I had the opportunity to join the team of Kenduri Rasa program, which is part of the 2023 National Culture Week event in Indonesia. The Kenduri Rasa program is research that began with the book Mustika Rasa which was initiated by Indonesia’s first president, Ir Soekarno. The Mustika Rasa book was designed not only as an effort to archive processed food and drinks originating from various places in Indonesia, the book also contains nutritional information and the benefits of each food ingredient. This book is also Ir Soekarno’s struggle to achieve food sovereignty for Indonesia, which at that time was still a newly independent country.
In this program the Kenduri Rasa team had the opportunity to visit 3 regions in Indonesia, Mandar West Sulawesi, Samosir North Sumatra and Timor East Nusa Tenggara. These 3 regions were chosen based on the diversity of geographical locations. Like Mandar which is located in a coastal area, Samosir is in the Lake Toba area, and Timor is in a mountainous area with land that tends to be dry. Because they are in different geographical locations, they produce different types of food and traditions. Quoting historian JJ Rizal, “A good kitchen is a kitchen that is connected to the surrounding ecosystem”, perhaps this statement can represent our visit to these three areas.
From the Kenduri Rasa curatorial team, Grace Samboh and Enin Suprianto, deliberately chose to learn about food and drinks from local residents’ kitchens, like mother who live in the area we visited. So the hope is that the food and drinks we encounter are part of the food menu that is consumed every day. During our visit we also encountered many ecological problems, such as the loss of endemic fish in Lake Toba, due to the release of predatory fish from outside the area. There are some residents who use the lake area as a fish farm, so the fish food they provide pollutes the water of Lake Toba. It was another matter when in Mandar there was a lot of rubbish scattered around the beach, due to the city government’s lack of attention regarding waste management. In the Timor region, the government planned for rice fields, which required a lot of water irrigation, which was not suitable for the soil in the region, so the project also failed.
We, as people who live in cities, are too dependent on food ingredients provided from outside the region. So we can feel that when the pandemic comes, city residents cannot do much, waiting for food supplies from rural areas which are more independent in producing food from agriculture, livestock and marine products. Maybe our trip can remind us again of the relationship between humans and the natural world around them, and look more deeply at the role of the kitchen and its traditions in our culture and identity today.
Series of Photograph, 2023
