'New media' exhibition misses the target

Farah Wardani, Contributor, Bandung

Art is like fashion. It represents the zeitgeist (spirit of an era) of its time. It has its trends, icons, genres, jargons and a habit to change. It also has a tendency to follow and be followed. The question is, what is more often followed, the idea or the form?

What many people like to call "postmodern" seems to be still the most fashionable thing around the contemporary art circle, both internationally in general, and in Indonesia in particular. However, the problem with postmodernism, with its relativist spirit, is that sometimes it can go too far in being "too relative" and becomes a trap.

An example of this can be seen in After the (F)act, an ongoing exhibition at Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, Bandung. The exhibition is meant to show the outcome of a workshop participated in by several local art groups and a foreign artist in residence at Selasar. The artist was Carolyn Black, a digital artist from Bristol, UK, who applied for the residential program in Indonesia organized by Kelola Foundation and Unesco.

International residency programs are a common thing in international art practice these days and are reckoned to offer more opportunities for artists of different backgrounds to interact and exchange processes with each other rather than in the competitive atmosphere.

Hence, the issue of process appears to have been positioned as the main tagline of this workshop exhibition, as shown in the catalog's introductory note. The word "process" itself in contemporary art practice has been heavily underlined as a more significant output rather than the end result, for in a postmodern perspective, so-called good artwork never ends; it is always in a process, inviting the audience to participate in it and get engaged with the experience. Hence, an exhibition like this has become an unusual occasion as an interface to mediate the artist's process of exchange.

Carolyn seems to be trying to do her best to show her creative processes within the context of being an artist in residence. Works like False Idol (2002), an ice sculpture of a video camera put on a pedestal, and her digital prints on stuffed gelatine reflect her preexisting contemplation of her medium, as something constantly "melting" (in transience). On the other hand, her other pieces show more of her on-the-spot creative processes, responding to her encounters with the culture and the space here.

The whole thing gets quite problematic when it comes to the issue of exchange. Carolyn's selected partners are three groups of young artists: Biosampler, Translingual (from Bandung) and Ruangrupa( Jakarta). What greatly seems to be a problem about their encounters is what is used as a similar "entry point" such as new media art, which, combined with lack of curatorial orientation, turns the scene out of focus. It gets stuck in the term "new media", then puts aside the aspect of process and blocks the interaction that was supposed to occur between the participating artists.

Another thing is space. Conceptually, the exhibition emphasizes the artists' process of creating autonomous spaces of their own while integrating thoroughly with the space as a whole, which proves to be very difficult to do. Physically, the outcome looks like several individual exhibitions in one, where each individual fails to communicate with the others, more likely disturbing them. Is this the autonomy that it wants to present?

In the end, what one sees is a space showcasing non- integrating artworks, a crowded, claustrophobic space with too many objects.

Ruangrupa, which tries to engage with the site by presenting a multimedia documentation of neighborhood interviews (Pakar Gosip (Gossip's Expert), 2002) and Translingual get cornered by Biosampler which invades the scene with noises and objects (most of which are electronic, reflecting their implementation of the term "new media"). They tend to indicate an urge to deconstruct the formal and exclusive image of the gallery by competing to respond to the space contextually, turning it into a playground. In contrast, Carolyn is isolated in her own showroom (except for her work, Windows in the outdoor terrace) at the back part of the gallery.

The exhibition looks confused about its main point -- whether it is the process, the medium, the space or whatever -- by getting trapped within its relativist platform. Relativist discourse has a tricky problem of being taken to be too "free", where anything goes and nothing seems to matter. When you try too hard to be so "post", to go beyond, you either go too fast before people can see your point, or too hastily before you've got all your points sorted out. That is what appears to be happening here. Not to mention that in particular, this is a forum-like exhibition, which is supposed to offer more reflections from its possibility for creating dialogues and processes, as well as a contemplation of the medium chosen. However, such aspects become blurred by too many ambiguous intentions -- to be autonomous, yet corresponding; individual, yet integrating; conceptual, yet anticonceptual.

Overall, the most obvious thing an audience can get from this exhibition is a "new media" showcase. The audience might find it hard to get the message clearly and might easily be led to the idea of implementing the media in the fashion sense, treated as objects, or forms, to define or actualize a new genre, rather than re-questioning the relationship between us and the media itself. It has too much to say in a too small a space, with too little time, whereas an instant response that an audience might predictably express would perhaps be something like, "Oh, so this is a new media art show! Cool!" -- which somehow misses the point.

After the (F)act exhibition at Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, Bandung runs until Oct. 26. For further information contact (022) 2507939