"Special Presentation", Folder #04: Cemeti x Conflictorium, sebARSIP_
Published on 10 July 2020
Comment 1

Cemeti x Conflictorium_

written by

English | Indonesia

Yustoni Volunteero, Open your freezer- find the fresh president, 1997, Slot in The Box exhibition at CEMETI Contemporary Art Gallery, Yogyakarta. (Image courtesy: Cemeti Art Foundation, 1997).

sebARSIP – Berkas #04 (special curation)

sebARSIP – Berkas #04 (special curation)

Cemeti x Conflictorium

Looking at the explicit and implicit criticisms of conflict through the Cemeti’s art archive collection.

Archive curated by Linda Mayasari & Muhammad Dzulqornain

For three days, from 10 to 12 July 2020, Cemeti – Institute for Art and Society parallelly ran another curatorial version of the sebARSIP Project in the framework of Instagram Takeover, a social-media-based project organized by Conflictorium – Museum of Conflict.

CEMETI – Institute for Art and Society (formerly ‘Cemeti Gallery’, then ‘Cemeti Art House’) is Indonesia’s oldest platform for contemporary art, founded in Yogyakarta in 1988 by artists Mella Jaarsma and Nindityo Adipurnomo. Cemeti offers a platform for artists and cultural practitioners to develop, present and practice their work in close collaboration with curators, researchers, activists, writers and performers, as well as local communities across Yogyakarta. The programme takes shape through exhibitions, workshops, talks, assemblies, publications, long-term research threads and a three-month artist-in-residence programme (held twice annually). The subtitle ‘Institute for Art and Society’ was added in 2017 by a new team to express the organisation’s commitment to socially and politically engaged artistic practices, exploring the possibility for a gallery to act as a site for civic action.

Taking over Conflictorium’s Instagram, Cemeti linked it with an ongoing archival project called ‘sebARSIP’, a casual project which was firstly initiated by Cemeti during the period of social distancing due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This project is taken seriously as a developed distribution platform that consists of the curated reviews over Cemeti’s selected archives.

The sebARSIP is run to intervene the archive into curatorial practice through producing content for online digital media. This project aims to stimulate metaphysics potential from the archives and also becomes an experimental approach in response to the archives and online media as a performative “platform” which tries to elaborate the possibilities of “meta-archives”. Rather than merely present with “editorial” technique, articulating the re-reading of Cemeti’s archival collection through a curatorial approach—as well as to regenerate curator’s intervention in the archives to be spread—is expected to represent the progressivity in evoking archive’s speculative segments that are open to anyone who wants to pick some fragments of the small historiography of arts in our society.

We chose this project to be directly linked to Conflictorium as a virtual loop that would allow us to look and learn from each other about the context of each other’s practices, and collaboratively contribute to the dynamics of production and distribution of cultural knowledge. In terms of its curatorial, sebARSIP in the framework of this Instagram Takeover shared several review of the selected artworks/projects archives from 1988 until 2020 to see a sort of landscape of art criticism on the issue of conflict, whether expressed implicitly or explicitly.

In addition, through this Instagram Takeover platform, Cemeti expanded the scope of its distribution not only in terms of reaching the broader audiences but also in the aspect of the potentiality of cooperation and sharing archival experiences in the relation between the two institutions. ***

Instagram Folder

Instagram Folder

The images embed below are Cemeti’s selected archives which were exhibited on the Conflictorium’s Instagram, in the framework of their Instagram Takeover project, and then reposted on the Cemeti’s Instagram.

View this post on Instagram

Repost from @conflictorium – Cemeti – Institute for Arts and Society (formerly 'Cemeti Gallery', then 'Cemeti Art House') is the oldest platform of contemporary art in Indonesia, founded in Yogyakarta in 1988 by Mella Jaarsma and Nindityo Adipurnomo. – Programs on this platform take the form of exhibitions, workshops, discussions, meetings, publications, long-term research projects, and artist residency programs for three months (held twice a year). – The slogan 'The Institute for Art and Society' came into use in 2017 in order to express organizational commitment to artistic practices that are socially and politically involved, exploring the possibility of galleries to act as important sites for civic actions. – #instatakeover #conflictorium #museumofconflict #keeptalking #princeclausfund #cemeti #ycreate #museumsofahmedabad #ahmedabad #keepseeing #keeplistening #contemporaryart — Taking over Conflictorium's Instagram (starting tomorrow), Cemeti will link it with an ongoing archival project called 'sebARSIP', in which the review of the selected artworks/projects archives from 1988 until 2020 will be shared. Cemeti team chooses the 'sebARSIP' project to be directly linked to Conflictorium as a virtual loop that would allow us to look and learn from each other about the context of each other's practices, and collaboratively contribute to the dynamics of production and distribution of cultural knowledge. – #cemeti #sebarsip #archive

A post shared by Cemeti (@cemeti.institute) on

View this post on Instagram

– Repost from @conflictorium — The experience of re-reading the archive of ‘Slot in The Box’ can be considered as ‘the memories conservation’ about the social-political dynamic of the New Order regime in Indonesia. ‘The conservation’ in this context doesn’t attempt to remember wounds and conflicts in an artificial way but to perpetuate awareness and criticality to re-examine the context of the conflict and what is left after. – The opening of Slot in The Box was held on 6th April 1997 within the pre-election silence and the exhibition had run over until 31st May 1997, two days after the election day. The people burst out their voice after the free speech was suppressed by the New Order regime during its 30 years in power. Riot in the capital city of Jakarta had extended to several other cities, various terrors, the feeling of being vulnerable, fear, anger, and even death covered the election atmosphere. – Within that tense situation that was described by FX Harsono as a 'culture of fear', Slot in the Box sketched the political contestation through creating a space for artists to voice their thoughts and against the taboo that was constructed by the regime. Indeed, this exhibition was not only engaged with the political climate, but also the artist's agency in taking part in participatory democracy. – This exhibition was participated by 23 artists. FX Harsono’s (@ini_fx_harsono) performance titled ‘Victim/Destruction 1’ in Southern Square of the Yogyakarta palace was taken as the first repertoire that opened this exhibition. Followed by a performative work of football tournament initiated by Tisna Sanjaya (@tisnasanjaya). – The texts about Slot in The Box are also playing a role as the rolling criticism. More than just zeitgeist, this exhibition also has an opportunity to be interpreted as a ‘treasure’ which would allow us to re-examine the history, memories, and identity that has been inherited to us. Thus, to re-read the history of the New Order regime through art practices and other critical lenses will lead us to the never-ending conclusion and….“to be continued…” — #conflictoriumtakeovers by @cemeti.institute #cemeti #sebarsip

A post shared by Cemeti (@cemeti.institute) on

View this post on Instagram

— Reopening the Rhizomatic Archipelago Whatsapp group and the artists' social media pages during their residency/temporary migration, we can find expressions that showed the connection they made through social media is a 'Home' for them. This is called ‘Home’ because they keep going there! To this 'Home' they can go home (at any time) for a moment to get some peace when they experience fear/stress over the disturbing and or traumatic narratives they faced along the way. In this ‘Home’, they can meet people from other parts of the island who are guarding them remotely, or at least accompany and or care about what they upload. From this 'Home', they can find various challenges as well as tools (network, references and perspective) – at the same time – to overcome them. I am sure that they never forget to go back to this 'Home' when they are at home in their original region. This 'Home' is a site where they are baptized into digital natives and are nurtured by the reality of the media. – The post generation of '98 in the context of the Rhizomatic Archipelago project is living within a system that involves direct and mediated experience. On the one hand, the direct experience mediated by family, stakeholders, and religion, still has a role in providing social identity, choreographing behavior, and determining morality. While on the other hand, advances in communication technology in Indonesia, which began with the entry of the internet in Indonesia since the 90s, provided a variety of new imaginations that were previously unimaginable. We realize that the development of communication technology that is supported by modern capitalism has two sharp blades. On the one hand individuals become vulnerable to the manipulation and exploitation of markets, the mass media, and the culture industry; but on the other hand it has a democratic and participatory nature which is able to break the patriarchal hierarchical power of the traditional social intermediary system. The shaded area between the real life reality and media reality has become a new battlefield that is urgently to be criticized in our context. — #conflictoriumtakeovers by @cemeti.institute #cemeti #sebarsip

A post shared by Cemeti (@cemeti.institute) on

View this post on Instagram

Repost from @conflictorium – Mella Jaarsma (@mellajaarsma) often uses artistic forms such as animals, food, clothes and the human body to discuss the context of identity and ethnicity. Departing from her anxiety to see racial riots in May 1998 in Indonesia, Mella sought to establish a public dialogue through her performance artwork "Pribumi-Pribumi" (3 July 1998); such dialogue, in this case, was the context of the Chinese ethnic issue, at which the minority group was the victim of New Order political contestation. – Mella Jaarsma wrote on her website: ‘During the 1998 riots, Chinese-owned shops were destroyed by fires, and in the cities of Jakarta and Surakarta, Chinese people were killed and raped. In Yogyakarta, the city where I live, Chinese shop owners started to protect their shops from fire and demolishment, putting signs on their closed doors that read: ‘Pribumi’ (Native shop owner”), or ‘Pribumi Muslim' (Native Muslim shop owner). – Mella, along with 6 ‘londos' (white foreigners) as performers, fried frogs on the edge of Jalan Malioboro. The frogs—which are identical to typical Chinese food—were served with wrapping paper that says “Pribumi-Pribumi” (natives) and covered in banana leaves. In this performance, Mella assembled a dialogical concept between several identity attributes inherent in her artistic material. In this case, food, framed as part of a culture that was contradictory between groups: frog labelled ‘haram’ for Muslims, but a delicacy for ethnic Chinese. – During the New Order regime, it was impossible to discuss the conflict of ethnic identity through open dialogue or confrontational actions that were straightforward—given the complexities of terror, violence and riots. Mella, as an artist with a multi-layered identity within the context of Indonesia, was able to read those political opportunities and work beyond that impossibility. By understanding social fragmentation and conflicts of ethnic identity in the setting of the time the performance was carried out, Mella's expression in the Pribumi-Pribumi consequently appeared as a satire and left a straightforward red thread. – #conflictoriumtakeovers by @cemeti.institute #cemeti #sebARSIP

A post shared by Cemeti (@cemeti.institute) on

This entry was posted in: "Special Presentation", Folder #04: Cemeti x Conflictorium, sebARSIP_
Tagged with:

by

Cemeti – Institut untuk Seni dan Masyarakat (sebelumnya ‘Galeri Cemeti’, kemudian ‘Rumah Seni Cemeti’) adalah platform tertua seni kontemporer di Indonesia, didirikan di Yogyakarta tahun 1988 oleh Mella Jaarsma dan Nindityo Adipurnomo. Cemeti menawarkan platform bagi seniman dan praktisi kebudayaan untuk mengembangkan, menyajikan, dan mempraktikkan aktivitas mereka lewat kolaborasi bersama kurator, peneliti, aktivis, penulis dan performer, serta komunitas lokal di Yogyakarta.

1 Comment

  1. Pingback: Cemeti x Conflictorium | CEMETI

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.