/ Recent content on The Tanimbar Islands Site Hugo -- gohugo.io will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) Mon, 26 Mar 2018 13:37:40 +0000 /page/chapter10/ Mon, 26 Mar 2018 13:37:40 +0000 will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) /page/chapter10/ The jaman moderen is the contemporary age, an age of Christian belief, of the Unity in Diversity of the Indonesian peoples, and of development. It should, having all of these benefits, be a constant and glorious march towards ever greater wealth, bodily wellbeing, material comfort and personal happiness. The jaman moderen is the time of progress and its home is the West, seen both as the site of great material wellbeing as reflected by the mass-media and as the home of Christianity. /page/chapter11/ Mon, 26 Mar 2018 13:37:40 +0000 will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) /page/chapter11/ The sculpture of Tanimbar exhibits a remarkable complexity and variety of forms, which can be seen as a reflection of a corresponding diversity of dynamic cultural forces at play in the life of the Tanimbarese. The challenge for the Tanimbarese – as they perceive it – is to renegotiate the relationship between those forces they see as external to Tanimbar and moderen, and those which they see as internal and tradisional, and hence bring about the transformation of tradition such that it no longer holds up aspirations toward material and spiritual development. /page/chapter12/ Mon, 26 Mar 2018 13:37:40 +0000 will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) /page/chapter12/ It may seem somewhat perverse to relegate two thirds of the sculptors within Tanimbar to an appendix whilst the main text of this study concentrates on the final third. However there are a number of reasons why this seems to me to be not only acceptable, but also necessary. The work of the sculptors of the village of Tumbur, which is the subject of this appendix, has been discussed in great detail by Annamiek Lenssen in her thesis “Main Tangan” It is not my intention to repeat her work here. /page/chapter02/ Mon, 26 Mar 2018 13:37:40 +0000 will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) /page/chapter02/ The fieldwork for this study was carried out on the islands of Yamdena and of Sera. There was insufficient time to travel to the islands of Larat and Fordata in the north, and contacts from these areas informed me (either rightly or wrongly) that there were no active sculptors in these areas. There are reportedly some monumental cement sculptures in Larat, but sources in Yamdena claimed that they were in a state of disrepair, and so this alone did not seem to justify a trip to the northernmost islands. /page/chapter03/ Mon, 26 Mar 2018 13:37:40 +0000 will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) /page/chapter03/ To attempt to write the history of Tanimbarese art may not be an impossible task, however it difficult to see how it could be successfully accomplished. One of the main problems is the scarcity of material, both written documentation and actual artefacts. There are a number reasons for this scarcity. As noted above, in the colonial period contact with the Dutch was sparse, and thus the historical documentation available for those researching the history of the central Moluccas is simply not available for Tanimbar and the surrounding islands. /page/chapter04/ Mon, 26 Mar 2018 13:37:40 +0000 will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) /page/chapter04/ It is clear that in the past the image was seen as the repository, the agency or the mediator of power: the tavu was the site where contact with the ancestors of the house would be made; the kora ulu was the representation of the dangerous power of the crew of warriors, as the boat roared its passage through the waves, and the walut was the residence of the power of the ancestors. /page/chapter05/ Mon, 26 Mar 2018 13:37:40 +0000 will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) /page/chapter05/ Life in contemporary Tanimbar is one of a complex of interacting forces, a fact that is keenly felt by the Tanimbarese. In the early 1980s, when Susan McKinnon carried out her fieldwork in the islands, she was, she says, surprised by the extent to which both the church and the Indonesian state had penetrated all aspects of life in Tanimbar [1992. p.lO] Since the time of McKinnon’s research these twin influences have both strengthened, and it seems from my observations that what McKinnon calls the “indigenous Tanimbarese order” has further lost some of its force. /page/chapter06/ Mon, 26 Mar 2018 13:37:40 +0000 will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) /page/chapter06/ Through the study of a wide cross-section of Tanimbarese carving, it has become appan that underlying the diversity of forms there is a binding and ordering set of ideas and principles. Talk of sculpture in Tanimbar inevitably tends towards conversation about history. It is Tanimbarese ideas of history that the contradictory and conflicting natures of different forms sculpture are collapsed into a unity that contains them, however temporarily, tenuously – and possibly even dangerously. /page/chapter07/ Mon, 26 Mar 2018 13:37:40 +0000 will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) /page/chapter07/ Although the Tanimbarese live in the jaman moderen, that is not to say that they see themselves as living entirely within a condition of modernity, as expressed by the idea of the jaman moderen set out in the previous section. Life within Tanimbar is not seen as a march towards ever greater perfection materially and spiritually: the Tanimbarese are pragmatists to some extent in this matter. The jaman moderen should be a time of unhindered progress and development, a glorious progression from darkness to light; but this is patently not the case, and the Tanimbarese themselves are aware of the fact that life in Tanimbar in the present time is far from satisfactory: there is still disease, suffering, immorality, hardship and drought. /page/chapter08/ Mon, 26 Mar 2018 13:37:40 +0000 will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) /page/chapter08/ The following three sections will be a consideration of the ways in which Tanimbarese artists use these concepts of tradition, history and modernity, in an attempt to transcend the problem of the contradiction between the tradisional and the moderen in their lives, whilst seeking an identity for themselves as Tanimbarese. The study will concentrate on the way in which the tradisional is modified and stripped of its power such that it is no longer a a force hindering progress (kemajuan) but rather it is tamed and brought under control so that it too may play a part in overcoming the unsatisfactoriness of the present. /page/chapter09/ Mon, 26 Mar 2018 13:37:40 +0000 will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) /page/chapter09/ The jaman pertengahan, the Middle Ages of Tanimbarese history, is the age of the ancestors, of a distinctively Tanimbarese way of life which embraces, as has been noted above, both the natural and the cultural orders. This ages was heralded by the coming of the nobleman Atuf with his sisters and his slaves from the island of Babar in the West, and made possible by the miraculous power of his lance which effected the severance of night and day, sea and land, male and female, and hence set into motion the dynamics of time, change and growth. /page/story-crab-girl/ Mon, 26 Mar 2018 13:37:39 +0000 will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) /page/story-crab-girl/ Introduction This is one of my favourite Tanimbarese stories. It is adapted from the ethnography of Petrus Drabbe, which I consulted in its Indonesian translation by Karel Mouw. Crab Girl Once a mother gave birth to eleven sons. Her twelfth child was a daughter, but when she came to be born, she was born in the form of a crab. One day, her brothers decided to set out on a long sea journey, as young men will, and they said to their mother, ‘Bring us our sister the crab, because we want to travel with her. /page/chapter01/ Mon, 26 Mar 2018 13:37:39 +0000 will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) /page/chapter01/ The Tanimbar islands lie in the Arafura sea, to the East of Timor, a part of the arced chain islands that leads from Sumatra, through Java, Bali and Nusa Tenggara to meet with Irian Jaya. Tanimbar is almost due north of Darwin, Australia, and lies south of the provincial capital town Ambon. Administratively it is a part of Maluku Tenggara, or Southeast Maluku, which includes the islands of Aru, Kei – Tual on Kei being the administrative capital of the district – and the islands to the west of Tanimbar towards Timor: Damar, Babar, Kisar and Leti. /page/story-shit-baby/ Mon, 26 Mar 2018 13:37:39 +0000 will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) /page/story-shit-baby/ Introduction This story is translated and adapted from the collection Nangin Tanemprar: Cerita Rakyat Dari Indonesia published by the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Tanimbarese friends told me that they regarded this not as a story or a folk-tale, but instead as an incident from Tanimbarese history. Shit Baby Once there lived a husband and a wife. They had been married for four years, but had not yet borne a child. /page/about/ Mon, 26 Mar 2018 13:32:39 +0000 will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) /page/about/ Why I set up this site… Perhaps the best way to explain why I think it was worth going to the trouble of putting this site together is to tell a story. Shortly before I left Tanimbar in 1995, one day during the rainy season, my friend Benny Fenyapwain knocked on my door. Under his arm he had a tape recorder and, on a fading tape, a recording of an old man from the village of Sifnana. /page/book/ Mon, 26 Mar 2018 13:32:39 +0000 will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) /page/book/ Stealing With the Eyes In 2018, I published my Stealing With the Eyes: Imaginings and Incantations in Indonesia (Haus Publications). It is a memoir of anthropology, art, indigenous Tanimbarese beliefs and sickness, written with the hindsight of a quarter century. The book has had some great reviews here are a few: ‘A beautifully written evocation of a journey into the village communities of eastern Indonesia, and a remarkable meditation on the uneasy business of travelling to foreign lands in search of stories. /page/contact/ Mon, 26 Mar 2018 13:32:39 +0000 will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) /page/contact/ Get in touch If you want to get in touch, the best way of doing so is by using the contact form on Will Buckingham’s website. /page/sculpture/ Mon, 26 Mar 2018 11:50:48 +0000 will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) /page/sculpture/ In 1994, I travelled to Tanimbar to study the work of sculptors in the islands. On my return from Tanimbar, I wrote a lengthy academic report on art and Tanimbarese conceptions of time, history and change. This report went to my sponsors and funders, but ever since has languished in a bottom drawer, so I thought it worth reproducing here just in case anybody is interested. This online version of the report is a minimally edited version of the original report. /page/stories/ Sun, 25 Mar 2018 13:37:39 +0000 will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) /page/stories/ There are a great many wonderful stories from the Tanimbar Islands. Perhaps the most famous of all these stories is that of Atuf, Tanimbar’s culture hero who speared the sun into a million pieces. This page has has a link to three of my favourite tales. Shit Baby A story about a childless couple, and their unexpected, but short-lived, happiness. Read the story here The Sacred Pool A tale told to me by a friend in the village of Lorulun, about two young lovers, a talking fish, and the origin of buffalo in the Tanimbar islands. /page/story-sacred-pool/ Sun, 25 Mar 2018 13:37:39 +0000 will@willbuckingham.com (Will Buckingham) /page/story-sacred-pool/ Introduction In Tanimbar, I was told that something around fifteen people a year are killed by buffalo. An English naturalist I had met in Saumlaki had insisted that they were peaceable, even shy, creatures, and that they did not attack unless provoked. Nevertheless, it paid to be circumspect whilst walking at night…. How Tanimbar came to be populated with buffalo in the first place remains, like many things, a mystery.