Guest article by Celina Lunsford, Artistic Director of the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt. All photos credit Celina Lunsford.
Oscar Motuloh
“I have just gotten back from a one week visit to Jakarta to discover different photographic artists from Indonesia, Frankfurt Book Fair’s Guest of Honour 2015. Thanks to my hosts, the Ministry of Education and Culture, I was introduced to several art centers. My main goal was to spend time at the Antara Gallery with its director Oscar Motuloh, and his co-curator Gunawan Wijaya who have been consulting me for this endeavour.
But first of all I spent some days at the Salihara Komunitas and met with Goenawan Mohamad, Chairman of the National Organizing Committee for Indonesia. Salihara Komunitas is the meeting place for several artists, students and the team of Indonesia as Guest of Honour, since Goenewan Mohamad (GM) founded this place. Salihara is a kind of oasis, located in Pasar Minggu area in southern Jakarta. With impressive facilities, it supports dynamic new art forms and diversity of cultures. On the grounds are a theatre, where Frankfurt based Ensemble Modern has performed. My visit fell on the holiday of ascension and all day there were performances of school children’s bands, dance and theatre.
Salihara Entrance
On the grounds there is also an exhibition rotunda, practice rooms for dance and music, the café, a book-gift shop, numerous gardens or grass covered decks, and the residency rooms with a very gracious communal area with good functioning wifi throughout the center. A visit here is a must for anyone visiting JKT and involved in the arts.
Being here enabled a pleasant and useful space that I could officially and unofficially meet artists. Besides the photographic artists Fanny Octavius or Paul Kadarisman, who I met here, I had the opportunity to often share the table or share words with other artists, publishers, or translators. Naturally other key figures like Endo Suanda, head of Performances Sub-committee or Slamet Rahardjo Djarot, Head, Performances, Exhibitions & Seminars were also constantly popping into Salihara. The entire place is really like one big family, where everyone greets everyone, takes a coffee, tea or beer with friends and colleagues.
One morning as I entered the café for my breakfast of baked bananas, chocolate and toast, Goenewan Mohamad, the writer and critic, asked me to join him as he was waiting on others for a FBF meeting. I could not really share much when local matters were spoken, except when it came to the most feared and dangerous of all Indonesian subjects: the traffic of Jakarta. I had experienced it the day before so I could suggest to GM that I was sorry that we did not have an audio book going in the car as it took us over 40 minutes to travel 7 km. GM told me that he is an avid twitterer, often having to teach classes with twitter, while stuck in a freeway quagmire. “Jam Karet” (rubber time), as the Indonesians say, basically everything has its time and place.
If you go to the Salihara café, order the fantastic Japanese named tea, a health injection of ginger, cloves and other interesting leaves; even in the hot weather this hot tea will keep you healthy during your entire trip. In the book shop you can buy good reads in English language of Tuhan dan Hal-hal Yang Tak Selesai’(God and other Unfinished Things) (2007) from GM or selections from Tempo, “Catatan Pinggir”, the magazine he founded.
Kosenda Hotel
Mid week in Jakarta I moved into the center of Jakarta so I could be closer to the Antara Gallery, our partner for our exhibition of contemporary photographic art. I stayed at a local Hotel called, Kosenda, which also has a comfortable 24 hour lounge with a good selection of books on Indonesian themes and international newspapers and magazines and a roof-top garden bar. Here I found a small selection of short stories “Lies, Loss and Longing” by Puta Oka Sukanta published by the Lontar Foundation to read during my stay.
Antara Gallery Conference Room
The primary reason for my visit was to meet photographic artists in Jakarta. Antara Gallery has been our local partner for the project. The gallery is part of the cultural complex and activities of the media agency Antara. Located at Jl. Antara 59 in the Pasar Baru, it is situated on a canal with lots of yummy places to eat or near by a bit of shopping. (from musical instruments to Saris). The building is from the early 19th c. and has a bit of the tropical colonial architecture details, tall ceilings, balcony and tiled floors. The space spread across 2 floors and an attic, housing offices, an expanded gallery space with and event room and bar. Upstairs is the library and meeting room. It is here also that an exciting academy for photography has been active since the 1990s run by photographer and director Oscar Motuloh.
Andi Ari Setiadi
Luckily my visit coincided with the last week of The Photo Book Month at the gallery. In collaboration with the local Goethe Institut, Antara Gallery has been inviting several German photographers and publishers in the past for workshops and lectures, such as Markus Schaden, Wolfgang Zurborn; while I was there, my colleague Alexa Becker from Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg gave a lecture. We both reviewed about 20 photographers works in a relaxed one-on-one meeting portfolio review. I met photographers here, which we plan to show in Frankfurt such as Muhammad Fadli who has produced a moving work of landscape and portraits about Banda Island, known for its nutmeg plantations. The enthusiasm for the photo-book culture is evident in many of the works I saw, such the book projects of Andi Ari Setiadi. He uses his photographic work, or uses fascinating graphic layouts based on details of materials, similar to that of Sigmar Polke, for other exhibition and photographers-projects. Another young book-maker was the architect turned photographer, Mulia Idznillah who continued her photographic studies at Antara. She prints small poetic books of her photos she takes with her iPhone.
Lans Brahmantyo & family
Here the Gallery, which changes shows about every month, they always have a live band for the openings and the finissages. I got to experience the last day of the exhibition Indonesian Photobook Selection 2013-2015 / Deutsche Fotobuch Preis 2014 with a good party and dancing to a rocking local band. The winning selection books of the german prize will tour further in Indonesia and then come back to Antara as a gift for their library.
Also at Antara I was able to meet Lans Brahmantyo who runs Afterhours Books, also a producer of fine quality life-style and art books. They published for example the unique photo book “Soulscape Road” by Oscar Motuloh a meditative visual poetry, beautifully printed black and white publication about life and devastation, such as the aftermath of Aceh’s Tsunami. They have also made the book, 17,000 Islands of Imagination with aerial photography from Jez O’Hare.
Celina @ Sunda Kelapa
Other places I made it too were the Nasional Museum with a great collection of Asian ceramics, a neo-greco-roman courtyard garden with extensive Hindu and Buddhist stone sculpture. Look for the collection of the wooden models of the different traditional Indonesian structures, including one of earthquake resistant housing.
If you have the chance, a quick visit to the Sunda Kelapa (the name of the old harbour) is worth viewing. It is where all the inter-island traditional Pinisi wooden cargo boats dock to distribute their goods.”
