'Rel Waktu' illustrates life on a train<\/p>\n
Andrew Fuller, Contributor\/Jakarta<\/p>\n
The day before, I had gone to Bogor. I arrived at the train
\nstation and I said to a friend who met me there in front of a
\ndonut shop: "I feel like I've actually left Jakarta."<\/p>\n
Unlike traveling by bus, the train journey gave an illusion of
\nseparation and distance. We passengers sat looking out of the
\nwindows, not to where we were going, but at the greater panorama.
\nThe slowness, the rhythm and the stopping reminded us of an older
\ntechnology.<\/p>\n
The doors are open and students lean out. A man unfolds a
\nnewspaper and lays it out on the steps before sitting down. A
\nchild squats and crawls along the floor, shuffling a small broom
\nbetween his knees. He extends his right hand, apparently having
\ncleaned the floor of the train car. He taps a young woman on her
\nright knee: three or four seconds pass before she is finally
\nstartled out of a conversation with her boyfriend -- or at least
\nthe person she is treating as her intimate. She gasps, then waves
\nher left hand at the boy: Not today. The "boyfriend" has already
\ncontributed three thin silver coins and that shall be enough. The
\nchild shuffles back down the car, his legs covered with dust.<\/p>\n
The photographs in Edy Purnomo's solo exhibition -- Rel Waktu
\nor Railway of Time, which ran from Nov. 19 through Dec. 10 at the
\nGaleri Fotojurnalistik Antara -- are untitled.<\/p>\n
Edy said, "I wanted to leave this up to the viewer. The viewer
\ncan name the works according to how each work makes them feel."<\/p>\n
Fine. This is a minor criticism of the practice of looking at
\nart. Yet, it makes reviewing and describing the exhibition more
\ndifficult, since each review would only make sense to the author,
\nand so communication could fail. But Edy has a point.<\/p>\n
The truth of a work's impact and what it means to a viewer
\ndoes not stem from the artist's intentions. Viewing art is a
\nconflation of accidents and circumstances.<\/p>\n
For example, I hadn't planned to take the economy train to
\nBogor the previous day; and I hadn't planned to go to Edy's
\nexhibition. I had planned to take the Pakuan express train and to
\nspend more time at the National Gallery opposite Gambir station.<\/p>\n
Yet, the two exhibitions there had closed early and I had time
\non my hands. Time enough to go to Galeri Antara.<\/p>\n
My experience of Rel Waktu occurred after taking one of the
\ntrains that Edy himself may have traveled on and photographed on
\nhis trips from Jakarta to Bogor.<\/p>\n
So, the works are untitled. There are no placards dating the
\nphotographs, detailing the media upon which they are printed or
\ntheir dimensions. The works are therefore, even if only slightly,
\nreduced of their artifice. A statement is made: "This is not a
\nwork of art; it is just a photograph on a wall" -- but a wall
\nwhich, of course, just happens to be in a gallery.<\/p>\n
A series of six photographs includes the following:
\nschoolgirls descending from a train; a man holding a toy machine
\ngun; a beverage and instant noodle seller; a cracked window; a
\ngraffiti of a red skull; a man in a baseball cap, carrying a
\nguitar; a hand gently grasping a horizontal bar.<\/p>\n
To the left of the red-skull graffiti, a woman is waiting
\nlistlessly on a platform. Her head is aslant, skewed toward her
\nleft shoulder, her arms are folded and she leans against a pole.
\nThe platform captured in this frame is empty, except for her.<\/p>\n
This numberless and nameless series tells us of several
\naspects of train life: trade, music or busking, vandalism as
\nshown by the broken window, street art or graffiti as an image,
\nand loneliness, waiting, impatience.<\/p>\n
It seems that being a passenger on a train is merely a small
\npart of train life.<\/p>\n
In the gallery, the air conditioning is off; there are no
\nfans. A radio plays hip hop from a front room. A group of four or
\nfive chats enthusiastically, in part about the exhibition and
\nsurely about other matters. I don't catch what they're saying.<\/p>\n
Their voices echo and mingle with the assertiveness and the
\nmelodies coming from the radio.<\/p>\n
This sense of loudness, or ramai-ness, is not far from the
\nexperience of being on a train or being at a train station, where
\nall sorts of people, behaving in all sorts of ways, are present
\nfor all sorts of reasons -- just as this gallery has possibly
\nbecome the site of an accidental reunion between old friends.<\/p>\n
Outside the gallery on Jl. Antara, a bajaj passes and the
\nnoise of its sputtering motor becomes another element of the
\ngallery's ambience.<\/p>\n
In this series of six photographs -- unframed and joined
\ntogether -- faces are blurred, disguised or absent. The face is
\none way of knowing, of recognizing another. Yet, in Edy's work,
\nwe are denied this opportunity for basic communication with the
\nfigures captured by the photographer. This work thus declares the
\nindividuality and the possible public loneliness of traveling by
\npublic transport, in which one is among and separate from others
\nat the same time.<\/p>\n
This series of incomplete portraits is an anthropological and
\nsociological work, providing evidence of the daily happenings on
\na suburban or local train. It gives evidence of a society with an
\noppressed economy, the workers in desperate need of money.<\/p>\n
How much can one really make in a single day as a busker, as a
\nhawker of toy guns?<\/p>\n
There is a stall on the platform next to the train: trade can,
\nand needs, to take place wherever possible. A basket of crackers
\nrests upon the floor of a train car, plastic boxes are wrapped in
\na Marlboro advertisement, the unmistakable cowboy with his lasso
\nat the ready. The crackers overflow in the plastic boxes, around
\nwhich a plastic strap is tied. The viewer speculates: is this the
\nbeginning of the day, or the end of an(other) unprofitable and
\nunsatisfying day?<\/p>\n
Many of the images show little of the sky -- Edy makes no
\nromantic statements about traveling by train. The photographs are
\nof closed interiors, each containing numerous points of focus,
\nand show the unstructured and rapid visual experience of riding
\non a train. This is not a luxurious way to travel. Dirt, rubbish
\nand grime are present throughout many of the photographs.<\/p>\n
I step out of the gallery and pass some street stalls that
\nhave just opened at the fall of dusk. Inside, the group of five
\nfriends continue to chat and laugh. The smell of the nearby river
\nin the ditch below, the fumes from a bajaj, a bus, permeate the
\nair.<\/p>\n
I escape alone into a taxi, which removes me at once from
\nJakarta, and the driver asks, "Where to?" I reply, and the air-
\nconditioning penetrates through my shirt; it is silent and cold.<\/p>\n
No, this is not the kereta api to Bogor.<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/rel-waktu-illustrates-life-on-a-train-1447893297", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }