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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 April 2019
Doomsayers and traditionalists prognosticate that the dominance of digital media spells the end of traditional arts in Java, Indonesia. Wayang kulit (shadow puppet theatre), while still highly regarded as theatrical heritage, is said to be under particular threat due to the long duration of its plays, complexity of language and the need for prior knowledge of characters and situations. Such features are at odds with the short attention spans and need for instant comprehension and gratification of Gen Z – the youth referred to in Indonesian media as inhabiting jaman now (literally the ‘era of now’). While digital social media, including Facebook and YouTube, definitely offer up alternative forms of entertainment and amusement, they are also being used by traditional puppet practitioners to reinforce and expand communities of practice. Facebook provides platforms for comparative discussion and critical debate, while YouTube potentiates the inclusion of a geographically dispersed audience, including overseas workers.
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17 In Internet discourse, the English loanword fan is used alongside the Indonesian equivalent penggemar.
18 Discussion with Dewanto Sukistono, 15 July 2018.
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26 These VHS cassettes were only available to watch in Leiden, however. Other academic projects in the 1990s involving recording wayang include the South and Southeast Asia Video Archive based at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the Balinese Television Project, a collaboration between the Indonesian conservatoire STSI Denpasar and SOAS, University of London.
27 See, e.g. www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDz3ZCwdCgg. These videos were originally made for Senawangi, the national wayang organization. Kuwato, another ISI lecturer, provides the voice-over narration. On Purbo Asmoro see Kathryn Emerson, ‘Transforming Wayang for Contemporary Audiences: Dramatic Expression in Purbo Asmoro's Style, 1989–2015’, unpublished PhD thesis, Leiden University, 2016.
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29 This group had 22,142 members as of 1 July 2018.
30 Posted by ‘Benzema Jhidate Menyonyoe’ on 13 July 2018 from RSUD Panembahan Senopati Bantul. For a full recording of this performance see Pagelaran Wayang Ki Seno Nugroho Lakon: WAHYU TRIANGGA, at https://youtu.be/QkNl_LY6Kek, accessed 1 November 2018.
31 Pagelaran Wayang Kulit Ki Seno Nugroho Lakon MIKUKUHAN, performed for the Bersih Dusun Gunturan in the hamlet of Gunturan, Triharjo, Pandak, Bantul, Yogyakarta, on 13–14 July 2019. See https://youtu.be/_7jgnQXaO-4, accessed 1 November 2018.
32 So, at Seno's performance at TBY, Seno asked my PhD student Sietske Rijpkema and me to sing songs from the wayang repertoire; Sutrisno Hartana, a gamelan teacher and performing-arts scholar based in Canada who has been following Seno for years, played gender briefly; and a spectator from Sumatra who had been spending the last month attending wayang performances around Yogyakarta was also hailed.
33 Bridle, James, New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future (London: Verso, 2018), n.p.Google Scholar Bridle takes the term ‘code/space’ from the discipline of geography, defining it as an ‘interweaving of computation with the built environment and daily experience … such that the environment and the experience of it actually cease to function in the absence of code’. Bridle's prime example is the airport – when systems crash it instantly transforms ‘into a huge shed filled with empty people’ (n.p.) – but argues that with the ubiquity of smartphones and other smart devices increasingly the entire world is becoming a code/space.
34 At www.facebook.com/pages/story/reader/?page_story_id=1689979914346159, posted 29 April 2018, accessed 24 June 2018.
35 Edible birds’ nests are a Chinese delicacy and a lucrative business, with some reports estimating that exports could account for up to 0.5 per cent of Indonesia's GDP. Jordan, David, ‘Globalisation and Bird's Nest Soup’, International Development Planning Review, 26, 1 (2004), pp. 97–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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