Hello everyone. We're here at Art of the MOOC with Farid Rakun a member of ruangrupa, a fantastic collective. Does really interesting work and so let's go straight to what the nature of your collaborations, how they operate. In this module students are exploring not just alternative economies but artists who want to confront everyday social structures and what we can do about them if we care about social justice, but also generally about using art to improve our lives. So how did ruangrupa come together, what do you generally do? >> It was founded in 2000 by 6 facial artists. So, facial art is something that is really important and vital for all of the stuff that we do, up until now. It is a space actually, thought out for giving space for artists themselves, so from artist to artist. Because at that point, the artistic scene, the art scene in Jakarta is taken over by gallery and commercial enterprises. There's no such thing as independent artistic space, cultural space, all this kind of stuff. If there's any, it's not that strong. So these six artists who just graduated actually from their art school, or they just drop out. Most of us drop out from art school. They decided to just okay, we want to do this kind of stuff. No one wanted to show us there's no space for us, so we just make our own space. But during the during the 15 years of existence, of course it has changed. The scale has grown up. Also, the thinking behind it has grown up, and it's always shifting. Different people join, some people just go out as well. There's no membership or whatever, so people can come to our space. In any given time you can come to ruangrupa now for example, there are tables filled with people that's not in ruangrupa working or meeting and talking about stuff that's not related to whatever the project that we are doing at that time being. >> And when people say walking through your space, what kind of events do they encounter, what kind of processes? >> Yeah, that's important as well. Since the beginning, and I think this is specific to Indonesia context, because its also happening Jakarta, Bandung, and wherever. We rent house and then we transform it. So you can see which one is supposed to be a guest room, which one is supposed to be a bedroom, which one is supposed to be a common room like room and all those kind of stuff. But the function somehow changed, like, transfer some bedroom into libraries and so on and so on. What we keep usually or we add is the bathrooms, of course, like toilet and kitchen. We keep it intact and stuff like that. As a events, it all depends, because since 2007 we decided to have a gallery before we just like, this is a house, a small house, we can exhibit, we can use it as an exhibition space. But since we have the gallery 2007, I think that's the main space that runs program regularly, it doesn't necessarily to be official art exhibition, it can also be a talk, workshop, concert, etc, it all depends. >> And are there particular groups that you actively engage with, or is it about the neighborhood, the immediate neighborhood? What tend to be your constituency? >> Funnily enough, after we existed in 2000, of course we are all, I have to say we are all networkers. We like to meet people, we like to talk to people. Not necessarily about serious stuff, art, politics, whatever but just like about everyday, as you said. >> Yeah. >> Everyday life in general. And then, by that affinities, some people younger than the founders, including people like me, like around my age. They started to find their own practice, and they find their own collective and spaces. So for example, we worked closely most of the time with a collective named Sarum also based in Jakarta. Sarum Studio, and then which was founded by another founder of that's focused on video and art, and documentary. But yeah, those people usually are just like basically around us all the time. Right now we already have networks all over Indonesia at least. In 2010 we held this exhibition called Fixer that only fixes on collectives in Indonesia and in our network. So it turned out to be like a very important milestone in collectivism, in how to read collectivism in Indonesia, contemporary at least. Indonesia as a country has changed. We cannot dismiss the importance of 1998. And then after the new order, that ended in 1998, form a collective or a group of people just that keep on meeting in a regular basis was considered to be dangerous. But after that, in 2000, there's an euphoria to do so. I think that also I can explain the rise in the proliferation of collectives in Indonesia. But so as a country itself it has changed. Macroeconomically speaking it's projected to be in the big 5 strongest economies of the world in the next, I don't know, 10 years or 20 years. So the government has seen culture differently. The previous government, not this one, learning from the UK, has put creative economy of course, those kind of notions. Which is dangerous in itself but nevertheless it changed. And then with becoming old as we are and then a big impact as we are, I think that they cannot dismiss it. So they've come to us and engage with us. And then as you know like making friends is something that we believe in, no matter how corrupt you are, maybe you'll kind of be called the corrupter but you're still an interesting person, maybe, I don't know. But we never dismiss people in the first meeting, first interaction and stuff like that. So we've been entertaining their notion of engagement in a certain sense, up to a certain extent. Certain stuff, of course, we don't want to get into. Certain stuff we can still shift, you know? And also, I think it's important to underline the difference. We understood this by our interaction with our Latin American friends. >> Through arts collaboratory and- >> Yeah, through arts collaboratory and other stuff. We have different sensibilities. We envy them up to a certain extent, that they can make structure as the forefront of practice. Coming from Indonesia or Asia maybe, I can't say, that's not the strategy that can work in our context. We don't have that kind of antagonism towards the government for example that kind of stuff. We can always sit down with them. We're not that against each other on a daily basis. There's no violence. There's less violence. So we are fluid as maybe, I don't know whether you understand us this way. It's open for interpretation maybe. But we keep that fluidity on how to work and then content comes first and then structure comes later. >> Yes. >> I think right now even the early growth in the far right see collectives and grass roots movement as something in line with their agenda. People are like, against the state, so they can go, in their wording maybe it becomes a company like. But, they see us as well right now as their friends. We see it as a danger, of course, we understand the danger. But we are still, we don't want to retract from that kind of discussion. Yes, maybe we are doing this, in Indonesia at least, I can say that being a collective, being associated to communism, which is still a taboo in Indonesia up until today, to talk about communism if anything public event that's labeled communist will be attacked and all this kind of stuff. If and up until physical violence could happen if you label anything communist. If you call someone communist on the street that's considered to be one of the highest insults, are in public sphere. But they don't see it like that anymore, they see it as a parallel to the stripping of the state. So, there's danger in it as well. >> Well thank you so much, Farid Rakun. >> Of course. >> And ruangrupa, of course it's a collective, but we're here with Farid, and it's been great to talk to you. >> Yeah, if anyone, can I say? >> Yes, of course. >> If anyone happened to just like want to travel to Indonesia, you can always meet us. And then go to ruangrupa.org, there's an email there, you can email us anytime and we would happily meet you in Jakarta or in anywhere in Indonesia. >> And one of the beauties of MOOCs is that they're all over the world, so hopefully we'll have many students in Indonesia [LAUGH]. >> Exactly, yeah.
