[Pollinator] [Fwd: INDONESIA Collaboration-- Sustainable Arts
Network International]
Josh Wilson
joshua at artsandmedia.net
Fri Feb 22 09:49:04 PST 2008
Talk about pollination ... howbout crosspollinating with an Indonesian
collective looking for international collaborators?
josh
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [SpAzLiSt] INDONESIA Collaboration-- Sustainable Arts Network
International
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:04:10 -0000
From: <rio at spaz.org>
To: <spazlist at lists.spaz.org>
INDONESIA COLLABORATION-- SUSTAINABLE ARTS NETWORK INTERNATIONAL
This is another update from Indonesia about collaborations with Taring
Padi and the wider community in Java. Its very long but please pay
attention that this is also an invitation and plea for people to get
involved with things either from San Francisco Bay Area or join us here
Indonesia.
If your interested in coming to Indonesia, there's help with financing it
available through a rolling deadline $2000 travel grant offered from the
USINDO society. This is for the purpose of some educational/cultural
exchange or conference, and we can help you arrange the info needed to
qualify. The website is http://www.usindo.org/education/travelgrants.html
Once here there are free places to stay including at Taring Padi space 10
min bike ride from the city in a beautiful friendly jungly village area,
or squatting an empty building at the Gampingan Museum campus which is big
social gathering place for everyone and has wifi and the ?squattable?
building was made cozy and cute by our Cyclown friends who were here.
Also for longer stays you can rent your own house for a few hundred
dollars a YEAR. Its amazingly cheap to live here, a meal is usually less
than $1 and the community is helpful, radical, and collective style.
The specific projects that we need help with are listed towards the bottom
of this post if you want to skip down to whats currently going on in
Yogyakarta.
So finally back in Indonesia? Arriving here was like a moment of truth
metaphorically and literally in regards to being able to start actualizing
the projects I have been planning and obsessing over. I will see if what I
talk (since I talk so much) has something to back it eventually. Also a
moment of truth in addressing more personal issues that were left
lingering when I last left Indonesia.
←Backtrack Overview→
Last time I was in Indonesia I was staying with Taring Padi collective and
theorizing everyday about collaboration ideas and how to connect our
communities more. Over the years a few SPAZ crew have been to Indonesia
and involved with Taring Padi. We talked about trying to get some Taring
Padi crew to the states to do a tour with SPAZ, but a big issue to
overcome was funding for such an endeavor. When I returned to the states
in the end of September I devoted the four months I was there to burying
myself in research on the non-profit funding world. I knew that the main
goal was to get money to pay for airfare and visas for Taring Padi, but
exactly what the proposed project was, why it was socially, culturally,
and artistically beneficial, what angle to take, and who to get funding
from was mind boggling. I had a lot of bits of info to start researching
but in the end the problem was credentials, track record, and 501c3
status, or sponsorship from another non-profit group to vouch for us in
order to receive funds for any project. After going to some conferences in
SF about non-profit stuff, tons of internet research, and being a
bookworm, getting Media Island in Olympia to fiscally sponsor us, I wrote
one grant proposal to the San Francisco Foundation?which was unsuccessful-
But a very big learning experience. What its come down to now is the
formation of the Sustainable Arts Network International (SANI), which I
still pretty theoretical, but will (once I?m back in the states later this
year) file for federal non-profit status. SANI acts as an umbrella to
connect art communities for research, documentation, collaboration,
exchanges, and information sharing to develop long term working
relationships with a focus on using art as a vehicle for social and
ecologic justice/awareness. (Within a grass-roots framework we are working
together globally to improve our communities locally) There is a focus on
solidarity with less developed countries. Basically this be our
user-friendly face and will help keep track of all of our international
wanderings and in the future provide funding possibilities to travel and
do collaborative projects and invite our international friends to the
states. I have on file a constantly edited version of what SANI is, the
mission statement, the details, and so on. So now realizing that getting
funding to ship a bunch of radical Indonesian art activist to the USA is a
bit further in the future we are here working on creating a track record
of smaller projects?
←Jakarta Overview→
So arriving in Jakarta we stayed a few nights on campus at the Jakarta Art
Institute (IKJ), hosted by our friend Yuda with the Sakit Kuning
Collective.
http://sakitkuning.blogspot.com/
The campus is crazy and painted and half run down in continual renovation.
Most of the students squat the campus, especially since other options
would mostly be commuting outside of the city to their family?s homes.
People seem to be hard at work on projects but there is a lot of chillin
at the open air café?s smoking and drinking, especially at night when the
faculty is gone and the campus is more like a big art commune.
We were also hanging out with Toni from Taring Padi who was in Jakarta and
he brought us to Ruang Rupa art collective space to stay while in Jakarta,
but still spending alot of time at IKJ.
http://www.ruangrupa.org/home/about_eng.html
Ruang Rupa had an awesome space, which was big with multiple large rooms,
computer/office room, library, kitchen, bedrooms. We had our own guestroom
too. They do a lot of film and video works, documentation and research
stuff including producing the OK film festival, and Karbon (a quarterly
journal focusing on topics like alternative spaces, performance art,
audience?)
Yuda set up events on the IKJ campus for us to give a
presentation/discussion with a bunch of the students introducing
ourselves, our art, SPAZ, and our ideas for a new non-profit Sustainable
Arts Network International (SANI). We broke it up into two parts with a
little slideshow of photos. We talked about stuff like examples of art
communities in the states, how we use our urban and natural environment to
provide what we need, resourcefulness, DIY mentality? Importance of space,
physical space like shared studios, buses for tours, festivals like Mutant
Fest, other events, and mental space? Importance of collaboration and
networking locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. How to
make money as an artist and support yourself, but also continue creating
art within your community without monetary needs/expenses. How to use your
art focus like theater for example for self-designated ideas and
experimentation with in process development and public art like street
theater, as apposed to only auditioning for other peoples shows, preparing
your art for prestigious stage theater or cinema/television acting.
Second, we talked about our particular art focus together as performance
and circus theater/music. We did some performance stuff and took an
audience volunteer to do a theater workshop and Maya used technique about
character development of facial expression, speach, posture, movement,
costume, makeup, props. And of course a little acrobalance stuff too.
Friday we did a performance with Sakit Kuning and some other performance
groups with experimental music and projection. We were interviewed by a
local television channel in reference to young artists, and they talked
with Sakit Kuning and some people there about what was going on.
IKJ gave us certificates of appreciation for workshops, presentation, and
performances which included our names, SPAZ, and Sustainable Arts Network
International. This is a good step in building a track record and
credentials.
We even got to go to an awesome Drum and Bass party put on by
http://www.javabass.com. Our friends Asung from Rueng Rupa DJ?d and Eloopz
from Sakit Kuning MC?d too. Fucking amazing. The energy was awesome, the
venue was quite posh, though still underground and tucked away in a corner
of the city. People danced all night long. We left the party early when
things were still jumping at about 3am.
I brought with me about a bunch of Beehive Collective posters and about 50
art/anarchist/history zines from the states for indi-literature exchange
and gave copies of some to a girl who does zine distro in Jakarta and she
gave me a stack of stuff she had too. I?ve been reading a lot of local
journals and zines from Java understanding layers to whats going on here.
We also visited a few other community spaces and collectives in Jakarta
too.
← Yogyakarta and Future Project Overview→
So being in Yogyakarta is a nice change of pace though especially because
its been our destination during this journey and I can feel a bit of rest
and settling. This morning we walked through the village that the Taring
Padi space is at to a ?restaurant? to eat near the river. We walked
between houses with smiling children playing outside, goat stables, free
roaming chickens, people constructing new buildings with bamboo, to a
small house with tables out front which functions as a little village
café.
Taring Padi arranged for the Yogyakarta National Museum at Gampingan to
give us letters of invitation for art residencies for use to extend our
visas and also apply for a small grant from the USINDO society. The main
projects with them right now will be to work on curating a ?call to
artists? Second Hand themed exhibition at Gampingan and organizing with
some folks (maybe ArtSF) for a simultaneous exhibition to happen in San
Francisco. This would be a two-part exhibit, which will include swapping
the artwork for a second display the American artwork in Yogya, and the
Indonesian artwork in SF. We want the develop a deeper thesis of
questioning, implied value, things passed down, stories told, antiquity vs
new, consumerism, reuse, and also a double meaning of the exhibition being
second hand with the trading of artwork between countries. We have lots of
ideas of how to make this exhibit interactive and participatory involving
video projects, documentation, "free-box" donations requests from all the
people who attend the exhibit then donating the stuff to a school or group
who needs it.(freebox is not a common practice yet in Indonesia) If anyone
has ideas for the SF side please let me know.
We also just got the opportunity to be involved with a Global Warming
awareness art festival, which Taring Padi is also involved with. This will
be April 15-20. Clear ideas for what we will contribute have not been
formulated but the invitation is there. We invite anyone to join us here
by then to create a workshop, and or performance for this festival.
Also since we have access to a very nice video camera I want to work on a
Taring Padi documentary about current issue with new footage, collecting,
editing, and translating old footage. I?ll be doing a lot of photography,
maybe painting a little bit, playing music, working on performance stuff
with Maya, working with children, and whatever else comes up.
Please feel free to repost this. I tried to post it on the spaz site as a
report, but was having problems... so next time I will try to post it on
the site and some more photos.
So we?ll see how things go from here?
Thanks thanks thanks
Rio
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