Although the Zoom video is not smooth, the image conveyed is clear: Javanese Life.
The scene opens with the sound of the Yasinan, then replaced with gamelan percussion. The pictures shift: women in kebaya, ballet performances, to chickens in the yard.
Very Javanese? This must be in Java, I thought. Wrong. It’s not in Java, but by Javanese. They are the diaspora, people who were uprooted from their ancestral land, Javanese in Suriname.
Thus is the excerpt from a short movie titled “More Javanese than the Javanese in Modern Indonesia”. The movie was screened by Fuji Riang Prastowo as a speaker at Viral Session #2: Embodied Diaspora: On Trans-national Becoming and Oceanian Identity. This discussion was held by Biennale Jogja XVI on Tuesday (28/09) via Zoom.
Besides Fuji, Marlon Ririmasse who incidentally is an archaeologist from the Ambon Archaeological Center is also a speaker. The discussion was also enlivened by Nancy Jouwe, a Maluku-Papua-Javanese diaspora and researcher of gender and postcolonialism.
The movie screening by Fuji wasn’t for no reason. This movie is a prelude to entering the discussion about the diaspora. For him, the diaspora, including those from Java, experienced the phenomenon of “post-colonial memory”.
Simply put, the diaspora preserves the memory of their ancestral lands just before they left. “The Javanese diaspora who left their land in 1975 will forever cherish the memories of that time while they’re abroad,” said Fuji. Memories that are frozen.
The very Javanese life of the Javanese diaspora in Suriname makes Fuji say that they tend to be fundamentalists. That is, the Javanese diaspora chose to return to their traditional roots. To the frozen memory of Java.
Alia Swastika as the moderator directed the discussion towards the theme of Biennale Jogja XVI: Oceania. The case is the diaspora in New Caledonia. Alia explained that in 2020 a referendum on independence from France was held for the New Caledonian nation. The result: more than 50% of the population chose not to be independent.
Fuji has an answer as to why. He said the francophone (French-speaking) community has a strong attachment to French culture. This makes assimilation go smoothly. Add the frozen memories of the New Caledonian diaspora, and it makes it difficult for them to imagine a community called the “New Caledonian Nation”. (Teresa Vita)
