My interest in my cultural background was already sparked a while ago. That's why for the minor Critical Studies, I chose to do a project about traditional knowledge or indigenous knowledge. I wrote an essay about how in the social sciences, traditional knowledge can never exist as 'true knowledge' because it is not considered objective enough. I had conversations with my mom and sister about the Batak tribe culture which resulted in an audio installation. Snippets of our conversations could be heard simultaneously through three big speakers in different volumes. By doing so, I wanted the audience to really concentrate on the exchange of oral knowledges.

RESEARCH QUESTION MINOR:
How can we approach traditional knowledge as valuable knowledge?

Abstract of my thesis: 
Ethnographic museums are European inventions and products of colonialism, once established to showcase often wrongfully confiscated cultural heritage from foreign cultures. Due to contemporary social developments, such as the emancipation of minorities, ethnographic museums are increasingly concerned with decolonising their collections. This study is particularly interested in the colonial history of the Netherlands and its former colony Indonesia. The research question is as follows: How are manifestations of decolonisation concerning the former Dutch East Indies visible in the narratives of ethnographic museums in the Netherlands? As ethnographic museums use stories and narratives to frame their collections in a certain way, qualitative content analysis and narrative analysis were conducted.
The following exhibitions were sampled for analysis 1) The Indonesian Bronzes at Volkenkunde Museum Leiden, 2) the permanent collection Indonesia at Volkenkunde Museum Leiden, 3) Kruispunt Rotterdam at Wereldmuseum Rotterdam and 4) Revolusi! at Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. The focus was not only on how the individual objects are presented in the exhibitions but also on what story the objects tell altogether and in which narrative (colonial, post-colonial) they are framed.
Additionally, as museums are places of memory in which heritage is formulated according to Western knowledge, the study also examined ways of remembering by identifying narratives of remembrance (nostalgia, Dutch cultural archive, counter-memories). During analysis, several new (aspects of) narratives emerged from the data, while some other initial theory-based narratives were confirmed. The ethno-nationalist narrative, strongly linked to coloniality, was most present in the exhibitions The Indonesian Bronzes and Indonesia. Volkenkunde Museum Leiden employs little critical reflection in the narratives, which is also reflected in the exhibition set-ups. On the contrary, the post-colonial narrative concerned with lasting decolonisation practices was present in Revolusi! and to some extent in Kruispunt Rotterdam. This can be explained by the fact that both exhibitions are relatively new and curated with the intention to add new perspectives to the museums' collections. Lastly, the study showed how nostalgic Dutch ways of remembering are closely linked to the ethno-nationalist narrative and were thus primarily present in the exhibitions The Indonesian Bronzes and Indonesia.

Essay about traditional knowledge
Vividly I remember being tired from standing in the sun for hours on end. On top of my head lies a handful of uncooked rice, laid down by someone I do not know but somehow call auntie. We (read: me, my family and all the neighbouring villages) are celebrating my sister’s wedding. Although her husband-to-be is Dutch, they decided to marry according to the Batak adat (tradition of the Indonesian Batak tribe). Everyone is wearing ulos, the traditional cloth of the Batak tribe. The wedding ceremony is a religious ritual that takes hours; food is being prepared, chants are being sung and blessings are being given. I did not understand all the rituals that were carried out, but I could understand the importance of such ceremonies to the Batak community at large. Traditions and beliefs containing symbolic and spiritual meaning I could only learn about by physically being there. During my childhood, I would neglect all these beliefs and practices because they seemed strange and ‘primitive’. It was only until later that I understood Western education is so focused on objective knowledge that everything I learned from my Indonesian family seemed less worthy. These findings led me to the following research question: How can we approach traditional knowledges1 as valuable knowledge?
At school, I learned that knowledge comes from books. I was always in the assumption that if I wanted to learn more about my Indonesian background, I should turn to information booklets rather than throwing myself on the rituals and traditions of my mother and grandmother. And if I did turn to these information booklets, I could not relate to the information given as it was all told from a Dutch post-colonial perspective. Therefore, I was in the assumption that the lessons at school were of more value than the beliefs and practices that were passed on to me by my Indonesian family. That, by the figure of speech, paracetamol worked better than tiger balm. In essence, I grew up with the idea that there exists a difference in value between the knowledge I took away from home and what was taught to me at school. And that difference was big. Even when I got older, it appeared to me that knowledge was only valuable when it was scientifically proven, substantiated or endorsed. Only if we can find the source of information back in articles, books or studies, this information is valid and can find its way to social policy, our historical canon, or the general consciousness. But when traditional pieces of knowledge systematically stay underexposed, how can ‘proven’ scientific be better than experiential expertise?
There are some important differences between traditional knowledge and Western knowledge. Traditional knowledges are transferred through oral tradition, whereas Western science is focused on literature. When using the term traditional knowledges, I refer to the metaphysical, holistic, oral, symbolic and relational knowledge; the knowledge of communities (read: minorities) that cannot be found in academic literature. Hence, my use of traditional knowledges is plural. Western knowledge on the other hand is reductionist. It breaks down ‘data’ into smaller elements in order to understand complex phenomena. It is also criticized for being anthropocentric, meaning humankind is seen as the central or most important element of existence (Ragavan, 2002).
Historically speaking, scholars were in power to control which knowledge could be determined as interesting enough to validate with research (Smith, 2012). Privileged white researchers who studied ‘the exotic other’ of choice. Privileged people have historically occupied positions of dominance over others. But even scholars have blind spots. What not many scholars dare to acknowledge, is that the social sciences are not only historically based on Eurocentric and racist beliefs, but that these beliefs still live on in the current practice (Smith, 2012; Gutiérrez Rodríguez, E., Boatcă, M., & Costa, S., 2010). For example, in almost every course of the arts and culture studies I do, the studied literature was written almost solely by Western men. The field of research is still dominated by perspectives of white, male, heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied people mostly from the middle- and upper classes. We still see these starting points as neutral ground on which social scientists can conduct so-called objective research. Furthermore, the idea that scholars are better able to describe lived experiences than the people whose experiences they actually are, still holds. Although there are millions of stories like my family’s, only a few of them move beyond the boundaries from which they originate. And if they do, they are often told from a white gaze.
Therefore, I call for a change in the way we perceive traditional knowledges, as I believe traditional knowledges belong within the general framework of ‘Knowledge’. But how do we change our perception of traditional knowledges without generalizing them and taking them out of context? It must have become clear by now that traditional knowledges cannot be treated the way we treat Western science. Policy-making bodies have attempted to include traditional knowledges in their policies, as opposed to technocratic problems but fail to do so because they attempt to systematize traditional knowledges (Agrawal, 2002; de Sousa Santos, B. D. S., Nunes, J. A., & Meneses, M. P., 2007). Being self-critical, it is even paradoxical for me to write about traditional knowledges as if its contents can be captured in words. However, to capture in words the urgency of the need for change in the perception of traditional knowledges is one way to infiltrate the existing literature on what knowledge should be.
Although this paper clearly calls for a change in the way we approach traditional knowledges, the tone of my artistic practice is intentionally different. In my work striving for a change as well, but as I like to work with personal material such as conversations/family archives I like to treat these elements more gently. For example, for this project I am working with sound, using recorded conversations I had with my Indonesian mother and sister about their lives in Indonesia and the Netherlands. The conversations are personal and intimate which is quite contrary to the general statements I made in this paper about different types of knowledge. To me, it would be wrong to generalize these intimate conversations to a bigger perspective, as they are specific about the Batak community. It is definitely an artistic choice, to not be activistic in my works, although I strongly feel the need for a change. And although my work itself is not of an activistic character, I hope it makes clear the urge for us, in the West, to think of traditional knowledges as Knowledge, but not approach it as we approach objective research. It is still about people and communities, which we cannot simply treat as mere numbers. This project, which I call Collective Memory can be seen as an exploration of what traditional knowledge could be, to me specifically. The goal is never to create some sort of fixed outcome, but rather to open up the way for more conversations and more stories.
In conclusion, this research has been about answering the question of how we can approach traditional knowledge as valuable knowledge. Collective Memory can be seen as the translation of this research into an artistic work. It explores what traditional knowledge could be, by using intimate conversations I had with my mother and sister about the beliefs and traditions of my Indonesian family. Although the tone of this paper is different from the work, the aim was and is still to encourage the reader and audience to unlearn the Eurocentric way of approaching knowledge and to see traditional knowledge as what it is: Knowledge.

1 In this paper I will use the term traditional knowledge without the use of quotation marks. This term remains problematic, as it should be known that traditional knowledge is just knowledge. I use it only to promote fluency in reading.

Klik op onderstaande pdf om het script van de audio-installatie te lezen.

Collective Memory Artist Statement

While writing my bachelor's thesis on the decolonisation of ethnographic museums in the Netherlands, the idea arose to make a project about decolonising food and food practices. I chose this theme within the bigger theme of decoloniality, as food plays an important role in Indonesian culture (and Batak culture). Therefore, I created a decolonial cookbook, although I would rather call it a family cookbook memoires as I built on the knowledge of my family, friends, and personal archive.