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As an important cultural research institution in Yogyakarta, KUNCI Cultural Studies Center is located in a crowded southern district of Yogyakarta like any other art organizations. It is hidden in an alleyway with a large yard full of ripe mangos and rambutans. During my first visit, they had just finished renovating a room for residency, and it might serve as a small space for future exhibitions. Along with the progress of each project, the space has maintained in a very organic and flexible state. Someday after, I had a chance to visit KUNCI again. While everyone was bustling around, Syafiatudina (also known as Dina) and I found a rather quiet space to sit down and she began to talk about the project of “KUNCI School of Improper Education” (SoIE) that started off from the end of year 2016.
Get Into Daily Practice
SoIE, this long-term project can be traced back from “Taman Siswa” (people’s school) that had rooted an intensive influences in Indonesia. Tawan Siswa, a school which combined western and eastern educational systems, focused on reading, discussions and the lectures of philosophy, theory, economics, politics, etc. In addition, they also encouraged students to practice meditating and drawing. Taman Siswa gave an impact to the later generations with its mission “caring”. This mission was based on two principles: The first is the freedom as the requirement to enliven and generate the power in body and soul so as to live independently. And the second is the Nature as a condition to live and achieve the progress quickly and properly.
Since SoIE is a project about how to learn together, members will go through various learning models to become aware of “how we learn?” Every four models form a loop, and after this experimentation, the following four models will be planned out for the next three years. This is the very first project of KUNCI that has no deadline. During 2017 to 2018, this project is expected to experiment four school models and evaluate the result after completion. The result of each model will be presented with books, exhibitions or events and so on.
In the second half of 2017, the second learning model “turun ke bawah” (going below) is underway. “Turun ke bawah” is inspired by the dialectic attitude of how artists think about “struggle” in everyday life.(註2) This model offers several principles for artists to follow. One of them is to go into the fields, work and live together with the peasants. Another one is that the artists should communicate with people on the same level instead of rivaling on the educational background. The other is that the artists must truly get involved in the lives of others by stepping out their own social circle.
I joined SoIE by KUNCI the second time in November, and I listened to the member Khairunnisa shared her experience on signing up for being a Go Jek driver a few months ago. In the daily life of Indonesia, there is a very exceptional transportation system known as motorcycle taxi (i.e. Go Jek or Grab Bike) favored by foreign tourists and locals because it is much more convenient and flexible to make its way through alleys, and also cheaper in comparison with automobile taxis. Motorcycle taxi serves more than just pickups, it provides food and shopping delivery as well. Nisa is a young girl with a cultural anthropology background and she responded to this theme of SoIE “how artists get into daily life and practice” by becoming a driver in this vast Go Jek network. Anyone who intends to become a Go Jek driver must first apply for Police Clearance Certificate from the government and send it to Go Jek head office for approval. The verification process takes about two weeks, the applicant officially becomes a driver once the application is approved and will then receive work guide, a set of Go Jek jacket and helmet. All the procedures mentioned are online, which means there is no interview and contact with any actual personnel, therefore even the termination of the contract will also be carried out via written form.
From the sharing of Nisa, we can see a completely different mobile app interface from the passenger’s, including each driver’s passenger rating section, earnings, working hours and so, are all dedicated exclusively through quantitative scale records. The passenger’s rating greatly affects the driver’s credits, so no wonder that is why the driver always reminds me to rate her/him five stars when getting off the motorbike. These motorbike taxi drivers assemble as a large group, either Go Jek or Grab Bike have developed their distinguished cultures under a long term of operation. I have observed that some drivers congregate in groups at some hotspots as if they are marking their territory. Nisa also mentioned that drivers set up dialogue groups on social media app to share information with each other. The accounts of passengers who once had bad records will also be reported to the head office for verification, and once the head office grants the blacklist, the drivers are allowed to refuse carrying the passengers with the corresponding accounts.
Methodology, experimentation & the story as the model
Before starting out SoIE, the participants decided on the theme together, and after the four models had been selected, the open calls began. The open calls announced that SoIE would be a year-long project which welcomed anyone who had an interest to devote themselves with KUNCI to propose the plan. Twenty proposals were selected and began the first model of SoIE in November 2016. The second model ended in November 2017. For the two following models to be conducting next year, the senior member can decide either to continue or drop out of the project as SoIE will keep inviting different members to join in.
For the first semester of SoIE, the theme revolves around “equality”, including the equality between teachers and students in school, and students and systems as well. Dina took a collective learning case of teachers and students as an example. In that school, teachers and students chose to learn a language that they both were not familiar with. In most of the occasions, teachers always master superior profession toward the students; that is why students must learn particular knowledge from teachers. However, if the field of learning target is something they both have no knowledge of, they are able to study and learn together. As a result, for the first semester of SoIE, they chose to learn a sign language that no member has any idea about. They tried several methods of learning but still no member was able to master the sign language fluently at the end, so the attempt eventually failed. Although the first model of learning a language was unsuccessful, they discovered the importance of “collective learning”, such as “urgency”: Why do we learn this? Why do we have to study together? And what fun does every individual get from collective learning?
Therefore, not only is this experiment related to collective awareness but it is also rewarding to individuals. The members developed friendships, worked together, read together, and generously shared their resources. The process simultaneously reflects the true spirit of “collective” and being in a team. When we talk about the close collaboration of an art community, it is not an exclusive model to Indonesia or Yogyakarta as there were already a lot of alternative spaces and artist communities since the 1980s in Taiwan. However, the question “why such a practice model has become one of the main recognized aspects of Indonesian art” appears to be intriguing. There are many art communities with diverse characteristics and approaches in Yogyakarta. In Dina’s article “Common Tasks: Indonesia – Aggregation of Living and Knowledge: How KUNCI Become a New School”, she has mentioned the crisis of “collective”:
For instance, having preference on collective production without any hesitation brings about dualism of the individual and the collective. To be more precisely, it is a matter of negotiating and balancing between informality and formality. Taking Artist groups as an example, they are considered to have more charisma in making political criticism than institution such as art museum or academia.(註3)
These art organizations play critical role and serve as an alternative school outside academia. However, similar to what Dina had in mind, I am more concern about the occurrence of a new hegemony if the young talents only take the concept and style of a certain leading art community as the guiding principle. Dina responded to my concern in an optimistic way. She thought that the communities in Yogyakarta have their own uniqueness, or they have their specific skills and languages, thus no particular group in Yogyakarta has the sole right to speak; or we can say that Yogyakarta is where many micro-centers exist. Then I asked further, if the “collective” is regarded as the research target for researchers or curators, then what is the position of individual artist within? Or to put it this way: “what is the necessity of an artist to become a community member?”
In fact the circumstance was similar in Taiwan and Indonesia; there were not many art museums or galleries in early days. Therefore, artists must rely on their own to create exhibition opportunities or to build exhibition space for themselves. The most common way is to cooperate or share the rent with others in order to get an exhibition space directly; this might explain why the art spaces are thriving in Indonesia. So up until now, it is still necessary for young talents to share the rent with others, run a space and further obtain exhibition space of their own. However, it remains still as an ongoing challenge for artists to distinguish their own creations from collective creations. As both a writer and a curator, Dina encounters the same task of balancing her personal plan and KUNCI’s. The artist may hope to retain her / his own voice in addition to the groupʼs collective work, yet Dina frankly acknowledged that she did not specifically divide the two because her own plans often slowly take shapes from the practices in KUNCI.
The Imbalance of Educational System & its Compensation from Art Project
During my visit to several cities in Indonesia, I have heard not only SoIE but also many other cases of reacting to education system or self-organizing courses outside school due to the fact of urban-rural divide and the corruption of system. Several university students who initiate “Floating School” project this year frequently go to small islands outside Sulawesi. They take the students there outdoor every weekend in order to put the seven themes of subjects (photography, dancing, music, computer skills, chemistry, etc) into practice. Owing to the fact of living in remote rural and suffering from the malfunction of education system, these children who live outside the center are very likely to meet teachers from the city only twice in a whole semester, and once would be the term exam. Moreover, even they have computer course, they could only learn the skills from the textbook without actual experience using computer keyboard. Floating School provides materials and instruments directly to the students so that they can learn from implantation. It also retains the flexibility of curriculums for students to decide on their course content. This year, Floating school is going to exhibit the photographic works of these students in Makassar Biennale in November.
When I asked why so many communities or projects reflect on Indonesian education system, Dina said the primary reason is that people cannot afford the tuition fee as it increases dramatically. Furthermore, due to the fact the development resources are in particular centered on Java Island, people must go there for attending better schools or seeking promising opportunities. Even the government is conscious of creating opportunities on other islands, the human resources are still missing since most of the youngster has flocked to Java Island. On the other hand, the reason might have something to do with the colonial history while the knowledge and skill was separated; the western colonist built up school for tutoring rationality whereas the sensibility and the people’s awareness came from wild school and informal school. This is probably why the artists nowadays keep caring for education system. The current Indonesian education system put too much emphasis on “skills”. The purpose of education is to help students cultivate certain skills such as foreign languages and computer techniques. Even if someday the education system improves, the knowledge of art and humanity will always be absent in schools.