Eri Rama Putra (b.1987) familiar known as Eri who lives and works in Indonesia. Eri’s artistic practice is driven by his lens based practice and perspective while encounters with everyday life narratives. He likes to use intuition when observing objects or phenomena that he encounters in everyday life, and play the role or function of the medium. He has been exhibited his works in several exhibitions such as UNSEEN CO-OP, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; SongEun Art Space, Seoul, South Korea; and National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia. Currently, he is doing long research project about seaweed, community, and its narrative lingered around in Nusa Penida, Bali, Indonesia.

Series of Workshops: Speculative Fiction On Indonesian Photo Archives

Background

Through a Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum collection about Indonesian photography archives, shows various locations, activities, and stories from unidentified year and specific location. All the archives been circulated through a fellowship program titled Leaky Archives. As a curator, I am seeing this archives to redistribute to those who are living closer to the context. I am working with a photography editor to make a compilation of speculative fiction photobook and a group of researcher and curator to conduct a workshop in East Java–where some of the photos are located. Instead of defining the archive through the truth of archives, I would like to discuss what kind of speculative fiction that we could create from these archives. The fiction constructed by the myth, folklore, oral histories that lingered around the communities. On this case, fiction becomes a way to position that community narrative could be a matters to define their own histories instead of depend to the material archives which defined by the colonial.

Speakers

Riksa Afiaty, a curator who are mostly working in the decolonization discourses within Indonesia. Especially the relation between Indonesia with Papua

Benny Widyo, a curator who is based in East Java and conducted a project to gather the local myth and community narratives in Tulungagung

Prasetya Yudha, a photobook publisher called SOKONG! which focuses on publishing the photobook based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

The second day of learning about archives and storytelling was presented by Riksa Afiaty, IVAA (Indonesia Visual Art Archive) and Agnisa Wisesa, State University of Malang. Riksa talked about the role of archives and artworks in the propaganda agenda concerning Papua. In addition, Riksa also invited discussion on how archives should be used to compile history for those who have not been heard or recorded.

In the second session, Agni discussed the collaboration that should be created between on-campus and off-campus academics. In archival work, there are interests of authorities over the archives and knowledge that circulate. Therefore, Agni emphasized that institutions should be more open to collaborating with archival practitioners who grow rooted in the context of archives and social issues surrounding archives.

On the first day, there were two learning sessions led by Benny Widyo, Gulung Tukar and Prasetya Yudha, SOKONG! In the first session, Benny talked about his Residency project with Ella Chedburn, Somerset, UK entitled The Trees and The Wires. This project talks about the archives and myths that shape the history of Tulungagung. Another emphasis in this project is about the effort to combine archives, myths, legends to become one narrative about the history of Tulungagung.

In the second session, Prasetya Yudha (Pras) from SOKONG! Publish told about several editorial projects of photographic archives that they did. Pras also mentioned the importance of connecting personal experiences with archives and social phenomena. This session also discussed a lot about ethical responsibility in the work of creating narratives through archives, one of which is about the responsibility of knowledge that is created and will be distributed across generations.