My original article for The Jakarta Post : An Open Letter for the Foreign Embassies

Yeah, my original title is that one you see above. Anyway, this article was published at The Jakarta Post on Saturday, August 29th, and here I post my original one, unedited. ............................................................................................................................................ For dozens of years, we Indonesians have enjoyed so many great performances by fabulous international artists, thanks to the generosity of the foreign Embassies in Jakarta. Those performances have opened our minds, broadened our insight and deepened our (artistic) knowledge. They are also usually presented mostly free of charge, so the people who are really interested and have the necessity to learn from them but are not so prosperous could have access to the performances. They provide the lay audience to come, see, experience and taste these art performances for the first time. In fact, during my childhood coming from not such a wealthy family I was one of those lay audience, and thanks to the classical music performances by The British Council, Erasmus Huis, Goethe Institut or Centre Culturel Francais (now IFI) I found my interest in classical music -- and just look what I am doing right now. ............................................................................................................................................ But is the impact of those free performances 100% positive? This is the issue I have been discussing with many foreign diplomats residing in Jakarta, mostly the Cultural Attaches. Of course it is the best way to introduce their culture, arts and artists. And cultural diplomacy is, as we know, perhaps the most effective way to build a strong understanding and solidarity among the people between two countries. But free performances unfortunately do not support the development of art in a sustainable manner. For the last few years, we see a real boom in the quantity and quality of concerts by local artists and local organizers. This becomes a major problem because classical music performances initiated by local organizers are unsubsidized, so we depend a lot on the income from the public. The writer, as a performance artist who also encourages performances by young Indonesian musicians, has received hundreds of messages through these years which are basically just variations on the same theme: Why should we pay to go to concerts by Indonesian (classical) musicians, if we can go to see Western musicians for free? And after hundreds of times explaining the reason behind it, they still (naturally) prefer to go to free concerts. Not that my concerts lack audience, but I know many cases where people complained that "this" or "that" concert could have been free. Especially in Indonesia, where I feel that there is still this feeling of "everything-western-is-better-than-our-own" by many Indonesians, therefore many prefer "western" art to Indonesian ones -- especially if they are free! That is not certainly the case with other things in life: nobody reserves a table in a restaurant and ask: can my girlfriend and I have 2 free meals? Since music is not tangible, or even edible, it doesn't mean that it is free. ............................................................................................................................................ Consciousness to invest in the arts must be built since our early ages, and free concert phenomenon destroys this very concept : that art belongs to everybody, and if one needs it (and certainly we all need it!), we should pay for it, just like we need food or other forms of necessity. Certainly it cannot be built by distributing free tickets to the performance. Free concerts also means that the willingness of the audience to pay to attend a similar concert in the long run will not be developed and encouraged, therefore it is unhealthy to the continuing situation of the arts. What is more, is that the appreciation to any kind of free things are usually low. "Free" often means "disposable", just like when we are handed out free snacks on the street, we often just taste it a bit and then we do not necessarily eat it again or even immediately discard it, after establishing an opinion that that thing we just ate is "cheap" and "not worth eating again". ............................................................................................................................................ A solution, if Embassies are prohibited by the governments to charge tickets to the audience, is to donate the income from the tickets to a cause. The tickets doesn't have to be necessarily "entrance tickets", they could be in a form of invitation "with a donation". The audience should be educated that every kind of art is a production, and any kind of production costs money and we who enjoy it should contribute to it. That is how artists earn our living. The price of the tickets -- or donation in this case -- can also be very cheap. The fare is not what matters here since the purpose is not to cover the production cost; it is the feeling that art is not something free which is important. The amount can be just a symbolic sum, perhaps equal as a cinema ticket, but one will appreciate the performance differently when we know that we, too, contribute to the existence and preservation of what we are enjoying. If its price is even lower than a piece of sandwich, then we know which persons really do NOT care for the performance. ............................................................................................................................................ Contributing to the arts means also contributing to the betterment of the society. Now that the arts subsidies are hugely cut in European countries, this issue will not only be an Indonesian problem, but a widely international one. The arts and culture will go back to where it really belongs : from the people, by the people, for the people. But it could be too late before we realized it.