Free Schools

FREE SCHOOLS AS
TOOLS FOR INCLUSION
Tiny Toones and Arte Moris

Nuraini Juliastuti

This chapter explores intersections of the visual arts and education by analysing the development of free school and classes organized by Tiny Toones (Phnom Penh, Cambodia) and Arte Moris Art Centre (Dili, Timor Leste). I argue that Tiny Toones and Arte Moris not only serve as a model for alternative schooling, but emerge as spaces for nurturing local strategies for everyday sustainability.

I conceptualize the ‘studying-turn’ as a method for reimagining the usefulness of an alternative space for a wider social ecosystem. I focus on various layers of teaching and learning practices to understand the vernacular vocabularies of the making of teachers, students, classes, and friendship-based learning methods. As such, I seek to understand the meaning of developing a free school and studying together. My research shows that Tiny Toones and Arte Moris serve as tools for inclusion to access equality in education systems. Tiny Toones creates a structure of freestyle education for children.

Arte Moris serves as a free art school which develops into a medium to facilitate the sustainability of an artist community. It functions as practice, in the ethics of living together.

Keywords:

⤷  Free Education

⤷ Collective Learning

⤷ Non-Knowledge

⤷   Sustainability

INTRODUCTION

This chapter examines the ‘free school’ practices of Tiny Toones and Arte Moris. Tiny Toones is a Phnom Penh-based organization that focuses on young people in Cambodia. Arte Moris is a free art school based in Dili, Timor Leste. The establishment of Tiny Toones and Arte Moris provides an avenue for exploring the link between art and pedagogy. My research poses direct questions about youth culture, cultural infrastructure, a sense of crisis, and the development of agency that shapes a collective vision. Tiny Toones’ and Arte Moris’ long-standing practices reveal a relationship between doing art and the creation of collective sustainability mechanisms that intersect with the organization of the spaces. I elaborate the ‘studyingturn’ and the notion of ‘studying together’ as both inter-relational thinking, and a mechanism to develop a long-term cultural strategy from below.

Tiny Toones was founded during the post-Khmer Rouge period, when the country had attempted to achieve normalization through the assistance of various international NGOs, UN bodies, and capital investments. The country strives to become a more democratic nation, while still healing from the wounds of internal conflicts and wars. My research provides insights into how the organization of Tiny Toones is also informed by the volunteering culture, and by various workers of these international organizations.

Arte Moris was founded when Timor Leste was in the process of transitioning into a newly independent country. The Indonesian New Order military regime invaded East Timor (or Portuguese Timor) shortly after the Revolutionary Front of an Independent East Timor (Fretilin) gained independence from Portugal in November 1975. During the New Order regime, East Timor was the twenty-seventh province of Indonesia. Following ‘Reformation 1998’¹ in Indonesia, seventy-eight and a half per cent of the East Timorese people voted for separation from Indonesia through an Independence Referendum. The conceptualization of a ‘studying-turn’ grows from my observations of various independent initiatives and artist collectives that develop various education or learning activities as the basis of their work. These organizations function as both independent art spaces and public learning spaces. The ‘studying-turn’ involves two ways of doing. First, it attempts to provide learning spaces for the public. Second, it attempts to reframe certain spaces as studying spaces. It shows an intention of going back to studying. Here I use Stefano Harney and Fred Moten’s concept of ‘study.’² Harney and Moten situate the act of ‘studying’ in between debt and credit; studying is located between what we can do, and what we fail to do. It assumes the readiness to accept the condition in which the future does not always lead to an expected outcome.

This chapter is divided in two parts: the first explores the learning processes in Tiny Toones and the diverse narratives that inform its programme; the second part explores how Arte Moris has emerged as an independent art institution that facilitates the survival process of an artist community. Both these sections include field-work descriptions and reflections which bring to life the spaces and faces in these places.

Free schools, as organized by Tiny Toones and Arte Moris, provide the ground for imagining a pattern of alternative education projects embedded in the formation of independent arts organizations. In the context of Tiny Toones and Arte Moris, my research shows that organizing a school means to perform a new mechanism for caring about local ecosystems.

In the context studied, education is both the product of crisis and a way of dealing with the crisis. This research argues that doing education through art is an intuitive act to be performed in a socially challenged context. Further, the studying-turn is inter-relational thinking that can connect art and community.

In labelling Tiny Toones and Arte Moris as independent art organizations, I use my definition of alternative spaces. An alternative space, as expounded in my previous research, refers to new cultural spaces—an artistrun space, gallery, performance space, or discussion place—for thoughts that would otherwise be ‘homeless’ in the cultural spaces formed and designed by established cultural authorities.³ These spaces are composed of a group of individuals with different backgrounds and trajectories who develop their own attitudes to test their thoughts on arts and culture.

Their works range from art production and research and are all conducted with clear interdisciplinary intention: be it for the provision of art and culture that in turn supports wider infrastructure, or to facilitate dialogue with policy makers, or to organize activities that can be classified as community empowerment. An alternative space serves as a model platform for artists and cultural activists to fulfill their visionary ideas.⁴

TINY TOONES: AN ARCHITECTURE OF FREESTYLE SCHOOLING HELPING CREATE EQUALITY IN EDUCATION SYSTEMS

Tiny Toones’ founder, Tuy Sobil (better known as KayKay or KK), was born in a refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border in 1977. Like thousands of Khmer people who populated the camp, KK’s family fled from the country to escape the Khmer Rouge regime and other internal military conflicts.

In 1984, when KK was seven years old, he immigrated to Long Beach, California, with his family. The number of Cambodian refugee communities in Long Beach is reported to be the largest outside Cambodia and the centre of the Cambodian diaspora.⁵ A major event in KK’s life led to his deportation from the United States in 2004. He arrived in Phnom Penh later that year: everything felt unfamiliar, as Cambodia was a ‘foreign’ country for him. KK found himself scrapingby with various jobs in the city’s foreign and local NGOs. He observed that there were not many activities conducted specifically for children in Phnom Penh’s urban landscape. As a skillful breakdancer, KK opened his house to provide free breakdance classes for kids and teenagers in Phnom Penh. Tiny Toones grew from a dance centre to a free school providing, in addition to dance classes, free classes in English, mathematics, and Khmer.

The need for an actual physical space for education for children elevated Tiny Toones to an important position in the community. In particular, Tiny Toones became pivotal for children who are excluded from the mainstream education system (because they lack of state-made documents to access school).

KK explains that the establishment of Tiny Toones originated from his desire to create an alternative for after school care. It was not intended to fulfill the role of a standard school in the national school system. KK described his education trajectory as one full of disruption; for example, he has not yet fully mastered writing in Khmer. He has channeled his personal aspirations for having a sufficient level of Khmer into elements of the school programme, which focus on improving students’ skills in reading and writing in Khmer.

Susan Needham’s long-term research in the Cambodian community in Long Beach explains that in the nineteen-eighties and nineteen-nineties, many Cambodian parents were concerned that their children were not mastering their native language. This led to the organization of various language classes managed by the local Buddhist temple, churches, colleges, student groups, and other bodies in the community.⁶ It suggests that the development of Tiny Toones is based on KK’s knowledge and personal history of engaging in this kind of alternative education during his life in Long Beach. Needham’s research also asserts that more than a matter of sustaining the connections with the homeland, the need to teach Khmer is based on the respect for the symbolic meanings of the written characters.

It is rooted in the religious pagoda-based learning system. The Buddhist temple held an important value in the Cambodian educational institution until it was shifted into a more modern schooling with French influence.⁷ It is beyond the remit of this chapter to explore the personal aspect of KK’s education. However, I use his specific story of educational disruption to understand the diverse narratives that inform the idea of schooling in Tiny Toones. Tiny Toones sits at the confluence of principles that value informal schooling and learning practices. In writing about Cambodian authors, Roger Nelson argues that their rejection of narrative linearity stems both from the newness of novel as an artistic format and the character of the national education.8 Pagoda-based education offered informality, openness, and an unstructured style of teaching. Such a learning style was also part of the disciplining project under French colonial rule. However, Nelson puts forward the thought that the ‘stop-and-start nature of education in Cambodia was, apparently hard to displace.’⁹ During my fieldwork, I visited Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, known as Security Prison 21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge regime. The prison formerly functioned as an education institution called Tuol Svay Pray High School. The existence of this prison, in the place of a school, shows the extent of disruption in the Cambodian education process.

In the following sections, I reflect on my field notes to examine how Tiny Toones organizes the learning process for it students; I explore the formal and informal characters involved in the school and their struggles to help frame its existence as a response to the unequal access to education that many children face in the country.

The Payback Mechanism and Sustainability of the School

Slick’s story.

Slick joined Tiny Toones in 2006. That was 13 years ago; he was 16 years old. He was a drug user at the time. ‘Ice has been a big problem for the youths in Cambodia,’ said Slick.

According to Slick, KK approached him and told him to stop using drugs. That was how Slick’s story with Tiny Toones began. As it turns out, he really loved breakdancing. He found it liberating; it made him feel more confident. Slick started to learn about breakdancing from various sources—particularly, bingeing on YouTube. As his dance skills improved, KK began to ask him to share these skills with the younger kids.

Today, Slick holds multiple roles in Tiny Toones: besides teaching dance, he also teaches English and works as a kind of operational manager and a mediator in the school. Slick speaks English well. This makes him a reliable partner for some volunteer-teachers who have limited Khmer language abilities. Mimi, another English teacher, says she often felt frustrated when students seemed to not fully understand what she said; this frustration grew when she was not able to convey certain messages to the students in Khmer either. In events like this,
Slick often comes to the rescue. The kids like him.

(Field notes, 2 March 2019)

Tiny Toones has moved locations on several occasions. Its current location is tucked away in a narrow alley of a kampong [urban village] in Chbar Ampov market area in central Phnom Penh. A passage connects the front gate to the small yard at the back of the building. There are two basketball rings in the yard, and both sides of the passage are lined with classrooms.

There is another building behind the yard where the office is located. The walls of the classrooms and the yard are decorated with murals. If we were to stand right in front of the basketball ring, a mural with KK’s face would be facing us.

Tiny Toones does not have a fixed curriculum system. Its daily activities are divided into morning and afternoon sessions. Each session includes three to four classes (English, Khmer, mathematics, and dance). Depending on the availability of volunteers or other organizations who are willing to contribute their skills, there are additional classes such as drawing, music, computer, or skateboarding classes. The number of students who attend ranges from fifteen to fifty. There are occasions where the number is smaller.

The class organization in Tiny Toones partly depends on the availability of various NGO workers who are willing to serve as volunteers. Tiny Toones has benefitted from the popularity of Cambodia as a site for practicing what Maria Koleth refers to as ‘volunteer tourism.’¹⁰ The volunteer tourists pay with their interest in working at various historical conservation sites, orphanages, educational, and health institutions.

Their practices function as personal exercises to learn about hope. Koleth’s research narrates that such practices are often not accompanied with efforts to contextualize this vonluteer experience within the country’s violent history.

Internatinoal volunteers usually work in Tiny Toones for six to ten months. After their teaching period is done, they go back to their previous employment or embark on a new position in a different organization.

In some cases, Tiny Toones uses its growing network of successful breakdance performers, ‘B Boys’ and other artists who visit Phnom Penh for performances, to volunteer to teach the dance class during their stay in the city.

During my research I noticed the frequent use of the word ‘outreach’ to describe the creation of attractive and relevant activities to involve children from different communities. This term is indicative of the influence of the NGO world on the school; it informs the way that Tiny Toones staff imagines the profile of the students attending the school. Though more research in this area is needed, it is clear that Tiny Toones is situated within the operationalization of various NGOs, and as such it lends and uses certain vocabularies from the NGO world to describe its own activities.

Although Tiny Toones depends on foreign volunteers to fill teacher positions, my research indicates that these foreign volunteers are highly dependent on local staff at Tiny Toones. For example, as my field notes above suggest, a foreign teacher-volunteer like Mimi always depended on the local teachers to mediate the communication with the students.

I note this to emphasize the strong role of the local people, something that differentiates Tiny Toones from other organizations that work with children (that are fully dependent on international staff). This factor reveals the potential future sustainability of the organization.

I observe that Tiny Toones employs former students to become its teachers. In conversation, KK talks about this hiring as part of the ‘trust system’ and ‘payback mechanism’ in the organization. The system provides job opportunities for former students and creates an established system of transition, from being students to becoming teachers. This can be understood as further creating a mechanism to facilitate ongoing connectivity between the former students and the school.

Regularity and repetition

• •

Gatari and I were cramped in a van along with the students who were going home after the morning class session finished. There were fifteen students in the van. Jacky the van driver is a former Tiny Toones student. Occasionally Jacky also helps teach the dance class when Slick is not around.

It took almost an hour to get all the students to their homes. We drove around the sprawling suburbs and slums under the Manivong Bridge. After dropping off the last student in Sangkat Preaek Pra area, Jacky parked the van under the

shades of trees in the corner of a quiet neighborhood.

Jacky spent an hour there before he turned on the car engine again, and went to pick up another group of students for the afternoon class. The car followed a slightly different route. In different spots, the students stood in front of their

houses, or the alleys where their houses were located, along the route. They waived as Jacky’s car approached. The car was a bit more packed than it was in the morning. I recognized some students who attended the morning session came again to the school for the afternoon session.

(Field notes, 5 March 2019)

Tiny Toones provides free transportation for the students. There are two Tuk-Tuks and a van that operate as a kind of school bus system for the students. The availability of free transport is not only intended to create ease for the students, but it also ensures the students’ regular participation.

There is a sense of regularity mixed with formality in the organization of Tiny Toones. For example, before the learning sessions start, the students congregate in the yard for an assembly. The students address the teachers as krou [teacher]. The classes are arranged by specific subjects, and programmed at a designated time. I assume that the formality is intended to create an impression—that Tiny Toones be perceived as a real school. But as my field notes suggest, Tiny Toones indeed does perform as a real school for many students. It is the only kind of school that they can access. The flexible curriculum system allows the teachers to improvise with the teaching materials. There is potential for repetition in the class. There is also freedom, as this flexibility does not entail any schoolwork. There is no limitation to the duration of study. Tiny Toones allows the students to be students as long as they want to be. Just like those who study in a pagoda, Tiny Toones’ students are also allowed to leave the education any time. The students attend Tiny Toones everyday to learn together, but also to play with their friends. Tiny Toones accommodates all these various needs.

ARTE MORIS: HOW TO BECOME AN ARTIST AND THE MAKING OF ETHICS ON HOW TO LIVE TOGETHER

The emergence of various sanggar [informal education institutions] in post-independence Timor Leste plays an important role, within the context of artist collectives, in nurturing the development of young artists.¹¹ In the Indonesian context, a sanggar refers to a space where a group of people learn to practice a certain kind of art under the auspices of a mentor. Leonor Veiga’s research suggests that the use of the term sanggar in Timor Leste might stem from the active roles of the Indonesian-speaking Timor Leste artists in the local art scene. Language skills usually provide insights into the personal history of people’s education. Those who were born in the nineteen-ninties usually do not posses Indonesian language skills unless they learn it from the sinetron [Indonesian telenovela] broadcasted by Indonesian television stations.

During the early development of modern Indonesian art, when the country was still in the early stages of developing a national consciousness, art associations played an important role not only in defining the relation between art and politics, but also in defining the meaning of ‘doing art.’¹² A sanggar is considered an informal education institution; teaching methods are informal and students and teachers often live and work together. The communal dimension of a sanggar is similar to what can be found in Arte Moris in post-independence Timor Leste, particularly in regards to its functioning as a collective. I use this aspect of commonality to discuss the kinds of mechanisms that the members have created to manage their shared goals as a community.

Luca and Gabi Ganser, the founders of Arte Moris, left Timor Leste in 2012. Their departure serves as a starting point to explore the new phase of a collective learning process in the organization. My writing narrates the transformation that Arte Moris has gone through from a sanggar into an artist collective. It entails the changes inherent in the learning process of an aspiring artist. The process changes from learning from a teacher, or a mentor, to learning together, to become an artist.

I dedicate some parts of this chapter to discuss different teacher figures that inform Arte Moris—from the founders Luca and Gabi Ganser, to the volunteers, to the peers-turned-study partners. I show how the aspiration of the members to become artists is interlinked with the idea and ambition to sustain the existence of Arte Moris as a space. Arte Moris emerged as a new artist collective in the process.

I consider Loïc Wacquant’s concept of teaching as a collective enterprise to elucidate the learning context of Arte Moris.¹³ In Wacquant’s research about a boxing gym in the Woodlawn area in Chicago in the mid-nineteen-eighties, he describes the workings of the transmission of a kind of ‘pugilistic knowledge.’ He observed that boxing skills, both in tacit and explicit forms, were handed down from the trainers to the boxers in a collective manner. The boxing gym appeared as a family where the members took care of each other. This created a condition whereby the progress of a boxer becomes part of the collective responsibility.

Some studies and reports on Arte Moris define the school as a ‘free school’ and the teaching method of Luca and Gabi Ganser as ‘free style.’¹⁴ The meaning of ‘free style’ here refers to the fact that both founders did not create a specific curriculum on which to base their teaching practices.

I connect these observations to the notion of teaching as a collective enterprise, forwarded by Wacquant. We can use this to investigate and understand what kinds of knowledge and non-knowledge circulate in Arte Moris. What kind of capacities do the members need to have to intuit that a certain learning activity can lead to useful knowledge?

Many studies of contemporary art history in Timor Leste focus on the narratives of traditional art¹⁵ and the revival of traditional elements,¹⁶ the rise of mural artists and the role of the walls as ‘public forums’¹⁷ and as a space to rewrite national identity,18 and the power of art as the driving force for social change,¹⁹ and art’s healing, therapeutic, and uniting energies.²⁰ I propose that the study of contemporary art in Timor Leste will be enriched by taking into account the condition of cultural production and the well-being of cultural producers. J.K. Gibson-Graham, Jenny Cameron, and Stephen Healy propose the idea of well-being, which encapsulates the interaction between five elements: ‘material well-being, occupational well-being, social well-being, community well-being, and physical well-being.’²¹

My definition of well-being concerns itself not only with the existence of Arte Moris as a space, but also with the people who activate the space. And my study further shifts a common perspective from seeing the visual performance as the ultimate form of cultural expression, to a mode of viewing art as a collective project. To view Arte Moris as a collective project means to move away from emphasizing the works of the members of the organization, and instead to understand this work as one part of long-term cultural strategy.

Most of the people that I met in Arte Moris are in the seventeen to thirty-five age range. The population below age thirty-five constitutes seventy-four percent of the total population in Timor Leste.²² According to the recent Timor Leste government report, the fast growing working age population ‘requires strong investment in skills and the creation of decent jobs’—one of the key areas in the country that needs to be strengthened.²³

The sustainability of an independent art school intersects with this young demographic’s sense of vulnerability, and with the survival strategy of the youth generation, navigating the post-Indonesian New Order regime of Timor Leste.

Arte Moris set up various ways for managing their living and working space: collective cleaning, collective gardening, and collective cooking. Such cooperative housekeeping can be traced to the habits of many artist communities in managing their dual-function studio and living spaces, and transforming them into a productive working space and a liveable place. The term ‘cooperative housekeeping’ here is inspired from the materialist feminist tradition, which focused its works on creating feminist homes aiming for equality for women. The proponents of this movement had created various design inventions and forms of domestic reforms revolved around public houses, socialized housework, and child care.²⁴ I find it useful to employ ‘cooperative housekeeping’ as a lens through which I can explore how an artist community like Arte Moris directs the aspiration of the members to become artists, through management of their space. To be an artist embodies personal aspirations. When the process of achieving these is conducted through living together with other aspiring individuals, it becomes a collective endeavour.

I consider Marie Mies and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen’s view on ‘housework’ in the context of cultural production.²⁵ Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen assert that in order to promote a just perspective of the contemporary social movement, one needs to renew a perspective of women in cultural production. They propose a subsistence, or ‘life production’ perspective, as opposed to ‘commodity production.’ I use this concept to develop a connection between collective responsibility and support systems in contemporary art. To talk about support means to talk about a certain kind of organizing and caring work that is often gendered, or discoursed in certain ways.

In the following passages, I reflect on my field notes to explore how Arte Moris emerged to become a space where the members not only train themselves to become artists but more importantly to survive together as an artist community.

A Free Art School, Productivity,
and Opportunities through Art
•
Iliwatu, or Ili for short, took us to see the Arte Moris gallery this afternoon. We had been chatting away at the porch of the pavilion at the back part of the building complex. This pavilion is used as the office of the organization. Some parts of this pavilion are allocated as the library and the art supply shop.
Ili said that they intend to create a cafe in the future. Next to the pavilion is the garden, the pond, and the favourite hang-out spot for everyone here. The gallery is located in the main building of the complex. The artworks displayed in the gallery are mainly paintings.

The themes of these paintings are predominantly personal expressions, Timor Leste culture, and the struggle of Timor Leste people during the Indonesian occupation. There are many three dimensional objects lying on the floor—various figurines made of wood sculpture, indicating the strong wood-carving and sculptural tradition in Timor Leste.

There is a classroom situated at the back part of the gallery. The classroom is big and can be used as a multipurpose space. The structure of the class seems to follow the conventional rules: a set of chairs and wooden benches are arranged next to each other. There are easels on top of the benches. The walls around the room are filled with charcoal and watercolour sketches, portraits of the members made during a portrait workshop. The class sessions are usually conducted twice a week, for approximately two hours (but last longer depending on class dynamics). But the class can also be cancelled for various reasons.

As we walked back to the pavilion, I looked around the surroundings. The walls of the building are all adorned with huge murals. These murals are of various themes, and made by the members. The number of the sculptures outside the gallery room is a lot more than inside. They are everywhere.

Some of them are made from wood, depicting traditional mermaid figures or crocodiles—known locally as the ancestors of the people. What strikes me is that a lot of these sculptures are made from various waste materials—food packages, used tires, plastic bottles, glass bottles, and flip-flops. Everywhere
I look there is art.


(Field notes, 18 June 2019)

Arte Moris is an independent art school located in the former art museum of East Timor province that was built by the Indonesian New Order regime. After Timor Leste gained

independence, the building was gifted by then Prime Minister Jose Ramos Horta to Arte Moris, to be repurposed as their headquarters.

This building complex not only serves as the headquarters for Arte Moris. The site is also used to host a theatre group, a music group, and has been frequented by various artists, activists, researchers, and writers. It has become an important part of public art infrastructure, meant to nurture the development of contemporary art and culture in the city. The ‘first generation’ of Arte Moris refers to those who experienced the transition from the organization’s location in Luca and Gabi’s rented house (some of them lived together in this house), to its current location in the former art museum of East Timor province.

When I conducted my fieldwork in Timor Leste in June 2019, the strong reputation of Arte Moris as a free school to study art had earned the institution popularity among young people. I met many new members who came from various districts in Timor Leste. These members are often regarded as the new generation of Arte Moris since they do not have first-hand experience of learning directly from Luca and Gabi Gansser.

They come from various education backgrounds including fine arts, architecture, community health, and sports education. Some of these new generation students were still in university, while others were either graduates from university, or did not go to university at all. They all had different starting points in their trajectory of becoming artists.

FOTO
FOTO

In the early years of Arte Moris, the Ganssers proposed that doing art and making good quality works of art were part of a useful pathway for healing from trauma and moving towards economic independence; the members kept a certain percentage of the sales and used it to fulfill their basic needs.²⁶ The gallery served and continues to serve as the display room for all the artworks created by all members. It has became a source of pride for the organization. Many tourists often made impromptu visits to the gallery. This created the possibility to purchase the artworks, which boosted the sense of confidence of the members.

FOTO

Many city residents come to Arte Moris every afternoon to enjoy it as a public park. This opens up another possibility to earn revenue from the building. There is a group of Arte Moris’ members who are in charge of guarding the gate everyday. Their task is to greet the visitors—high school students and other types of young people — who mainly come here to enjoy the green scenery, socialize, and to take selfies. There is a suggested donation to be able to come inside the building, ranging from twenty cents to fifty cents per visitor.

Being a member of Arte Moris often leads to opportunities to advance one’s artistic skills. According to Iliwatu, residency, scholarship opportunities, and cultural exchanges are important for deepening autodidactic learning methods. Such opportunities also come in the forms of book illustrations, advertisements, mural painting, or art workshop jobs. These do not always come often. Evan, the current programme manager, is confident that the reputation of Arte Moris will pave the way for these opportunities to keep coming.

An Intermittent Teaching System

• •

We had a long conversation with Kiki ze Lara yesterday afternoon in the studio. Kiki works in the logistics department of the army. The room is located right next to the art supply shop. Working in the army has provided Kiki income stability.

But he often feels that the military uniform limits his creative expression. That is why he likes to spend his lunch hour in Arte Moris. All around us are Kiki’s paintings. I have seen some of his paintings in the gallery too. We talk about how he idolizes Pramoedya Ananta Toer, about Loriku the mythical bird, about the spirit of Timor Leste people. Kiki told me a story about the years when he joined Arte Moris for the first time. Luca always said that there are three aspects to learn in painting a still life—shadow, lighting, darkness. Throughout the conversation, Acacio, a guest from Rekreativ, an art space for photography, was there. Abe came, made us coffee, and listened to the conversation.

Luca passed away last night. The news of his passing quickly reached Dili from Rome where he currently lived with Gabi. When I came to Arte Moris this afternoon, Arte Moris organized the ceremony to pay homage to Luca. Many local artists and former students of Arte Moris came from far and near to pay their last homage. They gathered in the hanging-out spot next to the pond in the garden. Everyone talked about memories, about Luca, and how they felt connected to him and the space. There was a big fish being grilled. There were bottles of local wine on the table. As they were engaging in a conversation, they were nibbling on grilled fish and circulating a glass of local wine. The newer members of the space were there too. Sometimes they chipped in during the conversation. But often they were just there, quietly observing, and being attentive to what the older members were talking about. The ceremony and other fringe activities around it serve as an occasion for younger students of Arte Moris to learn about Luca and how he impacted the lives of other people.

(Field notes, 23 June 2019)

FOTO

Arte Moris does not have a fixed structure or rigid teaching system. Teachers in the organization work on an intermittent basis. The knowledge facilitators reach Arte Moris through networks, friendships, and generosity.

Volunteers have played an important role in the learning process in Arte Moris. The existence of the volunteers emerged from the reciprocal gesture due to the opportunities given to them to stay at Arte Moris. The generosity of the organization generated a group of volunteer-teachers. However these volunteers often stay only for a short period of time. It makes it difficult to trace various skills circulated and to establish them formally as part of the institutional memory of the organization.

During my fieldwork, I observed that the planned classes were often cancelled for various reasons. Arte Moris is a school in which the class organization is based on the agreement of the people. In Wacquant’s research, the learning process becomes a collective teaching project because the pugilistic knowledge transfer in the boxing gym follows a more or less fixed teaching system—from the trainer, to the assistant trainer, to the boxers. Further, it is structured around the regularity of the training schedule.

Similarly, there is no clear learning process pattern in Arte Moris. Since its inception, there is a relaxed approach to how the learning process should be conducted. Rather than perceiving this as a shortfall, Kiki ze Lara, one of the members, suggests that we see practice as a more important dimension. Kiki explains: ‘Doing art is all about practice. Practice is the criteria of truth.’ He suggests that even without the rigid structure of class organization, many members of Arte Moris produce good art and organize an independent style of visual art exhibitions.

Further, the practice of hanging out performs a role as a regular event in Arte Moris. Hanging out was one of the regular activities through which I mined valuable information. It serves as a useful activity to observe how one learns from others through conversation, taking cues from everyone’s stories and experiences, forming plans and executing them into actions.

Antariksa’s research on nyantrik [learning from the master] offers an inroad for understanding how this hang out practice leads to useful knowledge. He reveals that learning resembles a soul-searching process. Nyantrik is a learning process to acquire certain craftsmanship or to learn about art from a master. Learning about art does not necessarily lead to the mastery of a specific knowledge. Rather it might lead to another process—‘to understand the universe, and the meaning and secret of the growth of the human soul towards perfection.’²⁷

The learning habits in Arte Moris can be seen as part of a process of creating the character of an artist. Such character is rooted in a strong autodidactic culture. The autodidactic culture stems from the combination of having to make do with what is available, of growing in a limited infrastructure, and of attempting to fill in what is lacking in the wider social environment.²⁸ A keen awareness of the lack of infrastructure informs the way Arte Moris members view opportunities and the future. In order to value the knowledge produced in the space, they needed to create their own ways of remembering, storing, and transforming this knowledge into practice.

On regularity:

Cooking and Surviving Together

• • •

Arte Moris organizes collective meals for its members everyday. These are prepared by a group of members who are in charge of chores each day of the week. There are vegetables growing in the garden in the back part of the building. These include spinach, chillies, cassava, corn, banana, papaya, and coconut.

The crops will be used for the daily cooking, in addition to the ingredients bought at a nearby market.

The menu is usually humble—nasi [cooked rice], a vegetable dish, and a dollop of sambal [hot relish]. The menu will change daily, depending on the available ingredients and the creativity of the cooks in charge. At around 12pm or 1pm, or when the meal is ready, a ‘lunch is ready’ call is made through the karau dikur [flute made of a cow horn]. There is a painting of a giant pumpkin, with corn, eggplants, and tomatoes dangling around it and hung on the wall next to the dining table. The text on the painting reads mai ita han [let’s have a meal together] in Tetum.

Guo was in charge of cooking the vegetable dish today.

Today’s menu was nasi, stir-fry cabbages and tempeh [fermented soybean cake], and sambal. We had started eating and chatting away, when Abe came. Apparently there was no more food available for him. I was feeling guilty because I thought I had taken his food. If I had not joined the lunch, there would have been enough food for everyone. ‘Aduh maaf ya. Ini pasti karena aku ikut makan di sini, jadi jatah makan kalian berkurang’ [Oh dear. This must be because I am having lunch here. Now there is not enough food for everyone] I said in Indonesian. Abe replied, ‘Oh tidak, kakak jangan khawatir. Bagi kami orang Timor, kalau ada tamu datang, merekaharus ikut makan.’ [Oh please sister, don’t worry about that.
For us Timorese people, if there is a guest, they have to eat together with us].

(Field notes, 22 June 2019)

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A series of housework activities function to regulate the time in Arte Moris. These activities are gardening, taking care of the gallery space, cooking together, having lunch and dinner together, and hanging-out together. They serve as the daily routine to create order in living together. During my conversation with Evan, I learned that doing chores collectively is based on the notion that they have the space to manage and to care for. What is the role of cooking and sharing meals together in sustaining the artistic career of Arte Moris’ members? There is a sense of certainty that emerges from the daily ritual of preparing the food and eating together. The sound of the karau dikur always feels assuring.

It means that there will always be food available for everyone. The act of cooking, to follow Luce Giard, is ‘the nourishing art.’²⁹ Cooking also provides another sense of certainty in managing time in collective practices. I often felt how time moved in a meandering manner while staying in Arte Moris. At 8 am, many members were already awake. Breakfast and coffee sessions that followed seemed to be able to continue on without end, until some people needed to leave to go to the university or to do other activities. Cooking is a task which holds clarity of purpose, a sure sense that this is what, at least, needs to be done today.

Cooking together and sharing meals with other people outside the family unit are often new skills and experiences for many members of Arte Moris. Being in Arte Moris has given members the opportunity to do ‘an apprenticeship in communal meals,’30 appreciate different tastes, and find different values in food. Arte Moris serves as a space to learn cooking skills and other domestic skills. Guo was forced to learn how to cook from seeing what the others usually did while in the kitchen. At first, it seemed like an obligation because cooking is part of living together in Arte Moris. Eventually, because he needed to eat, cooking felt like a necessity; Guo needed to learn how to cook and prepare food for himself and the others, so that he could access the system of food provision in the organization. Some parts of the apprenticeship in communal meals also include learning how to deal with various food technologies. Guo told me that he did not know how to operate a rice cooker until he arrived to Arte Moris.

My field notes highlights the connection between cooking practices and the tradition of Timorese hospitality marked by Abe. Cooking a meal demonstrates generosity, and helps to regulate the relation between the host and the guest. Within the Arte Moris community, cooking and eating together emerges as a performance of care. Giard states that ‘the art of nourishing has to do with the art of loving, thus also with the art of dying.’³¹

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In Giard’s writing, the art of dying refers to the practice of sharing food and having a family reunion during a situation of mourning. Food represents the sustenance for the bodies, and for the soul. When Luca passed away, we also sat together around food. Collective cooking provides an assurance that there will be food on the table. On a more practical level, it helps to assure the members that they do not need to worry about the food, and to focus on their art practices. This provides insights into the development of art making as a collective endeavor. Cooking together serves as a means to achieve this goal.

CONCLUSION

Tiny Toones and Arte Moris are both born from the necessity of providing an urgent space of education for their respective social ecosystems. They are both part of responsive activism efforts to tackle disruptions in education systems caused by political and social turmoil. Tiny Toones and Arte Moris started out as organizations that provided free art classes. They both developed into deeper, broader efforts that go beyond this original ambit. Their informal character has given them more freedom in organizing their schools. Here, ‘informality’ is a critical tool for fostering inclusion in education: ‘free school’ emerges as the means to facilitate a learning process with the ultimate goal of learning together.

In Arte Moris, collective housework creates a familial condition in which the members rehearse potentially shared ethics of living together. It replaces the intermittent condition of art classes. When my fieldwork was almost finished, Iliwatu told me that he had been negotiating the status of the land of the Arte Moris building with the government. Iliwatu said that if the government would like to take over the building, they needed to consider the fact that the cooperative housekeeping is a key point in keeping the Arte Moris’ premises in good conditions. The members took great pride in how they managed to transform the bare and dry land around the building into a green environment full of trees and vegetable patches.

The ability to maintain collective housework gives more power to the bargaining position of the organization. My research in Arte Moris suggests that studying together provides an avenue for learning about how to live together. Developing a free art school paves the way for creating mechanisms for living together. Arte Moris students are trained to be productive through doing art. The most important lesson, it seems, for being an artist, is to learn how to survive.

Acknowledgements: In conducting this research, I worked with my two colleagues from KUNCI Study Forum & Collective—Gatari Surya Kusuma and Brigitta Isabella. I would like to thank them and express my appreciation for their work in assisting me to conduct my fieldwork in Phnom Penh and Dili. I also would like to thank the Tiny Toones and Arte Moris communities for their generosity and support.