The role of friendship in collective governance - A conversation with Harry Isra Muhammad

Welcome to the Onassis AiR Conversations. My name is Myrto Katsimicha. I am a curator and cultural worker based in Athens and your host in this series of recorded encounters with the participants of Onassis AiR. Founded on the principles of learning and doing with others, Onassis AiR is an international research residency program in Athens initiated by the Onassis Foundation in 2019. They say that what happens in one place stays in that place. I cannot find a better way to describe all the things that have been happening inside the Onassis AiR house since I first entered as a participant of the Critical Practices Program in fall 2019. The truth is, it is not easy to transmit an open-ended process of relationing, which is very personal and relevant to a specific place and moment in time. How can I then give you a glimpse into that process? Everything starts with a conversation. Throughout this series, I'll be speaking with the Onassis AiR participants to shed light on their artistic practices and needs, as well as to reflect on ways of being and working together.

In this conversation, I am very happy to be speaking with Harry Isra Muhammad. Harry is a researcher and editor focusing on the intersection between literature, art, locality and its ecosystem, especially in eastern Indonesia. Harry is a co-founder and part of Jalur Timur, an independent collective whose praxis develops around contemporary art and cultural activism in eastern Indonesia and beyond. He is a participant of The School of Infinite Rehearsals Movement V, delving into a collective study on issues of governance and more specifically the notion of self-organization. Today, we will discuss about the notion of the collective and the role of friendship and care in fostering collective governance. Harry, welcome to Pali-Room!

Thank you so much Myrto for having me here on this wonderful evening.

Thank you very much for joining me and also a big thanks for the wonderful meal that you prepared for us today and that we had the chance to share. I think that food sharing is a great metaphor to start talking about collaboration and collective effort and I want to mention just for the sake of the joke that the first thing that we did this morning was going together and finding a banana leaf in order to create this meal. We had to carry this leaf in the main streets of Athens to reach the Onassis AiR space. That was really fun and thank you so much for bringing me into this.

Having a banana leaf and carrying it together was a very amazing experience for me because the banana leaf in the country where I live is available almost everywhere. We don't need to walk that far and become a spectacle to get it. I want to talk a little bit about the banana tree because it is a little bit intriguing for me to talk about it. The banana tree has
a lot to do with the context where live, in Indonesia in general, and South Sulawesi in particular. In most cases people eat on a banana leaf, like we just did earlier, after working together, after doing "gotong royong", which directly translates to organic collective work in an informal, voluntary and joyful way. Most of the times there is always lots of food. There is this idea of festivity. So, the fact that we ate on a banana leaf at the end of our residency also fits with the idea of festivity, eating on a banana leaf after collectively working for seven weeks. So for me, it was also the right moment to do that. The banana in Bugis-Makassar, the province where I live, has also some kind of cosmologic aspect. For example, a day before the wedding there is this ritual, in the groom's or the bride's side, there is always a food made —aside from coconut or palm sugar— from banana. I recently discovered why there is always a banana in that ritual. Before the old banana leaves fall down to the ground the new ones appear. So there is this idea of regeneration embodied in the banana tree. Having that here, finding it here and eating on the banana leaf was very special. It was very meaningful for me.

And also, we took the leaf from a friend of mine, who is connected to this banana tree for another reason. The reason being that his grandfather planted this banana tree in the house in the 70s. So it is a kind of a connection across the generations between people. Since you brought up the idea of regeneration, I am wondering, is regeneration connected somehow to self-organization?

Regeneration is related with the question that we discussed in our collective research: how do we create a structure that works without us? Paz, one of our friends, mentioned this in relation to the idea of vanishing. But for me, I think it is the idea of sharing responsibility and sharing roles before a person goes out of the organization. I would like to think about it from the football perspective, because I really love football. I don't have any other examples. The example comes from a very big club. So, Lionel Messi, who is known as the greatest footballer in the world, left Barcelona to go to Paris Saint-Germain this year and what happened to Barcelona is that they are messed up right now, because Lionel Messi played three roles at the same time. He played as a playmaker, as a goalscorer, and as the one who gives an assist to the forward. So, when this guy vanished from Barcelona, the question was "how do we start?", because people were relying on him per se to create the chance for a goal. It is very different, for example, with my favorite football club, Liverpool, where there is a rotation. There is always this senior player and a middle player and also a young player of 19 or 20 years old playing together. There are always changing roles and a rotation in the team. Imagine this in self-organization. There is a rotation of responsibility, a rotation of roles, which I guess somehow in our residency here we did it, but we didn't really realize it in a way. For example, in cooking.

Thank you very much for sharing that. I am also glad that you brought up "gotong royong", if I am pronouncing it correctly. This reminds me of the first week that we spent together and actually the time when we had to introduce each other to our practices. You did something that was very interesting to me, the way that you introduced yourself. Basically what you did was that you divided us into three groups and you told your life story to the first group and then the first group had to transfer this knowledge to the second group and then the second one to the third one and so on. This transfer of knowledge and information and the aspect of storytelling plays an important role in your individual, but also in your collective work with Jalur Timur and I wanted to ask you more particularly what does Jalur Timur stand for?

I think what I like about storytelling is that the story can develop further and further without someone claiming whose story this was. I love that, because people can add something to it. People can participate in the story. This is very different, for example, with texts, because with texts you can't really modify anything. With storytelling it is different. When it comes to other people sometimes there is a modification or there is a reduction as well and the stories intertwine. So that is why I really love storytelling, because it is about improvization and spontaneity, which is something that we practice in our collective as well. Also, maybe because where I come from —it is not an oral culture per se— orality is more dominant than literacy. Maybe that influences me as well to tell the story in that way. It is also related to the idea of regeneration. You regenerate the story from one group to the other groups. Because when you tell the story to other people, it is no longer my responsibility. There is no one who claims whose responsibility this is. Not that no one is claiming it, but the responsibility will be shared amongst the other people and you have the responsibility to share it with other people again. This kind of rolling responsibility is something that we do in our collective. We set up this collective —Jalur Timur— in 2015 and it started really doing something in 2018. Jalur Timur means a path. "Jalur "is a path and "Timur" is the East. We are focusing more on the eastern part of Indonesia, which is the context where most of us live. It stands for a path to the East. Why Eastern Indonesia? Because it is very close to us in a way. It is very close to the context where we live. Also, sometimes there is this narrative, like a generalization for the people from the East. They neglect the diversity. The East is very big. Sometimes there is something like this. It is that kind of narrative that we also want to raise, that of the diversity of the people living in the East.

You also told me before that the Western part is more dominant in the discourse.

Yes, I can say that. Even now I can say that there has never been a president coming from the eastern part of Indonesia. There was once, but while he was born there, he had spent most of the time in the West and only ruled for one year. So it is like people outside of the Javanese island cannot become the president. There is something like that, like a narrative domination. I think that is also something that triggered us. For example, I have seen many films being made by people from Jakarta, films about Papua and Makassar, and they so biased in a way. There is this gap. So we thought: "Why don't we tell the stories? Why don't we tell our own stories ourselves speaking without being represented by the others?" That is also one of the reasons that we began Jalur Timur.

Would you like to talk about your most recent research project?

Our recent project is called "Lontara' Duri". It is an old manuscript compiled by this scholar from Duri. He passed away in the 1990s. He had collected, transcripted and transliterated from Lontara —a traditional system of writing in Bugis-Makassar and also to people in the South Sulawesi. He transcribed it into Latin and transliterated it into Indonesian. That was in 1987, but it wasn't disseminated. So, we came up with the idea, which was supported by the foundation set up by the family. It is very important because sometimes people from Duri are neglected. People sometimes think that they are not part of an ethnicity, because they don't have this Lontara. Sometimes this Lontara becomes something that you will be recognized by as an ethnicity.

Is Lontara like the story of a people?

Yes, it is like the story of the people or the origin of the place.

A cosmogony focusing on the people?

It is like the story of origin. We edited the stories for almost a year. We did research and we went to Enrekang, Duri and we took pictures. We also added the Indonesian language to make it more accessible to the wider public, because there were some sentences that were not completed and some grammatical mistakes. Then, we took another look at the original Latin version and rewrote it in a way. We rewrote it in the format of a novel so that it would be easier to digest. We changed the format of the book as well to color with 100 pictures that have references to the text. For example, we added a picture of a "langda" or "lumbung", which is a rice barn, from Enrekang and we put the picture of that because it is mentioned in the text. We took pictures of some activities, of food, plants or animals that are mentioned in the text or even like a river or a mountain and we added them in the book. We did it that way to make it more interesting to read, so that people will not get bored, because Lontara is almost always associated with something really old. Even from the cover, from how it is packaged, it is always old school. We did that in order to create this perception that it can be made contemporary in a way so that it doesn't look like an old school thing.

I was talking with another artist in the past about the role of tradition and how if we see tradition through a different perspective, we can reuse it in a way and this also comes back to the concept of regeneration that we were talking about.

Yes, exactly. The idea behind why we created it in that format was to be able to make the younger generation interested to read it. So, that was our last project and we did it collaboratively. For example, we had a photographer from Makassar, we also had a photographer from Enrekang, who were collaborating to take pictures. The interesting part is that the people who worked on it are all from different ethnic backgrounds —there are people from Duri, but also people from other ethnicities— in a way that it can belong to many groups.

That is a very nice idea. How many people are part of Jalur Timur?

We are 8 people. Now we have also established a new space called Riwanua. Previously everything we were doing was by Jalur Timur. Now with the establishment of Riwanua, our new space, Jalur Timur will focus more on research, archiving, documentation, and the production of knowledge, while the dissemination of knowledge will be run by Riwanua. Although, the same people are involved.

How do you see your individual work in relation to the collective work that you are involved with?

I don't really distinguish the individual from my collective work. I never really do something like my own individual work. I don't have this idea of the artist as a genius doing something alone. I never do that. I mostly do things collaboratively with friends. Even when I write literary critiques I will call friends asking them what do they think about this. I don't want to claim that this is my individual practice in a way because there are people involved. Maybe because the way I think of the collective is that I don't think that people who are part of a collective are only the people who run an organization. In Jalur Timur there are eight of us who run the organization, but I also think of those who support us, like the family, the friends, who are not part of the collective but are also part of it by giving support. For example, my mom is a chef and she brings food to the organization. There is something that sometimes is invisible. We don't think they are part of the collective, but I think they are part of it, by giving more of like a support, even like giving you permission, to go somewhere, to do something. Especially if you already have a family, giving permission to do something is also part of the support. The idea of a collective for me is not only those who are running the collective, but also those who are supporting the collective even in an indirect way.

In 2019, as you already know, we went to Indonesia with Onassis AiR, as part of the Critical Practices Program, and one thing that made a great impression to us was the large number of collectives that exist in Indonesia, but also the way that they relate and collaborate with each other. I had a similar experience when I traveled to Mexico City and I realized how embedded collective work is in the ways that you work and also that there is a difference in the way that we perceive or conceive of a collaboration. I am interested to know, what do you think about that and also what was your personal and collective urge to apply for the School?

I think we not only have a different conception, but also the availability of time is very important. What I see in the West is that the conception of time is a bit different. I don't know how to really express it in English, but I feel it is a bit different. We are hanging out a lot in Indonesia. We hang out a lot and we spend time, sometimes until 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. and sometimes it is very fluid. Maybe, there isn't really much industrialization. So people still have lots of time to share with others, which enables them to build trust while hanging out. I think that is one thing. Also, maybe the second one is that there aren't yet so many art institutions that give funding. So, people don't really fight. They don't really compete with each other for the same resources in a way. I think that that's the thing. What was the urge to apply for The School of Infinite Rehearsals? That is a tough question. First of all, it is a way for us to survive, I can say. I don't want to be naive. I remember I talked with Ash about this during the feedback session and he said that the money that you get here is not supposed to be spent here. And I said, "yes, the money that I got here I spent for paying the rent in Makassar. That helped us survive". And secondly, I really like the idea of going outside of the collective and of going abroad. Sometimes I can see what we were or are doing from a distance and seeing that there is something here, for example, that isn't there or maybe what isn't there, but there is available here. So, I can make a comparison of what happens here and there. The third reason, which I think is the most important, is friendship. I learned a lot from the rest of the group. I learned, for example, from Paz some questions that are very intriguing. Also, the question about how we create structures and so on from Joey. I learned about art unions from Asli. I learned about sharing resources through Omuz, a format to share resources. From Nuno, I thought about food, which made me realize why my mother, for example, or many mothers in South Sulawesi, and Indonesia in general, before you want to go out give you the best food. For example, before I came to London for my Master's, my mother cooked the best food that I have tried. Now, I understood why. Because when you eat from the others, it means that there is an energy, there is a knowledge that you eat. It is like the idea of eating the other through the food. It comes through a body and then from that moment you start to reduce all the prejudice. So, I think the friendship is something really important.

In your group what common ground did you find in terms of self-organization and how did you work together?

This is very interesting because each of us has their own interests. Also each of us doesn't have a single interest. There are so many interests and sometimes it works like crisscrossing one another. It doesn't run in a single or linear way. For example, we tried using three questions that we wanted to elaborate on and then eliminate the other interests. We did that as well. We connected one another while also keeping each of our interests. So, while we were visiting some spaces, we related to one another as well. The idea was not to go together with single questions like academics, who usually go with a single or two questions, but with many questions crossing one another, which I really love, because it is about diverging rather than converging. The format itself made me think that we can do this research without eliminating each other's interest.

What was your initial research question?

My initial question was about sharing resources. I am interested to find out how people share resources in order to survive as an organization. I think that was the question. Also, how do we build trust aside from just hanging out? How do we create trust? Because without trust we cannot collaborate with one another and it is something that is quite difficult to build. In the context where I live we build it by hanging out. Is there any other possible way? One of the ways is by working together. It is not only by hanging out, but it is also by working together in terms of sharing resources.

What about the Athenian context? How do you see self-organization happening in the city?

We went to some places and each place has its own story. For example, we visited Tavros, that have this newspaper translated into the languages spoken by the people in the neighborhood, which for me was very interesting. They put the magazine or the newspaper in the bakery so that people read it and it also a story about people. And also they have this kind of archive of recordings of people from the neighborhood. For me, that gave me something new. Again, if we come back to the question I had before doing this residency, I guess, it enhanced what I have practiced before and also gave me something new, a new approach to do something. With Communitism, I learned this layer of decision making. They gave me another possible way to create a decision making process, a democratic decision making. For example, if there are too many people, what are going to be the consequences of decision making, or if they are separated into a core group and also the public. The point is:
How do we make decisions? Who is going to affect that decision? The question about decision making was a very interesting thing that I got from Communitism.

All these examples that you just brought to the table take me back to a short text that I was reading the other day "The Machinery of Hopelessness" by David Graber, where he says, "becoming aware of alternatives allows us to see everything we are already doing in a new light". Basically, in this text, he argues that capitalism and productivity and the way that states are organized have led us to a period of hopelessness where we don't think there are any alternatives. So, seeing the alternatives perhaps makes us realize that we can imagine new things. They exist somewhere else.

Yes, exactly! That's what I mean. That is what I was thinking before when I said what isn't here and what isn't there. It makes me realize that something is possible. But sometimes there is this dilemma of context. We cannot easily replicate something from a different context. We need to take a look at it and interrogate again the possibility of doing that. I love David Graeber. One of the quotes I also like is "from those according to the abilities, to those according to their needs". This is really something that we practice as well in our organization. For example, in a very simple way, to pay the rent, it has to be those who have the abilities. Here at Onassis AiR I have the ability to pay that and I will pay that. Then, maybe the next time, when I don't have the money and my friends have it, it is going to be my friends. It is something like that "according to the abilities and the needs". But this is something we have to notice. Sometimes this also happens in an organization, that we feel like we have contributed a lot and therefore we have more rights to do something. This is something that we need to avoid. It doesn't mean that because you contribute more you can have more rights. It is something very interesting to elaborate on as well.

Since you mentioned the decision making process of Communitism and that was quite interesting for you, I remember that you told me before that in your collective, there is no disagreement. How is that possible?

When you asked me about that before, I talked to my friends in the collective asking them when was the last time we had a disagreement. No one remembered. Maybe because we see disagreement not as some kind of rejection but as some kind of new possibility, like, "what if we do that?" Rather than rejecting, looking at another possibility, but that is only inside of our collective. I remember when we had a commission with another institution, we had disagreements, because we have our own standards and we don't want to be intervened to our standards of working. So, we had lots of disagreement, when we worked with this institution. But within our collective itself, I think, it is maybe because we know each other for many years that we don't have much of a disagreement.

I would love to be able to attend one of your meetings and really observe that. As a collective are you afraid of institutionalization?

That is a very interesting question. Paz talked about this before: "it is better to dream about an institution rather than thinking about forming an institution." I think, why not? Why do we need to be afraid of the institution? I read a very nice conversation between Casa do Povo and Ruangrupa. The conversation is very interesting. They think that in Europe they are afraid of the "institution" because there are lots of institutions, but in the context of Brazil or Indonesia, for example, from where they are having this conversation, they imagine the institution as a resource, which is very interesting. Sometimes when you have an institution, you will be subjectified with the institution. They have certain procedures that you need to follow. But when you imagine an institution as a resource, you can imagine it as something that you can exchange with in a horizontal way. Some of us, if not most of us in our collective, have imagined to create a university in 10 or 15 years. We don't know the time, but we have this idea because especially in Arts and Humanities there isn't any proper institution in Makassar, in terms of a university that can give you a decent or proper education and we were kind of upset with that. So we thought: "Why don't we create our own university? Why don't we make it our own?" We also have a friend who knows how to create a real university. He has that experience from before and he told us what we need. I think there is still a possibility for that. I don't think that we have to be afraid of making an institution.

Thank you for being a part of this conversation.

Thank you so much as well for the nice conversation.

Thank you for listening. If you want to listen to more conversations, please subscribe to our channel. You can find more about the Onassis AiR residency program and each participant at www.onassis.org. This series is produced by Onassis AiR. Thanks to Nikos Kollias, the sound designer of the series, and to Nikos Lymperis for providing the original music intro theme.