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Benito Lopulalan traces the genesis of Bali's 'cultural tourism', and explores the development of the island as a merchant's paradise.

Among the hassle of Kuta or the noisy traffic of Ubud, traders are watching, hoping that some rich crazy will buy everything in their shop. With its. street vendors, shops, galleries and artshops, Bali is heaven for any shopper, from the big spender to the penny pincher. It also happens to be the capital of the handicrafts trade. In Bali, you can buy anything from the Alaskan to the Australian aboriginal trinket.

Gateway

In the early days of tourism, Bali was marketed as a kind of cultural Eden. As evident in postcards and promo brochures from this era, Bali was projected to the world as a place where the island's unique religious traditions existed in symbiosis with its lush natural environment, and in a way that no other culture of the archipelago did. Nowadays, in the national imagining, Bali represents not so much Indonesia's cultural treasure, as a gateway for the international distribution of products from all over the country.

This is a true story: it is Sumbanese traditional to mark the death of an aristocrat with the carving of a number of monumental stone sculptures - some stylistically decorated, others forming more human shapes - which are placed beside the grave. But when the king of one Sumbanese region died in 1995, there were no carvers on the island strong and fit enough to perform this task. In fact, all Sumba's stone carvers had died bar one seventy year old man whose ill health preventing him from carving. In order to continue the ritual process required of them in the burial of a royal, therefore, the people of Sumba invited some stone carvers from Bali. 
Subsequently, the ceremony went off without a hitch. The obstacle they originally encountered, however, remains - in Sumba, traditional skills are beginning to disappear from contemporary culture.

In Bali, of course, this is not the case since most of the island's traditional skills have been preserved, as they are integral to not only the development of traditional agrarian culture and that of the aristocracy, but also that of the modern, capitalist, merchant culture.In Sumba, carvings continue to have symbolic resonance in modern times, yet the preservation of traditional processes that ensured the passing on of carving skills to the next generation has, clearly, not been considered so important. Conversely, Bali is positively bursting at the seams with carvers, as it is with a number of traditional trades people.

Culture and Harmony

Many people fear the deterioration of Balinese culture. However, what is taking place now is in fact the proliferation of culture, whereby out of Balinese cultural tourism, a commodity culture, a culture of marketing, has been born. Since the 1920s, when the 'island of bare breasts' shook the world, the term 'Balinese culture' has served as a mantra to evoke lush tropical beauty in both its inanimate and human senses. That Bali is widely understood as unique in this regard is invoked in West Papuan born Tapitalu's wry remark that "the Balinese are lucky in that their cultural resources are richer than their natural resources. In Kalimantan or in Papua, the natural environment is much more attractive to wealthy visitors than the local culture." Tapitalu offered a cheeky grin before going on to explain that for the sake of their "attractive natural resources", many of these islands' communities had been alienated from their homelands as, tree by tree, their forests were obliterated and, grain by grain, their earth dug up. In his view, as their timber and minerals "went global" and the payment for those resources went straight to Jakarta, the locals have gone nowhere at all. Seen from this angle, so many local cultures have been lost to modern economic reasoning, as on islands like Papua and Kalimantan the term 'traditional culture' does not have the same mantra-like status as it does in Bali. There, nature is an important commodity and 'culture' an annoying obstacle to its development.

But in Bali this is not the case - or so they say. In Bali, nature and culture co-exist, and do so beautifully many claim, in spite of the fact that here, too, many people are protesting against over development, environmental destruction and the exploitation of local people and their culture - protestations to which the bureaucrats predictably retort: "Which people, and how many of them are there?" they retort for everything in Bali is natural and beautiful - or so they say.

The construction of this image of Bali began with the puputan, the heroic cum tragic ritual suicide of the Balinese knights, which they chose over succumbing to the Dutch invaders, in 1906. To save face before the civilized world of pre-world war I, the Dutch colonisers preserved and promoted the island intensively, thus confirming for the European adventurer that Bali indeedharboured an enticing mystery. Thereafter, Balinese artworks were made available to a much broader market than had hitherto been the case, as tourists took gifts from the colonies back home with them. Many of them remain there, in museums and private collections.

Powerful Nexus

In the 1930s, Walter Spies and his expatriate associates, along with a number of Ubud aristocrats, reoriented Balinese traditional skills away from a conception of such skills as an example of the individual's obligation to the community, and towards the competitive market, where they were understood as examples of individual creativity. In the traditional economy, a craftsperson is rewarded for his work with the appreciation of their local communities. Nowadays, however, much of the financial reward goes to foreign 24 companies, and buyers often act as managers or agents in making suggestions for designs change very much pioneered by the Spies Ubud palace nexus. The involvement of the Ubud aristocrats with Spies, that is, spelt the collaboration of local political and economic power with the power of the global market place. This tradition of collaboration between aristocrats and expatriates has shaped the face of Ubud's art scene and remains strongly in place to date.

Made to Order

Who is the richest man in Bali? The answer to this question appears upon the sign boards advertising just about any Balinese craft studio. The answer is 'Made'...'Made-to-order'. This joke hints at the insidiousness in Bali of the culture of the market. Order' is a command, directed at the producer. Sometimes it involves the payment of a deposit, sometimes it does not. Order is a new mantra, which spells hope for many producers and exporters. Deposit or none, it is undoubtedly a contract, with a packet of money at the end of the production process.

Mande Karta is a small garment producer. His loyal customers give him shirts they have bought in India, Paris or Thailand and order him to copy them. Just like that. In the space of ten days, Mande must find a way to reproduce the shirt, in the same colour and the same design. In ten days he must produce a sample. Mande, who enjoys the "challenge of copying foreign products", inherited his tailoring skills from his mother, a renowned ikat weaver in his village. As a young child he already knew how to make fabric for weaving, but since then he has also developed a feel for foreign tastes and designs. "It's about maintaining a competitive edge," he explains.

In cultural tourism's earliest stages, Bali's handicraft market was overloaded with local traditional products. In the latter part of the eighties, however, pop art and primitive designs began to make their way into the local Industry. The Balinese handicraft industry, that is, became less ethno-centric, more modern, even if the production techniques remained very much traditional.

In Bali, nature and culture co exist, and do so beautifully many claim, in spite of the fact that here, too, many people. pie are protesting against over development, environ. mental destruction and the exploitation of local people and their culture

In a remote corner of Tampaksiring, seal horns are made into crafts that will sell well in Alaska as Eskimo art. The buyer, perhaps an Indonesian or Balinese tourist in Alaska may well have no inkling that the product was made in Bali. The horns are imported from Alaska, carved in Bali and sent back for the Alaskan market. In another corner of Ubud or Kerobokan some people carve digeridoos, decorated with Aboriginal dots and lines, bound for down under. Again, the tourist in Australia would have no clue that the aborigines who made these souvenirs live overseas and frequently attend temple ceremonies.

Similarly, many non-Balinese Indonesian crafts, including traditional 'Papuan' and 'Kalimantan' souvenirs, are also made in Bali - because the Balinese, so the story goes, can make anything. Anything, that is, so long as there is a demand, for Balinese handicrafts are always 'mace to order'.

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