English | Indonesia

The members of Rhizomatic Archipelago Network (here in after we call them as “Rhizomatic Network”) gather again even though through online platforms. Ferial Afiff (Yogyakarta), Rahmadiyah Tria Gayathri (Palu). Tajriani Thalib (Mandar), Ipeh Nur (Yogyakarta), Cut Putri Ayasofia (Aceh), and Arif Setiawan (Pontianak). Two other members of Rhizomatic Network; Syamsul Arifin (Madura) and Suvi Wahyudianto (Madura/Yogyakarta) could not join the online meeting on July 9th, 2020. Nevertheless, we felt impressed when we heard stories from each Rhizomatic Network participant about a current situation in their regions.

Ferial Afiff was accidentally in Bandung when a pandemic happened. She lives with his grandmother, mother, and her family. She is now intensifying hair creambath production from organic material. Through Rikma Kita, Ferial is also preparing for an offline exhibition concerning a strict Covid-19 health protocol in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19, along with the lifeshiled_facemask team and some artists from Bandung. The exhibition is taken from the distribution process of Lifeshield (behind story), 10.000 of free homemade face shields have been distributed to 16 regions in Indonesia.

Rahmadiyah Tria Gayathri, or known as Ama told a story about her activity “Cooking for Friends” which she initiated together with friends of Sudutpandang Forum. At that time, she found that many of her friends lost their job. Since then, she cooked and shared food to their friends who came to her house and they would wrap the food themselves and bring it home. Currently, she also started to organize a documentation of embankment construction in Palu Bay. Every day, she took a picture at the same corner. She tried to document it in a time-lapse format.

Tajriani Thalib, in this year, she got a scholarship from LPDP Program and now she is taking intensive language training. After that, she will take a master degree majoring Psychology at Gadjah Mada University. Meanwhile, she is also managing Bura’pia, a small space which focuses on education. She opens the space next to her house.

It’s different here with what Cut Putri Ayasofia and Ipeh Nur are doing; they start to make an illustration by order. Cut Putri Ayasofia, for example, posted her result of the illustration to sale platforms such as Fiverr and Amino. Usually, she only gets the orders for illustrations from her friends. The income is quite good, it is around one to three of her illustrations were sold out in a week.

What they have done is similar with Ipeh Nur’s who works on making artist merchandise together with her husband named OVVM while they are still working on collaborative projects with their collective, Gegerboyo. Ipeh is getting ready to offer her works to the customers who are passing by on her Instagram account, @ovvm_ovvm. Today’s situation is different from the past. There was nothing to worry about the customers, but now she must work harder to pick the balls up so she can sell all of the products.

Meanwhile, Arif Setiawan is creating Drapon (Drama of Pontianak) with his friends. It is a cinema sketch which uses Malay language. This sketch was posted to Instagram. He said that they got a positive response from the audience of Drapon. One of their posts at least got 5000 viewers since the first time they uploaded it three weeks ago.

When this pandemic situation happened, at first we felt shocked and chose to take a moment of silence. In fact, this silent action was a form of our way to learn the system that worked within us. The stories of Rhizomatic Network bring us to the point where we can feel the choreography of our life again. ***