Hello, everyone. Good morning,
good afternoon and good evening. It is with great pleasure that I welcome
you all from all over the world to the first public event
of documenta fifteen, the first episode of a series of
conversations titled lumbung calling. My name is Mirwan Andan,
but you can call me Andan. I'm from ruangrupa,
a collective based in Jakarta, Indonesia. I'm sitting here in Makassar,
South Sulawesi.
We have been invited to be the artistic
director of documenta fifteen. documenta fifteen
will be open on June 18, 2022. But various events and programmes
have already been initiated. lumbung calling, as mentioned, is the very
first event of our public programme, which we call Meydan. lumbung calling consists
of a series of conversations with a variety of guests focused on exploring
the rich meaning of lumbung across multiple disciplines, angles,
points of view, and contexts.
First of all, let me explain
what lumbung is, as lumbung is at the very core
of documenta fifteen. "Lumbung" is defined as a container
to store agricultural products, commonly rice, in the form of a house on
stilts with walls of woven wood or bamboo. It is an easily recognisable building
in Indonesia, similar to a barn. However, lumbung goes beyond
its physicality and it is used to describe
shared collective resources. It can be seen also
as a set of values in cosmology that describes the common living,
the common sharing, as a possible practice of a society. It is evidence of a communal life
marked by the spirit of collaboration and this characteristic can be traced back
to pre-modern and pre-colonial societies. Here, lumbung means a hardware
and also at the same time a software. lumbung calling,
the name of this programme, is a calling to the world to our deepest
social attitudes we all share and it means to raise awareness
on the practice of sharing, the lumbung practice.
Each edition of this series is dedicated
to one of the lumbung values. The present one is dedicated
to Local Anchor and the next ones will be
Humour, Generosity, Independence, Transparency, Sufficiency and Regeneration. The invited protagonists
have faced major challenges and initiated true changes
on various scales. Academics, cultural activists,
independent researchers, organic farmers and festival organisers,
among others. lumbung calling will take place
on the first Saturday of every month over seven sessions from now on, this April,
until October 2021. The conversation itself will last
around an hour followed by a short break and we will resume
with questions from the public. In the YouTube chat it is indeed possible
to ask questions or write comments that will be selected
and shared with our guests. Please note that this event
will stay online afterwards. I couldn't have wished
for a more perfect co-host, the artist, Jumana Emil Abboud,
who is currently sitting in Jerusalem. Jumana's creative interest
is in oral histories, personal and collective stories,
and mythologies, particularly folk tales
and their sites of being and unbeing.
She uses storytelling, performative
elements, and workshop methodologies in her artistic practice to investigate
our relation to time and place, to the human and of course the non-human. Her work has been shown
at many institutions and biennials around the globe, among which the BALTIC Centre
for Contemporary Art in England, Sharjah Biennale, Istanbul Biennale
and Venice Biennale. Jumana Emil Abboud is currently
pursuing a practice-led PhD at the Slade School of Fine Art,
University College London. Without further ado,
I will give the word to Jumana who will introduce
cultural Local Anchors, Melani Budianta and Armin Salassa. Jumana, it's yours. Thank you so much, Andan.
Thank you for a wonderful introduction. I'm super delighted to be with you,
with our esteemed speakers today, and with you, Andan, and with everyone.
Now before I introduce
our wonderful speakers, I'm going to just tell you briefly
about what is meant by the Local Anchor, which is the topic
for today's lumbung calling. The metaphor of an anchor describes the value of soil
in our globalised, yet divided, world. Soil that enables roots to grow and connects trees
located miles and miles apart. Just as trees echo each other's signals, harvesting and cultivation methods can resonate with
and be amplified by local wisdoms, bringing to life new resources and developing diverse relationships
with time. Our guests,
Melani Budianta and Armin Salassa, examine ways of challenging
integrated models of political, social
and economic behaviours in discussions unfurling
from the point of view of a seed to the tender voices
of concerned mothers.
Melani Budianta is a Professor
of Literature and Cultural Studies in the Faculty of Humanities
at the University of Indonesia and is a member of
the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society. Since the late 1980s, Budianta has undertaken
research and writing focused on gender and cultural activism. Her articles have been published
in academic journals, newspapers, and magazines. During the Asian financial crisis
of 1997 and 1998, she participated
in Indonesia's women's movement. In 2020, Melani Budianta
presented her talk Lumbung Budaya Sepanjang Gang or Cultural Granaries along the Alleys, organised by the Jakarta Arts Council. Our second speaker, Armin Salassa, is a farmer and an activist in Bulukumba,
South Sulawesi, Indonesia. In 2011, Salassa, along with farmers
from the village where he was born, began implementing natural farming, an organic practice that has long existed
in many other areas of the archipelago. Natural farming techniques
combine scientific knowledge with wisdom, stories and practices
inherited from ancestors, removing the need for chemical
fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides, etc. Since 1993, he has worked
as a community organiser in various locations throughout Indonesia and advocated for the denied rights
of indigenous people in Palu, Central Sulawesi.
Since 2007, Armin Salassa
has assisted community organisations in numerous Indonesian villages, including Aceh, Sumatra,
following the 2004 tsunami. And now, without further ado,
we welcome Melani Budianta. It's all yours, Melani. Thank you for
your beautiful introduction, Jumana. I'm much honoured to be invited to this
launch of the lumbung calling project by documenta with ruangrupa
as art director. The project very much overlaps with
my interests and my cultural activism in the past four years. Lumbung as a granary
for the storage of the rice harvest is known all over Indonesia.
And it's called
by different ethnic languages. You see a few only there on the map, but we have over 700 languages altogether. The lumbung has different shapes
according to each region, but with similar architectural pattern of
a steep roof with lots of space within it, the central storage area
and the hollow space under the lumbung. In many rural areas there are individual lumbungs
in each house, as well as the collective village lumbung. In today's world, with urban expansion and land-grabbing for extractive
and consumptive industries, lumbungs are disappearing. However, in my various
grass-roots activisms, be it in the urban peripheries
or in rural villages, I have found how the symbol of lumbung
is still widely used by many organisations. In fact, the lumbung becomes a symbol of an effort in gathering
collective memory and cultural resources, tangible as well as intangible, for the common benefit of the people. As each kampung tries
to construct their identity, they start by identifying
what is available in the community. It can be old people
who know the history of the community or a kampung-dweller
with knowledge about traditional music, dance, herbal medicine, urban farming or alternative healing, or culinary practice, like grandma's recipe, for example.
And they try to construct a space and some ways for storing the knowledge. It can be digital websites,
it can be books. It can be a small corner in the village and they create a small museum
for displays. But actually the whole kampung
serves as a space for the lumbung. And as the kampung
becomes the collective space, it is very important for the community to create a liveable and comfortable
kampung environment as their home.
Sometimes they use unused lots
for children's playgrounds. Sometimes they painted the walls
of their alleys to create a beautiful space around them. And next there is
this value of regeneration, of finding a system
to reactivate, revive, and to develop the cultural resources
for the young people. They set up bookshops for youth or create a space for performance. In some of the kampungs that I visited, the older traditional recipes
of the mother or grandmother can be packaged
in a millennial style of menus and they created
this kampung-style café where young people in the village
can learn to do business.
So they mix the old with the new. There is also an important value
of organising the sustainability and distribution
of the lumbung benefit for economic or social wellbeing. They organise who should do what and how people share the benefit. Here lies also the value
of transparency and democracy, the participatory process
of working together with what we call in Indonesia
"gotong royong". This is a very well-known term
that almost all Indonesians know, that it is the collective spirit of working together
and sharing together. An example of this is
the urban farming initiative done by the kampung community,
especially during the pandemic. In this kind of activity, they put up
schedules, charts in the alley, to remind people who should
be in charge of what and when. The collective together is heightened
especially during the pandemic, whereby the urban kampung-dwellers
in the city, but in the peripheries, try to revive again their older
tradition called "jimpitan", which is to chip in a cup of rice daily
from each household in order to be collected together and later on distributed for those
who need it in the time of crisis.
So this is also a kind of food security which is similar to the lumbung practice
in the rural villages. Although these collective initiatives
are locally anchored in different communities
all over Indonesia, what I find interesting
in the past four or five years is that these kampungs
started to connect with each other through a digital social media platform and created a larger lumbung network.
One WhatsApp group can consist of up to 150 urban
and rural village communities, which do larger collective activities. Sometimes by visiting
one village and another in order to share experience and
support each other's cultural activities. Sometimes especially they do it
during kampung festivals and it is there that they share,
they meet and they chat with one another. The overall atmosphere of the WhatsApp
group, as well as the offline meeting, is usually light, full of life,
humour and festivity and fun.
By becoming a member
of this informal WhatsApp group of Jaringam Kampung Nusantara
or Nusantara Kampung Network, I managed to know stories
of several kampungs which I would like to share now. The first is the Kampung Cempluk. Kampung Cempluk
was initially a rural village, which was swallowed
by the urban expansion. So it became an urban kampung surrounded by a gentrified
urban middle-class environment. They were in danger of being evicted
through land-grabbing as the price of land increased. In order to save and return
their neighbourhood and their community, the residents invented
an annual kampung festival. The name Cempluk
means kerosene lamp and during the festival
they turned off the electricity and used kerosene lamps only
to remember the past. Then they shared traditional snacks, performed traditional dances and songs
that they remembered. The festival finally
put the village on the city map. Thus the branding
of the kampung identity helped them to save their existence. Second is Kampung Karanggreneng, a kind of urbanised rural village
near Jakarta.
It was a very poor sub-village. 40% of the existing households
were ageing widows who worked as farm workers,
as nut grinders, with a monthly income
of less than $100. The village had no special
natural or cultural attraction and was high in urban consumption
and low in social cohesion. But then one villager
was inspired by a TV show called "If I were this and I were that…" and he created a collective
live-in project for Jakarta youth to experience rural living. In the beginning
nobody took him seriously, but then he started to convince others, and finally they managed
to organise villagers to recall and relearn
traditional games, dance, gamelan music, and they started to identify local
villagers who can remember these things and can teach the youth
their traditional culture. They share the collective income
of the programme to build common space
for village traditional art.
Since then the spirit of gotong royong
and working for collective benefit for all is re-installed in the village. There are many similar efforts like that, for example, a village in East Java
called Ledokombo. Half of the population went
as migrant workers to Asian countries, leaving the left-behind children
to be taken care of by the elderly. This condition changed when there
were a couple of cultural activists from Jakarta
returning home to the village and they set up a library
and playground for children, and then started to revive
the traditional children's game called "egrang" or bamboo stilt game. The couple used their network
to support the village activities and created an annual festival.
Now the children are invited
internationally to do the stilt dance and the common organisation
later on created a school for mothers and for grandparents to equip them with lifelong learning, how to regain knowledge
for planting organic herbal gardens, turning them into herbal medicine
and drinks. In that way, returning migrants now
can find means for living in the village. As we all know, during the pandemic, there were 80% of migrant workers
abroad who returned to their base. These examples show how the kampung
cultural commoning or lumbung activity reverses the current
of today's hyper-urbanisation.
Collectively they try to save
the green environment in their village and construct a liveable, economically
viable and culturally satisfying home in the urban or rural villages
for the future generation. Thank you. Jumana. Thank you, Melani, it's wonderful
to hear about your experiences and I'm very curious to know more and we'll get to that, I think,
when we have a chance to ask questions. But for now I'm really interested
as well to hear and to know the link
between you and Armin. And this will be the moment
where I hand the microphone to Armin. If you could please share with us
your experience towards the collective efforts
that you have done. The microphone is yours. Thank you. So, thank you very much for inviting us. It's an honour for me
to be here joining all of you.
First of all, let me begin
the explanation from Salassae. Salassae itself
is located in Bulukumba district around 180 km from Makassar,
capital of the province. And most of the farmers in Salassae have various types of plants
cultivated on their soil, such as durian, banana,
cacao, and so on. And the name of the Salassae itself comes from the ancient
Buddhist language, which means palace. Well, the palace itself no longer exists but only the site of once… Once a site for coronation
for kings and queens existed in the area. So, Salassae has its own term to name a practice
or space to store crops such as rice, which in the Indonesian language
is called lumbung. People in Salassae
used to call it "para". Physically speaking, para is a space to store crops
such as rice, corn, and so on. And, cosmologically speaking, para that is located in between
the ceiling and the roof inside the house where the crop is stored illustrates a lofty attitude
towards the food.
It's a manifestation of gratitude to God
who provides the food all the time. And speaking of the process
of para itself, para is a metaphor for the cycle
from sowing the seed to eating the food. And it involves many roles, like roles
of women, roles of children, and so on. Whenever the harvesting season arrives, all people have the opportunity
to work and share the yields. So, during the Green Revolution,
which was imposed by the New Order, who ruled Indonesia for 32 years, the cultural system of para
was under a constant threat. So, the Green Revolution
was used as a vehicle for the chemical industry
to take advantages from the village and the Green Revolution
also introduced the usage of chemicals in farming, which prioritised
the maximal production. It in turn segregates the agriculture
from people in Salassae and the land becomes exhausted and also people were migrated
to other places, such as Malaysia, to work as… to work in plantation companies in Malaysia and other areas in the south
in Sulawesi. So, in 2011, around 20 people,
former plantation workers, came back to Salassae.
So working in rubber
or oil palm plantations didn't seem to have significant impacts
on their lives. So the farmers in Salassae…
the former plantation workers in Salassae came to reflect, to rediscover
the memories of the past, which then came to the conclusion
of their application of natural farming. And then another reflection
came to the farmers who said Salassae should be regarded
as an important place, as important as any other places
like New York, Jakarta or Berlin. It is also from this process that farmers began to appreciate
the process of learning. So, the idea is to create a sense of pride in living and being Salassae people. It's also to reverse the idea
of the Green Revolution to come back to the local values
that we have. So natural farming
is not just a matter of technicality, but it's also a principle
to develop together with nature, which is relying on the natural resources to create the nutrition necessary
to enrich the soil, which is also coming from the area
around Salassae itself.
Afterwards the effect was so good, so many people got their benefits
in terms of the economy and also refreshed the health of the soil,
and so on. So, along the way, the natural farming
community in Salassae realised that the chemical farming
resulting from the Green Revolution has negative impacts on other villages
across Indonesia. Driven by such reflection the need to disseminate
natural farming practices and knowledge so that the other farmers who switch would then have a pathway
for the establishment of Salassae as a collective sufficient
rural community. So, the aim of this organisation is to build the understanding of people
of natural farming. It's also used as an action,
as a call to action to disseminate the idea of natural farming
to other people. So, there was a problem the first time
we initiated the organisation. The farmers didn't have
organisational skills. But it didn't become a problem for us
to spread the idea of natural farming to build a better future and learn.
So at first we learnt how to speak,
how to give speeches, how to be involved in the dialogue
and conversation, and so on. Women also have an important role in all sectors in the culture of para
in Bulukumba from breeding the seed, cultivating
the soil, cultivating the plants, and to harvest the yield itself. It is also the role of women
to determine the food sovereignty, whether it should be sold or not. It's all the decision from our women. So, para values are also… The process of para values
can also be from birth until death. So it is the value
that we have to be submissive to recognise the existence of God. The system of para itself is translated
into collective actions from assembly to working collectively
to build the facilities and so on.
And also to reflect… to be able to use… to be able to pray for God
and to be grateful to God, and so on. So in the future we hope that Salassae
can be a space for learning for everybody, it can be a collective laboratory
for everybody to rediscover the values, also to practice natural farming. We also hope that every corner of
Salassae, which is around ten kilometres, can be an asylum for everybody
to learn anywhere, in every corner of Salassae.
Thank you very much.
Amazing.
Thank you so much, Armin and Harry. Thank you. So that I don't forget
to remind our listeners today from wherever you're listening
across the world, I want to remind you
that you can post your questions that you have for Melani and Armin in the YouTube channel and we'll be able to select,
both myself and Andan, from there and share your questions
with our speakers. Wow, there's so much that's resonating
with me from hearing you both speak.
The whole idea of lumbung
and the local anchor and your distinctive experiences
of these two… or the main value of what is lumbung. And some of the words
that are resonating with me are the para, the idea of the para, and the idea of the gotong royong.
I hope I'm pronouncing them right. This idea of the collective working, the idea of the collective gathering
and collective efforts, and the notion of the collective effort of not just being something
which is collective among humans but also collective with nature. And I think one of the first questions
I'm really keen to ask you both is connected with this idea of value. Maybe if I can ask you first, Melani, to share with us through
your lumbung experience about values, and then I will also ask Armin
to talk a little bit about that too. Yes, you mention it very much right. The gotong royong, I think, is central to this collaborative, collective,
working together.
However, sometimes we get the idea that the collective could be repressive
to individual difference. So I would like to share with you that this is not what we want to have in this kampung commoning
or gotong royong in the lumbung spirit. Instead we would like the spirit
to be bottom up. It should be a democratic decision-making, just like what Armin
already shared with you, how women and men… how they negotiate,
they decide what to do collectively. And the decision-making
should be inclusive to all, empowering women, the marginalised,
and the minorities within their community. So that is one thing
that is very important, the bottom-up and participative
kind of decision-making. Another value is of course transparency
in managing the collective spirit. I showed you pictures
of how people put schedules of work and this is negotiated.
The work is shared as well as the benefits that they get
from the collective activity. So, how to manage the lumbung together,
how to organise it. Armin already said that some of the kampungs are not
very experienced in doing organisation, but they learn by listening to others,
by working together, inviting people who know
how to do this and that. Next is the value
of scientific knowledge, especially the cultural knowledge,
the cultural memory, for the young people. And also to transfer leadership
for future regeneration. So, these are, I think,
some of the values that are important. But the last but not least
is happiness of being together. I think happiness, humour, festivity
is very important for Indonesians. Without this, the collective
lumbung gathering would not work. Whenever people come together,
there is always food, there is always laughter,
always arts, dance, music. So these are all integrated
into the collective effort. Of course, I have to say that
each kampung is locally anchored, so they have local differences. The ones that Armin Salassa talks about
and the ones that I talk about or the ones in East Indonesian islands,
for example.
They each have their own
locally anchored knowledge and tradition. But I think some of the values
that I talked about are shared amongst all. Thank you, Jumana.
I hope this answers you a little bit. Yes, absolutely. It's amazing. It's amazing to hear about
both the individual's needs and how the individual's voices
are heard within the collective. And the learning process… I've always felt the learning process, the more that
it's a collective organisation, the better the learning. So I'm also curious to hear more
about the learning process from Armin through his experience over 15 years
with the farmers. So, Armin, I'd like to direct
the microphone to you now with regards to values. In an earlier conversation we had, you had quickly mentioned about
how being uprooted from culture can impact on values. I'm wondering if you can share with us
today a little more about this. So, when we're speaking
about local values, it's a process that…
There are four aspects
that form the community. The first one is the government,
the second is the natural resources, the third is the society,
and the fourth is the local values. What happens if people do not have… if the government, natural resources
and society do not have the values? They'll all become just robots. And speaking about natural resources, without values
it can be just an exploitation, because if you are speaking
about government's policy, most of the government's policy
is focused on the power of interest. There cannot be any public trust and that's why local value
is very important here. And what is also a vital aspect
in local value is that the local value is embodied
in the biodiversity of the land. So when the land is degraded
or deteriorated, it is the moment where
the degradation of local value began. Question. I want to ask Armin regarding
the cosmology in the context of Salassae, how it's related to the belief
of people in Salassae and then its relation
to being locally and strongly anchored on the soil of Salassae
as an organic farm.
Thank you. We, the people of Salassae, mostly know
the culture of para since childhood as most of the grandparents or parents
enrich our point of view by the stories,
that could be fiction or fact. We know the story of lumbung itself
through a traditional story that there are certain creatures that really want to try to reach
the lumbung itself, because it's located
in between the roof and the ceiling, so there are certain stories like that. But what is left now is this story, but the value still exists and when it's recalled it's pretty similar to recalled memory
or the beauty of the story within the people of the Salassae itself, which then is pretty much…
it makes it easy for people when they want to organise…
I want to add something
about seed breeding, the process of seed breeding
where women play a very important role. So women treat the plants
as their children, which in the Konjo language
means "Appasusu’ pare", which is something like "to give birth". So the woman is giving her breast
to the paddy, giving the milk from her breast
to the paddy as a kind of giving birth to the children, children just born to the world. So this is a process I want to add. So the story and behaviour, which are
interrelated with one another, they are embodied and embedded
in our memory and then transformed as a spirit
to work collectively, working together. Thank you. Lovely. So if I understand you correctly,
then it's… The spirit of working
collectively together has also a lot to do with respecting
this kind of local knowledge as well as…
Well, with regards to
respecting the local knowledge, it has to with how do we preserve it, but at the same time
how do we also disseminate it. So I'm curious about both the preservation as well as the dissemination
of this local knowledge in order for the local anchor,
which is the primary value of the lumbung, to continue being active
in a harmonious way. So it's almost like a harmonious
entanglement of the local knowledge between its preservation
as well as its dissemination. But I'm getting to a question, so, Melani, if you could please
share with us this… Is it very much connected as well
with the cultural identity, this idea of the lumbung? OK. Thank you, Jumana. I think lumbung initiative
or a kampung commoning is very closely related to identity. In my interaction with kampung activists I've found that,
amongst the young people especially, there is this inferiority complex about their status as originating
from the rural area or the kampung. The word "kampung" or village
in the Indonesian language has this connotation
of being backward or outdated. With hyper-organisation of the youth… The youth are not interested any more
in living in the village or working as a farmer.
They consider the traditional culture
and also the ethnic language not very cool. And they prefer the urban lifestyle
as they see on the internet or they listen to popular culture or consume this popular culture
in social media. Now, the lumbung
or kampung cultural commoning is trying to reverse this tendency by putting a very high value
on traditional arts and culture. For example, I'll give you an example
of the kampung I mentioned before, the kampung in East Java called Ledokombo. In that village the Madurese language is considered to be not very cool,
according to young people, because it's associated with poverty, with outdated, traditional,
very old-fashioned, something like that. But the children's club or
the children's association they created, actually, the kampung created, they use actually the Madurese name,
which is Tanoker, which is the Madurese word for "cocoon". They decided to use that and then they started
to relearn traditional games and really put a high value on it
by making it an international festival.
Foreigners came
and people were coming to the village and then looked at the children
playing that traditional game and they really appreciated them. So these children finally see,
"Oh, they like our culture." "Our culture is considered important." They regained a sense of pride about their language, for their cultural tradition. So, in that way,
children started to relearn their identity as Madurese or their local
traditional games and other things. This is still something
that we need to bolster, meaning it's going on
in various villages. They're trying to re-activate, they're trying to tell again the stories
of the ancestors in the kampung heritage, and they've tried to make it modern
for the young people, to make it relevant to their life.
So this is an effort to…
again, to regain a sense of pride. In that way the children will feel
that it's fine to be ourselves, it's fine to have
our own cultural identity and we are proud of it.
So something like that. Thank you, Jumana. Amazing to hear this, Melani. I think it's wonderful to hear
how the lumbung practice is actually upheld or nurtured
through this way with the younger generation. But I'm sure that
we're going to continue discussing this and we're going to also address
the questions we have from our audience after our five-minute break.
So we're going to take now
a five-minute break and we will, when we return,
address some of the questions that are being asked among our audience. Thank you, everyone, so much. NO AUDIO for 6 secs
NO AUDIO for 6 secs So, soil in our local value… What I mean it's not a metaphor,
but it's a real science, which the local value lives,
about the soil and its condition.
Speaking about responsibility
for the soil's degradation, it mostly comes from industry,
if not all of it, and exploited nature
that is supported by the bureaucracy through its civil and military service, which then have the principle to take
as much as possible benefit from the land. Ironically, there is much research
on land degradation carried out here, but the government seems
never to listen to it. They neglect it, by the way. So the question about responsibility
is not to ask who is responsible, but what we can do to restore the soil, because if we rely on the government… Yeah. For many years back then, there has never been a real action
to restore the degradation of the soil. So, I want to add some things. The global power that aims to dominate
the policy in the agricultural industry seems to have devastating impacts as well, because the chemical farming
that they proposed many years ago did not just degrade the soil itself but also poisoned our minds. Not just poisoning the land,
but also poisoning our minds to have access to healthy foods.
The implication of that is that,
again, like I said before, the degradation of local value
is undeniable and speaking about the responsibility
is not… we cannot rely once again
on industry or the state. To restore the soil condition is to involve the community
in our local society. Armin, to follow up on that
wonderful question with regards to the soil as a metaphor, do you believe that
folklore tradition in Indonesia has in any way impacted
agricultural practices? The local folklore in Salassae
fully reverberates with us to restore the soil
and to build the community. In Salassae, for example,
the story that is very close to us, to the core of the organisation, is very vibrant to make our practice live. For example, to deal with the pest we rely on the story of the pest. That is to communicate with them
rather than to kill the pest itself. This is not a metaphor. But the communication is understood
in the real sense, communicating with the pest. So instead of killing them, we provide
the food necessary for the pest itself.
So, through the communication with
the pest itself, such as worms, and so on. Thank you, Armin, thank you, Harry. We have a question
to Melani. "Thank you for the great presentations,
to both the speakers. I would like to know
if there is a specific system that has been developed and implemented
through the years that fights against
the asymmetric gender dynamics." Thank you for the challenging question. As we know, Indonesia is so diverse. We have hundreds of ethnic groups
spread across the 17,000 islands. Each has their own traditions
and each has different local patriarchies, forms of local patriarchy.
In some areas it's combined, for example,
with the rise of religious conservativism. That, of course, works not very well
with gender equality. So, it's very varied gender dynamics
in each locality. When I went to some urban kampungs,
for example, some of the initiators
of urban farming are women. They organise it and they complain that
the males are too lazy to be involved. In some other kampungs,
it's the young people, mostly male. In other kampungs, it's mixed. So it's completely… very varied. So we cannot generalise.
However, when these kampungs
are connected to one another, then there is very interesting dialogue
usually occurring concerning women's participation. When one kampung
with very active women's participation commented on the others which are not… So, in sharing dialogue,
there is kind of a learning about gender, how to let women participate more
in this and that. That's one thing. So the dynamics
between the kampungs themselves. Secondly, in the kampung,
in initiating this lumbung activity, they are not working alone
within their kampung, but they work with local governments,
they work with the ministries, they work with universities. And there is one time I helped this Ministry
of Villages and Marginalised Areas to conduct a kampung-commoning workshop
and the lumbung activities. In the requirements, we told them that we wanted
at the least in each kampung that there should be
participation of women. Something like that was a requirement. Universities also,
when they work together, they initiate some
gender-mainstreaming agenda. But it's interesting to say that
most of the kampung-cultural activists, as they are working towards reactivation
of traditional cultures, they are usually the progressive ones.
They are not the ones
that are very narrow-minded in practising their religion or things. So I find it interesting
that these cultural activists, especially working in the arts
and traditional culture, are mostly progressive and they really welcome
women's participation more, and some of them are
very powerful women leaders also. So, not really one systematic way. It's partial here and there,
it comes from different directions, and we're still facing
a lot of challenges, especially with the rise
of religious conservativism, but many women's groups work
is about that too. For example, the Islamic women leaders with organisations
like NU or Muhammadiyah, they also have their role
in the villages, working. I remember one time
I went to a village in Kalimantan and there were these
religious conservative groups trying to sort of occupy the village, and then these young leaders from the NU, which is a more traditional
Islamic organisation in Indonesia, they went to face this group. So there are many bottom-up initiatives, as well as initiatives
from different directions, to make sure that there is at least
more and more women's participation in this lumbung initiative.
Thank you. I need to add to what Melani just said
about the women leaders. They're coming from an organisation
called Nahdlatul Ulama, NU, or the moderate,
the moderate Islamic organisation that has a long history in Indonesia. Also the next question
is to both Melani and also to Armin. When was your first encounter
with lumbung? Was it a thing when you were a child or were you exposed to it
when you were very young? Was it one of the words that you learnt from being very young, when you were a child? He mentioned about his experience
with lumbung when… his children's experience with lumbung.
Maybe he can answer this. So, we people in Salassae
have first recognised the lumbung in the form of its physicality,
in the form of the building, and so on.
It's combined with the story
of the value inside the lumbung itself. So, as I said before, children
and many other people are also involved in doing the whole process of
sowing the seed to harvesting the crops. Although para no longer
physically exists now, the value is so memorable in our memories. And it also lives within our lives. OK, now I think it's my turn
as a city child. I grew up in the small city of Malang and, of course,
completely different from Armin who really grew up in the rural area
with lumbung physically in front of them. I learnt about lumbung
from children's textbook stories and then later on my teacher
was taking us, the children, to see the rice fields
and also to see the lumbung. But unfortunately now
lumbung is disappearing physically and today's generation,
especially those living in the city, they only read about it in textbooks and they cannot experience it
like we did before. Therefore I think there is urgency
to use lumbung and to revive it.
So, it's not only as a physical entity,
but the spirit behind it and, as Armin already elaborated, the cosmology, the philosophy, and
Andan already also mentioned the values. So lumbung calling for me is an initiative to reverse
this damaging force of hyper-urbanisation, extractive industry, land-grabbing
and urban consumerism, that cause us to have a memory loss
of our own culture, and that cause disappearing forests
and rice fields, and also all the collective memory
of the communities, and thus erasing their identity. So, for me lumbung calling is a call
to again support this initiative of cultural collective regeneration, especially, in my perspective,
from the bottom up, from the kampung communities,
urban as well as rural, for the future generation. Thank you. Thank you, Melani,
thank you, Armin, so much. There's a lot of depth
in what I heard from both of you.
There are a lot of, I guess, challenges. We have a question from the audience
with respect to the challenges. The question is: How do you overcome prejudices
within the lumbung? So I'll try to find it. Yes. How do you overcome prejudices
in the lumbung? There are some technicalities
with Jumana's connection. This is to Bu Melani. "So, how do you overcome prejudice
in the lumbung? In most societies there are exclusions
because of racism, homophobia, or being afraid of other people." Also because of religious conservativism. I remember in one kampung they tried
to revive this myth of Dewi Sri or this myth of the goddess
that protects the harvest, etc. And there were some religious groups
that said that this is haram, this is not supposed to be done. But this kampung had this clever idea
of saying that this is only the package. We need it.
Actually, what we are trying to do is to create an understanding
of environmental protection, how we really value the environment. So, these rituals,
rituals in the river or in the agricultural field
or rice field, are not religious rituals.
It's a ritual in reviving
our respect for nature, to protect nature from pollution, from abuse,
like Armin already mentioned. So there is this kind of negotiation
by these cultural activists against the people who are
very religiously conservative. So there are many problems. Problems not only from
the religious conservative groups, it can also be from the capitals. There is a story also in Tegal, about one mountain, karst,
a beautiful… The kampung is between
these two karst mountains, very beautiful. But one mountain is already "bought",
taken over by one company. They already excavated the mountain
and the mountain cannot be saved any more. So, finally the cultural activists,
working with the local government, turned the other one, the one that's left,
for mountain climbing.
For mountain climbing as an alternative
to a kind of tourism, ecotourism. That way they can save one mountain. So there are many, many challenges
that are… Especially during the pandemic,
there are other problems. Those who live on ecotourism during the pandemic
have had to switch to organic farming, to other creative ventures. Also from political parties sometimes. So there are many other…
many challenges. Joining the social media kampung network
is one solution. When one kampung has a problem,
other kampungs offer strategies and some lessons learnt from them. So they could share knowledge together
and support one another. We are still facing a lot of problems but what makes us hopeful is the energy
and the spirit of this activism. There are a lot of problems,
there are a lot of… Sometimes they have to retreat one step
in order to go forwards, but I'm very happy to see how tough and how full of spirit
these kampung activities are.
Thank you. I also want to echo what Melani…
– Thank you, Melani. I also want to add to
what Melani mentioned. Some of the physicalities of lumbung
are already disappearing. But in some contexts in Indonesia, because Indonesia is a country
with 17,500 and something islands, and there are so many lumbung buildings which are still used by the communities
where they belong to. For Indonesians, the people
in the village of Salukanan, the people of Salukanan in Enrekang
which are part of the Buli people. They still have this lumbung building
called landa, which can store the seed
for more than 50 years.
Or the same as with the lumbung
in Ciptagelar, where they can store seeds
for a long time. The documenta fifteen team is planning to
build up the lumbung community in Kassel. Thank you for the question,
because also it's the… One of the plans
that we've had from the beginning… Building lumbung is not… It will be started both from Kassel
and also from Indonesia, and then the existing of ruruHaus… If you are in Kassel now and then you are
passing by in front of ruruHaus, you will see the ruruHaus, which is one of the platforms
that we created since last year to start this lumbung Kassel. And then we are working
with some initiatives in Kassel. Two of our friends,
Reza Afisina and Iswanto Hartono, have already been there since last year to work on this plan of building
a lumbung community in Kassel. This is also part of the thing
that we are discussing now, because we believe
the initiatives in Kassel are the ones who are locally anchored.
So you'll connect with the initiatives
in Kassel as local anchors for documenta. Yeah, of course. There are actually also already
some events and programmes which were developed
by the team of documenta fifteen along with, as I mentioned, two of our
friends, Reza Afisina and Iswanto Hartono, who are there, with two of our friends in Kassel also,
Andrea Linnenkohl and Ayşe Güleç, who are also part of the artistic team. Great. Thank you, Andan. We have a question for Armin. "Besides the natural farming
as a local anchor, is there any inter-local sharing
or learning from the overseas activities?" So, natural farming is just one part of
the local values and beliefs in Salassae. There are many others… There are many local values
in Salassae itself. One for practise is when we were
practising and built the organisation. In the organisation there is no gap
between the people within with the knowledge that the farmers have, with the experience
and with themselves as well. So there is no gap between them.
Also in the organisation there is
participation of women and children. All of them are started
from the local values and one typical example also
is the decision making, which is highly embodied
from our local values. So we don't have voting and elections. When we want to make decisions
it's always from assembly. Assembly, assembly, and no voting
until the conclusion is reached. So that's one of the manifestations
of local values in decision making. A question which is… He says, "What image do you have
mentioning God?" This is very interesting because…
Maybe we can… Maybe Armin Salassa can share his stories on the concept of God in the cosmology
of people in Salassae. Thank you. So, when we're speaking
about God in local values, as I mentioned before,
it's from birth to death, from recognising God
to behave submissively, it's all like a cycle,
like a whole process. But the very important point is our
submissiveness and our acceptance to God. So really it's not about image,
but the beliefs that we put in it that is reflected in the behaviour
of the people in Salassae. So when we talk about God,
we do not talk about image, we talk about the beliefs that we have. Yeah. Thank you so much, everyone,
for your time. I would like to thank our guests,
Melani Budianta and Armin Salassa. Also Armin Salassa's translator,
Harry Isra.
They are sitting in Makassar. Melani is sitting in Jakarta. And also Jumana Emil Abboud for hosting also this first session
of lumbung calling. Jumana is sitting in Jerusalem. As well as special thanks
to Undine Schäfer, who has been interpreting
in international sign language. I would like to thank all of you
for your attention and for asking such relevant questions
and making comments. Please note, in case
you have missed some parts or if you would like to share this video, it will be online very soon.
Check the date for the next
lumbung calling on May 1st. Be safe and stay healthy. Thanks so much..
