A Critique of Global Pop Culture's Hygiene Standardization Against the Megibung Tradition in Installation Art

Abstract

The communal Megibung tradition of Karangasem and the Lawar preparation at its centre are increasingly marginalised by a standard of hygiene that global popular culture presents as universal. The international gaze reads organic, hand-prepared, open-air food as unsanitary, and that verdict is now internalised by younger Balinese, who withdraw from a practice they have learned to see as dirty. Existing scholarship treats Megibung as a culinary and sociological object, examines Lawar from a food-safety standpoint, or analyses ritual as a vehicle of cultural transmission; none has treated the hygiene conflict itself as the material of an artwork. This article reports an artistic research project that designed an installation as a critical response to that conflict. The enquiry combined participatory observation of Megibung and Lawar preparation at customary events in Karangasem Regency over approximately six months, semi-structured interviews with tradition bearers and younger residents, analysis through cultural hegemony, the classification of pollution, and the tourist gaze, and material realisation in the studio. The resulting work, Ritus yang Dihakimi (The Judged Rite), places a full gibungan replica, comprising rice, three Lawar variants, sate, urutan, and komoh, at floor level and encircles it with macro-scaled green flies cast in resin and fiberglass. Because the standing viewer shares the elevation of the swarm rather than that of the dish, the audience is placed inside the structure of judgement rather than outside it. The contribution of the article is to demonstrate that hygiene standardisation can be argued spatially and materially as well as analytically.