Abstract:
Urban people are always exposed to soundscape, to sounds and noises in their everyday life. With the aid of technology, the soundscape of Yogyakarta has dramatically changed in the last 30-40 years. The sounds which once gave certain characteristics to the city have changed both quantitatively and qualitatively. For most people it does not bother them if they do not pay attention to them. However, people accept certain sounds as acceptable sounds while some other may reject them as disturbing noises. The result of such perceptions create spsychologically different responses, either positively or negatively. Therefore, exploring how people in the City of Tolerance responding to the religious soundscape of the place where they live is an effort to see an interfaith relationship from a different perspective, the auditory angle.
Speaker:
Jeanny Dhewayani, Ph.D. is the Associate Director of Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS) Yogyakarta.She got her Master degree from University of New Mexico and Ph.D. from Australian National University, both in Anthropology. Now, She is also a professor of anthropology at Duta Wacana Christian University.
 

Anang G Alfian | CRCS | Event

Issues of environmental damage are becoming more pervasive recently. It was just a few months ago we hear the voices of Samin community, indigenous people in the slopes of Mount Kendheng advocating environmental justice against industrialization attack surrounding the mountain, the issue of which inspired Dian Adi M.R., one of CRCS students, to compose instrumental music and conceptualize arts performance at the event called “Sounds of The Indigenous”.
Through his experience in music performance, Dian initiated the event and collaborated with various musicians, environmental activists, and academia of religious and cultural studies. This innovative way of giving collaborative performance is purposively to raise an awareness among various professions to work together on preserving nature.
Held at Taman Budaya Yogyakarta, many visitors crowded the event on the eve of January 25^th 2017 to see the performance, which was started by a documentary film about the semen factory against Samin people and other environmental issues happening recently. Some commentaries from local peoples, scholars, and villagers were narrating a number of environmental problems especially in dealing with actors of interests and exploitation of nature. There is a need of consolidation and urgent answer to avoid further consequence of human misconducts toward nature.
As the introduction to the theme was read, a theatrical performance began to tell narratives and stories, and the instrumental music slowly echoed and filled the air of the room. Visitors seemed to enjoy the mystical yet artistic nuances coming out of the cello playing. Throughout the performance, music and theatrical arts were integrated and made a harmonious blend.
Some instruments were used to represent different and rich sounds from different cultures and origins. Besides guitar, violin, and other common instruments, there were also Gambus, a Middle Eastern music instrument played in the end of the session with Arabic vocal. A Dayak instrument called Sape was also used to sing with a children song. It produced a nostalgic scene of happy life when children can play with nature before industrialization has polluted environment and water.
A theatrical narrative called “Hunger” was also enacted to convey indigenous voices demanding justice and prosperity. The story was meant to see how the man’s greed is always the cause of destruction.  “Those local cultures are indeed real guardians of the nature, while ironically many intellectuals go with the interests of those people to build their projects ignoring the locals and the environment,” said Dian commenting on the theme of the performance.
Music can be a means to harmonize the relation between human and nature and awaken the awareness of the shared duty to preserve nature. Justitias Jellita, the Cello player, reflected on music as being in a harmony as she said, “The harmony is not only for musical tunes, but also for the self and the universe. Without harmony, journey of life will lose its meaning, and those who can return to his home is the ones that know where they come from. This Sounds of the Indigenous event is a valuable message and important warning that human will return to his home “Earth” anyway. Therefore, while alive, we’re responsible for our home.”
Indigenous people of Dayak tribe have their own cosmology on their music as what Anang, the Sape player, said, “For Dayak people, they believe an old saying, ‘Sapeh Benutah tulaang to’awah,’ meaning Sape can crush the bones of evil ghosts.”
This event has given us a lesson on how to maintain the relation between man and nature as important elements in the harmony of life. And music is one of the languages the indigenous speak with. Now it is our turn whoever we might be; artists, scholars, or environmental practitioners; to know where we stand on and where we are going to return.
*Anang G Alfian is CRCS student of the 2016 batch

Abstract
Iranian cinema is one of the very few in the Muslim world to have employed this new medium in imagining and narrating stories of religious figures. The representation of religious figures in Islam has become particularly controversial in recent years. Therefore, it turned into a highly sensitive undertaking. In this talk I examine the complex socio-political context of Iran to study late emergence of the epic genre in Iranian cinema. In doing so I study the recent creation and development of ‘Qur’anic Films’ within Iranian cinema with specific reference to Kingdom of Solomon (Mulk-i Sulayman-i Nabi, Shahriar Bahrani, 2010), which I argue is the first Qur’anic epic in Iranian cinema if not in the Muslim world.
Speaker
Dr Nacim Pak-Shiraz is the Head of Persian Studies and Senior Lecturer in Persian and Film Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of Shi’i Islam in Iranian Cinema: Religion and Spirituality in Film (London, 2011) and a number of articles and chapters in the field of Iranian Film Studies. Dr. Pak-Shiraz also regularly collaborates with a number of film festivals, including the Edinburgh International Film Festival and The Edinburgh Iranian Festival.

Abstract:
In this discussion, Jonathan Zilberg will discuss problems fracing Indonesian museum in terms of performance, accountability and transparency. He will discuss the Goverment of Indonesia’s 2010-2014 museum revitalization program, the transformations that have been taking place in Indonesia museum over the last decade and the challenges posed for the future. He will look at museums as democracy machines and as postcolonial centers for advacing the ideology of pluralism in civil society. In particular he will address the integrated importance of museums, adchives and libraris for advacing the state of education at all levels including for countinuing adult education.
Speaker:
Jonathan Zilberg is a cultural anthropologist specializing in art and religion and in museum ethnography. He has been studying Indonesian museums for a decade and is particularly interested in museums as democracy machines and as post-colonial centers for advancing the ideology of pluralism in civil society. His immediate interests focus on Hindu-Buddhist heritage including the function of archaeological sites as open air museums as well as of museum collections and government depositories in terms of being under-utilized academic resources. For comparative purposes, he has studied museums in Aceh, Jambi, Jakarta and to a lesser extent observed select museums elsewhere in Indonesia. Currently he is CRCS UGM Visiting Scholar.

Abstract:
The Green Santri Network aims to be a socio-ecological movement by Indonesian Muslim groups, using Muslims’ own sensibility and ‘thought language’ to effectively disseminate messages about Islamic ecological values for survival and sustainability and to advance the idea of relocalization, or returning to a smaller scale, as self-reliant communities with simpler ways of living and with self-local governance.  It comes out of my research into how Indonesian Muslim groups, including both the large-scale Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama and two examples of green intentional communities, Hidayatullah and An-Nadzir, can contribute toliving knowledge transmission or murabbias a way to make sustainability education relevant in the Islamic symbolic universe in the Indonesian context,based on the understanding that more than intellectual ability is needed to comprehend this knowledge; it must be made personal by living it.
Speaker:
Wardah Alkitiri earned her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 2016. Her dissertation was entitled “Muhammad’s Nation is called “The Potential for Endogenous Relocalisation in Muslim Communities in Indonesia”. She is founder of AMANI, a not-for-profit organization that aims to promote ecological sustainability through entrepreneurial creativity in Jabodetabek and Central Java.

Meta Ose Ginting | CRCS | Wednesday Forum Report