In a forested area outside Palembang, a dancer dressed in Aesan Paksangko, the intricate ceremonial attire of South Sumatra, performs the tari tanggai, a traditional welcome dance. The scene shifts abruptly: she now stands amid charred trees. She reaches for a full-face gas mask and continues her dance.
The scene is part of a performance art project titled Tarian Kehancuran Budaya (The Dance of Cultural Destruction) by the Palembang-based art collective Jaga Api, which has gone viral on Indonesian social media.
Pebri Yansyah, 33, a visual artist and member of Jaga Api, said: “In South Sumatra, it feels like the fires keep happening every year. So the idea that I had was: is the haze our culture now?”
As smoke from fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan once more spreads across South-East Asia, driving up respiratory illnesses, causing school closures and disrupting flights, individuals are responding with more than just complaints.
From creating memes and works of art to implementing more practical measures such as providing masks and healthcare, people both within and outside Indonesia are coming up with various ways to express their concerns and show solidarity with one another.
For many, the initial response has been humour. In Singapore and Malaysia, content creators and netizens have taken aim at the Indonesian government’s handling of the haze crisis in various ways.
Singaporean content creator Calvin Chua, for example, posted a video repeatedly asking “Who do we fine?” for the smoke enveloping many parts of the island.
Malaysian content creator @isawkwardguy, who routinely makes videos poking fun at the friendly rivalry between South-East Asian countries, made a video mocking Indonesian government spokesman Syahganda Nainggolan’s claim that the country also sends oxygen to Malaysia.
“Thank you for the oxygen,” he says sarcastically.
Instead of taking offence, many Indonesians joined in. “Fine our government, you have the people’s blessing,” one reply to Chua’s post read.
For Jaga Api, social media turned out to be an unexpected amplifier. The group drew inspiration from Tarian Kehancuran Budaya, a 2024 painting by Pebri, which was part of a series of works featuring masks.
They adapted it into a performance, video and photo series, which was shot on Sept 7.
The group premiered the video at a public forum in Palembang in October, where civil society groups encouraged them to post the work online.
The response surprised them. “We used local symbols from South Sumatra, so we thought only people from South Sumatra would relate,” Pebri said.
Instead, it spread across Indonesia, garnering tens of thousands of likes and drawing the attention of popular Indonesian social media aggregators such as USS Feed and Cretivox.
“Art may not be the solution, but it can be an inspiration for the solution,” Pebri said.
The work has inspired at least one other group: in Ketapang, West Kalimantan, Zwageri Generation – the youth division of non-profit conservation organisation YIARI – has choreographed and performed its own dance.
Photographs posted by the group on Oct 17 show young dancers in traditional Dayak clothing, gas masks and rubber boots dancing on burnt peatland.
“The ground was actually still warm when we got there,” Dieka Pertiwi, education and awareness manager at YIARI, said.
The dancers were performing Ma’alap Senggayung, a ritual practised by the Dayak Pesaguan people to seek blessings from their ancestors for a fruitful harvest during the tree-flowering season.
“What are we going to pray for when the trees are already gone?” Dieka said. “This is our way of raising this issue in a way that resonates more with others, instead of directly criticising those in power.” — The Straits Times/ANN
