Citysounds: Allah Akbar / In Excelsis Deo / Huat Ah Heng Ah

Taman Rasuna - Allah Akbar
(Jakarta, December 2010)

One thing that one often forgets about visiting a staunchly Muslim country - that is, until one arrives - is that startling, huge sound of muezzins at prayer time, echoing at least five times a day through the city. Like a beacon of light sweeping through the city, the voices rise from the many minarets across the city, calling muslims to prayer. There was always one at about half past 3 in the morning, and due to the stillness of the night it was always incredibly clear as the sonorous sounds echoed off the skyscrapers in the adjacent and more affluent parts of Jakarta city. I did not see so many mosques in the rich part of town, but I did see them at almost every other street corner in the poorer, low-rise areas.

Who was keeping awake at 3 in the morning? Who was listening and who was still praying at this hour? It was as if the voices from the poorer quarters of Jakarta competed with one another to be heard, and under the blanket of darkness, I did not know who might still be listening.

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Gereja Katedral Jakarta - Gloria In Excelsis Deo (Bahasa version)
(Jakarta, December 2010)

On the night of Christmas Eve, thousands of Christians pack the Gereja Katedral Jakarta to attend the Mass services conducted in Bahasa. One of Jakarta's largest Catholic cathedrals, the halls within the Gereja Katedral Jakarta are opulently grand in European style - tall stained-glass windows, wooden pews decked with holly and ribbon, small roman birdbaths of "holy water", and gilded paintings of Jesus and the Apostles on the walls. Dressed in their Sunday's best, the services draw a cross-section of Jakarta which appears predominantly Chinese and generally very bourgeois or affluent.

The refrain of "Angels we have heard on high" will be familiar to even english speakers. As the faithful crowds sung it, I wondered, did they translate this song from the English, or the Dutch, or was there a Latin version of the song? There was something jarring about this. The only words I recognised were the Latin words, and in that, one is reminded that Latin was not even the original language of the Bible. I could not even begin to imagine how the Indonesians would relate the Bible to their context of living in Indonesia. An artificial bubble world. But of course I am simply thinking too much - it is not so complicated for most, for Christianity is often just another sign of the gentrification or western influences in those parts.

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Xing Gong Temple (Jalan Ulu Air Molek) - Heng Ah Huat Ah
(Johor Bahru, February 2011)

On the 20th day of every new Lunar year, an epic Chingay procession is held in Johor Bahru, where five deities (representing each of the Chinese dialect groups which have settled in Johore - Hokkien, Cantonese, Hainanese, Hokchew, Hakka) take a tour around the city, hoisted on the back of followers eager to bear the load of the huge shrines (for good luck!).

At the temple before they go on their tour of the town, event organisers from the temple lead the crowds in vigorous cheers of "Huat Ah! Heng Ah!" The event is clearly more than just religious ritual but also symbolic of the Chinese community's aspirations and power within Malaysia. After respects have been paid and dances have been made in honour, the "gods" are paraded proudly through an 8km stretch traversing the financial centre of the city which they presumably watch over. The ensuing float procession is decorated in bright LEDs, neon lights, accompanied by acrobatic performers, worshippers with huge joss sticks, offerings, and a long entourage of lion and dragon troupes from all over Malaysia and other parts of Asia.

House & Memory / Apartment Project - ruru & friends (Galeri Nasional Indonesia, Jakarta, 28 Dec 2010)

Last December, I made a short trip to Jakarta which incidentally coincided with the opening of the ruangrupa "Decompression 10th Anniversary" exhibition at Galeri Nasional Indonesia. A whole month of exhibitions, talks, shows, and performances spread out over various locations in jakarta (and scattered over numerous buildings within the Galeri Nasional compound), this exhibition was huge! so vast! it was like art/information overload for the visitor who might not be so well acquainted with Jakarta or the art scene in Indonesia.

However one thing I wanted to write down was that there were two things which were quite interesting to me at that show - Arjan van Helmond's House and Memory, and ruangrupa's "Apartment Project". During that trip to Jakarta, we also happened to be coincidentally staying at a friend of a friend's place at Taman Rasuna, one of the residences discussed in the works.



The view from the balcony of Taman Rasuna (Tower 9)

A staggeringly massive condominium development by Bakrie Group consisting of 15 highrise towers, landscaped gardens, multiple swimming pools and other luxury facilities, Taman Rasuna towers over the adjacent low-rise area which is seperated from "Bakrieland" by a high wall and barbed wires. the 4th floor features an "open sky podium" which is said to be one of the few of its kind in Indonesia (but this type of condo development will probably look quite familiar to Singaporeans).



A narrow hole in the wall is the gateway between the two worlds. On one side, in the shadow of the 214m tall Bakrie Tower and in walking distance from international embassies and Jakarta's CBD, you'll find 45000rp coffees at Starbucks, the organic "farmer's market", and the other predictably glossy accoutrements of commercialism and modernity. But not more than a 10 minutes walk away, behind the fence, it is the typical Jakarta urban sprawl, teeming with muezzins wailing, ramshackle houses scattered in all directions, speeding bajajs, rubbish dumps, and parts of the cemetery upon which Towers 1-4 of Taman Rasuna is said to have been also built over.



Cemetery



Mountain of Rubbish

Arjan van Helmond's House and Memory is a collection of sketches in which residents were asked to draw where they used to live based entirely on memory, which naturally allowed people some freedom of imagination where their self-drawn maps and floorplans were concerned. Some of the sketches were by people who previously lived in the areas which had been bought over and redeveloped to build Taman Rasuna, some others were by people who were currently living in Taman Rasuna, and some others were residents in other types of housing.



In the accompanying book for the Apartment Project, they write that in Indonesia, land is seen as the source of life and power; houses occupy space and land and are also representations of power. the most obvious spatial difference between the rich/modernised areas and the less developed areas is that apartment housing is vertical whereas the dense urban sprawl of jakarta develops horizontally. when we draw maps we draw them on a flat plane, but highrise buildings do not have the same relation to the ground as the simple single-storey houses found in jakarta. so even when we try to draw our maps, the normal orientation and notion of space is altered.

The question that would be interesting for me is whether/how this spatial difference between horizontal and vertical housing affects the perceptions of social relations.

For a land-scarce country like Singapore, landed property retains its position as the ultimate symbol of power because of its scarcity and cost as compared to vertical housing such as the public HDB flats. yet in Jakarta where land is much more plentiful, it is the vertical housing developments such the Taman Rasuna which are the symbols of economic power as opposed to the rabble of small landed houses on the other side of the fence.

As a casual and transient observer, I wonder if the highrise flats have the effect of instilling the notion of social motility (or perhaps even aspirations of upward social mobility). i almost want to relate this back to the indonesian concept of "nongkrong" - which is to hang out to do absolutely nothing except hang out and sit around. one will frequently observe that labour is so cheap in indonesia that even say the bakso stall in a fancy mall can afford to hire ridiculous numbers of staff to man a simple stall - resulting in what looks to me like a massive nongkrong of bored 20-something year olds sitting behind the counter. (in this case they are supposed to be working, so it is not quite nongkrong, but it certainly seems to echo with this sense of life having come to a standstill. from my perspective as an insufferable workaholic (and perhaps also partly from my upbringing in Singapore), i find that the concept of staying still in one place (and not doing anything in particular) smacks of boredom, but perhaps boredom is not the case for people there, coming from completely different perspective; from a land where houses simply take up space on land and aren't always piled up in stacks, with every stack of houses fighting to be taller than the next.



Jakarta City Map