Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

244Refiguration of identities and futures in times of transformationBONES IN TANSU — FAMILY SECRETSYoshiko ShimadaFrom an interactive art project which I conducted in the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia, I found underlyingproblems behind the façade of “family values” in Asia. Many secrets seem to be written by women and young people.The project provides those who are silenced a safe place to voice their experiences and share them anonymously withthe public. Through workshops and talks, I learned about the social, political, religious, geographical and historicalbackground of these problems. Furthermore, I interacted with some of the victims of these problems and conducteda workshop to seek the possibility of visual art as a tool for recovery from traumatic experiences. Some problems areparticular to the region/country; others seem to be more universal. However, regaining human dignity should be abasic and universal human need. I hope this project contributes to the effort of achieving this purpose.CULTURAL ATTITUDES TO ANIMALS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA:HUMAN-ANIMAL RELATIONS AS A DIMENSION OF CULTURALIDENTITY FORMATION AND DYNAMICSMyfel Joseph PalugaSamples of animal-relating practices and attitudes happening in varying ecological and cultural contexts in Indonesia,Thailand, and the Philippines show the extent of the diversity that Southeast Asians have woven as a result of theirlong-term interactions with nonhuman animals. The picture is both complex and patterned, so that although wecannot justifiably give a single unifying label to the phenomena, we cannot also discount the broad themes emergingout of the interactions. Monkeys, for example, are variously feared, venerated, and hated, but through all these, onealso observes their propensity to actively assert themselves and, by their trainability and adaptability, to find nichesdespite the expanding spaces of humans. There are also enduring dichotomies (e.g., forest/village, wild/tame) thatshape the attitudes of local people vis-à-vis animals. These patterns form the wide settings in which human-animalrelations play themselves out in Southeast Asia. The paper argues that human-animal relations, to varying degrees,are involved in the shaping of identities—as humans, as communities, or as selves. In these dynamics, the animalthreads might be explicitly evoked or may be only implicit in practice but always integrating these in our narrativesis important in forming a broader view of Southeast Asian realities.NARRATING THE NATION: MODERN HISTORICALREPRESENTATIONS OF IDENTITY IN INDONESIAN FILMIskandar Sharifuddin bin Mohd. SaidIndonesian films in the past tended towards a martial ideal in their depiction of the national struggle forIndependence. The first part of the paper will be devoted to the ideas surrounding the construction of the ideaof nation; this necessarily incorporates issues on identity and history and the manner and ways it is constructedtextually via the moving image, taking two feature films as examples. The principles or narrating the nation organizesitself towards a homogenous perspective. What this homogeneity excludes and denies are alternative histories, otherrepresentations and spaces of public memory that express the heterogeneous as an absence. And absence assumesfinding and recovering, as a beginning, a cycle of beginnings, as texts and practices that are engaged and defined viaspatial categories and thereby its articulations and contestations as spatial politics. My paper proposes to look at theconstruction of identity and the ideas of nation by way of textual analysis of filmic texts and ground practices andtheir articulations and narrating of the nation, across Indonesian films as culturally, socio-politically and historicallylocated.RECONSIDERATION OF LOCAL IDENTITY THROUGHPERFORMING ARTS IN THE ERA OF OTONOMI DAERAHKaori FushikiThis study attempts to indicate how people recognize and practice their local identity through the performingarts. It focuses on Bali in Indonesia, which is well-known for its flourishing performing arts. In recent years, aconcept, Ajeg Bali, has infiltrated Balinese society, and the number of people who want to practice performing artsas a representation of Ajeg Bali is increasing. The study, thus, surveys the concept of Ajeg Bali, which has becomeAsian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows