Just a breather from the stress. Today I am talking to Yolande Melsert. She is cultural attachée of the Dutch embassy in the Indonesian capital Jakarta. Because of the corona-lockdown, she is temporarily back in the Netherlands. Reason to look back on an eventful year in relations between the Netherlands and its former colony.
'Indonesia is still a young country. You notice that it is still very much discovering its own dna. It is nice that now in the Netherlands the museums are changing the signs. The stories about our common history are being told in a different way. That is certainly true there too. But above all, they are looking ahead. This even goes so far that when I brought up the colonial past, they said: now you shouldn't put on too big a trousers, because we have had a lot of other rulers in the past than just you.'
Listen to the podcast here!
Of course, the situations here, about compensation for the total stagnation of the cultural sector in the Netherlands, do not pass her by: 'I see everyone trying enormously to map things out. I fall under it myself, as the Erasmus House gets a subsidy from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is a big black hole we are looking into now, if we want to know how long this is going to take and how we will get out of it. In Indonesia, it's simple: nothing is happening there at all. There is sometimes some money on a project basis, but often that is veiled state propaganda.'
Without subsidies, the art world in Indonesia manages things differently: 'There are a lot of artists who work together in communities. Then they share everything with each other. If one sells a work, he shares the proceeds with all the others.'
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français 
%20met%20Yolande%20Melsert,%20Cultureel%20Attachée%20in%20Indonesië:%20‘Het%20is%20mooi%20dat%20nu%20in%20Nederlandse%20musea%20de%20bordjes%20verhangen%20worden.’){kind=link}