On Religion and Interpretation
A kind-of-disclaimer, I'm a free thinker, and have some... Somewhat critical(?) ideas on religion. I don't mean at all to offend, I'm sorry if that's the result anyway, please correct me on any errors I may make.
That being said, I have nothing against religion. Faith is an interesting, intricate concept which I have little personal stake in, but is still fascinating to me from a third-party view nevertheless. I just don't particularly feel that I have any affinity with it.
Now, more to the point. During the trip, in particular during our trips to Borobodor and Perambanan, and later in retrospection, with regards to the performances we saw during the trip.
Our two guides were both clearly, very experienced and invested in their work. they explained both monuments clearly, and definitely had immense knowledge of the history and architecture of both structures, and it was really impressive to hear about the details which I myself would not have picked up, if not for them or some kind of sourcebook. That being said, human bias is inherent within everything we do which has some kind of communicative element, and that kind of perceptual bias, in concept, is interesting to me.
In the case of our guide for Perambanan, it was clear that his own spiritual/religious beliefs had an impact on the way he personally interpreted and explained the carvings. It's inevitable, I think, that our own worldviews impact the way we interpret and view things open to interpretation, but this fact became even clearer in the case of Eddie and Perambanan.
Of course, it's not a bad thing I think. It was interesting to me, to hear the way he interpreted the carvings-- it was an experience I would never get anywhere else, and I think in that sense, perhaps held more value to me than a perfectly factual (although that too, is always up for debate) sourcebook or written text guide.
It made me consider further, the potential implications of interpretation bias (particularly due to religion and spiritual belief, in the case of the art forms we've seen in Yogyakarta) on performance and the arts.
It reminds me of how we were talking about, a lot earlier in this class (and woah have we done a lot of stuff since then...) about how theatre is both "of the world" and "in the world", or at least something to that effect. It seems to me that another way theatre may be "of the world", is in the interpretive process of it. Literally, theatre is made of the world that is surrounding us, by the fact that our interpretation of it too, is shaped by that same world, and we view everything through its lens. The "in the world" to me, is granted by the fact that by our viewing of theatre occurs in the continuum of our current world, and what changes in terms of our perspectives, and/or what we take away from that art, thus changes us, and shapes the way we react to the world thereafter.
In oral-centric art forms like wayang and most of Indonesia's folklore, it's that kind of perception-bias interaction participants of the art form have with the art which interests me. We had discussed in class, briefly, how interpretation literally shapes and changes the art across time, due to the lack of a written text of the stories, and how the individual arts practitioners change the story as they go, as an integral part of the art form. At what point does what is produced cease to be a part of the greyscale that is the original story? When you see more modern takes on wayang, such as wayang hip hop, how are viewers able to clearly put aside interpretations of a certain character as "pop" and thus "not in the continuum"? Basically, where is the tipping point when an individual artist's interpretations breaks his art away from the continuum/tradition which he is a part of, into something else completely?
I have no real answers for this (and I have a feeling there aren't any), but it's something worth thinking about, I suppose.
