Ngurah Rai Airport

Bukit - Bali - Indonesia

I < 3 Arak Bali

Bali has not got more expensive for tourists. Bali has got more segregated. Places are getting gentrified and taken over by smoothie bowls (yoga, golf, surfing). And expensive global spirits are replacing the local Arak. The fort-like resorts and gated communities are popping up here and there. The Balinese are still poor. Estimated 85% of the tourism economy in Bali is non-Balinese owned. The parties on cheap Arak were open for everyone (with a few bars and clubs as an exception). The new standard of clubs in Bali with luxury spirits and expensive beer are without the locals and only for the most privileged and rich.

This picture is photographed on the Tolak Reklamasi demonstration in Denpasar 25 August 2018.

    

THE MOST EXOTIC PICTURE EVER PHOTOGRAPHED.

I work on a project in Arugam Bay, Sri Lanka, that is a distant and exotic place for me. Through the project, I intentionally intend to be in a colonial gaze. At the same time, it’s a gaze that’s already my own. From a global perspective, I already represent the role I now consider myself to play.

I'm in a role as a missionary in an American Christian surf organization. I do this as an art performance. Nobody on site knows that I see my participation as something related to my art practice. I perform a role in a group that I'm critical of. I'm carrying a camera with me and I am photographing a lot. The others in the group do also carry around cameras. Many photographs and video clips are being shot in an environment that is exotic to us. A difference is that I am primarily interested in targeting ourselves. When days and weeks pass, the situation becomes more known to me. At the same time, I probably exoticize and generalize the missionary role in an unfair manner. And maybe I also over-identify me with the research subject. I make a series of overthrows and break the rules in ways that are more or less typical of anthropologists throughout history.

After being away for 2 months and 2 weeks, I've returned home to the Swedish summer via airplanes, airports and airport buses. I'm in Mälarhöjden where I live in a collective with friends. We share a garden villa in a neighborhood with a lot of quite old but very nice houses. My room is still occupied since I've rented it out temporarily to an exchange student while being away. I do now make the living room into my sleeping area. I´m laying down on a pile of mattresses that really are too soft in combination with each other. I'm so tired that I don't make an effort to separate them.

The days are very hot in Arugam Bay. The place is located on the southeastern side of the island of Sri Lanka. Strong sunlight is shining through the window. We are as missionaries visiting a welcoming Sri Lankan family.

As I look around, I wonder how the picture on the wall looks so familiar. There is something with the color scale. The various shades of green that are broken up by some reddish and brown. A bookshelf is placed in the spartan-decorated room. It's very similar to a shelf in our collective in Sweden. And just as it stands. I'm getting a nice curious smile on my lips when I see that it also contains the book The Aesthetics of Resistance by Peter Weiss. On the wall is a Mona Lisa poster mounted on a wooden board. The same as we have in our collective in Mälarhöjden! It's also worn in an almost identical way. The feeling in the body is overwhelming. I'm rising up out of the several layers of mattresses. I reach for the camera to start photographing the room. I focus, and when I press the shutter button, the perspective changes.

Bali - indonesia "All We Do is Surf"

War is over - Obey

Bali - Indonesia "War is over - Obey"

Tolak Reklamasi - Denpasar Bali 25 August 2018 - For Bali

The Balinese Tolak Reklamasi movement is protesting the exploitation of Bali by huge international companies. They are not completely against all tourism or a group that only thinks The Balinese or Hindus is the right. There are people from other areas and other religious views supporting and participating in Tolak Reklamasi (Reject the reclamation). It is a people´s movement. The main goal is to stop The Benoa Bay exploitation. Reject the reclamation of The Benoa Bay.

There is now a plan for a 3 billion dollar tourism project in The Benoa Bay area. That is about building artificial islands with resorts for rich people. This will also include huge harbors for cruising ships. This reclamation will destroy a natural area of mangrove trees and has far worse environment causes in Bali overall.

There have been fishermen in a more smaller scale harbor in this area. They have been refusing to move from there. Then the stories about this are different depending on whom you talk to. But what is for sure is that some days ago around 40 ships got burnt in a fire disaster. And this is right in the spot where the building of this mega-tourism complex should go on. In all the media I’ve been reading, internationally, about this fire disaster, the only explanation I get is that Bali has to pour safety for fires and that the boats have been to close to each other in the harbor.

Some locals have other versions. One version is that people, or the government, with interest in this exploitation project, has burnt the ships. A friend of mine send me the same kind of article as the ones I already read recently about this incident, but with a date from 2017. The causes of the fire that year, as with this year fire, are not solved. Just some thoughts are presented about that it could be about electricity. In 2017 it was only three boats that got on fire thanks to helping from 15 fire engines and two boats deployed to the scene. In 2018 the fire was more massive and it went extremely fast. 40 ships got gulped in the fire this time. It might be an electrical short circuit that caused the fire. But this is widely discussed.

”The negative aspects of unrestricted tourist development have been highlighted by the Bali Tolak Reklamasi movement, including unregulated mining of limestone and coral for hotel and airport construction, coastal erosion, plastic waste, sewage pollution, and water source diversions from the Subak water irrigation system towards areas that no longer have existing water tables.”

”…estimated 85 percent of the tourism economy in Bali is non-Balinese owned, and the tourism industry accounts for 65 percent of Bali’s water consumption.”