[Anthropgrad] Wednesday seminar for August 22 by Ana Dragojlovic

[Alan Rumsey]

The Wednesday Anthropology Seminar this week is:

Performing Balinese-ness: ‘lessons in culture’ and contested Balinese 
identities in the Netherlands

By Ana Dragojlovic
Anthropology, RSPAS, ANU

9.30-11.30 am, Wednesday 22 August, Coombs Seminar Room A


Abstract:

There have been various links and connections between Bali and the 
Netherlands from the early twentieth century and from the beginning of 
Dutch colonialism in Bali to the present day. Balinese people started 
moving to the Netherlands from the late 1950s. The people who initially 
moved were mostly political refugees while later movement was largely 
motivated by marriage liaisons with Dutch people.

My central concern here is to examine and analyse the roles which the 
historical forces of Dutch colonialism and the subsequent promotion of 
Bali by the independent Indonesian state have played in shaping what has 
become to be seen as ‘Balinese culture’; and how this notion of culture, 
exercised in various forms of expressive culture in Bali for 
non-Balinese tourists, is re-enacted and lived in ‘cultural’ 
performances in the Netherlands.

In this paper I discuss various forms of Balinese dancing performances, 
juxtaposing these with discussion of other forms of production of 
‘Balinese arts’ or forms of art produced by people of Balinese origin, 
and how these performances and exhibitions are sites for ‘lessons in 
culture’. Those displays of various forms of art, which are not 
necessarily related to the ‘traditional’ and are performed and exhibited 
both in the contemporary Netherlands and at different cultural festivals 
and exhibitions around Europe, are spaces in which the relations between 
selves and others are played out, but also occasions on which Balinese 
are assert and negotiate what it means to be Balinese outside Bali.


Inquiries to Alan Rumsey
alan.rumsey at anu.edu.au