Komunitas Lima Gunung: Building Communitas through Religious-Aesthetic Performances

BRIAN TRINANDA K A, Dr. Samsul Ma'arif

2020 | Tesis | MAGISTER AGAMA DAN LINTAS BUDAYA

Komunitas Lima Gunung (KLG) didirikan pada tahun 2002 oleh seorang budayawan yang bernama Sutanto Mendut. KLG merupakan komunitas yang tersebar di lima gunung yang ada di kabupaten Magelang, Jawa Tengah. Lima gunung tersebut adalah gunung Sumbing, Merbabu, Andong, Merapi, dan Menoreh. Sutanto Mendut merupakan presiden KLG, yang membangun komunitas dengan karakter seperti yang dijelaskan Victor Turner yaitu communitas, melalui serangkaian performance religi-estetis di mana tiap-tiap anggota KLG dapat mengartikan dan mengontekstualisasikan kembali cara pandang, serta norma-norma dan tatanan sosial mereka. Penelitian ini mengupas ide communitas yang diterapkan di KLG berdasarkan pertanyaan penelitian sebagai berikut: 1) apa performance KLG yang mampu mengubah KLG ke dalam communitas?; 2) bagaimana Sutanto Mendut mengelola performance (religi-estetis) sebagai jalan re-artikulasi ide-ide communitas?; 3) kenapa performance communitas KLG dapat diterjemahkan sebagai performance religi-estetis? Penelitian ini dilaksanakan dengan cara observasi partisipan serta wawancara tidak terstruktur. Data didapatkan melalui keterlibatan langsung dan dokumentasi beberapa kegiatan (performances). "Pemahaman" tentang berbagai performance didapat melalui serangkaian wawancara tidak terstruktur kepada praktisi, termasuk Sutanto Mendut, pemimpin komunitas, sekaligus anggota KLG. Penelitian ini berpijak pada teori performance studies untuk menganalisis data-data yang didapat. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa: 1) communitas muncul melalui performance ritual yang menciptakan momen liminalitas, momen in-between (di antara) sebagai akibat dari penerjemahan kembali struktur atau antistruktur suatu norma/tatanan sosial. Performance ritual KLG berfungsi sebagai sarana penciptaan kembali tatanan sosial (kontekstual) melalui pengalaman-pengalaman "normatif" yang dimiliki komunitas; 2) Sutanto Mendut merepresentasikan dirinya sebagai religious-trickster (penggoda-yang-reigius) yang menciptakan momen liminalitas melalui prinsip-prinsip dialogisme kemanusiaan (tiap manusia dalam sama dan saling ber-relasi) yang merupakan salah satu nilai communitas yang muncul di KLG; 3) communitas, yang muncul pada performance KLG, secara praktis menantang sekaligus mendidik anggota komunitas untuk bebas dari ketergantungan struktur-struktur (suatu tatanan sosial) dan status (sosial) serta membebaskan anggota untuk turut serta menikmati momen rasa kebersamaan dan keterkaitan sebagai identitas dasar menjadi religius dan estetik di KLG. Penelitian ini mengusulkan pula adanya kebutuhan untuk: 1) menantang wacana modern tentang "agama/religi"; dan 2) mempertimbangkan praktik keagamaan sehari-hari melalui bantuan performance studies dalam studi agama. Ide essensialis tentang agama seperti contohnya adalah memisahkan yang sakral dengan profan, tidak dapat membantu menjelaskan praktek-praktek KLG. Gagasan-gagasan tersebut sama sekali tidak ada dalam perspektif praktisi. Performance studies membantu menjelaskan bagaimana performance-performance yang kompleks digunakan sebagai jalan mencapai religiusitas dan estetika secara bersamaan.

Komunitas Lima Gunung (KLG, the five-mountain community) was founded in 2002 by Sutanto Mendut, a well-known budayawan (cultural practitioner). KLG refers to communities living in areas of the five mountains of Magelang, Central Java that together join into one single community, the KLG. Those mountains are the mount Sumbing, Merbabu, Andong, Merapi, and Menoreh. Sutanto Mendut, the president of KLG, builds the community with the characteristics of what Victor Turner may call communitas through series of religious-aesthetic performances in which members of the KLG continually re-articulate and re-contextualize their worldviews and social norms and orders. This research examines those ideas of communitas as forged in the KLG through the following research questions: 1) what are the performances of KLG that transforms its members to engage in communitas?, how has Sutanto Mendut managed (religious-aesthetic) performances as ways of re-articulating ideas of communitas?, and 3) why may KLG's performances of communitas be interpreted as religious-aesthetic? This research was conducted through fieldwork: participant observation and unstructured interviews. Data were collected through participating in and documenting several activities (performances). "Meanings" of those performances were gathered through series of unstructured interviews with practitioners that included Sutanto Mendut himself, leaders of the communities, and many members of the KLG. This research is indebted to theories of performance studies to analyze those collected data. Based on data collected, this research argues that: 1) communitas emerges through ritual performances that create the moment of liminality, the moment of in-between as the result of re-articulating structure/anti-structure of social norms/orders. Ritual performances of KLG function to recreate (contextual) social orders through "normative" references belonging to those communities, 2) Sutanto Mendut represents himself in performances as "religious trickster" who re-create moments of liminality through which dialogical humanitarian principles (each person is equal and relational) as one of the values of communitas are forged in the KLG, 3) Communitas, being forged in the KLG performances, practically challenges and teaches its members to be free from dependency on structures (of social orders) and (social) status and let them join in the moment of feeling the sense of togetherness and relatedness as the vary basic senses of being religious and aesthetic in KLG. This research finally argues the need 1) to challenge the modern discourse of "religion," and 2) to take everyday religious practices through the help of performance studies into account in religious studies. The essentialist ideas of religion which, for example, separate the sacred from the profane do not help to explain the KLG practices. Those ideas simply do not exist in the practitioners' perspectives. The performance studies help to show the complex performances as ways of being religious and at the same time aesthetic.

Kata Kunci : aesthetic, communitas, performance, religious, trickster