It’s not a report or a travel diary, it’s a very derivative talk about two travels in Indonesia

Ernesto Oroza est enseignant à l’École supérieure d’art et design de Saint-Étienne (Ésad Saint-Étienne) et fait partie de l’équipe Spacetelling, un laboratoire travaillant sur la théorie du design. En 2022, il a participé à la documenta 15, organisée à Kassel par le collectif indonésien Ruangrupa. Dans ce contexte, il a entamé un dialogue avec l’artiste Mirwan Andan et lancé une sorte de programme d’échange entre l’Ésad Saint-Étienne et la résidence Riwanua à Makassar, en Indonésie. Ce programme s’est concrétisé en 2022-2023 avec l’aide de Maria Moreira à l’Esadse et de l’Institut français d’Indonésie (IFI). En 2022, Ernesto s’est rendu sur place en compagnie des étudiants Lola Pelinq et Alex Delbos-Gomez , ainsi que Bertrand Mathevet (assistant chef du Pôle Modélisation à l’Ésad Saint-Étienne). En retour, les créateurs indonésiens Barak Aziz, Mirwan Andan et Muhammad Rifqi Fajri ont été reçus à Saint-Étienne en 2023.

Delphine Hyvrier, artiste et doctorante à l’Université Jean Monnet de Saint-Étienne en partenariat avec l’Ésad Saint-Étienne, est – quant à elle – partie un mois à Makassar entre novembre et décembre 2023. Elle a pris l’avion depuis Tokyo, où elle se trouvait pour des raisons personnelles.

De retour en France, Delphine et Ernesto se sont rencontrés : le debrief du voyage de Delphine est devenu un prétexte pour discuter de la création collective comme outil d’émancipation. Leur dialogue – mené en anglais par une francophone et un hispanophone – a été retranscrit par Delphine Hyvrier, dans son intégralité et son authenticité...

Cough syrup and prehistorical babiroussas

* Saint-Étienne, 2024, cold february, at the terrace of a bar with drinks. Ernesto comes back from a few days in Senegal, Delphine is working on the last chapter of her thesis. They speak their usual imperfect english based on their spanish and french native grammars.*

Ernesto Oroza : Is it recording ? The audio is good ?

Delphine Hyvrier : Yes it is. And as always it seems that when this thing is on we don’t know what question to ask !

E. O. : No, I came with questions, I tried to put my mind in the possibility of your trip.

D. H. :  Oh really, you did homework.

E. O. : Of course. I know your work on “nature”, traditions and modernity... what landscapes were you expecting in Indonesia ?

D. H. : Actually none. I did not know much about Indonesia, we had conversations with Andan in Kassel, then on Zoom, and a week before leaving Tokyo I still wasn’t sure this residency would work, so I came completely unprepared. Especially as Andan said « let’s not plan anything, tell the french institute you’re here to make friends», well, I found this plan of not planing very promising so that’s what I did. So, no, no representation of nature, nothing.

E. O. : You traveled from Tokyo to Jakarta ? Did people came in group to get you at the airport ?

D. H. : Tokyo to Jakarta is 6 hours of flight. But in total I traveled almost 24 hours to join Makassar. And yes, peolpe came, that’s not so common in France, isn’t it ? A kind of intimidating moment, to wait sweaty from the plane for people you don’t know to do things you have no idea.

* Ernesto and Delphine try to tell each other who they met in Riwanua, and laugh on the conversations they had with the same people at one year of distance*

E. O. : And how did you react to the climate ?

D. H. : It was fine to me,  but I had just like you ! I think people do really wants to know why both of us got a cold there ? During 3 weeks I kept coughing. I developed an addiction for local herbal medicine, I was buying compulsively this kind of things...

* She pulls from her bag a small packet of herbal cough syrup*

E. O. : I have it too ! Yes ! Komix ! I got a lot at the airport, you can find these everywhere, no ?

D. H. : I keep this one in my bag in case I get sick again, and also as a memory ! You know, I do my own medicine with plants, I give it to my friends, it’s also something on which I am doing research, so I was really curious about local ways to cure colds1.

E. O. : Did they told you I was without voice ?

D. H. : Yes they did ! I almost lost mine too.

E. O. : I think it was because of the smoking.

D. H. : Also because we have been driving under heavy rains and through pollution.

E. O. : How many trips did you take out of Makassar ?

D. H. : We’ve been doing some hikes and also we’ve been out to do field research in Enrekang.  I’ve been doing hikes with people who were introduced to me as some of the only female hikers of the group. And you too have been to Maros, to the caves, right ?

E. O. : Yes ! We visited the museum and saw cave art.

D. H. : There’s cave art in Cuba also, isn’t it ?

E. O. : Yes, in Cuba, but it’s different because this one in Maros is very sophisticated, no2 ?

D. H. : Yes, and they’re the oldest ever discovered.

E. O. : There are animals ? In Cuba they only produced spirals or geometric forms3. We think it’s about constellations or hurricane, cycles, but no animals. One of the most famous in Maros is a … pork, a pig ?

D. H. : Yes, babiroussas.

E. O. : Ah, yes. And many handprints.

D. H. : I think something weird happened to me when I was there. You know, near from where I come from, there is a cave with also extremely old prehistorical paintings. There are animals too, buffalos, lions4.
And the people played with the shape of the cave, some animals are drawn at precise places to play with the sensation of space. It is at the same time painting and sculpture and it is very, very beautiful. And people did handprints too. So when we came there, in Maros, I had a shock. You know this thing, when people see the Chapelle Sixtine and feel dizzy and troubled ?

E. O. : The Stendhal syndrom ?

D. H. : Yes ? I think I had this in front of the chubby babiroussas. Because it was too much beauty ! The drawings are very powerful... But also because it felt oddly familiar.

E. O. :  What is the name of the cave near your place ?

D. H. : La grotte Chauvet. The paintings there are well known and are reproduced on many things. I grew up with these, if I didn’t really paid attention. And there I could find the same patterns : beautiful fat animals and hands printed on them.  The two caves are from two different eras, two opposite part of the world. When the lions and buffalos were painted in Chauvet, Europe was under ice, I don’t know how it was in Maros. Nowadays, both sites are in stunning moutains, surrounded by weirdly similar beautiful rivers. The water is green in Ardèche, blue in Maros. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing, it unexpectedly reminded me memories from the region I left 10 years ago. So I felt very dizzy and discreetly cried.

E. O. : You cried in front of prehistorical babiroussas ?! Nice…

*they snort with laughter*

I have something to confess here. I’m known in the family for talking about prehistory every weekends while eating. Neanderthal or something. It’s an impulse, I think it’s because we’re sitting, sharing the food together…  They laugh of me but I don’t care, I keep doing it. It’s because I’m really interested in this, the beginning of rituals, arts... so I always have stories, gossips to share. It’s related to the food, I think, because when people talk about prehistorical art, they often relate it to the apparition of violence.

D. H. : Violence ?

E. O. : Yes, like there would have been a lot of violence at the time. But no, there are evidence of people living together, taking care together. Archeologists found repair bounds. They could tell people with injuries were taken care of for one whole year, because they found fractures on bones, fractures that take more than a year, even now, to heal. But these people were socialy integrated, they were not left alone5. People took care of each other. I don’t know why, the family laugh but I like to think about that.

D. H. : It is a very virilist representation of prehistory to depict it through violence and cruelty. These chubby animals, people put their hands on them, or near them. The guide in Maros was describing to us the scene in Indonesian, the friends translated to me that, the hypothesis is that to represent fat animals and hands, in this place, would be a prayer. Maybe these animals were painted to be hunt, killed, but people took the time to make these incredible paintings for them. And to put their hands all around them.

*a silence*
 
Also the floor in Maros is covered with seashells, eaten there for some reasons by many many people. There’s a huge layer of it, so people must have done this for maybe, centuries ? Thousand years ?  Just imagine the people gathering here over generations.  We joked about it, saying we were walking on the remains of hundred years of parties. Maybe I actually didn’t get anything about was being told to me, but ah, the picture is so intensely poetic I don’t mind not having understood clearly everything.

E. O. : You know, in Florida, I was invited with a group of artists to visit a historical place that was used by native americans before colonisation. It’s not at all the same time, not prehistorical, not the same people obviously. I’m telling you this because in the place you can see an accumulation of shells. Like a mountain, a crassier6 of shells. Some people were eating and collecting this in this place for a very long time. And archeologists discovered these evidence of people eating together.

Baking madeleines, wearing Christian Dior but not really and soft-power

* They have a long enthusiastic digression about indonesian food*

E. O. : Food reminded me of Cuba.  The banana fried things !

D. H. : The fried bananas you cooked us, once !

E. O. : Yes but we don’t put dough around bananas like gorengan. People made us try food from many regions. Food really was a surprise. It made me nostalgic. You’ve been cooking, I saw ?

D. H. : Yes I had a lot of pressure as people still made fun of Lola and Alex’s weird aïoli7 ! Also Barak and Andan seemed to have not so good memories of what they ate in France, even if our cooking is supposed to be excellent. But, to cook, I had a very enthusiast girl crew curious about french receipes. I had two requests : ratatouille8 and madeleines. We cooked them while playing music and dancing, just like I do with my friends in France.

E. O. : Was it the first time you cooked those ?

D. H. : No, you know I cook a lot. Madeleines and ratatouille are very common food we eat in our families. Ratatouille is a very cheap and popular one, because it’s seasonal easily foundable vegetables in the south east of France. People use olive oil and wild aromatic plants that grow anywhere there to perfume it. In Indonesia these dishes became extremely fancy and expensive because we had to go to special import shops to buy ingredients. It became a feast.

E. O. : ...and you met the french ambassador. I was not aware you would meet him. Was he visiting other places before ?

D. H. : He was visiting South Sulawesi, and among the many places there were Riwanua. So it was a pure coincidence to meet him. Preparing his visit made me think a lot about soft power, french influence on Indonesia and indonesian influence on France. A friend asked me « You’re going to meet your ambassador, are you going to dress a formal, traditional way ? » and it made me think « No… but now that you say it... » and so I asked to go to the market to buy some fake luxury brand.

E. O. : Really ?! Please let’s not cut this part of our talk in the transcription.

D. H. : We found the perfect fake Christian Dior dress : it was written on it Christians Diors.

E. O. : Plural.

D. H. : Yes. It could also suggest a serie : Muslims Diors or Buddhists Diors, very interesting.

E. O. : Oh god...

D. H. : It was a tribute. To french fashion and indonesian stereotypes, or french stereotypes and indonesian fashion, anyway these clothes are creating a real conversation between our countries on fashion, luxury, what we think is elegant dressing. As a researcher in design, I found those these items meaningful. In Japan or Indonesia, France made its luxury brands very well known. Some of my friends in France sew bags for Hermès... But I don’t have the budget to buy any of these objects I am associated with as a french woman abroad.
A lot of people and money are invested for my country to be connected with this glamourous narratives. It seems to work incredibly well : I was told that when I talk in french it sounds like I was repeating some cosmetic brand names like «  Laroche Posay » or I don’t know what. But this soft power isn’t an unilateral relation : it’s not only France delivering attractive pictures of luxury and people consuming it.
There’s an answer to this french soft power which is the indonesian interpretation of these brands. I loved to see these fake brands adapting Chanel and Dior’s european elegance tropes to the casual clothes people wear in Sulawesi or printed on mattresses or very random items. It’s a cross-cultural cross-class dialogue through fashion. I wore this Christians Diors to highlight this international conversation during this diplomatic moment.

Repairing, picking fruits, cooking and telling the most interesting stories

D.H. : I was also very curious about your experience : you have been working in Cuba, in the US, in France, so in different cultural and political contexts : so-called communism, American capitalism, western European capitalism... but everywhere with people for who everyday life practices and creations (art, crafting objects, cooking...) is a way to go over oppression. People from ruangrupa and in Riwanua insist on collective art practices with the socio-historical context of Indonesia. How did you experienced it in comparison with others ?

E. O. : What I felt, with people I met in Indonesia, not only people of ruangrupa, is that collective practice is something rooted in everyday life. That’s why I’m fascinated with the bale-bale9. It’s an object that is not designed by anybody, it suppurate, it’s coming out of being together. I don’t want to romanticise this object, at the same place maybe people do drugs, but also at the same place people educate, guide the sons of others… it’s near your house but neighbours are coming, and other kids are coming, and something happens as a community there. For me this kind of objects is resisting, and forming culture. The same conversation came out in Senegal, where I was a few days ago. I was talking with Yasmine10 about the documenta. She was telling me, we need to not idealise the fact of working together. Every time conflit happens, but we need to deal with these things.

In an event at Zeppelin University, where Andan also participated, I commented on the need to embrace the problem, to embrace the conflict. Otherwise it would be fake ! We need to disagree, it’s sometimes difficult to move together, to get a consensus… and what I found interesting in the case of Indonesia, as well as in Cuba… - well, even if not all the time, because the politics there destroy collective, don’t want people to trust in the other one, no- it’s that it is coming from the culture. In comparison with Europe… it’s like everywhere, you have good and bad examples. But it’s also something about individuals. Some people have the skills and ethics to work with others. To be autonomous as a collective, you have to be aware that autonomy is a very fragile condition. It can disappear in 2-3 years. This is why the ruangrupa talk about being an ecosystem.

 I recognise in ruangrupa position something that happened in Cuba. Many of the group are together because of economical conditions. They can have some different religions, different approach to things but they need to be together to exist.

D. H. : There’s the economical conditions, but people also talk about lumbung, about traditional rice culture, things that are based on subsistance cultures.

E. O. : In Cuba, there’s both things. There are many cultures which came together with colonisation. Cimarron was very important there, and through religion, yoruba but not only, through practices they brought something that came from african, as you say, subistance cultures. It is sometimes very interesting but need to be not idealise also. It sometimes is very machist. Women are not allowed to do some things.

D. H. : Conversations I had in Makassar made me wonder even more what are the practices we have, in our daily lives, cultures, that resisted capitalism or extractivist organisations. I remember a person telling me, well, to sum up, he thought Western people were globaly convinced and happy of capitalism. The last years France was completely shook by hardcore protests that blocked the country, like the yellow jacket movement, people fighting police violence, anti-social policies, so I was very puzzled to hear that. Oops, digression. Or no, not really digression. It’s just I realised how strong are state narratives, even when long-lasting hardcore riots happens.

The destruction of subsistence organisations on the French territory is the core of my thesis. My grand-parents and everyone before them grew up in culture based on shared work and resources. The langage spoken in this region was not French, it was either Arpitan or Occitan. The langage people had to share, to talk about nature, collective works and all, well it’s very recent that it has disappeared. It became forbidden for kids to talk this langages at school and French government depicted them as shameful primitive rumblings. There’s a traumatic history about the loss of these langages. But it means that, a few generations before mine, people still had a vocabulary for non-extractive relations to nature and others.  Like... when I was a kid, all my family members would meet in september at the farm to pick grapes and make wine together. The moment I would meet all of them was through intergenerational collective work. It was a festive education to plants, animals, to the delicious taste of food made from the garden’s vegetables...

I guess I’m also writing my thesis to understand why all this non-extractivist, community culture is not considered as something that worthed being transmitted. We had until a few decades ago a whole culture that was enabling us to live well outside of capitalism. How did people ended up erasing this from every details of their lives and not telling to the next generation what used to be the very basis of their existence ? I was focusing on the destruction for my writing but this experience in Indonesia, especially this short survey in Enrekang with Reza and Andan11, made me wonder about what was surviving.

E. O. : I was thinking about asking you what kind of previous ways people in Europe organised but you just did it. You are doing that, harvesting together, it’s kind of a ritual but you don’t think about it, it’s automatic, you are not thinking that you are doing this there because people practised the same thing one hundred years ago...

D. H. : Yes, these practices in France can still be seen as backwards, not civilised enough. I was asking friends of my hometown about their grandparents activities. They answered « they were farmers, yeah, no, let’s not talk about that, they were poor, people had no real individual houses like now... » but actually it was precious practices. It was pre-development, almost pre-capitalist organisations. And the grandchildren don’t seem aware that this was a culture.

E. O. : There’s a move to stigmatise these practises of mending, repair… people see, ok, this is linked to poverty. In Cuba too. People are automaticaly connecting repair to poverty. It is a shame because they have the knowledge, they have the practice, they have been doing that for several years, they recognise the material, they recognise the way to do the artefacts but when you try to talk about that they feel ashamed.

D. H. : Why do you think it is still shameful ?

E. O. : It is shameful for them… well it happened everywhere. I like to say that in latin America we are aspired to be Americans, to live in American television. A good example is the cars in Miami, in Florida. You are driving in Miami, you see new cars every year. People buy every year pay to renovate the lease for the car. The latin people of Florida, -it’s the majority- think the Americans have a new car every year. You travel some kilometers up in the north, you will find again old cars, saved from the trash. It’s the everyday life, everywhere.
Then there is two Americas. The America of the latin people aspiring to be Americans, and the Americans, using trash cars for 20 years. It’s common. I think it is part of the bombing, of the information we have in America with advertising. You know, before the revolution, all american cars were tested in Cuba. The cars in Cuba are famous because we had a lot : Chevrolet… They tested the market in Cuba. And they were selling a lot of cars to Cubans.

* a friend come to say hi and leave and they don’t remember why they were talking about cars*

My grandmother and her sister were really good at knitting. They gave class. I grew up in a house full of people knitting. I remember they talked, talked, talked, shared informations. How much the practices, the activity of the days were facilitated...

D.H. : ...by knitting ?

E. O. : No, of course the knitting. There’s beautiful connections between the knitting and text in spanish. I’m sure you have it too in french : «  knitting the story ».

D.H. : Mmmh... maybe « Tisser ? » « Tisser l’histoire… » Yes, I think so…

E. O. : I’m just thinking about many activities that were created in small communities, like cooking together, knitting together, teaching to others, dancing together were facilitated in this community process.

D.H. : These community process were connected to the seasons. In the Alps, from late october to early march, people would rather be in houses, near the fire, sometimes with their animals because animals helped to warm the place. Women were doing embroidery and knitting. The women I interviewed in Tignes for my case study connected these art practices to the fact of telling stories and baking cakes. Winter was the most social time because people couldn’t be outside, it was too cold and dangerous because of the snow. During the season they were singing, knitting, telling tales12, educating kids. You can’t take the artwork art of its social context.

E. O. :  You told me you wanted to document the dances and other surviving things. I’m looking for one that could have interest you… *taps on his phone* I slept twice in front of it but it was interesting. I’ll send it to you. What time is it ?

D. H. : It’s 20h13. You need to go meet your family, right ?

* Delphine ends the recording and they leave the place while chatting. *

Delphine’s post-scriptum :

« It took me a long time to transcript this chat. Back in France, I got caught in the vortex that was the end of my thesis and Ernesto also dived back in  his own work. Later, we also talked about the mural Ki Coret and I and the people of Riwanua residency did, inspired by the kids drawings, to celebrate their imagination and the fun of drawing together13. And also, about the flower and vegetable garden we planted and the nasu cemba workshop. Many other things happened, but you were warned, dear reader, this text is not a travel diary nor a report, just a very derivative conversation whose starting point is Indonesia.In Riwanua, we waved goodbye and made plans to work a way to outlast this residency month. There’s a pretty French expression to talk about that, it is faire des plans sur la comète ("to plan on the comet") it means making fragile, not very predictable but thrilling projects. I like it very much. »

EntretienDocumenta quinze : make friends, not artavec Ernesto Oroza

RencontreMirwan AndanRuangrupa à Saint-Étienne

IdéesCarnet de voyage en IndonésieArchitectures, Golok, et autres découvertes

IdéesAïoli en IndonésieTechnique, partage et poisson