By Franki Raden
It might be an old story, but it still has resonance now. A few years ago, I met with the newly appointed Indonesian consulate general for a region in North America. During the conversation, the diplomat pointed out that Indonesian diplomacy placed a strong emphasis on culture. This was surprising, but pleasant information.
Policy is one thing, and those in charge of running it are another. That same diplomat told me a few months later that he would no longer allow the Indonesian community in the city to have cultural events due to alleged “minor restroom damage” after the community held a very successful fund-raising event.
On the other hand, I witnessed myself, an Indonesian ambassador to an Eastern European country that took the initiative to run a highly successful major cultural campaign in his region for several years. Instead of presenting exotic traditional arts, his program included inviting Indonesian filmmakers, theater directors and classical pianists to perform their works before a European public.
This is something that could only be done by world-class quality performances.
These examples highlight that Indonesia does not have a general diplomatic and business strategy on how to position Indonesian cultural products on the global map. As a result, it is very difficult for foreigners to access Indonesian art and artists.
In most cases, if we go to the money changers, we do not find rupiah in the list of their currencies.
If we go to downtown areas in the big cities in the world, it is very difficult to find Indonesian restaurants. At universities, you often do not find an Indonesian students association in the entire lists of student associations. At annual global market events and art fairs, the Indonesian booth is missing.
In the list of jazz festival in the world in jazz magazines, JavaJazz, JakJazz and Jazz Goes to Campus, the three major jazz festivals in Jakarta are not listed.
In other words, Indonesia is invisible for the general international public on the global cultural map. Yet, it is one of the richest cultural resources in the world. All of these phenomena, of course, do not merely indicate the weakness of our official cultural diplomacy and representatives abroad.
The aforementioned cases point to the lack of our cultural strategy in general. Having said that, I realize that this cultural strategy cannot be designed and implemented by a single individual or institution, or even government institutions such as the Foreign Ministry or the Culture and Tourism Ministry.
This is a cultural strategy that needs to be developed from a national consensus. However, in order to have this consensus we first have to overcome one of the most crucial problems, i.e. how to have the same level of awareness about the significance of the issue nationwide.
On a small scale, I have witnessed how Singapore has done it successfully. With a simultaneous and full effort, this country managed to position its cultural activity in the global arena without producing much of it themselves. What they did was provide spaces with the funding to facilitate cultural activities that had a strong global impact.
Today, many major cultural troupes in the world consider Singapore as one of their destinations. Their strategy has been highly effective and has not only boosted Singapore as an attractive tourist destination, but benefited their huge retail business sector as well.
On a larger scale, I see this is happening in China. With the power of the Chinese diaspora, with their remarkable hard working ethos in the cultural field and, thanks to communism and militarism, a highly disciplined nation, China was also able to position their cultural products firmly within the global arena without spending considerable funding as was the case with Singapore.
As a result, in addition to promoting Chinese culture abroad, Chinese musicians, dancers, visual artists, filmmakers, writers and acrobatic troupes have also been able to exploit the international market for the sake of their domestic revenues.
As Immanuel Wallerstein reminded us a long time ago, culture today is the site of ideological battleground. However, this is not simply a battleground for political ideology, but more for political economy. It is in this context that we shall understand the issue of creative economy that has become popular in the country today. Creative economy will only make sense if it is placed within the context of global market competition.
This competition positions cultural products as the site of an ideological battleground. Any countries that do not seriously participate in this fierce global competition will certainly get weaker and weaker both economically and politically. The worst case scenario is that they will be wiped out completely from the global cultural map. It would be really sad if the world has to see this happen to Indonesia, as one of the richest cultural repositories on earth.
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Franki Raden is a musicologist
Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com
