The Planet: A Lament for Environmentally Engaged Citizenship?

Abstract

This article focuses on Garin Nugroho’s stage play The Planet: A Lament, which combines song and dance, predominantly from Eastern Indonesia, with video and other visuals that bewail the human destruction of the natural environment. I argue that the performance embodies a call for planetary citizenship that bridges art and spirituality as well as aspects of deep ecology and political ecology. The combination of art and spirituality facilitates intimate connections between audiences and phenomena that are otherwise relatively inaccessible and difficult to grasp due to their specific philosophical, scientific, socio-political or cultural-linguistic character. Moreover, the stage play draws connections between some of the worst environmental disaster zones in Indonesia and the socio-political, religious and cultural suppression or marginalisation of the people living in the affected areas. I seek to demonstrate how its engagement with marginalised ethnic groups, cultural traditions and religions provide a foundation for environmental renewal. At the same time, some aspects of this foundation are weakened by ambiguities around the sponsorship and promotion of the production. This article discusses the play’s structure, aesthetics and representation of race and religion; its position in Nugroho’s larger socially, politically and environmentally engaged oeuvre; and the politics of promotion and sponsorship.

Keywords:

• Indonesia
• performing arts
• the environment
• spirituality
• art sponsorship
• ecology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For a full recording of the performance in Melbourne, see AsiaTOPA, The Planet: A Lament, https://experience.artscentremelbourne.com.au/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Edwin Jurriëns

Edwin Jurriëns is Senior Lecturer and Convenor of the Indonesian Studies programme at the Asia Institute of the Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne. He holds PhD and MA degrees from Universiteit Leiden (Netherlands) and an undergraduate degree at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Indonesian Institute of the Arts, Yogyakarta. He has held research fellowships and teaching affiliations at: LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore; Monash University, Melbourne; The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva; and the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) in Leiden. He has authored three sole-authored books, Visual Media in Indonesia: Video Vanguard (2017), From Monologue to Dialogue: Radio and Reform in Indonesia (2009) and Cultural Travel and Migracy: The Artistic Representation of Globalization in the Electronic Media of West Java (2004). He is also co-editor of three edited volumes, Digital Indonesia: Connectivity and Divergence (2017), Disaster Relief in the Asia-Pacific: Agency and Resilience (2014) and Cosmopatriots: On Distant Belongings and Close Encounters (2007). His journal articles have appeared in: World Art; Third Text; Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art; Continuum; Taipei Fine Arts Museum Modern Art; Southeast of Now; Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia, and Indonesia and the Malay World. He is editor of the Asian Visual Cultures book series of Amsterdam University Press and regional editor for Australia and the Pacific for IIAS’s The Newsletter.