Episode 22: Bilawa Ade Respati, jee chan and jelena golubovic
þ thorns þ
In this episode Bilawa, jee and jelena discuss issues surrounding the choreographies of language, mapping, nationhood, and diaspora in relation to the construction of plural and post-colonial identities.
See the resources and references here
This episode is a conversation between jee chan, jelena golubovic, and Bilawa Ade Respati. jee is an artist in the first cohort of the Rose Choreographic School, whose practice often examines the potential of the displaced body, driven by their research concerning ancestral epistemologies and oral histories. jelena works across music, visual arts, and conceptual practice, exploring the intersections of language, society, and the sensorial. Bilawa is a musician and performing artist whose current artistic interest lies in the dialectic between tradition and innovation, as well as the revaluation of traditional values in contemporary life.
In this episode of þ thorns þ, recorded in Berlin, you'll hear an insight into the questions, tensions, and forces that shape their collaborative project titled laut jerebu (the sea where land is out of sight). Drawing upon their respective lived experiences across Southeast Asia and Southeast Europe, they discuss issues surrounding the choreographies of language, mapping, nationhood, and diaspora in relation to the construction of plural and post-colonial identities.
Find out more about Bilawa, jee and jelena on our People page.
To the Glossary Bilawa donates Purwarupa 
, jee donates Kepiting 
and jelena donates Uniform 
.
This series is produced and edited by Hester Cant. The series is curated by Mine Kaplangı with additional concept and direction by Martin Hargreaves and Izzy Galbraith.
Transcript:
MARTIN
Hello and welcome to þ thorns 
, a podcast where we bring you conversations in relation to concepts of the choreographic 
. þ thorns þ is produced as part of the Rose Choreographic School 
at Sadler's Wells. As part of the ongoing imagination of the school, we are compiling a glossary of words that artists are using to refer to the choreographic. Every time we invite people to collaborate with us, we also invite them to donate to the glossary. You'll hear each guest on the podcast propose and describe their donated word or phrase, and you can also find these on our website.
This episode is a conversation between jee chan, jelena golubovic, and Bilawa Ade Respati. jee is an artist in the first cohort of the Rose Choreographic School, whose practice often examines the potential of the displaced body, driven by their research concerning ancestral epistemologies and oral histories. jelena works across music, visual arts, and conceptual practice, exploring the intersections of language, society, and the sensorial. Her projects attend to spaces beyond and between words, sounds, images, perception, thought, the seen, the unspeakable. Bilawa is a musician and performing artist who draws from his various backgrounds, from engineering to performing art, from European music tradition to the art of Javanese Karawitan. His current artistic interest lies in the dialectic between tradition and innovation, as well as the revaluation of traditional values in contemporary life.
jee, jelena, and Bilawa have a collaborative project titled laut jerebu, which translates as the sea where land is out of sight. Within this project, they regularly meet to practice songs from the central Javanese gamelan tradition as a mode and vehicle of friendship. In this episode of þ thorns þ, recorded in Berlin, you'll hear an insight into the questions, tensions, and forces that shape laut jerebu. Drawing upon their respective lived experiences across Southeast Asia and Southeast Europe, they discuss issues surrounding the choreographies of language, mapping, nationhood, and diaspora in relation to the construction of plural and post-colonial identities.
There is a full transcript available for this episode on our website, together with any relevant links to resources mentioned. The transition sounds you will hear in this episode are excerpts from a recording of their gamelan practice session in their studio in Berlin.
BILAWA
I visit this library, the State Library, because I want to read some of these books written by Sutan Takdir Alisyahbana, who was, uh, this Indonesian philosopher. He's an actually an author, well-known as an author, and he was part of this literary movement called Poedjangga Baroe. So, the new poets translated literally. For me, his work is interesting because I think he was the first one who somehow pushed this agenda of modernity in Indonesia and explicitly using this term “modern” in the context of thinking about what Indonesian culture would be. And he sparks debate, and it's remembered as the cultural polemics because he polemicized the idea of what Indonesian culture would be in the context of this modernity. And what's interesting, this took place before Indonesian acquired independence, so it's already like in the 30's that this debate was sparked. And it was controversial. It was a polemic because he said, "For me, the definitions of Indonesian culture must be differentiated from the so-called pre-Indonesian” [1]. So he somehow tries to delink whatever that comes before the idea of Indonesia came to be. So that means the Javanese culture, the Sundanese culture, Balinese, whatever regional cultures which already were. And instead he said we should think about the future and only look at the future. But what's interesting about his imaginations of the future is the West. So he said the modern Indonesian culture should take the example from the West. In the later works of him, it is clear that he's also opposed some ideas of modernity that come from the West. So that means the West that he imagined, and this is we come to the idea of imagined identity, I would say like, the idea of West as an imagined entity, because he then reject all of this avant-garde art, for example. All this avant-garde literatures and modern work of art. He actually prefer what I still consider somewhat conservative or classicist view of the aesthetics. Since language becomes the vehicles of this culture, so he needs an Indonesian language which is modern. And for him, a modern language must be able to facilitate technology, so advances in technology [2]. It must be able to accommodate the language of science and the language of, I put it under philosophy, so, but what he meant by philosophy is this traditions of formulating thoughts, like in Western European traditions of philosophy.
JELENA
Rationality.
BILAWA
Yeah, exactly. And I think the way that he derive idea of modernity is from the Enlightenment.
JEE
I think today I feel like coming back together among the three of us, it really pulls my focus back to this image, which is also a concept of laut jerebu (the sea where land is out of sight). I arrived at this image through the research of Professor Jan Riess and he was the one who was writing about this in his essay. If I'm not mistaken, the title is The Prison and the Sea [3]. And I think the inspiration from, for this came from looking at land as this symbol of fixity, of definition. It's interesting for me now hearing both of you speaking about modernities, like from your respective research trajectories, because to me, laut jerebu is actually a proposition for the post-modern.
BILAWA
Mm-hmm.
JEE
In the sense that what is on land, you know, everything is so structured and we are building on this firm ground our nation states with our borders, and that is, to me at least, very much the project of Western Modernity. Modernity. Madonna. Madonna's tea. Modernity.
They laugh.
JEE
But to depart from the land and to enter the sea where everything is in flux, right? And it's unpredictable in a watery sense, where everything is fluid, potentially turbulent, anything could suddenly happen as a result of the weather changing, the winds shifting. It's not something that I subscribe to, let's say, but it's just something interesting for me to think about as a space that is beyond what has been proposed by modernity so far, or like our different varieties of modernity. Yeah, so much to say about Singapore and its relationship to this whole idea of modernity that is also very similar, I think, to what Sutan Takdir Alisyahbana proposes. Because post-colonial Singapore was very much founded on this, of course, rejection of the British colonial, but also it has absorbed so much of the colonial structure that was projected or imposed upon Singaporean society during the colonial period.
JELENA
There was, just to add to what jee just shared, I was lucky to be at this one conference in Southeast Asia in August, and there were two incredible students, PhD students, sharing about the film. It's a Filipino movie from the 90's. And well, their analysis had this concept I think I shared, Terrestrial Bias. And this was a beautiful concept to work with, to rely on to when discussing what you just shared. This idea that everything takes place on the land, and sea is something that is just a resource that we extract from, serving to get from one land to another.Or to get protection from that other land that is potential danger.
JEE
Mm-hmm.
JELENA
And so, we can look into what are these patterns of, uh aquaphobia.
JEE
Mm!
"The binary of water-land is rooted in a terrestrial bias, projecting anthropogenic knowledge systems onto the environment. From the geomorphology of Panglao." [4] Ah.
BILAWA
From the slides. Ah, okay.
JEE
And Panglao is an island.
JELENA
Yes,
JEE
Of the Philippines.
Gamelan plays
JEE
So, I have been sending in this film to some festivals.
BILAWA
Yeah.
JEE
And recently, my co-producer, she texted me about this short text that acts as a kind of summary of the film for the festival to promote and publicize. And in the text actually I write, there's this line, "It considers the memory of water, questioning how the sea and its waterways facilitated the Dutch colonial project across the Malay world." And in brackets I write, in Bangkok as well actually, I don't know whether you attended this round table discussion, presented by these three Indonesian artists, but they speak about this, were using this word in the presentation as well. And then I realized, wow, as a Singaporean in the room listening to three Indonesians, our perceptions of the Nusantara needs to be clarified constantly and renegotiated because of, yeah, the issues surrounding this word.
BILAWA
In the text that you wrote here, it says, "Nusantara, the, the Malay world." And when you say the Malay world, what is the world you're... Is it like a world where we have the shared language or cultural, in the sense of a Malay language and culture? Is this what you mean by this, this word?
JEE
I think what I mean is more, it's a direct transliteration of Alam Melayu. You know?
BILAWA
Ah, okay. Alam Melayu.
JEE
Which is also a polity or like a political territory that precedes this modern notion of the nation state, but nonetheless it holds certain characteristics that are similar to what the nation state proposes. You know, so like a shared, uh, bangsa. You know, there is this shared culture, shared language is a grey area, I think, because there are so many languages, obviously, in this alam. But I need to do more research into this [5].
They laugh.
BILAWA
Well, I find this definition is interesting. I also relates to my study on the works of Alisjahbana. Because first he propose a modernized Indonesian language. Indonesian language starts from the, how do you call it? Like, lower Malay language, which is used in the market. And then he propose, okay, we take this lower language to become powerful language by means of this grammatic inventions, so it can facilitate all of these aspects of science, technology, and... But then in the further trajectory, he imagines a lingua franca in Southeast Asia even using Malay language [6]. I think it is important to make this word as not owned in a single narrative strand.
JEE
Exactly, yeah.
BILAWA
Especially when that narrative strand is closely entangled with power, because I think that word Nusantara, especially in the current political climate in Indonesia, is used to, it's, it is used to validate a certain political structures.
JEE
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, by my understanding, the most popular source or, like, where the word Nusantara can be traced to is back to Gajah Mada in the 14th century.
BILAWA
Mm.
JEE
And I mean, there are so many various kind of interpretations of, like, what is Nusantara, right? Because literally it would mean, like, the islands in between. And also, I think within the whole discussion of modernity that we're getting into here, some interpretations propose that the Nusantara are the islands in between the great empires of India and China.
BILAWA
Aha, interesting. This is new for me.
JEE
Right? Because if we think about Singapore and its location as this historically extremely important port city- It was important because it is so strategically located in between these two so-called great empires that had a massive influence on world trade for millennia. So, this is something that I read somewhere recently which is also, yeah, like, where does that place the identity of the Nusantara. Like always in relation, once again, to the land mass. Always back to these huge kingdoms, yeah, that were established in what is today India and China. So, I found the slide actually that I was talking about earlier. And obviously, the slide is referring to Sutan Takdir Alisyahbana!
They laugh.
BILAWA
What are the odds?
JEE
They were presenting on this notion of the Bhumantara, the in-betweenness of Southeast Asia [7]. So, there is this book, I suppose, where he writes about Bhumantara. Bhumantara, the land in between, a futuristic vision of Southeast Asia as a fluid geopolitical entity.
BILAWA
Mm-hmm.
JEE
You can read and see how you think about it.
BILAWA
So, should I just read it aloud so people can also?
JEE
Yeah.
BILAWA
So, the title is Bhumantara: A Critical Compass for Artistic Connectivity. The Navigating Connections, Collaborations, and Conviviality Across Artistic Disciplines, National Borders, and Cultural Imaginaries. Coined by Sutan Takdir Alisyahbana and Bhumantara as land in between, a futuristic vision of Southeast Asia as a fluid geopolitical entity. Geopolitical perspective, Southeast Asia as a site of mediation, shaped by navigation, trade, and cultural flows, beyond national borders and interconnected systems, not isolated nations. Infrastructural thinking, connection, movement, infrastructures of ideas shaping regional dynamics, a foundation for artistic and cultural collaborations. Questions. What does it mean to stage and be staged as Southeast Asian? What does it mean to share a stage with Southeast Asian perspectives and histories? [8]
JELENA
So c- may I read through these slides as well?
BILAWA
Yes, yes.
JELENA
So, I was-- This was in Chiang Mai, and I should find the name of the presenter, but it was on Bhumantara as well. The presenter discussed first the emergence of multiple geological bodies, and then, for example, Thai nation geological body, British Empire geological body, Southeast Asia as a regional geological body, Indigenous geological body. And then he argued about this from geo body as a geographical body to geo body as a geological body. The geological body also contributes to rethinking the direction of area studies, particularly Southeast Asian studies, as it is not limited to a single nation state. Instead, it encompasses a broader scope, including the Southeast Asian regional geological body. The first feature often overlooked in the concept of the geo body is its focus on the Earth's surface while neglecting what lies beneath. The geo body should not be limited to just the geography of the Earth's surface. It must also encompass the geological materials found underground. And then he goes to this book, Perjuangan Kebudayaan Indonesia. Is this the book?
BILAWA
A-among others, yeah.
JELENA
To... Now, again, I will not repeat what you explained, but again, it's Sutan Takdir Alisyahbana's from Bhumantara book quote [9]. I'll read through it.
BILAWA
Yes.
JELENA
“I would like to propose a new name for Southeast Asia as well for the people who inhabit it in order that the Organization for Cooperation, which started with the Declaration of Bangkok, twenty years ago in the future, can develop more naturally and become the integrating force for this region as well as for its people. The name that I would like to propose is Bhumantara. For example, a combination of the words Bhumi, land, and Antara, in between. Because in fact, what we call Southeast Asia, which consists of Burma, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Kampuchea, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Brunei, is the unification of the regions as well as the people which are different from China in the east with a population of a thousand million, as well as from India in the west with a population of eight hundred million." This is a quote from him from the Bhumantara book.
JEE
Something very, very interesting for me that stood out was this thing about the ownership of a word. Who gets to possess the word, for instance, Nusantara. And like the contested dealings around this particular word.
BILAWA
I was always struck with the idea of laut, so the sea.
JEE
Yeah.
BILAWA
Because, again, I have strong association with it with my childhood when I still lived in Borneo. But also, somehow after our conversation as I travelled to Sunda Islands, I realized that there is a particular poem by Sutan Takdir, that has to do with the sea.
JEE
Mm.
BILAWA
And the poem is called Menuju ke Laut [10], so towards the sea, and it has a subtitle, Angkatan Baru, the new generation.
JEE
Oh.
BILAWA
The poem is called Menuju Ke Laut, Angkatan Baru.
Gemuruh berderau kami jatuh,
terhempas berderai mutiara bercahaya.
Gegap gempita suara mengerang,
Dahsyat bahna suara menang.
Keluh dan gelak silih berganti,
pekik dan tempik sambut menyambut.
Tetapi betapa sukanya jalan,
bedana terhembas, kepala tertumbuk,
hati hancur, pikiran kusut,
namun kembali tiada ingin
namun kembali diada angin,
ketenangan lama tiada diratap.
Kami telah meninggalkan engkau,
Tasik yang tenang tiada beriak,
diteduhi gunung yang rimbun,
dari angin dan topan.
Sebab sekali kami terbangun,
dari mimpi yang nikmat.
TRANSITION SOUNDS: Gamelan plays.
BILAWA
I think I will try to translate just the first verse because I think it, this is the main because it is repeated. So, yeah. "Kami telah meninggalkan engkau tasik yang tenang." We have left you the calm water. So, we have left the calm water, which doesn't have any, it's like the bubbles [11] in the ocean. So, because it's so peace, calm, doesn't have any bubbles. It's an area which is filled with mountains, which is very green. It is shielded from wind and hurricane, so it's a very peaceful place. But then he said, "But now we have been awake from a very beautiful dream." And then what comes after his, his descriptions about, like, the danger of, of going into the sea. Like, there will be, like he said a very strong wind. We will be thrown and shaken. There will be people screaming, but when we somehow manage to overcome this, we will also scream in a joyous way, like a victorious scream. And this is where the place where he said, like, difficulties and joyful love come and change. So, we will struggle and because of this struggle there will be laughter and also sadness.
JEE
Mm-hmm. Perhaps any resonance of the sea for you?
JELENA
Yes, definitely. But it's this, again, The Land Imagined [12] before. Once there was this access to the sea. That's where I'm, like, the country state that I have to identify with its borders, of course, have the access to sea. But this is, I mean, is this the reality? No, of course not. But I did not grow up on the coast, so I don't feel so familiar with it. I am afraid of oceans and even Mediterranean. Hmm. Not really, actually. I spent a lot of time there.
JEE
Do you recall when this poem was written?
BILAWA
That's a good question, because the book itself comes from the 50's.
JEE
Yeah, mm-hmm.
BILAWA
So, this is coming from an anthology of poems that Sutanto Takdir himself edited. And it, the title of this anthology is called Puisi Baru, the new poems, to make it so different from the classical Malay poems. So the book is published in 1954. But it's already the fourth edition. Uh, unfortunately, it doesn't say here.
JEE
Mm-hmm. So that's- Yeah, already, I mean, if it's fourth edition, then it's already firmly within this context of post-independence.
BILAWA
Yeah, I would say.
JEE
Trying to find this meaning of the new nation state. I think first of all, there's such a fragile balance, I think, between what fiction or, like, works of art can do to inspire a national consciousness. And how it can collapse into this nationalistic and potentially fascist kind of a formulation of a society. I think in Singapore it feels like on one hand there is, like, this very young kind of national consciousness. This year is 2025, and Singapore gained independence in 1965 from the British colonial powers. So, there's this whole big celebration in Singapore now called SG60, where it's celebrating 60 years of national independence.
BILAWA
Wow.
JEE
And everything is SG60. I grew up attending or, like, at least watching on TV these National Day Parades, which are held on the 9th of August every year, the date of Singapore's independence. And these are very conscious and state-engineered displays of nationalism and national pride. So in addition to how every day, I don't know whether you experienced this growing up in school, but we had to sing the national anthem and, like, to recite the national pledge every day, from primary school all the way, for me, you know, I had to attend national service in the army. So, all the way from, like, 6 until 20 years old, I was singing the national anthem every single day, on the weekdays. So, there's a very strong sense of this need to inculcate a national consciousness into the citizens of this country. In terms of fiction, or like works of art or like art movements, I can think maybe the earliest would be the Nanyang [13], a kind of art movement. And in Mandarin transliterates into the southern seas. So, this is different from the southern seas of China. So what south are you talking about?
They laugh.
JEE
What east are you talking about when you're talking about these directions? So, the term Nanyang was coined in order to refer to this cultural movement that was manifesting in Singapore in the early 20th century. So, this was when many migrants from the southern coast of China was migrating to the Nusantara, across the southern seas. So, there was a whole generation, I would say, or movement of artists and cultural icons by now who were part of this movement. So many of them coming from China, but also had a lot of like cosmopolitan experiences going to Paris to study art, for instance, being exposed to all these like Western art movements, and then returning to China, and then eventually relocating across the southern sea to Singapore and Malaya. So, if you were to go to the National Gallery of Singapore, there is... I might be mistaken, this is on record, but like, I suspect there is a whole gallery that is dedicated to the Nanyang artists. You know, because this is how important they are. But then again, this is the National Gallery of Singapore, right? And so, these are institutions that are invested in developing a kind of national identity, right? So where do we trace the lineage of our national identity to? This is one thing. I guess these are the wider macro, like historical narratives, right? That I know simply because I grew up in Singapore, and simply because I have access to the National Gallery in Singapore, simply because I went through the education system in Singapore. And likewise for you, going through your respective cultural contexts, social systems, you also... Everyone has a clear idea of like, okay, so how did my nation state or like this country that I come from, come about? Simply because we were taught that. But then of course, we know that that's not the full picture, right? And there's always the contributions of so many other players that have either been ignored or actively marginalized in favour of something that is seen as more valid or more worthwhile, for whatever reason, to shaping this narrative.
But for me, coming back to laut jelabu, for me, I think what I find very helpful for me in terms of this, let's call it a concept for now, of the laut jelabu, is that because I was raised in the overlap, I think, of many, many different cultures in a very conscious way, you know? So my mom, she's Hakka, but then, you know, she grew up speaking Cantonese. And I grew up with my grandmother speaking Cantonese. And then on my dad's side, we're Peranakan, and so we speak Baba Malay. But then also the colonial language of English, then having to learn Mandarin in school as a so-called mother tongue [14]. This was all, like, extremely confusing as a young child. But then when I grew older, I'm like, ah, this is actually the chaos actually that is inherent to what I consider a Singaporean identity truly. Because Singapore is at its heart a migrant country. There is no way to say that. Obviously, there are Indigenous people, Orang Laut [15] as well as the Indigenous. So yeah, some- I just wanna say personally, I find it very helpful to think in this way that the sea is open around me, and what might I encounter on the next island that I dock at, that I, yeah, that I swim to?
TRANSITION SOUNDS: Gamelan plays.
JELENA
And utilitarian language policies in Singapore, I have to share like it's again very ethnicity based. It's race…how to say…parameter that's being used to imagine this. Because again, you had to learn Mandarin in school, but you didn't have to, right? Because you happen to be Chinese, you know? And you, I know because we are friends, that you learned Malay but you didn't learn Tamil. You are encouraged to go for your own kind. And this is-
JEE
You have to actually.
JELENA
Oh, you have to!
JEE
Not encouraged.
JELENA
You have to. If you have some heritage of Chinese, you could learn Mandarin at school, but not if you're like...
JEE
So, there is a race assigned to every person in Singapore at birth-
JELENA
Oh!
JEE
By the government, okay? It's not your parents who are like, "Ah, this is my child. They are Malay," you know? It's by the government!
JELENA
And four races, not five?
JEE
Four. Yeah, four. So, the four races are Chinese, Malay, Indian, and my favourite, “Others”. So, the acronym is CMIO in Singapore, Chinese, Malay, Indian, Others.
BILAWA
Okay.
JEE
And this was a racial matrix that was imposed onto Singapore during the British colonial period in order to classify and to segregate the different communities, right? So, this was, I mean, textbook Colonialism 101. All of you know that already. You know, this was a way to control and manage the population, in a way that I think only Western colonial powers know how to. It was then adopted and continued as a practice of classification after independence in Singapore. Yeah, even though, you know, what is Peranakan Hokkien to the government? We are Chinese, you know? And even though from family to family among, like, the Peranakan Hokkien in Singapore, people would respond with different things, you know. Of course, like, ah, they don't know how to speak a word of Mandarin. You know, most Peranakan families in my father's era didn't know a single word of Mandarin. So, what was this imposition or, like, necessity, you know, to identify as Chinese after independence, and then furthermore to learn Mandarin, that was a whole other story. Then the, the tyrannism comes from, of course, Singapore's desire to be economically intimate and politically aligned with China-
BILAWA
Mm, okay.
JEE
You know? Which used Mandarin as in national language, which is a whole thing in itself. Why Mandarin? Because Mandarin is the language of the northern capital in Beijing. And therefore, because, you know, the Chinese government governed from Beijing, then it became this national language. But China itself has, like, hundreds of different languages.
JELENA
I'm referring to the book, Language Policy and Modernity in Southeast Asia [16] from 2006, still a lot of data not updated. But it's interesting just in the philosophical sense if we look into language policies in Southeast Asia and specifically to Singapore and Mandarin campaigns, speak Mandarin campaign, how they understand it is there is, of course, this capital coming from the Beijing, how to say?
JEE
Yeah, Beijing.
.
JELENA
Beijing. But also, the modernity in Singapore, right? So, the first prime minister decides to align with Western capital and to use English as one, we say, the language of business. Of, how do we say, working language in Singapore. But then is aware that this Western modernity does not fully apply to Singapore and to Southeast Asia. We can imagine different geo bodies. And knowing that we have to preserve our culture, so Mandarin is also has this connection to the values.
JEE
The specific phrase used is that these languages, you know, which was, you know, what was very important in terms of establishing this bilingual education policy is that Singaporeans would hold onto a sense of cultural ballast [17]. Ballast, as in like an anchor, a weight. To hold onto this, this very vague notion of Asian values, you know? So, I suppose this refers to, maybe in the Chinese sense it refers to Confucianism.
BILAWA
Mm.
JEE
Family as the basic unit of society, filial piety, majoritarianism, so like the collective over the individual [18].
JELENA
Family.
JEE
Family, yeah, everything about family. And then in the Malay sense, I think this is more vague because... Yeah, but we could talk about adat, for instance, you know? And what, how that is exercised in Singaporean society. Yeah, but in terms of, let's say Indonesia, I think this is also really something that you've been looking into for a long time, right? Like how Bahasa Indonesia was formulated as a state language.
BILAWA
I started my own search of this substantial element in the identity of Indonesian. And so, about years ago, there is an Indonesian cultures, it needs to be preserved. It's somehow facing the dangers of extinction. When I was growing up, the word modernism is always viewed as something with cautious. Like, most of the time it is viewed as something negative. Which is also understandable given the colonial history of Indonesia. Then what is Indonesian is, in its essence, what's substantial about it ontologically? When I try to answer these questions, I find it very difficult because to my current conclusion, there is none. It is as if you have an aggregate of something, and then you try to think, "Oh, what is the essence of these things?" And you unwrap these aggregates [19], and you unwrap, unwrap, unwrap, and then in the end you don't find anything.
JELENA
And you keep wrapping.
They laugh.
BILAWA
And I think this is also what happens. So, what happens that when I try to unwrap, you don't find anything. But then people trying to wrap with whatever they think the substance of thereof. So, what happen is that the notion of Indonesian is, I think, it's something very, it's changing all the time. The question is, who is giving the definitions, whether it comes from the official channel, like from the government, or it come from people because it's so fluid. I think there lies also the challenge to question what is Indonesian culture, what is Indonesian identity?
JEE
Mm-hmm.
BILAWA
Because then there's this idea of a cultural policy about how to define what the culture is. I think the most famous definitions, which is also taught at school, is that Indonesian culture is the peaks of all the regional cultures in Indonesia.
JEE
The peaks?
BILAWA
The peaks, yeah. The Indonesian formulation is very famous. It's called Kebudayaan Indonesia adalah puncak-puncak kebudayaan daerah [20].
JEE
Oh, wow.
BILAWA
So, the peaks of regional cultures, and this is formulated by Ki Hajar Dewantoro. I think for me, his formulation is interesting because on the one side, I feel this is a very Javanese way to accommodate, try to accommodate and keep the harmony of these various political tensions. At least this is my interpretation of this definition is this is not saying anything about what the culture is. But it just simply says, well, what that is, it's a heap of all of this, the peaks that made it to, probably to our Indonesian consciousness. But there is a danger in this, I think. First, when we're talking about peaks, it's of course what is dominant what is visible.
JEE
Exactly.
BILAWA
And then the logical consequence of this is, of course, the Javanese culture, for example because it is already so prominent other thing is, of course, who gets to define what is the peak. Whether the ordinary people can contribute to these definitions or not. But this is something which is cemented in the policy of the government. And then through these official channels, we are somehow motivated, I would say always think we are motivated to think in a certain way through this policy. And this is why I think also the reason in many foreign representatives of Indonesian embassies, you might easily find angklung, for example, Balinese gamelan, Javanese gamelan, but not probably some other instrument from other regions in Indonesia. Because probably this is the peaks which are visible, and it's very easy already to use these instruments as an identity.
JEE
Mm.
BILAWA
It was during New Order era, for example, where the government as a regime tries to shape the society to think in a certain way, because it is the other way around. You don't find the substance first, but rather to see, okay, what is the already there and how we can shape this through the policy to serve interests of the government the directions that the government would like to take.
JEE
Mm. Yeah. I mean, this communitarian, if I can maybe term it like this for now, approach, I think there's a lot of resonance, like what I said earlier, this Confucianism as a format of, like, this vague notion of Asian values in Singapore. Yeah. But I want to ask Jelena now in terms of, I mean, there is the whole thing about the nation state, you know, post Yugoslavia, and then there is also this thing about communism, you know, that…Yeah, what was maybe your experience growing up in relation to these values of community? And also, I guess, on another level in relation to this idea of the nation state.
JELENA
For me, it's still interesting how it overlaps with different imageries of what we are as a collective of humans. Not only, but how do humans imagine their group in a certain space? Because I still up to now, well I did go through the transition into capitalism, and I can see how behaviours change, how the purposes change, or ideas of what are we there for, what is this community for? But often if I look into values, what do we value? What are the ethical norms that we follow collectively? I am still confused because I wouldn't say that those, let's say, five decades, that they shaped the communitarian values after five hundred years of the Ottomans. So however, in the Ottoman Empire [21], however brutal the social strata, socio-ontological strata was for different communities, there were still I think I'd rather... I cannot observe the communitarian values isolated from the Ottoman past because my grandparents, they belonged rather to that one. They carried from their parents, you know? They've been told because what we are is what, how we start shaping, I think, our reality. Imagining it and framing it is what our parents kind of…they give us these instructions, how to think, how to analyse, and how to perceive. Of course, we do experience it in different settings, but I think what my grandparents carried is the values of their parents, which were, of course, anti-imperial struggle for equality or liberation, but also certain… how do you say? Collective communitarian values that were shared among.Like, we can see it now once different people from the Balkans meet in some different spaces, it's so obvious that certain behaviours, which are communitarian, are very pronounced.
So, I can't go back to the danger of communism. For me, it's rather isolated political imagery or political discourse that I wouldn't fully apply onto my social ontology if you know, way of being, way of existing. For the purpose of nation building, it's completely disregarded. As we have never, however oppressed, yes, but you lived in this for 500 years. Values did circulate. I'm a little bit, like, allergic of the word value. Because it's, like, so capitalist. But then it does not belong. It has to be reclaimed also to the capitalist discourse. Yet, I think the circulation of values was huge, and I can see it even now talking to the people from Palestine, for example, that we have common proverbs that… and these are the values. These are the ethics. How do you come about with your reality, and what is good to do, what is bad? Stuff like that.
TRANSITION SOUNDS: Gamelan plays with vocalisations.
JEE
Yeah. Is this very long and, I guess, significant influence of the Ottoman Empire on present-day Serbia, is that something that is consciously kind of embedded within education in Serbia? It is, yeah?
JELENA
Yes. The Ottomans are presented as like the ultimate evil. And the struggle for re- liberation is something as ultimate good. I can just say how was it because I did not live through those times. I can just say how is it represented in the curriculum. We also, school excursion, we would be taken to, for example, close to Niš, one of the places in Southern Serbia, there is this, it's called Ćele Kula [22]. I'm not sure, but it's a tower made out of human skulls made by the Ottomans. I forgot from which century. But to show to the children the brutality of the empire.
But then, like, the empire that was created after the liberations from the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarians was as brutal, depending only on who, to whom, to which. Who are we, and who is the dominant group, as much as the Ottomans had their strata, who is ruling, who goes to the army, who works, who produces for the empire, not who gets to work, who gets not to work and who must work? It's very strong. Or in terms of language, my grandparents, they used so much of the Ottoman Turkish vocabulary with Slavic grammar, but we were taught at school that those are Turkic words, that those are foreign words, and that we should instead use original Slavic words that we never have used. In case of Croatian, they've been kind of inventing the words, producing new words to fit with the Slavic language from the Slavic, South Slavic in our case. Yeah, basically it was a new morphology. Constructing new words from the principles of Slavic grammar to replace foreign words, even English. Not, yeah, to keep it clean.
BILAWA
Ah. In this, I think I can also point some similarity in what happens during... Again, I, I will always come back to Sutan Takdir because simply this is what's in the back of my mind at the moment. There was this essay that he wrote, I forgot from which year. But he wrote in an essay that he would like to go against the tendency of the Indonesian government. I think it's a critic to National Language Conference in which they try to propose new words, invented words, based on Sanskrit and Old Javanese origin. So, and this creates a lot of very difficult to understand words. Because his critic is the following, because if we use this Sanskrit-based and Old Javanese-based translations of these already foreign concepts, not everyone in the country would understand, because not everyone have Javanese or Sanskrit related language root. And second, sometimes for him, it is easier to Indonesianize the foreign word instead of finding new words, just so we have this clear language identity. Because for example, I know one word that I really like to use for exemplifying this, is that word purwarupa [23].
JELENA
The first shape? What is purwarupa?
BILAWA
So purwa. Yeah, purwa means old, rupa is form.
JEE
Mm-hmm.
BILAWA
But this is a word which is used to translate prototype.
JELENA
But, I have to say it just totally makes sense.
JEE
And this is a word that is still in use today?
BILAWA
No, this is again the case. This is, I think there was always an attempt to create a translation, and to make the translation so Indonesian. For example, transaksi is from the Dutch transactie. And then we just change the letter to S, so we have transaksi. And the reason to use this form, transaksi, because it's already used, people know what it means, grammatically it fits with the way that the Indonesian words are formed. And we don't need to invent new word for it. It's already used in banking. It's already used in commerce. So, there's no need for a new word.
JELENA
Let's leave it foreign as it is. Banking, commerce-
JEE
-it's just foreign.
JELENA
Don't get involved with this. It’s foreign.
BILAWA
Yeah. And I think partly it's also that it is also clear that yes, it's a borrowed term. If we don't have that word. This is why I find it resonating with what you just told me, that there is a clear effort as well to consciously create this identity through language. Also by trying to translate, into what they thought as sounding more Indonesian.
JELENA
When you said like purwo, the, the-
BILAWA
Yeah. Purwarupa.
JELENA
Purwarupa. It's also like, hmm, there must be so many Indigenous terms for this.
JEE
Prototype.
JELENA
Prototype. But then the Javanese is a dominant language.
JEE
Yeah.
JELENA
Because who would have chosen some small language of the jungle versus Javanese, the language of literature and knowledge? May I jump in just here quickly here so that I don't lose this thought? But I'm thinking what you said, which we were wondering, right, which Indigenous community has this, like, idea of something that advances from one shape to another that is better, which is basically modernity, versus, because shape is reproduced forever. We can look at batik, for example. Like form is something that is present in all the communities. I mean, I cannot generalise, but it's repetitive. It does not have to evolve anywhere. It can, but it does not have to. It can be simplified. It's very interesting how it's like we can say rhizomatic or how imaginative in different ways, fluent, but it does not need to evolve.
BILAWA
But this is... I think is a good point to touch upon because then I think it can bridge to the idea of the choreography as a way of moving, because that words attach this adjective old or ancient, purwa, to the form. And like you said, this idea of having something as the origin idea, something as the eldest form of it, and then what comes afterward is just the copy, or the imitations or- I don't know, several generations after that has lesser value, and probably is also another mode of thinking that come from yet another worldview as well. In that book, for example, that I just read from that this poem, the title of the book is Baru. So, the baru is the adjective for new, and the idea of newness. I think it's a very modern thing, because at the same time, Takdir, for example, published his anthology of Puisi Lama. So, there is this idea of what is old or, in his own term, pre-Indonesian, and what comes after as a, Indonesian as a modern, part of the modernity of the world.
JEE
Yeah.
BILAWA
So, I think that in itself, the idea of newness, novelty probably also contemporary, is a mode of thinking that not necessarily inherent in the, in the original language. I mean, we speak about language that it doesn't have any equal, direct translation to.
JEE
Yeah. I think that relates to the concept of time. Right? Like, what is old and what is new, and how do we demarcate what is old and what is new?
JELENA
And what is, with time, contemporary?
JEE
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. What is the present? What is the current moment?
BILAWA
I don't have one in particular at the moment, but I think after our conversation that word for Purwarupa is, I think it would be interesting because in that word, I think a lot of things happened. Like, whether... This sounds very old, like if I say this to Indonesian people, they will think this is coming from far away, but this is at least the way I know this word, supposed to be a translation for prototype. So, for me, in that comes this tension, like the needs to have identity.
At the same time, the needs to, how to say, keep up with modernity, because prototype is, of course, a very industrialized. I think it's come from the industry, that there's the need for this. And a lot of these tensions, I think, create some sort of a dialectics about what still needs to be done, or what can we still think about when we think about the cultures, when we think about identity, and where this will lead us in general in our human. So, I think that would be my word, which is, I think, a very contradicting, it has a lot of contradictions within it. What about you? Do you have a word that you-
JELENA
I got very fixated on the Purwa…purwo, what was it? But yeah, I think because now talking about the form, I will probably contribute this, uniform, and how I think about it in different contexts. As a, you know, communitarian way of being, and fluid because this is something, this is a form you take, and you take it off. But also, in the sense of the nation building and how did these institutional uniforms come to be borrowed from something that was before? And absolutely how did it come to be borrowed and to be dominated by the nation states and institutions? But how it came to my mind, I was just so impressed by all these uniforms that were all around me in Thailand the last time. But also, somehow, I had flashes of it the whole time, also from the times of my parents and my own also looking then back into chilum, how to say, kilums that my grandmothers made. Why do we have these patterns in the weaving and in embroidery? What do they mean, and how did they come to be disregarded? And how did we all wear suits, and so on. So, I was thinking a lot about that, and then it was just flashes in my mind, just something that comes in and it's processed very slowly. And then when I was in Thailand the last time, these uniforms were everywhere, and different kinds of uniforms, also traditional wearing. So, and then it, I get into discussion with a woman in the market. I was also showing her something from my region and, and then, yeah, it's just remained with me. I remain fixated on it. There were school children with these impressive uniforms, and how they're all together with that and whether they feel comfortable or what, what do they relate their wear to and so on. This was so interesting.
JEE
I think I've arrived at my word that I wanna contribute. Yeah. The word is kapiting.
BILAWA
Kapiting? Yeah.
JEE
Yeah. Which is…?
BILAWA
Crab!
They laugh.
JEE
Crab! In Javanese, actually, right?
BILAWA
That's good questions about the etymology because in Indonesian language we also say kapiting.
JEE
Kapiting, yeah. In thinking about, I suppose, what we are discussing here in terms of how language choreographs, you know, time and space. Like how does language facilitate the choreography of people across generations and across different borders and communities? The Malay word for crab is actually.
BILAWA
Ketam! Yeah. I also use this, yeah. Ketam.
JEE
But I never use this word because my access to the Malay languages is through Baba Malay, which is the language that my dad's side of the family speaks. And in the Peranakan cuisine, there's this, one of my favourite dishes is bak wan kepiting. Of course. So bak wan is actually a Hokkien word, which bak means meat, and wan refers to, like, a blob or a how do you say this? Like-
BILAWA
Yeah, yeah…
JEE
A clump!
BILAWA
Yeah, a clump. That the closest. Or like
JEE
Or like…a ball?
BILAWA
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's the word.
JEE
So, like, it's a meatball. And kepiting is crab. And I never knew that it was actually, in my understanding, a Javanese word, you know? So how did the Peranakan Chinese or Hokkien, Peranakan people, like, contact this Javanese word. And kind of, yeah, this word kepiting replacing the Malay word for crab. Ketam. So, I think for me, this word becomes this quite interesting interface that reflects from a dish that I know since I was a young child, growing up eating this. Yeah, the choreography of the crab.
TRANSITION SOUNDS: Gamelan plays with vocalisations.
MARTIN:
Thanks, jee, jelena, and Bilawa for this conversation. For the transcript of this episode and for resources mentioned in the conversation, go to rosechoreographicschool.com. The link for this page will also be in the podcast episode description wherever you're listening right now. This podcast series is a Rose Choreographic School production. The series is produced and edited by Hester Cant, with concept and direction by Martin Hargreaves and Izzy Galbraith. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.
Resources and References:
Footnotes provided by Bilawa, jee and jelena:
[1] Alisjahbana's view and his peer during the Cultural Polemic era of the 1930s were gathered and edited in Mihardja, Achdiat Karta, ed. Polemik Kebudayaan. Perpustakaan Perguruan kementerian P.P. dan K, 1954.
[2] For Alisjahbana's position on art and his vision of art and culture of the future see Alisjahbana, Sutan Takdir. Seni Dan Sastera Di Tengah-Tengah Pergolakan Masyarakat Dan Kebudayaan. PT Dian Rakyat, 1985.
[3] Mrázek, J (2019) The Prison and the Sea. Suvannabhumi Multidisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 11(1):7-40.
[4] Benitez, C. and Mohsin, Z. (2025) 'Submerged Spaces: Seascape in Muro-Ami', 12th Biennial Association for Southeast Asian Cinemas Conference, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 14–16 August.
[5] Brief history on the term 'Nusantara', its meanings and uses over time: https://en.antaranews.com/news/211097/nusantara-and-its-changing-meanings (https://en.antaranews.com/news/211097/nusantara-and-its-changing-meanings)
[6] Bumantara: Platforming the In-Betweenness of Southeast Asia, presentation by Yustiansyah Lesmana, Akbar Yumni and Brigitta Isabella at the Bangkok International Performing Arts Meeting, 13 March 2025 : https://www.bipam.org/tables2025bipam (https://www.bipam.org/tables2025bipam)
[7] Alisjahbana, S.T. (1987) Bumantara: The Integration of Southeast Asia and Its Perspectives in the Future, Center of Southeast Asian or Bumantara Studies, Universitas Nasional Jakarta
[8] Karib, F. (2025) 'Disassembling Southeast Asia; On Geological Body, Bumantara and Decolonizing Southeast Asia', Decolonizing Southeast Asian Studies International Conference, Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RCSD), Chiang Mai University, Thailand, 17-19 July.
[9] Alisjahbana, S.T. (1999) Perjuangan kebudayaan Indonesia. Jakarta: Dian Rakyat.
[10] "Menuju ke Laut" is part of Alisjahbana's anthology of new Indonesian poem see: Alisjahbana, Sutan Takdir, ed. Puisi Baru. PT Pustaka Rakjat Djakarta, 1954.
[11] I mistranslated "riak" as bubbles, but what I meant was the "wave" of the ocean.
[12] Evocative use of the title of the film A Land Imagined (2018), Directed by Yeo Siew Hua. Singapore: Akanga Film Asia.
[13] Nanyang Reverie, National Gallery Singapore : https://www.nationalgallery.sg/sg/en/our-collections/past-exhibitions-festivals/siapa-nama-kamu/nanyang-reverie.html (https://www.nationalgallery.sg/sg/en/our-collections/past-exhibitions-festivals/siapa-nama-kamu/nanyang-reverie.html)
[14] "Students of Chinese, Malay and Indian ethnicities will study their own MTLs" https://www.moe.gov.sg/primary/curriculum/mother-tongue-languages/learning-in-school?utm_source=chatgpt.com (https://www.moe.gov.sg/primary/curriculum/mother-tongue-languages/learning-in-school?utm_source=chatgpt.com)
[15] Orang Cina Bukan Cina: being Peranakan, (not) being Chinese and the social construction of race in Singapore: https://fass.nus.edu.sg/srn/2025/02/17/orang-cina-bukan-cina-being-peranakan-not-being-chinese-and-the-social-construction-of-race-in-singapore/?utm_source=chatgpt.com (https://fass.nus.edu.sg/srn/2025/02/17/orang-cina-bukan-cina-being-peranakan-not-being-chinese-and-the-social-construction-of-race-in-singapore/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)
[16] Rappa, A.L. and Wee, L. (2006) Language policy and modernity in Southeast Asia: Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. Language Policy, 6. New York: Springer.
[17] “Language transmits values […] These values will provide cultural ballast to our people as we adjust to a fast-changing world”, from Lee, K.Y. (2011) My Lifelong Challenge: Singapore’s Bilingual Journey. Singapore: Straits Times Press
[18] Lee Kuan Yew maintained that, more than economics or politics, a nation's culture determines its fate, describing Asian values as the "primacy of group interests over individual interests" which "support the total group effort necessary to develop rapidly" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_values (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_values)
[19] I borrow this term "aggregates" from the Buddhist terminology "Skandha" and its concept in Theravadan-Buddhism. It describes how the idea of the "self" is actually a combination of the "aggregates" which are in constant changes, leading to the non-existent of a permanent, unchanging "self". See, e.g., “SN 22:48 Aggregates | Khandha Sutta | Sutta on Dhammatalks.Org.” Accessed March 10, 2026. htps://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/SN/SN22_48.html (http://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/SN/SN22_48.html).
[20] The definition of the Indonesian National Culture can be found at the Clarification (Penjelasan) part of the 1945 Constitution of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia (Undang-Undang Dasar Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia). The definition is atributed to the thought of Ki Hadjar Dewantara (see, e.g., Jones, Tod. “Indonesian Cultural Policy, 1950-2003: Culture, Institutions, Government.” Thesis, Curtin University, 2005. https://espace.curtin.edu.au/handle/20.500.11937/403 (https://espace.curtin.edu.au/handle/20.500.11937/403))
[21] The Ottoman Empire was a highly expansionist power that ruled large territories across West Asia, North Africa, and Southeast Europe (the timeline and extent varied, but it was from the 14th until the early 20th century in case of the latter). While its undoubtedly notorious policies are frequently debated in the multiplicity of historical and political contexts, this discussion shifts the focus from the ruling elite to the ruled diverse populations themselves. By treating the empire as a shared space and time, we can trace and foreground living realities, and the substantial connectivity and circulation of practices and customs, from Sarajevo to Jerusalem, Baghdad, or Algiers. Equally so, we can trace the invisible, immaterial remnants of this shared history that endure into the present, outlasting the disintegration of former imperial geographic-territorial borders and simultaneously transcending the present-day nation state borders.
[22] National Museum Niš (2026) Skull Tower (Ćele-kula). [Historical Monument]. Niš, Serbia: National Museum Niš. Available at: https://narodnimuzejnis.rs/en/o-muzeju/objekti/cele-kula/ (https://narodnimuzejnis.rs/en/o-muzeju/objekti/cele-kula/) (Accessed: 7 March 2026).
[23] Alisjahbana gave criticism on the effort of the national language office to translate new terminologies into the Indonesian language without thinking of its acceptance. Especially, he found that there was an over-representation of words of Sanskrit and old Javanese origin. This is described in Carle, Rainer. “Kulturpolitische Implikationen Einer Kontroverse Um Die Indonesische Einheitssprache.” ASIEN: The German Journal on Contemporary Asia, no. 27 (1988): 1–15. The essay referenced is Alisjahbana, Sutan Takdir: "Menutup Pusat Bahasa untuk Pendewasaan Bahasa Indonesia lebih Efisien dan Cepat" I/II in: Kompas (Jakarta), 22.10.1986. Alisjahbana's view on Indonesian language and its development can be found, e.g., atAlisjahbana, Sutan Takdir. Sedjarah Bahasa Indonesia. PT Pustaka Rakjat Djakarta, 1956.
Other people or references mentioned:
People:
Works/texts:
laut jerebu (the sea where land is out of sight)
Words/phrases:
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