{"id":424,"date":"2026-03-04T07:42:43","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T07:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevinjagar.com\/?page_id=424"},"modified":"2026-03-25T09:02:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T09:02:31","slug":"bring-brung-art","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/kevinjagar.com\/index.php\/bring-brung-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Bring Brung Art"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Bring Brung: Ritual Continuity as Communal Resistance<\/b><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Ledeng
<\/strong>Northern Bandung
<\/strong>West Java (2025)<\/strong><\/p>

Institutional partnership (NUS Museum)<\/i>


Written and photographed by Kevin Jagar<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Bring Brung is a community-based performance practice that emerged in the early twentieth century and has been transmitted across five generations through paternal lineage. Rather than functioning as overt political resistance, it operates through ritual continuity, collective participation, and intergenerational inheritance.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Image 1. The preparation of incense and offerings (small plants, fruits, coffee, cigarettes) pre-performance.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Image 2. Bring Brung is performed with a Sundanese traditional instrument called the Terabang.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Image 3. Artist Tisna Sanjaya outlined a performer’s body on a canvas during the performance.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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The practice integrates communal performance with devotional elements drawn from Qasidah Barzanji and Jamjami, accompanied by the burning of incense and offerings of agricultural produce as expressions of gratitude toward nature. Participation remains open and spontaneous, reinforcing social cohesion rather than producing spectacle.<\/p>

During the Dutch colonial period, Bring Brung was banned under accusations of blasphemy and disorder. This suppression functioned less as religious regulation than as an attempt to disrupt autonomous forms of community organization and cultural transmission. What was targeted was not the performance itself, but the relational structure it sustained.<\/p>

Bring Brung cannot be understood as an isolated performance or symbolic representation. It operates within a relational environment in which human presence, land, and spiritual belief are mutually assumed rather than conceptually separated<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Image 4. A performer kneels down to earth during the performance for 4 times, following the 4 directions of the wind.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Observation suggests that meaning emerges not from narrative or abstraction, but from embodied practice conducted within a living landscape. Gestures directed toward the ground, references to soil or Mother Earth beneath concrete, and the personification of nature indicate that relationships are enacted rather than depicted. Nature is not externalized as landscape or resource but encountered as a relational presence embedded in bodily practice.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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This reveals a central tension between continuity of form and continuity of meaning. As Bring Brung encounters modernization and institutional framing, the risk is not disappearance, but misalignment\u2014where form may persist while relational meaning erodes. For this reason, the practice should be framed not as an art object extracted for interpretation but as a situated practice operating within a wider web of social, environmental, and spiritual relations.<\/p>

In recent years, Bring Brung has been sustained through selective collaboration with contemporary artists, allowing it to enter current art contexts while retaining its communal structure. The practice continues to operate as a form of resistance through continuity\u2014preserving collective memory and relational orientation amid historical erasure, rather than confronting power directly.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Bring Brung: Ritual Continuity as Communal Resistance LedengNorthern BandungWest Java (2025) Institutional partnership (NUS Museum) Written and photographed by Kevin Jagar Bring Brung is a community-based performance practice that emerged in the early twentieth century and has been transmitted across five generations through paternal lineage. Rather than functioning as overt political resistance, it operates through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-no-title","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-424","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinjagar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinjagar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinjagar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinjagar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinjagar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/kevinjagar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":676,"href":"https:\/\/kevinjagar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/424\/revisions\/676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinjagar.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}