Art Monthly Australia East Java (Lo)

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2/4Eyes on Indonesia Issue #244 October 2011 w w w . a r t m o n t h l y . o r g . a u

during their ourth expedition (1413-15) to the IndianOcean. Older than most Javanese cities, SurabayasArabic, Dutch and Chinese quarters are still intact.

Unlike some salon photographers, Yong avoidssentimentalising the city. Nostalgia can sometimes bedistracting because it necessarily directs him towardscertain monuments and away rom other landmarks.

Worse, it directs the viewers away rom the cultural orhistorical signifcance o these sites.

Apart rom Yong, Mamuk Ismuntoro (b. 1975;Surabaya) is another photographer who pursuespersonal work, which some o his peers see as a wasteo time. I like to share things about culture and socialissues with people, he explains. Photography is notjust a technical thing. It takes passion, vision, creativityand, o course opinion and empathy. Long-termpersonal work keeps me ocused on these virtues.7

A journalism graduate, Mamuk has been

working as a ulltime photographer or variouspublications over the years. He is now the pictureeditor oSurabaya Post. His frst project on the Chinesecommunity o Surabaya sees him grappling with themechanics o long-orm documentary work. Sincethen, his storytelling has matured signifcantly,especially in Dare to Live(2006-08).

The mudow disaster frst hit Porong inSidoarjo, East Java, on May 2006 and has sincedisplaced 42,000 people. Most geological experts eelthat the oil and gas company PT Labindo Brantas,which was then involved in drilling activities in the area,is at least partially responsible or the catastrophe. Aso May 2009, the mudow has covered some 800hectares o arming and industrial land, destroyingtwelve villages. About 100,000 cubic metres o mudcontinues to surace each day and possibly or the nextthirty years. Not to appear useless, the Yudhoyonogovernment has shited its attention to related socialand inrastructure issues rather than trying to stop theblow-out. On the ground, the loss o property andemployment has become a reality while compensationhas not been orthcoming or many victims. Cramped

into camps at Pasar Baru and under the old Gempol-Surabaya highway, reugees rom the disaster are tryingto get their lives back on track through the simpleroutine o praying, working and schooling.

Right rom the start, Ismuntoro has beenconscious o the photographers near-pornographicobsession with the disaster landscapes at Porong. Headdresses that unease in Dare to Live, providing adierent way o contemplating the human stories thatare oten lost in disaster reportage. As the work wassel-initiated, Ismuntoro had no particular schedule or

deadlines to ulfl. He would visit Porong with his35mm digital camera, taking time to talk to the victimswhile trying to sieve out the details that wouldntinterest the press or wire photographers.

The result is a surprising combination o

P43: Sadewa, Untitled image fromMe and Mirrors project.

P44: 1/ Hari yong, Surabaya Kalianak, 1997, from the Surabaya Koe project; Kalianak River, North Surabaa.

2/ Hari yong, Untitled image from theAbandoned Histories project.

P45: 1/ Sadewa, Untitled image (The Gate of Death), from the Transposition of Rahwana series.

2/ Mamuk Ismuntoro,Dare to Live. Diana, 19, is getting married at the Pasar Baru refugee camp. Agraduate from high school, she plans to sta temporaril at the camp with her husband (Jul 2008).


3/4Eyes on Indonesia Issue #244 October 2011 45w w w . a r t m o n t h l y . o r g . a u

nowadays acts mainly as a support organisation or otherinitiatives in Malang. Unlike Bandung, the absence o a major art

institution has meant that the art community in Malang is smaller.While Mes 56 has been able to eed o the energies o othercollectives in Yogyakarta, Insomnium is more isolated in thispicturesque hill station. Fortunately, its members have continuedto produce work.

As an economics student rom the University oMuhammadiyah Malang (UMM), Tronic joined its photo club in2002 and stayed only or a year, dropping out rom schoolaltogether in 2007. In The Bag Project(2006), Tronic approachedriends, photographers, artists, designers and strangers to emptytheir bags and allow him to take pictures o their belongings. Thepeople whom he picked were entirely random. The objects in each

bag, Tronic believes, add up to the construct o the ownerspersonality. He is also airly upront about the voyeuristic natureo this project. Needless to say, the act o discovering peoplesbelongings provides comic relie. A rock-and-roll singer, orinstance, carried a little doll and baby oil in his bag.9 Nevertheless,the work oers a dierent way o encountering the issue oidentity among young Indonesians.

Tronics brother Sadewa (b. 1980; Kediri) didcommunication studies at UMM rom 1999 to 2006. JoiningInsomnium in 2004, Sadewas frst major work Me and Mirrors(2005-06) eatures a series o sel-portraits taken across Indonesia

during moments o sel-reection:When I see mysel in the mirror, I oten think o myproblems. Sometimes, I eel like the reection is not me. I eellike I dont know mysel. When I have these thoughts, I wantto take pictures to remind mysel. I want to tell people that:This is me!10

However, some o the sel-portraits also have moreaesthetic motivations. Put together, the entire series unctions likea visual diary not unlike How We Forget and Why We Remember(2006-

survivor portraits and images o abandoned homes and schools. Animage o the grafti at Pasar Baru reugee camp speaks o the angerthat the victims elt against PT Labindo Brantas. As a orm oretaliation, the grafti acquires greater eect through the currencyo Ismuntoros photograph. Dare to Liveallows viewers to understandthe tragedy rom the level o its victims.

Over in Malang, Nakula Tronic (b. 1980; Kediri, EastJava) and Seto Hari W (b. 1981; Madiun, East Java) decided toestablish Insomnium in 2003. Inspired by Mes 56 in Yogyakarta,Central Java, Insomnium aims to provide a orum orcontemporary photography and visual arts. As Hari W asserts:People have been pursuing salon photography or years. We wantto show that there are other strands o photography. Photographyis multi-aceted and we can connect it to disciplines like

anthropology or sociology.8

In 2005, they rented a house that served both as a gallery

and a living space or some o its members and collaborators. Notsurprisingly, a lack o unding has been their Achilles heel, orcingthem to give up the space in 2007. Previously, Insomnium hadbeen able to organise several workshops and exhibitions inMalang, sometimes in partnership with the British Council orwith the collectives o Mes 56 or the Jakarta-based ruangrupa.Since then, it has been unable to run its own programs and

Charles Nodrum Gallery03) 9427 0140 www.charlesnodrumgallery.com.au

ABSTRACT ION 102 7 O c t o b e r - 1 9 N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 1


4/4Eyes on Indonesia Issue #244 October 2011 w w w . a r t m o n t h l y . o r g . a u

07) by emale photographer Christina Phan (b. 1977; Jakarta). Inboth cases, the photographers use their sel-portraits to markspecifc moments o their existence. In this sense, Phan is morecourageous, choosing to bare her emotions to the camera, whileSadewa looks somewhat more reserved in his sel-portraits.

In Transposition of Rahwana(2007), Sadewa moves beyondthe fxation on sel and works with Mujiyana, a Ramayanadancerplaying the character o Rahwana. Traditionally, Javanese peoplebelieve that the spirit o Rahwana, the symbol o evil, can neverbe destroyed, that it resides in every soul as the dark side ohuman behaviour. To locate the relevance o this mythology intodays world, the photographer invited the ully dressed danceronto the streets o modern Yogyakarta and posed him at theBeringharjo traditional market, in ront o a McDonalds outletand against the bustling trafc. The juxtaposition o this mythicalcharacter against urban, mundane realities helps to convey hiscautionary message: Careul! Rahwana is close to you!11

Ironically, the bemusement that some o the onlookers eltwhen they saw Rahwana suggests that leakages o meaning areunavoidable in this modern restaging o an old story. Like mostphotographers, Sadewas confdence in the mediums ability to fxthe notions o identity and meaning may just be unjustifable.Nevertheless, the works o Sadewa and the aorementionedphotographers have brought new ideas about the photographicpractice to East Java. But it will take a ew more years beore theirinput will be elt on a wider scale.m

1. See Peter Carey, Civilization on Loan: The Making o an UpstartPolity: Mataram and Its Successors, 16001830, in Beyond BinaryHistories: Re-imagining Eurasia to c. 1830, Victor Lieberman (ed.), AnnArbor: University o Michigan Press, 1999, pp. 267-288.2. Timoticin Kwanda, email to author, 20 March, 2009.3. Jacob Rumbiak, Bravo the Cat: Life among Papuan and Timorese PoliticalPrisoners in Jakarta, Inside Indonesia, http://insideindonesia.org/content/view/455/29/.4. Hari Yong, interview by author, Surabaya, Indonesia, March 2007.5. Timoticin Kwanda, email to author, 17 December, 2009.6. See Mely G. Tan, The Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia: Issue o Identity,inEthnic Chinese as Southeast Asians, Leo Suryadinata (ed.), Institute oSoutheast Asian Studies, Singapore, 1997, p. 42; Tan explains that theperanakan are those who are o mixed descent, whose amilies have settledin Indonesia or at least three generations, who may have had someChinese language school education but do not speak Chinese as the homelanguage, and whose cultural orientation is more towards the culture othe area in which they have settled.7. Mamuk Ismuntoro, e-mail to author, 18 December, 2009.8. Seto Hari W , interview by author, Malang, Indonesia, March 2007.

9. Nakula Tronic, interview by author, Malang, Indonesia, March 2007.10. Sadewa, interview by author, Malang, Indonesia, March 2007.11. Sadewa, email to author, 3 January, 2010.

Zhuang Wubin is a Singapore based researcher specialising in thecontemporary photographic practices o Southeast Asia. He isalso a photographer: wwwseasiaphotography.wordpress.com;www.lastharbour.com

1/ Mamuk Ismuntoro, from the Dare to Live project. Graffiti at the Pasar

Baru refugee camp in Porong, east Java, highlights the plight of the victims

in the mudflow traged caused b PT Labindo Brantas (Jul 2008).

2/ Nakula Tronic, image from The Bag Project; Adon, 27 ears old, bassist.

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Art Monthly Australia East Java (Lo)