Arya News - From creating memes and works of art, to implementing practical measures such as providing masks and healthcare – people both within and outside Indonesia are coming up with various ways to express their concern and show solidarity.
JAKARTA – 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, told The Straits Times: “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 practical measures such as providing masks and healthcare, people both within and outside Indonesia are coming up with various ways to express their concern and show solidarity.
Laughing and dancing through the smoke
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, mostly in their late teens, 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, told ST.
Dieka said Zwageri Generation had been inspired by Jaga Api’s posts and wanted to do something similar. “Sadly, it was so easy to find a place to do the shoot. The location was just a kilometre away from the YIARI office, and there was burnt peatland everywhere you looked,” she 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.”
Breathing room
Farther east in Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan, the Ranu Welum Foundation – an indigenous youth movement – is taking a more practical approach by setting up shelters for residents to find temporary refuge from the haze.
Sarasi Silvester Sinurat, Ranu Welum’s managing director, told ST: “Most people in Kalimantan live in wooden houses, which makes it hard to keep out the smoke. That’s where the idea of haze shelters came from.”
The foundation, whose name means “water of life” in Dayak, began in 2014 as a group of university students making short videos on current affairs.
During the 2015 haze crisis, members of the group met Singapore-based media company Big Red Button, which visited Palangkaraya to hand out N95 masks.
Singaporean Wally Tham, who runs Big Red Button, said he had watched years of heated online comments achieve little and wanted to see the problem up close. “If we weren’t so angry, what would we actually learn and see?”
The partnership grew into haze-safe shelters: permanent buildings equipped with air filtration, health workers, oxygen tanks and medicine. The first three opened in Palangkaraya in 2019.
Today, 26 operate across Central, West and South Kalimantan, run with partner organisations that provide their facilities and staff.
The shelters are free and open to anyone during the day and have served more than 3,000 people this fire season.
“Most people who come to a shelter complain of coughing or shortness of breath,” Sarasi said.
“Many come because they can’t afford to go to a conventional health facility. They might have a BPJS (national health insurance) account, but it hasn’t been activated yet, or they haven’t updated it to their current address.”
The foundation also provides financial support for patients who need treatment, as it did for a toddler in Palangkaraya a few weeks ago. “We helped get her admitted to hospital; she hadn’t been able to sleep for three days because of the smoke,” Sarasi said.
Besides the haze shelters, Tham is working with Ranu Welum to provide better equipment to volunteer firefighters, who form most of Central Kalimantan’s firefighting force and often have to put out fires with makeshift tools.
The shelters also allow the firefighters to concentrate on work, he added. “Knowing that the wives and children are safe allows the firefighters to focus.”
For those located far from the fires, the groups suggest several ways to help. Sarasi said Ranu Welum welcomes donations of masks, vitamins and air purifiers, as well as volunteers with medical training.
Tham, meanwhile, urged Singaporeans to look up Indonesian activists on social media and find out more about what is happening in areas hardest hit by the fires. “The degree of suffering there is much higher than what Singaporeans experience,” he said.
Pebri from Jaga Api shared a similar sentiment. “We all have a role to play,” he said. “Our hope is for the general public to gain greater awareness about these issues and continue to help voice them, so that we can push those in power to act.”