Indonesia Council Digest - May 2023
It’s been a busy month for us at the IC, including a visit to Indonesia where we caught up with colleagues from the awesome Koneksi team. They will be at the Indonesia Council Open Conference in September to share more about Koneksi’s work in supporting Australia-Indonesia research. Please remember to register if you haven’t already done so – speaker registrations close this month!
Until next month,
Natali
iclistdata@gmail.com
What's happening...
HE Dr Siswo Pramono, Ambassador of the Republic of Indonesia to Australia, will be speaking at the University of Sydney on Monday 29 May on the topic of economic growth in ASEAN. More info and register here.
Indonesia Update 2023: Governing Urban Indonesia
Mark your diaries for the next Indonesia Update, to be held in Canberra & online on Friday 15 and Saturday 16 September, plus a postgrad workshop. The 2023 Indonesia update will be convened by Prof. Edward Aspinall from ANU and Dr Amalinda Savirani from the Department of Politics and Government, Universitas Gadjah Mada.
Indonesia is now a majority urban country, with almost 60% of the population living in urban areas. This transition brings with it challenges typical of urbanisation, such as managing garbage, flooding, traffic, and public transport. As well as examining these issues, the conference will discuss urban design and planning, the rise of gated communities, the politics of urban security, and kampung clearance and evictions. It will also look at how politics shapes urban governance, examining why some cities are pioneering better service delivery and public amenities for their citizens, while others remain mired in corruption, their streets filled with potholes.
Stay tuned for more information on the Update in the next few months.
Other cool stuff
ReelOzInd! 2023 , the Australia Indonesia Short Film Festival, is now open for submissions! This year the competition theme is PENCARIAN // QUEST. After a successful return to the ReelOzInd! pop-up program of live screenings in 2022, with events held in 19 locations across both countries, in 2023 we will once again see audiences gathering together to watch the short films and debate them afterwards. The festival will premiere in late October and run through to the end of December. View the Call for Submissions Trailer here. If you are interested in hosting a pop-up screening please get in touch with the organisers via: ReelOzInd@australiaindonesiacentre.org. And learn more about one of the driving forces behind the Festival, Jemma Purdey, in our Meet Our Members section below!
Speaking of films, if you’re based in Sydney don’t miss the opportunity to see Autobiography, in which ‘A naive young housekeeper is tempted into corruption and violence.’ This highly anticipated film is the first feature from Indonesian filmmaker Makbul Mubarak. It is screening on 9 and 11 June as part of the Sydney Film Festival. More info here.
Another Sydney event (and a reminder to please send us your non-Sydney-based events, friends!) is this Art as Resistance in post-1965 Indonesia: A talk by Rangga Purbaya. Rangga will discuss the impacts of 1965 on Indonesian society today, and explore the intersection of culture and activism. This talk is happening on Sunday 28 May from 2pm at 16 albermarle project space in Newtown, and is co-organised by the Asia-Pacific Solidarity Network.
Indonesia Council Open Conference
A reminder that speaker registrations close on 31 May. If you’ve been accepted as a speaker at ICOC, make sure you register by then as there will be no deadline extensions. Once registrations have closed, the ICOC convenors will get to work on the program and should have it ready for you by mid-June so you can start planning. If you’ve got questions, please reach out via the conference email address: icoc2023.conference@sydney.edu.au
Publications
Sana Jaffrey has published a fascinating article on the Mechanics of Impunity: Vigilantism and State-Building in Indonesia in Comparative Politics. She uses data on 33,000 victims in Indonesia to show that contrary to views that link state-building to a decline in vigilantism, rapid expansion of the state’s coercive presence corresponds with more lynching.
Congratulations to Edwin Jurriëns for his new book, The Art of Environmental Activism in Indonesia: Shifting Horizons, just published by Routledge. This book analyses the intersections between contemporary art and environmental activism in Indonesia. Exploring how the arts have promoted ecological awareness from the late 1960s to the early 2020s, the book shows how the arts have contributed to societal change and public and political responses to environmental crises.
It’s not out yet but many will be eagerly awaiting the publication of Eve Warburton’s forthcoming monograph, Resource Nationalism in Indonesia: Booms, big business and the state, which is due out with Cornell later this year. It examines transformations of ownership in Indonesia's land & resource sectors & shows how the rise of big local business is reshaping nationalist policy paths & the terms of extraction.
Finally, this op-ed by Rizal Ramli caught our attention, in which he argues that 25 years after the fall of Suharto, ‘Indonesians find themselves in the worst of times’, with President Joko Widodo, his cabinet and the House of Representatives having delivered ‘devastating blows to the country's democracy, methodically undermining its institutions and norms to the point where Indonesia more closely resembles a semi-authoritarian state than a democratic one.’
Remembering Lily
Thank you Edwin Jurriëns for giving us permission to share this piece honouring the life of Lily Yulianti Farid.
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On 10 March 2023, our kind, bright and creative friend and colleague Lily Yulianti Farid passed away. She will be deeply missed by our Indonesian Studies community. Our sincere condolences to Lily’s husband, son, and extended family.
Lily completed her PhD degree at The University of Melbourne in 2015. For many years, she co-taught a subject on Indonesian literature with us. For this, she drew on her versality as an academic researcher, literary author, journalist, and founder of the Makassar International Writers Festival. Thanks to Lily’s thoughtful advice and exemplary role as a feminist, we have learned to give more careful consideration to issues of gender, ethnicity and social justice in our selection of literary authors and themes.
As a testament to her modesty and generosity to other authors, she never put forward her own work, and did not really encourage us to discuss it in class either. After she embarked on the next exciting step in her academic journey, as Research Fellow at Monash Indigenous Studies Centre, we finally included several of her short stories in the main reading list.
One of Lily’s last activities with us was her contribution to our online conference ‘Citizens of the World’, 28-29 September 2021, which was meant to honour the past, and celebrate the future, of Indonesian Studies in Australia. We are committed to nurture new generations of Indonesian Studies students by continuing to honour and celebrate Lily’s life and work with them.
Let me finish with a quote from Lily’s short story, Ayahmu Bulan, Engkau Matahari (2012) which was dedicated to her mother:
Ayahmu bulan, engkau matahari. Dua bola langit yang tidak pernah bertemu, tapi saling mencari, saling menjaga …. Pada akhirnya kau tahu di belahan bumi Utara yang kau datangi puluhan tahun kemudian, langit musim dingin memberikan pemandangan yang membuat pernyataan nenekmu terbantahkan: bulan bisa bertemu matahari!
Selamat jalan, Lily.
On behalf of the Indonesian Studies program,
Edwin