Matthew Isaac Cohen
Biographic Data
| ID | 117512 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthew Isaac Cohen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthew Isaac |
| FAMILY NAME | Cohen |
| SIGNATURE | COHEN M I |
| AFFILIATIONS | Universidad de Londres |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4926-5136 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 27 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Dardanella: Perintis teater Indonesia modern, duta kesenian Indonesia melanglang buana, by Jaap Erkelens
The history of theater in Indonesia in the 1920s and 1930s is dominated by two traveling companies, Orion and Dardanella.Both specialized in Malaylanguage spoken-word dramas, with cabaret numbers inserted after each act of the plays.They were self-consciously modern companies integrating and re-interpreting cosmopolitan culture for local Indonesian audiences.As such, they represented a break with the komedi stambul operatic style of performance, …
Launching the journal, opening the forum
Preview this article: Launching the journal, opening the forum, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/pi/8/1-2/pi_00002_7-1.gif
Wayang in Jaman Now: Reflexive Traditionalization and Local, National and Global Networks of Javanese Shadow Puppet Theatre
Doomsayers and traditionalists prognosticate that the dominance of digital media spells the end of traditional arts in Java, Indonesia. Wayang kulit (shadow puppet theatre), while still highly regarded as theatrical heritage, is said to be under particular threat due to the long duration of its plays, complexity of language and the need for prior knowledge of characters and situations. Such features are at odds with the short attention spans and …
Three Eras of Indonesian Arts Diplomacy
Sukarno took a personal interest in using the arts for presenting Indonesia in a positive light. He oversaw cultural missions abroad and produced 'cultural events' that showed off his grace and charisma on the dance floor to overseas guests. While Soeharto showed little interest in the arts, new modes of arts diplomacy flourished during the New Order-scholarships for foreigners to study arts, artists in residence at Indonesian embassies, large-sc…
Launching the journal, opening the forum
Launching the journal, opening the forum
Launching the journal, opening the forum
Wayang in Museums: The Reverse Repatriation of Javanese Puppets
Transported to museum settings, wayang puppets from Java (Indonesia) are inevitably disembedded from performance traditions and the techniques and events animating and framing them. But this essay argues that it is possible to involve puppets in processes of “reverse repatriation,” bringing home to objects far from their sites of origin, as well as catalyzing new dialogues in sites of storage, exhibition, and performance. Puppets in the British M…
Domination and Resistance
The final 18 months of World War Two brought great austerity to Java and other islands of Indonesia. The masses were drilled in calisthenics and the national anthem Indonesia raya could again be played to raise spirits and encourage volunteering. Traditional artists were trained as information officers; those who spoke against the regime, such as the ludruk clown Cak Gondo Durasim, were severely punished. A sandiwara union, Perserikatan Oesaha Sa…
Inventing the Performing Arts: Modernity and Tradition in Colonial Indonesia
Inventing the Performing Arts: Modernity and Tradition in Colonial Indonesia
The Japanese occupation (1942–1945) was brief but significant in cultural impact: plays, songs, and dances promoting anti-imperialism, Asian values, and war-time austerity measures were created by Indonesian intellectuals and artists in collaboration with Japanese and Korean civilian and military personnel. Artists were registered, playscripts censored, training programs developed, and a Cultural Center established. Based on more than two decades…
Global Modernities and Post-Traditional Shadow Puppetry in Contemporary Southeast Asia
Under global modernity, Southeast Asian shadow puppet theatre is being re-worked in art galleries, the internet, community arts contexts, intermedial collaborations and festivals. Even while cultural conservatives mourn vanishing traditions, a generation of Southeast Asian practitioners are seizing the codes of performance culture, inhabiting received forms and re-making them to speak to both local particularities and global issues. These post-tr…
Wayang Kulit Tradisional dan Pasca-Tradisional di Jawa Masa Kini
Regional traditions of wayang kulit puppetry remain alive and vibrant in contemporary Indonesia, responding to currents of global culture, changing configurations of patronage, and the challenges of doctrinal Islam. Enterprising artists tap into new funding sources to renew audiences, strategic alliances are struck between academics and performers, and after the long hiatus of a military dictatorship under President Soeharto, wayang kulit has res…
Concerning a certain Komedi Stambul actress
Additional informationTranslator biographyMatthew Isaac Cohen is Professor of International Theatre, Royal Holloway, University of London. His publications include Performing Otherness: Java and Bali on international stages, 1905–1952 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)
Introduction: Global Encounters in Southeast Asian Performing Arts
Long considered an isolated backwater of global cultural flows, a proud possessor of artistic traditions seemingly immune to international fashions, Southeast Asia is now coming into its own as a cultural powerhouse, refashioning old traditions and taking on new forms and ideas, with connections being rapidly formed between ASEAN member states in anticipation of the region’s Economic Community in 2015. This introduction positions this volume’s ar…
Indonesian Theatre: New North American Scholarship on Modern and Traditional Performance Practices
Indonesian Theatre: New North American Scholarship on Modern and Traditional Performance Practices Matthew Isaac Cohen (bio) Resistance on the National Stage: Theater and Politics in Late New Order Indonesia. By Michael H. Bodden. Southeast Asia Series, no. 123. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010; pp. 352. Indonesian Postcolonial Theatre: Spectral Genealogies and Absent Faces. By Evan Darwin Winet. Studies in International Performance. Basingsto…
Suluk Wujil and Javanese Performance Theory
Suluk Wujil (inscribed in Cirebon, West Java in 1607) interpellates descriptions of wayang kulit, raket mask dance and clowning with discourse on Islamic topics and a portrait of a homo-social relation between two Islamic 'saints' (wali). The text focuses centrally on Sheikh Malaya, an alias for Sunan Kalijaga, the legendary Islamic proselytizer. Malaya has become a mask dance performer in his search for his missing son, but is unable to reconcil…
Contemporary Southeast Asian performance: Transnational perspectives
Mutual borrowing, fluid transactions and transformations of performances and performers have a long and enduring history in Southeast Asia, but this trend has been heightened and made more vivid in the contemporary period. The omnipresence of global communications has provoked and inspired yet more novel experiments and collaborations between cosmopolitan artists and globally-oriented performers. This volume offers vital insights into recent deve…
Performing Otherness: Java and Bali on International Stages, 1905-1952
A far-reaching examination of exoticism, cultural internationalism and modernism's encounters with Indonesian tradition, Performing Otherness examines how Indonesia entered world stages through imperi
British Performances of Java, 1811–1822
This article looks at the reception of the British interregnum of Java (1811–1816) in the theatre through a comparison of Jane Scott's pantomime The Poison Tree (1811), George Colman the Younger's melodrama The Law of Java (1822) and the case of ‘Princess Caraboo’, a Devonshire serving girl who posed as a princess from ‘Javasu’ in Bristol in 1817 and later performed the story of her career as an impostor on stage in America. The author examines t…
Eva Gauthier, Java to jazz
Java did not enjoy a significant place in the American imagination during the nineteenth century, and in contrast to India, China, or Japan was rarely an artistic subject. In the early years of the twentieth century, adventurous artist-travellers occasionally gave exhibitions of paintings and sculptures of Indonesian subjects. In the days when illustrated lectures were still a popular entertainment, one might also attend a talk on Java by itinera…
Indonesian Performing Arts across Borders
Dancing the Subject of ‘Java’: International Modernism and Traditional Performance, 1899–1952
This article surveys the ‘Javanese’ work of non-Javanese ‘ethnic’ choreographers and dancers of the period 1899 to 1952, including Mata Hari, Ruth St Denis and Ted Shawn, Ada Forman, La Meri, Ram Gopal, Nataraj Vashi and Michio Ito. I will also consider the work of Eurasians such as Fred Coolemans, Takka-Takka (who danced with her husband ‘Yoga-Taro’) and Ratna Mohini, as well as the Javanese modernist Raden Mas Jodjana, to evaluate how they imag…
The Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theater in Colonial Indonesia
Matthew Isaac Cohen's evocative social history situates the Komedie Stamboel in the culture of empire and translocal flows of itinerant entertainment. He shows how the theater was used as a symbol of cross-ethnic integration in postcolonial Indonesia and as an emblem of Eurasian cultural accomplishment by Indische Nederlanders. A pioneering study of nineteenth-century Southeast Asian popular culture, The Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theater in Colon…
The Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theater in Colonial Indonesia
'Come, see, and judge for yourself!' Originating in 1891 in the port city of Surabaya, the Komedie Stamboel, or Istanbul-style theater, toured colonial Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia by rail and steamship, performing musical versions of the Arabian Nights, European fairy tales and operas such as Sleeping Beauty and Aïda, Indian and Persian romances, Southeast Asian chronicles, true crime stories, and political allegories. It was the region's …
Border crossings: Bangsawan in the Netherlands Indies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
2002). Border crossings: Bangsawan in the Netherlands Indies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Indonesia and the Malay World: Vol. 30, No. 87, pp. 101-115
On the origin of the Komedie Stamboel. Popular culture, colonial society, and the Parsi theatre movement
Traditional and Popular Painting in Modern Java
Matthew Isaac Cohen, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom Traditional and Popular Painting in Modern Java Le mythe de Sungging Prabangkara interprète l'arrivée de la peinture figurative à Java en provenance de la Chine, du Japon et de l'Europe comme le retour des descendants d'un artiste javanais exilé et donc comme la restauration de la production javanaise passée telle que les monuments de la période classique en gardent la mémoire. La peintur…
Three Eras of Indonesian Arts Diplomacy
Sukarno took a personal interest in using the arts for presenting Indonesia in a positive light. He oversaw cultural missions abroad and produced 'cultural events' that showed off his grace and charisma on the dance floor to overseas guests. While Soeharto showed little interest in the arts, new modes of arts diplomacy flourished during the New Order-scholarships for foreigners to study arts, artists in residence at Indonesian embassies, large-sc…
Wayang in Jaman Now: Reflexive Traditionalization and Local, National and Global Networks of Javanese Shadow Puppet Theatre
Doomsayers and traditionalists prognosticate that the dominance of digital media spells the end of traditional arts in Java, Indonesia. Wayang kulit (shadow puppet theatre), while still highly regarded as theatrical heritage, is said to be under particular threat due to the long duration of its plays, complexity of language and the need for prior knowledge of characters and situations. Such features are at odds with the short attention spans and …
Global Modernities and Post-Traditional Shadow Puppetry in Contemporary Southeast Asia
Under global modernity, Southeast Asian shadow puppet theatre is being re-worked in art galleries, the internet, community arts contexts, intermedial collaborations and festivals. Even while cultural conservatives mourn vanishing traditions, a generation of Southeast Asian practitioners are seizing the codes of performance culture, inhabiting received forms and re-making them to speak to both local particularities and global issues. These post-tr…
British Performances of Java, 1811–1822
This article looks at the reception of the British interregnum of Java (1811–1816) in the theatre through a comparison of Jane Scott's pantomime The Poison Tree (1811), George Colman the Younger's melodrama The Law of Java (1822) and the case of ‘Princess Caraboo’, a Devonshire serving girl who posed as a princess from ‘Javasu’ in Bristol in 1817 and later performed the story of her career as an impostor on stage in America. The author examines t…
State of the arts, arts of the state
The publication of the first volumes of the 15-volume, deluxely produced 'Indonesian Heritage' encyclopaedia project was a cause for celebration in official and diplomatic circles in early 1998. 'Indonesian Heritage', though in English, published in Singapore, and incorporating writing and editing by numerous non-Indonesian scholars, might be characterized as the swan song of New Order Indonesia's scholarly discourse on what is Indonesia. Each vo…
The Barikan Banner of Gegesik. Ritual and History in a Village Painting from Colonial Java
M.I. Cohen Les ogres sont dépeints en Hollandais dans cette peinture représentant un type d'art villageois javanais, décrit ici pour la première fois, qui disparut durant la difficile période recouvrant l'occupation japonaise et les années de lutte pour l'indépendance. Mesurant quelques dix mètres de long, elle tapissait l'intérieur des pavillons de cérémonie ou les murs d'une maison, contribuant à donner un air de solennité et de fête lors des p…
State of the arts, arts of the state
The publication of the first volumes of the 15-volume, deluxely produced 'Indonesian Heritage' encyclopaedia project was a cause for celebration in official and diplomatic circles in early 1998. 'Indonesian Heritage', though in English, published in Singapore, and incorporating writing and editing by numerous non-Indonesian scholars, might be characterized as the swan song of New Order Indonesia's scholarly discourse on what is Indonesia. Each vo…
Indonesia
On the origin of the Komedie Stamboel. Popular culture, colonial society, and the Parsi theatre movement
Reading “Suluk Wayang”: Javanese Shadow Puppets, “Nala”-Vision, Private Self, Bodily Self
Wayang kulit (shadow puppet theatre; henceforth “wayang”) as practiced in Java (Indonesia) has been recognized by exegetes – European and Indonesian alike – for its centrality as both a performative vehicle for and a symbolic figuration of understandings of the human developmental cycle, the variety of character models available to individuals, the precarious balance of chaos and stability in society, and kinship dialectics of conflict and comple…
Border crossings: Bangsawan in the Netherlands Indies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
2002). Border crossings: Bangsawan in the Netherlands Indies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Indonesia and the Malay World: Vol. 30, No. 87, pp. 101-115
Traditional and Popular Painting in Modern Java
Matthew Isaac Cohen, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom Traditional and Popular Painting in Modern Java Le mythe de Sungging Prabangkara interprète l'arrivée de la peinture figurative à Java en provenance de la Chine, du Japon et de l'Europe comme le retour des descendants d'un artiste javanais exilé et donc comme la restauration de la production javanaise passée telle que les monuments de la période classique en gardent la mémoire. La peintur…
The Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theater in Colonial Indonesia
Matthew Isaac Cohen's evocative social history situates the Komedie Stamboel in the culture of empire and translocal flows of itinerant entertainment. He shows how the theater was used as a symbol of cross-ethnic integration in postcolonial Indonesia and as an emblem of Eurasian cultural accomplishment by Indische Nederlanders. A pioneering study of nineteenth-century Southeast Asian popular culture, The Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theater in Colon…
The Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theater in Colonial Indonesia
'Come, see, and judge for yourself!' Originating in 1891 in the port city of Surabaya, the Komedie Stamboel, or Istanbul-style theater, toured colonial Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia by rail and steamship, performing musical versions of the Arabian Nights, European fairy tales and operas such as Sleeping Beauty and Aïda, Indian and Persian romances, Southeast Asian chronicles, true crime stories, and political allegories. It was the region's …
Indonesian Performing Arts across Borders
Dancing the Subject of ‘Java’: International Modernism and Traditional Performance, 1899–1952
This article surveys the ‘Javanese’ work of non-Javanese ‘ethnic’ choreographers and dancers of the period 1899 to 1952, including Mata Hari, Ruth St Denis and Ted Shawn, Ada Forman, La Meri, Ram Gopal, Nataraj Vashi and Michio Ito. I will also consider the work of Eurasians such as Fred Coolemans, Takka-Takka (who danced with her husband ‘Yoga-Taro’) and Ratna Mohini, as well as the Javanese modernist Raden Mas Jodjana, to evaluate how they imag…
Eva Gauthier, Java to jazz
Java did not enjoy a significant place in the American imagination during the nineteenth century, and in contrast to India, China, or Japan was rarely an artistic subject. In the early years of the twentieth century, adventurous artist-travellers occasionally gave exhibitions of paintings and sculptures of Indonesian subjects. In the days when illustrated lectures were still a popular entertainment, one might also attend a talk on Java by itinera…
British Performances of Java, 1811–1822
This article looks at the reception of the British interregnum of Java (1811–1816) in the theatre through a comparison of Jane Scott's pantomime The Poison Tree (1811), George Colman the Younger's melodrama The Law of Java (1822) and the case of ‘Princess Caraboo’, a Devonshire serving girl who posed as a princess from ‘Javasu’ in Bristol in 1817 and later performed the story of her career as an impostor on stage in America. The author examines t…
Contemporary Southeast Asian performance: Transnational perspectives
Mutual borrowing, fluid transactions and transformations of performances and performers have a long and enduring history in Southeast Asia, but this trend has been heightened and made more vivid in the contemporary period. The omnipresence of global communications has provoked and inspired yet more novel experiments and collaborations between cosmopolitan artists and globally-oriented performers. This volume offers vital insights into recent deve…
Performing Otherness: Java and Bali on International Stages, 1905-1952
A far-reaching examination of exoticism, cultural internationalism and modernism's encounters with Indonesian tradition, Performing Otherness examines how Indonesia entered world stages through imperi
Suluk Wujil and Javanese Performance Theory
Suluk Wujil (inscribed in Cirebon, West Java in 1607) interpellates descriptions of wayang kulit, raket mask dance and clowning with discourse on Islamic topics and a portrait of a homo-social relation between two Islamic 'saints' (wali). The text focuses centrally on Sheikh Malaya, an alias for Sunan Kalijaga, the legendary Islamic proselytizer. Malaya has become a mask dance performer in his search for his missing son, but is unable to reconcil…
Indonesian Theatre: New North American Scholarship on Modern and Traditional Performance Practices
Indonesian Theatre: New North American Scholarship on Modern and Traditional Performance Practices Matthew Isaac Cohen (bio) Resistance on the National Stage: Theater and Politics in Late New Order Indonesia. By Michael H. Bodden. Southeast Asia Series, no. 123. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010; pp. 352. Indonesian Postcolonial Theatre: Spectral Genealogies and Absent Faces. By Evan Darwin Winet. Studies in International Performance. Basingsto…
Wayang Kulit Tradisional dan Pasca-Tradisional di Jawa Masa Kini
Regional traditions of wayang kulit puppetry remain alive and vibrant in contemporary Indonesia, responding to currents of global culture, changing configurations of patronage, and the challenges of doctrinal Islam. Enterprising artists tap into new funding sources to renew audiences, strategic alliances are struck between academics and performers, and after the long hiatus of a military dictatorship under President Soeharto, wayang kulit has res…
Concerning a certain Komedi Stambul actress
Additional informationTranslator biographyMatthew Isaac Cohen is Professor of International Theatre, Royal Holloway, University of London. His publications include Performing Otherness: Java and Bali on international stages, 1905–1952 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)
Introduction: Global Encounters in Southeast Asian Performing Arts
Long considered an isolated backwater of global cultural flows, a proud possessor of artistic traditions seemingly immune to international fashions, Southeast Asia is now coming into its own as a cultural powerhouse, refashioning old traditions and taking on new forms and ideas, with connections being rapidly formed between ASEAN member states in anticipation of the region’s Economic Community in 2015. This introduction positions this volume’s ar…
Domination and Resistance
The final 18 months of World War Two brought great austerity to Java and other islands of Indonesia. The masses were drilled in calisthenics and the national anthem Indonesia raya could again be played to raise spirits and encourage volunteering. Traditional artists were trained as information officers; those who spoke against the regime, such as the ludruk clown Cak Gondo Durasim, were severely punished. A sandiwara union, Perserikatan Oesaha Sa…
Inventing the Performing Arts: Modernity and Tradition in Colonial Indonesia
Inventing the Performing Arts: Modernity and Tradition in Colonial Indonesia
The Japanese occupation (1942–1945) was brief but significant in cultural impact: plays, songs, and dances promoting anti-imperialism, Asian values, and war-time austerity measures were created by Indonesian intellectuals and artists in collaboration with Japanese and Korean civilian and military personnel. Artists were registered, playscripts censored, training programs developed, and a Cultural Center established. Based on more than two decades…
Global Modernities and Post-Traditional Shadow Puppetry in Contemporary Southeast Asia
Under global modernity, Southeast Asian shadow puppet theatre is being re-worked in art galleries, the internet, community arts contexts, intermedial collaborations and festivals. Even while cultural conservatives mourn vanishing traditions, a generation of Southeast Asian practitioners are seizing the codes of performance culture, inhabiting received forms and re-making them to speak to both local particularities and global issues. These post-tr…
Launching the journal, opening the forum
Asian Studies and History (24 works) · Art (23 works) · History (17 works) · Political science (15 works) · Visual arts (15 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Art history (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · History (9 works)