We might see the cultural traffic between Indonesia and abroad in
1950-1965 as an imbalanced flow of influences, in which Indonesia
was in the position of being influenced rather than the reverse.
While Indonesian cultural workers presented their works abroad,
searched for inspiration from and extended their references to
various sites of ‘world’ cultures, as other contributors to this volume discuss, subsequently they processed imported ideas into ‘local’ expressions, to fittheaspiration for so-called national identity.
This was common in recently decolonized nations, since the
‘nation building project’ was at the initial stage.