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Hello, thank you for the time that has been given to me today.

I am Annissa Gultom from Indonesia.

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Wo Ist Indonesia? It is an archipelago in Southeast Asia where Luthfansa doesn’t have a direct flight to.

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Indonesia is an archipelago of 17, 508 islands with only 2 out of its 5 main land mass that has big cities
density. With almost 260 million of inhabitants, Indonesia is the 4th most populated country in the
world.

Around half of that population is living in areas prone to natural disaster as the archipelago is part of
the “Ring of Fire”, where many earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur.

With a GDP of less than 3,500$ and around 400 museums in the country, the annual museum visitation
is far from 5% of the population. The average numbers of published history-culture books are only 2000
per publication, and re-publication are special cases.

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A little bit about myself, I have been working in the realm of Archaeology, History, Museum and Culture
since 2005, right after I got my bachelor degree in Archaeology, with specialization in Hindu-Budhist Art
and Architecture. Then I completed my Masters in Museum Communication in the US.

Throughout the years you can easily see the pink bars of consistency in my research, writing and
teaching in the subject of Archaeology and History. While blue hues shown my involvements in Museum
work, research and development. The yellow bars are the trace of my chance leading a short-lived small
private museum on traditional textile in Bali.

One distinctive purple from last year mark my eye-opening-experience with Indonesian contemporary
art scene, with Jakarta Biennale 2017.

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For this panel I want to show you a glimpse my work from last year.

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Bank Indonesia Museum, the central bank’s museum recruited me to curate in their effort in developing
a Collection Management system. Why this is a big deal, because like unicorns, such thing does not
really exist in Indonesian museums. Out of 400 museums that we have, only 2 museums that are having
an integrated database system, not on Microsoft Excel. Only one of them has a storage system that
works together with database system.

To make it worst, the three -now two remains- museum studies program, while they are educating
mostly for exhibit making, they do not taught the subject of Collection Management system and
Audience Development, two fundamental museological infrastructures to actually create a well thought
and effective public programming.

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This lack of foundation in Indonesian museums may be the culprit of why it is difficult for us to be
advance.

This project did not worked out, for different kinds of reason. Yet we are working towards a different
approach.

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Since last year, with a few colleagues, we initiated a number of educations and assistantship
programming for museums, by reintroducing them to what is basic museum practice and introduction to
visitor study.

We believe in what JW Fulbright once said “Education is a slow moving but powerful force”.

From earlier this year with the Foundation of Jakarta Museum Friends, we are preparing a more
intensive curriculum on Museum Collection Management and initiating an online study and reference
package for Introduction to curation.

Curating is another issue that we are trying to overcome also. Our government set the bar quite low on
Museum Curator definition, according to the regulation on museums that was officiated three years
ago, Curator is being identified as administrative or technical staff with limited scope of conceptual
work.

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Onwards to my recent work of last year, this is a combination of two projects that I was involved as
curator for the Renewal of Jakarta History Museum permanent exhibit and Jakarta Biennale 2017.

Jacatra, the old name of Jakarta, was found in 1527. It was -and still is- an important port city on the
west part of Java Island’s north coast. In 1619, the VOC, or Dutch East Indies Company, the world’s first
formally listed public company, gained the vacated war torn city and made it into Batavia citadel.

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After dominated the Spice Islands through violence, then the spice trade, VOC controlled the
international trade networks from Batavia.
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The Company was hitting one of the highest mark in profit in world history, the company’s worth
translates to a whopping $7.9 trillion dollar worth today, that is far fetch from Apple who is leading the
race to be a $1 Trillion worth company, as its market value by February 2018 was $910 billion.

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The company went bankrupt in 1799 and the Netherlands Indies was born as Dutch colony, the
“Netherlands Indies” until 1942.

It left one beautiful trace, the city hall that since 1974 known as “Jakarta History Museum”. The 18th
century built architecture is the main vocal point of the old city’s area square, the Fatahillah square, one
of the main budget conscious destinations in the city. The museum has been trying to renew their
permanent exhibit since 2014 and in 2016 they invited me to join on board to actually made it
happened. So what’s new in this NEW permanent exhibit?

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It’s COLONIALISM.

Oddly enough, the subject of colonial period is one major thing that only recently being explored in
Indonesian museums. Before, the focus was only to the material culture style of Indies furniture and
architecture.

If you ever read or heard the idea of FAIR TRADE, from “Multatuli”, the book that killed Colonialism, it
was written by Max Havelaar based on his time working for Dutch East Indies in west Java.

The museum on Multatuli in Indonesia, just opened in February this year.

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At the same time, I was also part of the curating team of Jakarta Biennale 2017, with Melati Suryodarmo
as its artistic director. This Biennale is distinctive for it chose a “heavy loaded” theme of JIWA. The
Indonesian word that refers to a combination of “spirit”, “soul” or a feeling that you can sense from an
individual, a group of people, a community, a place, a period, an atmosphere and so on.

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As part of the new permanent exhibit, we used three rooms to reintroduce the rise of VOC, the embryo
of colonialism in Indonesia. This is not yet a widely understood concept of history among the 200 million
something Indonesians, as we were taught in elementary school history lesson of not making
differentiation between the company, and when we actually became the colony of the Netherlands.
In the rooms we put miniature of VOC ship, objects of violence, models to show how the port city was
changed, and JP Coen, the accountant who built Batavia, along with a mural how he could afford it, and
a temporary installation from one of the artists we chose for Jakarta Biennale 2017.

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The temporary installation was a short movie by Mathieu Abbonanc, a French based artist, “Sector IX”. It
is a fictional film addressing scientific and artistic questions related to the colonial collections and the
role of the Museum.

The film focused on the interaction between a young anthropologist from a former French colony with
French acquired African collection.

This installation can be seen from inside its own room, and also from the other two rooms through an
existing window and a connecting door.

For the first time, as I know of, a contemporary look of a historical subject was put in the midst of
permanent collection, to disrupt the conservatively one way storyline.

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Another piece that we worked on with a digital artist is a mural, made based on historical visual
documentation on how JP Coen could afford Batavia, which was by violently took over the nutmeg trade
from the Banda islands, one small cluster of islands among a few small archipelagos of Spice islands.

Coen instructed the massacre of Bandanese people in 1621, left around 600 people remained from the
previously around 13,000 people in the islands. A number of this remaining people brought to Batavia
and left what is now known as Kampong Bandan, or the village of Banda people. The islands continued
to be fought over by the Dutch and the British companies. Untill in 1667 the Brits agreed to make an
exchange, the Manhattan island of today’s New York, was given by the VOC to the British for VOC’s total
ownership of Banda.

This mural is accompanied by a text according to the documented details of the events from Dutch
archive, without having the “Indonesian perspective” or the “Dutch perspective”,

It is for the first time a museum emphasize the importance of this portion on Banda history and not the
celebration of 350 years of Brenda treaty such as done last year in Indonesia.

The general visitors enjoy this mural as their new selfie background, yet this visual information will
travel far digitally and would start a discussion on how we deal with the past, and when I said we, not
just Indonesia, but also the Netherlands. This is the “shared heritage”, the shared “ourness” that both
side should start discussing it beyond reconciliation and international aid, it should be aimed to “how
are we going to talk about this to our kids?”
This mural has intrigued the interest of Dutch museums, the Dutch Culture Center for International
Cooperation set up a program on the Forum on European Culture in Amsterdam in 31st of May – 3 June
2018. The program will confront invited speakers from former colonized country (including me) with not
just the Netherlands’s resource expert, but also from the UK, the former empire.

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Thank you