Cempaka Culture and Tourism: Bali Artists Resist Change

"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it), Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse), Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

“… The Shift in Human Nature

You're starting to see integrity change. Awareness recalibrates integrity, and the Human Being who would sit there and take advantage of another Human Being in an old energy would never do it in a new energy. The reason? It will become intuitive, so this is a shift in Human Nature as well, for in the past you have assumed that people take advantage of people first and integrity comes later. That's just ordinary Human nature.

In the past, Human nature expressed within governments worked like this: If you were stronger than the other one, you simply conquered them. If you were strong, it was an invitation to conquer. If you were weak, it was an invitation to be conquered. No one even thought about it. It was the way of things. The bigger you could have your armies, the better they would do when you sent them out to conquer. That's not how you think today. Did you notice?

Any country that thinks this way today will not survive, for humanity has discovered that the world goes far better by putting things together instead of tearing them apart. The new energy puts the weak and strong together in ways that make sense and that have integrity. Take a look at what happened to some of the businesses in this great land (USA). Up to 30 years ago, when you started realizing some of them didn't have integrity, you eliminated them. What happened to the tobacco companies when you realized they were knowingly addicting your children? Today, they still sell their products to less-aware countries, but that will also change.

What did you do a few years ago when you realized that your bankers were actually selling you homes that they knew you couldn't pay for later? They were walking away, smiling greedily, not thinking about the heartbreak that was to follow when a life's dream would be lost. Dear American, you are in a recession. However, this is like when you prune a tree and cut back the branches. When the tree grows back, you've got control and the branches will grow bigger and stronger than they were before, without the greed factor. Then, if you don't like the way it grows back, you'll prune it again! I tell you this because awareness is now in control of big money. It's right before your eyes, what you're doing. But fear often rules. …”

Sunday, December 29, 2013

Bali Artists Resist Change

Jakarta Globe, December 29, 2013

The Bali Not For Sale art collective is concerned about the loss of the
island’s unique culture and traditions. (JG Photos/Putri Fitria)

Day two in Denpasar, southern Bali, I had to share the remaining water in the bathtub with three friends just to wash ourselves. My best friend, Venusia Indah, whose place was where I had been staying, was not complaining so much. It was a normal thing for her. Twice a week, the water supply in their neighborhood was cut off by the authorities.

Tourists, though, have more than 45,000 rooms at upward of 700 hotels to choose from if they want a comfortable stay in Bali. The water flows all day long there, and there are swimming pools too.

The water crisis is only one of the impacts of the massive tourism industry development in the island. This is expanded to worsen as the land used for traditional rice fields are taken over for villas, hotels, restaurants and shops.

It is no wonder, then, that a group of concerned artists has been trying to raise awareness of the plight of the ordinary Balinese. “A rebel artist draw the line… A tribute to farmers, rice fields, children and memories of simple Bali,” describes the group, Bali Not For Sale, on its Facebook page.

But Bali Not For Sale is not just making a statement in the virtual world. One of its expressions of protest can be seen in the middle of a rice terrace in Ubud — an installation art work that was originally created without any serious purposes in 2010. But it has turned into a must-see icon for visitors to Ubud.

One of the creators is Gede Suanda Sayur, 33, a native of Ubud and a graduate of the School of Fine Arts at the renowned Indonesian Institute of Arts in Yogyakarta. The eye-catching installation, surrounded by lush green rice plants, caused a buzz some time ago. Newspapers and magazines published pictures of it. One magazine even kicked off a quiz to find out who was behind this “crazy” work. It was an anonymous work at the beginning of its development.

“I don’t compel people [who sell their rice fields] to change their mind-set; I’m just trying [to start the change] from my own self,” Sayur says.

He is the owner of the rice field where the installation is located, and of an art space in front of it. Named Luden House, this art space is where a number of artists hang out, sharing the same concerns and creating art together.

These artists regularly hold some activities such as music concerts, art performances, lelakut (scarecrow) competitions, kite competitions, film screenings, and various art workshops for children and young people. They also designed a T-shirt, selling for Rp 100,000 ($8.10), and stickers (Rp 5,000) to raise money to help the few traditional farmers remaining in Ubud to hold on to their fields.

“To be a farmer now is very difficult. Their land is subject to class 1 tax, which is the same as the tax for villas, because they’re situated in a tourist area,” says I Wayan Gendo Suwardana, the head of the Bali chapter of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi).

“There’s no market guarantee [for their rice], their harvests are declining, and much of what they earn goes toward paying the tax.”

Gendo says that while the farmers have come in for criticism for selling their land to developers, a large portion of the blame should also go to the local authorities for their lax land-use policies. The concept of “selling out,” he says, should not only refer to the sale of the farmland, but also the policies that allow the “carefree issuance” of building permits and rampant violations of zoning regulations.

Made Bayak, 33, a visual artist whose works center around the negative impacts of tourism on Bali, traces the problem back to the government’s anti-communist purge of 1965-66, when anyone critical of the government was branded a communist sympathizer and either jailed or killed.

“Back then, almost 90 percent of Balinese intellectuals who were critical of government policies were wiped out. Bali then turned into a kind of toll road for foreign investment: everyone could get in, everyone was accepted by the tourism industry,” he says.

Bayak acknowledges that taking on the island’s all-powerful tourism industry is to tilt at windmills, but insists he has a duty to raise the issue through his art or risk watching Bali get exploited to the point that it has nothing left.

He vows not to stop producing works that are a slap in the face of everyone in the tourism industry. And indeed, people deserve a slap. That is, if they still have a heart for Bali.