By Bhima Aryateja

(SBF, Jakarta) Intrasia I had been a learning landscape about mutual enrichment in cultural diversity for both the participants and committees. This time it was through a different angle where all the participants all came from the same urban context but with different types of art including Music, Visual, and Dance.

On the 25^th January this year, along with LttW’s 37^th offline session (It’s Time to Interact) 24 members of the audience signed up to participate in Intrasia II, while on the 22^nd February along with the next offline session (38^th, Materializing the New Ideals; Possibilities and Challenges) the number decreased to 29.  By the time the clinic began, the final number had decreased to 18 participants.  As with the previous Intrasia, the participants all went to a mountain hillside area in Puncak, West Java to attend the clinic. This location enabled the participants to focus as well as to learn to collaborate with each other.

The intention of those two offline sessions were to build the same common ground and understanding in order to further develop their work as artists through this collaboration project.

The clinic itself was a four straight days of processes involving comprehension of the context, basic techniques, concept, and creativity about music, dance, and visual art within the global and local context. Facilitated by Adikara Rachman, Maya Tamara, Irwansyah Harahap, and Vincent McDermott, they tried to explore many facts and possibilities from timelines to mechanics and self-reliance to mutual enrichment. The four-day of clinic supported the main requirements which are their willingness and readiness to make a change.

Their work will be presented on the 25^th May at Indonesia’s National Gallery (Galeri Nasional), Jakarta. What will happen there will be their act to realizing their dream. How successful will it be? Just wait and see.

There’s always an interesting story behind an artifact—a sacred one—and to whom it belongs. A few weeks ago, an auction house in Paris was selling myriad of Arizona’s Hopi Indians’ sacred ritual masks to public following a Paris court ruling. Many were disappointed by the court’s decision, including the U.S. government and the Hopis who want the masks returned to its home.

Our minds will probably go with the Hopis; the right people who are entitled to keep those sacred artifacts are the people who originally own it. However, the primary question to this matter remains the same: how can we justify an ownership of such precious cultural manifestations?

With so many auctions of artifacts happening in all over the world as we speak, the above question needs to be settled immediately. First of all, we need to realize that any artifact (and other forms of cultural manifestations) “belongs” uniquely to who creates and where it is created; but most importantly, all of those creations also belong to the rest of us as the world heritage, history, as well as source of knowledge. So, as long as it protected from damages and kept accessible to the world, then any individual, community or even institution other than the original owner can also “own” it.

Without doubt, there are societies who will do anything necessary to protect their own cultural manifestations; but unfortunately, there are some who don’t. In Indonesia for example, a number of sacred artifacts has been traded solely for income which often made possible by the real owners themselves. So, how can we justify this?

[Ed.]

By John Chipperfield

Jonathan Wiseman (left) and Ginastera ‘Boo Boo’ Sianturi (right) with John Mills after the concert at St. Mary’s Church, Oxford, UK.

(LTTW, LONDON) It is astonishing what talent exists on our doorsteps.

Jonathan Wiseman lives just 100 yards as the crow flies from my front door, yet I never realised we had such a gifted musician in our midst.

‘An Evening of Classical Guitar’, held on April 6 2013 at the 13^th century St Mary’s Church at Kidlington, Oxfordshire, quickly put right that omission.

I and, I suspect, most of the audience were left spellbound as Jonathan and Indonesian-born Boo-Boo Sianturi tackled a challenging set of pieces.

The speed at which their thumbs and fingers swept up and down the strings was a joy to watch. If there was a wrong note or chord in the whole two-hour performance, I didn’t detect it.

Jonathan, 25, has had a rapid rise to fame since being named Oxfordshire Young Soloist at the age of 14 and going on to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

In 2011, he joined the elite rank of guitarists who have won the Julian Bream Prize for artistic excellence and last year, he won the Academy’s highest performance award for work of exceptional maturity.

Boo-Boo, who was introduced to the guitar by his grandmother when he was 10, attended the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, USA, and the Royal Academy of Music in London, and continues his studies at the Royal Welsh College of Music. He has also won many awards.

The programme had a distinct Spanish flavour, with works by Isaac Albeniz, Francisco Tarrega, Emilio Pujol, Antonio Soler and Manuel de Falla. But the varied programme also included contributions from Bach and composers from Italy, Mexico and Paraguay.

The two guitarists played solo, but showed their versatility and obvious rapport by performing a series of duets.

The highlight for many was the final piece, the fast-moving Danza Espanola No 1, from Manuel de Falla’s opera, La Vida Breve (Life is Short), which, to everyone’s delight, the musicians performed twice, the second time as an encore.

It’s been a decade since the Iraq War had begun. Did the “mission accomplished” fantasy last? Not from what it seems in many media portrayals of Iraq so far. Nonetheless, let’s not forget that this is about Iraq, the land once known as a peaceful salad bowl of cultures; and to the Iraqis, things are a little bit different. The hopes are high, and they are taking it very seriously.

According to the Telegraph, the Iraqi capital Baghdad is approaching herself as a "capital of culture" for 2013, to remind the world that there is more to culture than bombs and bloods in Iraq. There are more indicators showing that the recent “battlefield” caused by the war is rebuilding itself a home that can provide a positive energy for the people. The National Museum of Baghdad was finally reopened; a number of Iraqi Diasporas have brought together Iraqi artists across the globe to share their experiences through art; not-for-profit projects for the advancement of Iraqi art and public education are springing up everywhere; and top-selling musicians are growing swiftly.

The above indications are truly a good sign of Iraq’s rising, and certainly as good as knowing that the arts are responding to such struggles. However, being around the ever growing arts activities do not necessarily mean that the culture is “vibrant” already; it is a term used for reflecting how the arts is functioning as healing and creative force among the societies. Viewing today’s Iraq’s vibrant art and music scene within this perspective, we have had to trace back from its great history of art and music, and then ask ourselves a question: Will the future of Iraq’s art and music scene be vibrant than ever?

[Ed.]