 118 years of history that is sort of tied up in this. I’m sort of, I don’t have. I’m alone at the moment. This is a group that was originally started off as an amateur dramatics club in the early days with the offices on the ships and, you know, to survive two world wars, a major earthquake and the lack of interest throughout the ‘90s. And there is a sense of, like, yeah, it’s actually something that keeps me awake sometimes at night, and not through any sense of my own legacy but the legacy of this group, and responsibility I have for that on some level, although it doesn’t really impact my work for that group. I’m always, I would feel really awful if I was the last person to let the ball drop. I’ve been doing it for 10 years and there’s nobody waiting in the wings. My collaborators, mostly other immigrants, and unlike me, I’ve been here 15 years, they’re usually here for one year, two years, six months. There’s no one to take it over despite the nature of the group, it’s not, yeah, I mean, I need to find another person who is here a long time, exact same interest, it doesn’t, yeah, you just brought that up and I’m having an existential crisis here now. So, I just wanted to share that. I sorry, I don’t know the answers or anything, but it terrifies me.

BH: Yes, it is terrifying. Not many of us have the double bind of being responsible for 118 year of history of an organization and I wouldn’t ever want that. Jean-Baptiste Joly, who some of you may know, he runs the residency programme at Akademie Schloss Solitude, and has been for doing so, I think for 40 years if I’m not wrong, once told me something which I have held very closely to my heart: that it’s OK if it dies, that maybe it’s OK, that it doesn’t necessarily have to be even, yeah, I’m mean you’re in a kind of slightly different position from most of us, but maybe it doesn’t have to go on and maybe part of the succession is that it may have fed it purpose and be done. Maybe there’s no need for whatever it was anymore and you’re just sort of responsible for archiving which is in itself kind of terrifying. But also, the idea that Linda was saying about you take on this new responsibility and how do you deal with it and how do you work with other people and you allow this kind of organic system to emerge. I’ve been thinking about that a lot especially from the Southeast Asian perspectives where, you know, we are the ones that “live in the nice warm south and things are easy there and works slower”, right, that’s so stereotyped. But in a way it’s true, we are, perhaps culturally, we are given towards a certain degree of flexibility and noncommitment and so we don’t embrace rigid structures in the same kind of way. And I think it’s important to think about allowing an organic way of relating just to emerge or not emerge maybe. And I was thinking about that for my project, in how the dramaturgy work, it kind of didn’t from my point of view, I didn’t do any dramaturgy, in allowing an emergent dramaturgical form. We were talking in that process because it was a collaborative process, a lot about what are the structures of collaboration, how do you collaborate, there were some people who had really structured processes for collaborating, you have this many minutes and then I have this many minute and it’s all very, you know. And then some people went arm in arm off to the shrubbery and came back with a dance and we’re like no “process” you know. And that was sort of “emergent collaboration”, maybe we can have “emergent dramaturgy”, maybe we can have “emergent succession” or sustainability, I don’t know.

Public: Hello. Just following on, again on succession, a bit on what you said now about maybe it’s OK if it dies. My name is Rize Rizal [1:47:52  name, check] I’m from Johannesburg in South Africa. I wonder if succession is maybe, maybe there is other thing that we can consider. In my region, my office is in Johannesburg but we work in the Southern African region. There is a lot of similarities, there is a lot of independent projects or collectives, companies that operate in similar conditions, of really no funding, little to no funding, mostly no funding and no infrastructure. Then you have, what forms is where you have people who are the drive, who are the infrastructure, people who are the resources, who are the inputs and so I think it’s quite right to say that funding and infrastructure doesn’t exist but it exist in this very different form, it’s really human. Along these lines, then yes, the question of succession becomes very pertinent because that’s what happens when that person, family or that..  passes on. But I think what becomes really important, maybe a shift from looking at succession, to a shift at looking at memory and the kind of construction of ecosystems. I think there are ways to address memory in very interesting ways. I mean there is a lot of projects that deal with and artists who deal with the archive and living archives. I think that these are being addressed a bit. I don’t think that we’re kind of at a dead end. I think… Yes, also with the maintaining of relationships is another way where, when you have these what could be considered as precarious organisations or structures that because they are kind of sitting very heavily on an individual. What you forget though is that the individual is able to do what they do because they are in relationships with many other individuals. So, there is a kind of, there is a structure that does exist beyond the person and that holds the person and enables them as another way to kind of look at what succession does. The last thing, I think from what Hiromi was saying, when she, just at this last point, the question I came from there, but I think she was saying that what she’s trying to do in being responsive to what is being needed is that, I think she’s saying that TPAM needs to continue to be relevant and that it needs to have participants who are invested in it. That’s what I got, I might be wrong. And I thought that’s really clever and that’s also a strategy for sustainability or succession or having your project before. I think that this is the first year that TPAM invited African participants. I think that is precisely an example of that. You are growing your network. You are having more people being from other networks, developing relationships, becoming more invested, you have a greater pool of participants. I think is very clever and another way of dealing with this.

CR: Thank you very much. Yes, Ugo.

Public: I’m Ugo. I really like the whole conversation as to a point that we are talking about succession now because I’m seeing Cemeti as a fan since 1999, 2000. So I kind of know like what the weight that is now, not the weight probably, I don’t want to put a burden on you already, carried in your bag. Cemeti.. This is a point of view that I would like to add to Linda already a comprehensive presentation, but to give a little perspective of how the role of Cemeti in Jogjakarta is. Bear in mind they are the first post-‘98 institution in Jogjakarta. So it was heaven having Cemeti and all the most urgent, the most pressing experimentation is very much we can see in..that.. I experience that by coming into the gallery. And this is from the beginning, it is already a very cross-disciplinary space. So within, just like Linda said, this is happening because of the leadership of the two, Mella Jaarsma and Nindityo Adipurnomo, the founders, the two, they’re not the founder, another two Agung Guniawan and

LM: No, they are the founder, Agung Guniawan and the other place, Yahyasan Cemeti.

Ugo: Yahyasan Cemeti. So, there is this Yahyasan Cemeti and there is Cemeti Art House.

CR: So Yahyasan is foundation, yah? Can you use the mic.

LM: Cemeti Art Foundation was formed and now they becoming IVA, Indonesian Visual Arts Archive.

Ugo: It was the first infrastructure for us as an audience, as a spectator, for getting to know visual art. You can see the who naming how they change the name as also indication of, they locate the position of visual arts in term of the public. They begin with.. What is it? Modern…

LM: Modern Art Gallery.

Ugo: Modern Art Gallery and then Contemporary Art Indonesia and then Art House and now it is Institute for Art and Society, meaning they don’t, no longer believe in visual arts, right?

LM: [Laughs]

U: So, what happened? So, I also see now Lindy Teo, the founder came over to Gerasi, came over to event seeming like a ghost, like a father without a child. So there is this … nesting blues [1:54:43 ??] kind of situation whenever he came, I always see, like la, la, la. It feels like the father giving up the child. Because precisely when they changed the name, then they are no longer involved, right? They are no longer involved with the institution. I find even the sheer position of what Cemeti currently locate themselves is already inspiration for.. because nobody in Jogja at least, even I think in Jakarta, or those who are creating art spaces, those who are creating working collectives, working groups, no one in the right mind, not looking at Cemeti. Cemeti is point a reference. They are a thought leadership in term of as an institution, they are the point of reference. Therefore, it is also a point of reference on how to regenerate, which is that is the point. I think they are successful in not using the old word, they’re not succeeding, they don’t have succession, they don’t regenerate because it’s totally, they are not implanting their idea to the next generation because they are not even involved in the framework of Cemeti today, so it is not a regeneration. It is not a succession. It is not reborn kind of situation. It is just..

LM: Occupation!

U: Yes, take this away, like being occupied by the next generation, they can reclaim by history, so to speak, it is an institution that… Willing to die is easy, right? Then your memory is intact. They’re not, they just, give it away. Like just give it away. And then like. Like the next person take it to whatever, whatever corner there is. I think it is really brave. The sight of Nindityo coming around singing the nestling blues. It is a very brave and inspiring, you know, what is 25 years institution? Well, give it up. Give it up. It’s really, really cool.

CR: Yah, it raises the question: What’s precious and what’s worth giving up? Sometimes, we are still associating what’s precious with something that has to be preserved and kept intact when actually its value is in its capacity to dissolve, like the phoenix and many other mythical creatures that, you know, in order to give life they have to die in some kind of dramatic, tragic way.

Are there any other questions or comments?

If not, please join me in thanking Linda, Bilqis and Hiromi and thank you all.