The opening of OK. Video—4th Jakarta International Video Festival 2009 held in the National Gallery, Jakarta on July 28, 2009, was jam-packed. That night, Hafiz, Festival Director, along with Tubagus “Andre” Sukmana (Director of Indonesia National Gallery) and Aminuddin TH Siregar (Festival Curator), delivered speeches to mark the opening ceremony of this grand biennial event organized by ruangrupa. Festival was held until August 9, 2009. Its large number of visitors shows that development of new media art, especially video, is welcomed with enthusiasm in the society. In a sense, OK. Video has successfully spread the popularity of video art in Indonesia. As a relatively newcomer, video art is gaining its rightful legitimacy in contemporary culture.
This year, OK. Video Festival carried out a theme that stimulates the locus of consciousness, addressing critical comprehension through comedy. According to its curator, Aminuddin TH Siregar, the theme was intended to represent how comedy as a way of communication via video critically addresses current problems. Covering vast areas depicting predicaments in urban living, politics, hegemony, modernity, technology, economy, generation, gender, tradition, religion, mass media, identity, pop culture, mundane art, and even as far as the election. During the festival, we are presented with numerous non-narrative videos open to reconstruction, recording manipulation, and other comic approaches in the form of jokes, parody, absurdity, satire, sarcasm, vulgarity, taboo, and tragicomedy.
To ruangrupa, the theme was carried out because comedy is perceived as a potent way to release oneself from anxiety. Being a critical claim disguised as entertainment, comedy is able to reflect practically anything, laugh at itself, serve as silent protest, and transform misery into humor. Comedy is a way of communication that has long been present among Indonesians—from gestural humor to audio-visual language. The decision to finally choose the theme comedy was in itself a long haul. As mentioned in festival introductory, OK. Video: Comedy attempts to address the social, political, and cultural state this country is currently undergoing. It is also ruangrupa’s disseminative attempt in pioneering the usage of new media art to respond and even to intervene with global situation, which in this case refers to modernity.
A Space to Protest
The conception of representation via new media has plagued this country since the last decade. Ever since the fall of New Order regime in 1998, political climate has drastically changed. People have easy access to information technology. Consumption level of information technology formed new social institutions such as internet centers, chat-rooms, mailing lists, etc. Alongside, society’s political representation is contained through the usage of new media. In Indonesia, new media art practices often throw criticism towards the addiction to television, video games, computers, and other devices such as the internet and smart-phones. New media art has become a counter-culture to media domination, especially television.
In the history of its birth, media art was born from the marriage of art and technology, triggered by cultural, social and political problems in the Western world during the 1960s. Scientific and technological advances were at that time used as dehumanizing instruments. It led to the inevitable human reification that took place globally. This pathological crisis chaperoned the birth of new media art.
Media art emerged as a protest to hegemonic penetration of information technology during the time. It was Nam June Paik who pioneered the development of new media art and consistently criticize and oppose visual culture, especially to the one socialized by television as an agent of information and entertainment. Paik suspects that television carries negative excess socially, politically, and economically. He considers television as an extension to authority and corporate giants. Paik then tries to articulate his criticism towards Western visual culture.
The birth of new media art was of course contingent to the birth of video as the element of moving images. Video has inarguably major contribution to the birth of new media art. According to Krisna Murti, a practitioner and teacher in the field, new media art was born from visual culture development where a number of elements were summarized into one cosmic whole. New media art assumes elements of interactivity, virtuality, and immateriality. During its further development, new media art consistently opposes mainstream media domination. Its presence has inspired media democratization so that information monopoly is rendered minimum. Till date, new media art stays relevant and even more flourishing as a way to comment and reflect upon the overwhelming flow of information. New media art stands out as an antithesis to various issues of contemporary society.
In OK. Video—4th Jakarta International Video Festival there were 95 selected video works from 56 participants. There were also three special presentations from Goethe Institut, CCF, and Cologne OFF.
In regard to selection process, Aminuddin remarked on two tendencies. The first is for the artist to build a narrative—be it lengthy or brief—and intentionally arrange either its plot, sound, or communication pattern, to finally record it. The second is to wait for a moment in actual daily life which happens to trigger laughter and accidentally recorded by the camera. The first tendency was the most practiced approach.
As organizer, Ruangrupa implemented two methods in regard to application. Firstly, they opened free registration for anyone who has (or rather, anyone who thinks they have) video art with element of comedy in their work. Secondly, via exclusive invitations to those inclined to incorporate humor in their work throughout their career in video-making. Each work was then classified to subgenres of comedy to represent anything satire, cynic, critical, parody, situational, and absurd.
According to Aminuddin, OK. Video: Comedy functions to set the perimeter in discussions on advanced arts in Indonesia. The term ‘comedy’, to Aminuddin, can be conceived as a way—a very specific one—to look at the chances of how artists explore their sense of humor through the lenses. On the other hand, the theme comedy is able to effectively insert a critical dimension in examining the life and practices of contemporary arts.
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