Andreas Siagian, NGM interview
" I really like small scale events, which is actually against big grand funding. With big grant fundings they want more people, big events, and somehow I think it's like a big advertisement, as big as possible. I personally prefer small, but continuing. "
Interview host: Shih Wei Chieh
2022.11.11
Jogjakarta, online
Can you tell us a bit about Lifepatch?
Lifepatch is a collective, I’m an individual, the co-founder. So I think it’s a different story. I myself consider doing lots of things with my friends, with people. I think I have a different approach to what Lifepatch is. Lifepatch has my value, but the whole value of me is not in Lifepatch. I consider Lifepatch to be more like a space now. It's not like what it used to be. It’s been ten years, the collective has grown and also progressed in a way that the people there are mature and also older now, and then all these individuals have different priorities like I also have different priorities. So of course there are projects that I really like in Lifepatch and I would really like to continue, but I am not involved in all Lifepatch projects anymore because of my own personal choice. So one of the projects that I really like is a collaboration with Marc and Hackteria. And the last project that we did we made it clear that this is a project between Hackteria and me. I also started another institution, but this is just to be clear, and Lifepatch is the host of the Residency. So in this aspect I can have more of what I think is really important because I have more of the control, more of curatorial project approaches and I can have the freedom to choose the artist without having to communicate it with my friends or without having to argue with my friends. And this is very important in my current stage of practice, I really need to have my own choice. I really like how we try to connect with Southeast Asian artists and the region of Southeast Asia. I really like the context, I really like the similarities. The continuity of having projects with a certain institution or a certain collective, or as a certain individual, allows you to know their working methodology. Knowing how they work and knowing what interest that we have, that we share in common, and this is what is most important. I think the last project that we did in Rosa, it was mostly about giving the chance for people to gather, after this whole pandemic, and we really don’t want to give big pressure for artists to produce in such a short time.
So this ROŠA is a grant from GOSH (Gathering for Open Science Hardware), which is a network of Global Open Source Hardware, and both of us applied for it and we got the grant, and the grant is actually for scientific purposes – science, or hardware proposals, and we really like this theme of open science hardware, but in an aspect to grow communities, or collectives, we have to broaden it a bit. So we tried to gather art as part of this project, so combining art with science and open hardware practices gives a more fun and creative aspect of the project, which allows more possibilities in creation. So we invited three artists from Southeast Asia to pair up with several artists to come to Indonesia and to do a residency of almost a month. And continuing back to what I was saying before - that one of the grants was pressuring the artists quite hard to have an output in such a short amount of time, like within one month residency you have to do an exhibition there, and this is really why we would like to try a different model. For us you want to try not to focus so much on the output, and focus more on the process. After a pandemic situation of more than 2 years, we thought that it would be great to be able to meet, to talk, to catch up, to do something together and by physically also being together. So this project is about this, because when you have creative people situated in a space together, the output will come, they will produce something, it’s natural for them to create something. So we had many interesting workshops and creative practices happening in the past one month that we had the project, and this continues to the topic that this is also a kind of social experiment, and a new model is only happening because of a long history from the collaboration that we did. We know for certain that in the past in 2014 we did a lab that was big, 70 people for two weeks. And we were really happy with the results but we also thought that this yearly festival maybe was not a model to go for.
Did you hold an open call for your event?
No. I really like small scale events, which is actually against big grand funding. With big grant fundings they want more people, big events, and somehow I think it's like a big advertisement, as big as possible. I personally prefer small, but continuing. I think the most important is actually continuity of the project or a continuity in small scale. So in the beginning of Rosa, we encouraged a lot of participants to initiate their own workshop on a small scale. We were aiming at 5 to 10 people only, because in that situation, this is where we come to the idea of educational outreach, you have better quality. When you have to deliver to 40 people, it's too much. But in ten people you can get personal, you can get personal direction, you can get personal outreach, the interaction becomes more personal and less formal. People become comfortable with themselves, we can ask questions, there's more interaction between the people in the workshops and the audience. So we were aiming for a small scale but continued, sustainable model. The artist invited to come here is also giving a workshop, Marc is giving a workshop, I also give a workshop. There are multiple roles here. As an organizer, I also deliver a workshop. It's a very different model and, in this experimentation of a new model could happen because of the long, collaborative work between Marc and I. So the participants organized workshops. I also organized a workshop. We encouraged them to organize their own workshops. We helped them also, of course, with publications and materials, we provided space. But they also organized their own, and prepared their own stuff. So it was very mixed, and very fluid roles.
Can you describe the transition from organizing as a collective to a more personal approach?
I think I've worked with collective practices since 2004, so that's like 18 years. There are some parts that I think I want to try by myself. There are other parts that I really want to try with my collective. Like I said, now I'm seeing Lifepatch more as a space rather than a collective. So now they have a lot of projects going on, also without me. I really like this open-source, open hardware concept, and I really like to apply my idea, so I gave my collective the role of a host, it hosts the residency, while the choices of the artists, the choices of the projects, and the direction of the projects is my individual choice. This happened also before, not only for this project, but there were others also before. So now of course there's a transition, because now we've been a collective for ten years and a lot of the individuals also have their own different priorities. I think this is also a transition in the stage of life. And so it's different now, some of the members now have married, have families and less time to do things. So we become more selective in what we're doing. Also the age. Back then, the first time I met up with Marc in 2009, I was really young, full of energy at that time. We hate to admit it but we grow old, that’s how it is.
I think in collectives, in the art scene and festivals, we always try to rethink new models, but there's no model that is going to be the best, it might be irrelevant to do it the next two years. For example, during COVID pandemic Online Exhibitions became a thing, but now who wants to go to an online exhibition? So that model is irrelevant now. But maybe this model will be relevant again in the next five years with new Internet technology or whatever. Festivals every year will have the question ‘can you really deliver new content by next year that is really good?’ There's a lot of good events organized on a big scale by many institutional collectives. But the small scale is also very important. And this is what I think a lot of funding institutions miss by much, because it complements each other, and it’s not that big festivals are more effective, both can be effective in their own way, they are just different. And after one month of residency, everybody had a good time, everybody tried to be better, these small groups receive a big quality of knowledge transfer in one month. As the organizer of the participants, we learn a lot. There are festivals that run for one week. In that one week, we might go to certain talks, but then we cannot really have the interaction because there are like 200 participants listening to one person speaking. Yes, we gain a lot but we gain a lot little by little. In a small scale event, you gain a lot – you get big parts, so it's just different and both are complementary to each other. A one month residency is about living together, we don’t have events everyday.
Imagine I put you in Indonesia and tell you that within a month you have to create an artwork in this gallery, that's a heavy task. You don't know the culture, you don’t know what's going on, you don't know where to buy stuff, you don't know how things work. You need time. And I think this is an old model. We should start to look for a different model. There are some people that can work with that, but there are also a lot of people who cannot work with that. Putting people in one place is not about creating a masterpiece, it’s about connecting to the other people, it’s not only for an exhibition.
Why did you decide to hold the event in Indonesia?
Because I can say now that Jogjakarta is more international than any other city now. Yogyakarta is like a capital now for cultural practices. Why not in Jogjakarta? The scale of the city is a good size. There are a lot of collectives here, interesting cultural histories… but as co-organizers, it makes more sense to pick our own bases - so the choices would be either Zurich or Jogjakarta, and of course we choose of Jogjakarta.
Why do you think Jogjakarta has an international art scene?
First of all, I don't think Jogjakarta uses English that much. In daily life, Malaysians speak more English than us, Indonesians. We speak broken English. That's our joke. It's because we have a lot of visitors from outside, it’s because of the tourism. Jogjakarta is one of the destination for tourism in Indonesia, even though it's more popular for domestic tourism, compared to Bali, which is more for international tourism. Another thing is that Jogja has all these art schools, and if you see, the distribution of the art schools also influence the distribution of art practices. And maybe people that know Indonesia, they know the main places like Jakarta, Bandung, Jogjakarta. They know it partially because there are art schools there - ISI. And of course Solok also have ISI, but they have more approaches into the traditional art practices and they have very strong performances. So if you want to see traditional performances, dance and stuff, Solok is the place to go. So this contributes to the distribution of arts practices. And compared to the other cities like say Bandung and Jogjakarta, Jakarta is the capital, the city is big. Bandung is also the capital of the province of West Java. Jogja is a lot smaller than these two cities, and the city itself is more for education. There are a lot of schools and Universities here. And combined with the small city scale and the affordable costs, these factors also influence the art scene in Jogja. One of the oldest universities is here, the Java University in Indonesia, and it was the biggest in Southeast Asia at some point before I think. Thailand is kicking our ass now. But there are a lot of universities here so, combined with the affordable living cost, many people comes here to study, of course there's a lot of youth culture also coming here, a lot of them will leave to Jakarta for work when they graduate, but some of them will stay. So if you check the collectives in Jogjakarta, a lot of them actually involve people that are not from Jogjakarta. I'm from West Java.
So there a lot of elements that make this city quite unique. And then because a lot of these collective also see this combination, they started to make collectives, and by making collective they started to make their own networks, because there's little funding. But of course, as you know, there's politics behind the funding scene in Indonesia, which is more directed to traditional art practices. For a lot of contemporary collectives they make their own network, they start their own network – national and international network. So the collectives are expanding their own networks, so you meet all these people, they are all inviting artists from different places. Then of course there's also the influence of Jogja Biennale for example, and the big funding from the government for cultural events because there’s a history between Indonesia and Jogja that makes Jogjakarta a special region, and that's why we get more funding from Indonesia to initiate art and cultural events.
Are you organizing the next event already?
We are always organizing. In November we are making an experimental workshop for pregnant mothers using sound. Without fundings we still going to organize events. Even during Covid I was doing workshops, we had Bonbontronics for example, so we did 9 workshops. I wanted to make a smaller study group with friends, with some people that are really interested in creative electronics. And I reflected about how I was learning these electronics from the workshops, and with Bonbontronics I would like to try a new curriculum, like stages of workshop where people can develop their interest in electronics. When I learned electronics, we were soldering, but we didn't know what we were doing basically. But in Bonbontronics, I would like to have the workshop in a way that the participant and myself as well understand what we are doing. And also we try to travel also, we try to get out of the lab for some workshops. We try to go to other bases in a non-workshop situation. It's not always indoor. And also I try to make all the members participate in the organizing and also the funding. Every time there's a workshop session, we decide who's going to do the documentation, who's going to write, who's going to do the cleaning. And we should put our money for the electronic materials, or something like that. It’s more like a study group instead of collective. And then sometimes people want to cook, so sometimes we get away from electronics, and prepare food, or some of us have other stuff other than electronics that we want to teach.
Links in the interview
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