Day #2
21 November 2022

The second day of the workshop focused on exercise and meditation. Iwan Wijono asked participants to do relaxation. Participants sat around in a circle. They have already prepared themselves with comfortable clothes and a yoga mat. First, the procession began by stretching the stiff muscles, then proceeded with Ganesha exercises. After that, Iwan Wijono started the Chakra balancing. The human body has seven chakra points: root chakra, sacral chakra, navel chakra, heart chakra, throat chakra, Ajna chakra, and crown chakra. Each breath opens chakra points. Both hands hold the ears, and the left hand is in front. Then the body goes up and down seven times. The number seven counts to one round. Iwan told them not to pause in the middle and ensured the round was completed perfectly. This session closed with self-healing meditation; they sat cross-legged, examining their own bodies in the hope that a spiritual moment would arise with meditation, so the resulting work is much more refined.

Iwan delivered this exercise and meditation to participants as one of his rituals of art creation that he has done so far. In that case, the thing that Iwan emphasized here is that art creation is not merely about processing the idea and medium, but the artist that created an artwork itself should also be paid attention through bodily and soul training. This is an important process to make the creating process have clarity of thought and full of awareness. This subject matter was quite distant from participants because this kind of approach is often related to the spiritual practice of “Kejawen” which has experienced a disconnect with the life of today’s generation. This workshop was closed with a discussion about ideas or concepts they want to present at the final presentation. They came up with an idea to evaluate Post Pandemic Art: reflecting on experiences during the pandemic and post-pandemic to be elaborated into their works. All participants were very excited to experiment with the Nusantara Contextual Art method. *