Wednesday 24 April 2024 at 16.00 WIB until 20.30 WIB, the second event in a series of online seminars REMATRIASI #2, a collaboration program between the Department of Fine Arts FSR Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta and Institut Sandberg in Amsterdam, was held. The program was hosted and collectively curated by Arahmaiani, Iwan Wijono, Martinus Dwi Marianto, and CPR. Together with Butet Manurung, Edwin Jurriëns, and Iskandar Waworuntu. The seminar was held online through the zoom platform and offline at the Ajiyasa building on the 1st floor, FSRD, ISI Yogyakarta.
Rematriation is an online seminar program about the recovery of lost knowledge, languages, tongues, cosmological nature-cultures, and other ancestral relics, in the de/colonial realities of Indonesia and the Netherlands. The seminar program is part of a new collaboration between art academies in Yogyakarta and Amsterdam, to foster our understanding of shared histories and interconnected ecosystems. What cosmological knowledge systems, languages and cultures were erased due to the neo/colonial project? We traced its impact to its culmination in the current environmental disaster. Throughout the seminar we invite and look at practices that support different ways of survival and recovery.
To kick off the #2 rematriation seminar we screened a documentary drama modeled after the life and work of renowned activist and anthropologist Butet Manurung. Riri Riza directed the documentary drama (2013) which is told from Manurung's point of view, and in which Orang Rimba plays the role of Indigenous actors.
Saur Marlina (Butet) Manurung (1972 Jakarta) is an award-winning activist-anthropologist and pioneer in initiating literacy and numeracy education for Indonesia's indigenous and marginalized communities, who use this education to leverage themselves against land-grabbing industrial and state forces. Manurung initiated the first pilot school in the Orang Rimba community, a semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer group living in Bukit Duabelas National Park, Sumatra. He developed Sokola Rimba (which means Forest School in the local language), an education system, as a form of self-defense for the Orang Rimba community. With four fellow educators, he founded the Sokola Institute in 2003 and adapted the program in 16 other locations in Indonesia, from Aceh to Papua, benefiting more than 15,000 people. Manurung is currently doing fieldwork as a doctoral student at the University of Amsterdam.
Edwin Jurriëns, Iskandar Waworuntu, Arahmaiani Feisal. Two close collaborators of Arahmaiani share their intersecting practices, and together offer a reflective constellation where different spiritual journeys, religious traditions and syncretic expressions are analyzed and traced to different locations. At the forefront is the revival of a tradition of critical debate that nurtures sensitivity. Curated and moderated by Arahmaiani.
Edwin Jurriëns discusses the environmental work Arahmaiani does with Gelugpa Yellow Hat Sect monks and lay communities in the Khamp area of the Tibetan Plateau. This area, also called the Asian Water Tower, provides the Asian continent with a source of water, and is indirectly responsible for the livelihoods of 2 billion people. The spiritual-religious knowledge system practiced and taught by the monk community in the Himalayan mountains, originated from the slabs at Borobudur Temple in Java.
Iskandar Waworuntu
Institut Bumi Langit (Sky Earth Institute) has become an important educational center for ecological agriculture in Java and Bali, combining Islamic Sufi traditions with agroecological practices. The founder of the institute, Iskandar Waworuntu provides insights into the key processes in the creation of the institute and the community that supports it.
Iskandar Waworuntu is the founder of Bumi Langit Institute. After embracing Islam in 2000, he moved to Yogyakarta to start Bumi Langit and the farm in Imogiri. In 2011, the waqf foundation started operating and initiated its structure by involving the community and became the Bumi Langit Family.
Rematriation Team
EN 
ID