My basic idea, when I first got a mail from Ravensbourne that I have been offered a place in the MA conditionally unless I submit a project idea was : Why not promoting as well as exploring Indonesian culture to the world? I know that most people knew what and where Indonesia is, but I've travelled to several countries and still find people who don't know where it is, nor if it existed…some was really convinced that Indonesia is in Bali and that Bali was a country..and several others thought that I was living in a tree house (like Tarzan) and asked whether we have McDonalds back home! I know they must be ignorant or didn't pass Geography lessons in high school, but compare to other South East Asian countries like for say, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia is the biggest but sometimes, most-unknown..sad, but true. The government seemed to be more interested in other issues than promoting the country, internal issues has made its people forgot that in order to regain the economy from its 1998 monetary crisis, we need to attract the tourists to come, and we the only place we can only count on that is Bali, not many people knew that there are thousands of other islands in this archipelago country that is as beautiful even more of a tropical paradise than Bali.
Not forgetting its diverse art and culture, all those costumes, dances, languages, food…
So, it came to my mind; I'm having the chance to study abroad, why not as well change people's perception towards Indonesia and promote my home country. In the other hand, Us, the Indonesian itself aren't pretty proud of our country. As written above, we've gone through so many since the past 10 years, we had our monetary crisis, natural disasters, corruption and collusion issues within the government, diseases, poverty and so forth, that we tend to look on other countries and ashamed with our own. We follow the western cultures to some extent, we want to live like westerners. Our lifestyles are very much influenced from it, especially those from America. We only like to watch Western movies, listen to Billboard top 40 chart, admire Hollywood movie stars, wear clothes like the British people, inspired from Western artists, Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons and Britney Spears were our idol, we look down on legendary Indonesian artists, we hated Indonesian musics, we don't like to wear our traditional costumes, hence, we try our best to copy the New York, London, Paris, Milan fashion show.
But as i reflected on these phenomenon, I am more aware about my own culture, I started to do some research on what are the cultures my country's got, the different types of dances from the 34 provinces we have, the 300 something dialects, the different types of costumes with its different uniqueness, it all made me proud of my country like I've never been before This is what drives me to do my MA Project based on this theme. I wasn't so sure in what sort of form I would do it, but since I came from a Fine Art background, why not putting Indonesian art into fashion and see if it will correlate nicely.
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