English | Indonesia

When this article was written, the government of Yogyakarta had not applied the new normal system. People talked about it, new normal tests were done gradually, and in July was the biggest challenge for this city because a bunch of tourists and students came back. On the contrary, some public places in Jogja seemed back to normal; more crowded than one or two months before. Meanwhile, we are doing good in Cemeti and working on our activity by keeping our distance from each other and closing the door for the public.

Nevertheless, we cannot stop producing and distributing knowledge away just because the Covid-19. Besides, putting our safety and health in a number one priority is necessary to do. We have no other choice, some of our programs have to be postponed until further notice. Cemeti Team decides to do diverse things which are possible to be realized the most while we are waiting for good news. One of them is giving our huge attention to archives.

The situation above which actually stimulates the initiation of sebARSIP; a casual project in a curated review series towards documentation material Cemeti has chosen from our archives. We process and interpret in a new perspective which we distribute through online later.

So far, we have published eight publications in the frame of sebARSIP as seen on the website. The eight of publications consist of three curatorials with a given label “Archive” (Archive #01-”Jogja 88” which is curated by Manshur Zikri; Archive #02- “Undangan 98″ curated by Ika Nurcahyani; and Archive #03- “Presence and/with Presenting Text” curated by Manshur Zikri); a review of Leyla Stevens’s Project when she took her residency in 2013 which followed by a reflective essay by Diyan Krisnawati; a reflective essay on archiving by Muhammad Dzulqornain; also, a review on Ruang Etsa Art Project and Soccer (by Tisna Sanjaya, 2000) and Petruk Visited His Family (by Krijn Christiaansen, 2008).

Managing the archive in the curatorial frame of sebARSIP gives the Cemeti team a new experience they never expected before. From the curatorial side, the archivists have freedom to interpret Cemeti Archives in a popular point of view and perceive archiving action critically, including in the context of criticizing the distinction between physical activity and non physic (online). In term of institution program, this project has become a therapy to review the development of the discourse of Cemeti in a contemporary art scene in Indonesia; it is a sort of a choreography to understand the social background, artistic vision and mission from each project and art works which ever got involved on Cemeti’s projects all this time.

The approach in managing these archives has been becoming our concern, also a positive feed-back from the public towards the contents have been published. Furthermore, sebARSIP will be a sustainable project which is open and adjustable for any possibilities of development. One of them is a cooperation and sharing action in archive content among institutions. Entering the month of July 2002, Cemeti started the cooperation with Conflictorium in which we expanded the scope of sebARSIP content distribution and gained more audiences. Regarding that collaborated project, Cemeti Team is now preparing for online content publication for sebARSIP particularly in order to apply Instagram Take Over Program which was initiated by Conflictorium. ***