Aichi Triennale 2016: Ruangrupa

LUXURIOUS RISKS
By Natsuko Odate


Installation view of commercial event at Ruangrupa’s Gudang Sarinah Ekosistem venue. Courtesy Ruangrupa.

Formed in 2000, the art collective Ruangrupa has grown into one of the leading organizations for contemporary art in Indonesia. The group’s activities range from making stand-alone projects to producing events and exhibitions including the OK. Video Festival and Jakarta 32°C, running their own gallery space, RURU Gallery, and serving as the artistic directors of this year’s Sonsbeek 2016 exhibition in Arnhem. In 2015, they established their own educational initiative, institut ruangrupa, which they recently brought to Japan as their contribution to the Aichi Triennale 2016. ART iT met with members of the group in Nagoya during the opening of the triennale to discuss their collective practice.

The Aichi Triennale 2016, “rainbow caravan,” was held from August 11 to October 23 at multiple venues in Nagoya and other cities.

Interview:

ART iT: It has been 16 years since Ruangrupa was founded. What has changed for you over this period? Has your mission changed at all? Is there anything that has remained consistent throughout this time?

RURU: Things have changed a lot, actually – not only in terms of scale, but also the tradition. Sixteen years is a long time, and our approach or methodology has constantly evolved. Structurally, too, we always play with the organization and organically challenge its structure. We started out with six people, and now we have more than 30 who work with us, while the community itself just keeps growing!
But maybe in that sense the vision has been consistent. We have always been concerned with developing a certain approach or system in relation to what’s happening not just in the art scene but also in our surrounding environment. So there is as much institutional practice as there is artistic practice – dealing with how we work and not only what kind of work we produce; dealing with how we work internally among ourselves and also with other people. So we are not only an artist group that produces collaborative works as collective artistic statements. We also contribute to supporting the whole art system by organizing platforms or events, exhibitions, publications, workshops, festivals, and archives.

ART iT: What motivated you to create this kind of organization in the first place?

RURU: Well, when we wrote our foundational text in 2000, there were two things that we critiqued: one was the art market and the other was the formal art institution. These two things were part of what motivated us. We think it is necessary for art to not only be about producing objects but also research or the production of knowledge.
But comparing the text from 2000 to the situation now, we have to say the art market in Indonesia now is monstrous – it’s many times bigger than when we started! And then in 2006 Ade Darmawan became a member of the Jakarta Art Council, which was one of the institutions that we had originally criticized, so in the space of six years we ended up infiltrating that system.

ART iT: How do you manage to work with the Art Council while also keeping a critical distance?

RURU: You could compare it with how we work as teachers, for example. Many of us work at art schools, which are also part of the system that we used to resist. There are two things going on here. One is that the system or institution itself has become more open in recent years. It has changed and is more receptive to our practice. The other is that for us it is really challenging to work inside the system rather than solely practicing outside of it. For Ade, working in the Art Council can be very difficult, because with Ruangrupa it is easy to act quickly and organically, but that is simply not possible in an institution like the Art Council.
So it takes time to understand how you want to infiltrate the system. We compare it to hacking or creating a new angle for seeing things.

ART iT: Is there any difference for you between working individually and working as a collective?

RURU: It’s more like we just steal each other’s ideas. We get a lot of inspiration for our individual projects when we work together, and the other way around, too. Even when we work as a collective we are operating as individuals. And the thing about being a collective is that it’s not just about working with other artists. We might also meet up with historians or researchers or other people from diverse backgrounds. This kind of approach enriches how we work as a collective.
But even though it is always so diverse, people still might look at the results and say, oh, that’s so Ruangrupa! It’s interesting that after so many years, people associate a certain aesthetic with us, because we never intended to establish anything like that. We just do whatever we think. But now people say they can see it, so maybe it has become institutionalized. And, actually, although we started in 2000, most of the founders have known each other since they were students in the mid-1990s, and were already working together from then.

ART iT: In Indonesia, Ruangrupa organizes events like the OK.Video Festival and Jakarta 32°C, and now you are internationally recognized and invited to events like the Aichi Triennale or the Sao Paulo Biennale; this year Ruangrupa is also the artistic director of Sonsbeek 2016 in the Netherlands. How would you compare your group to the international model of the museum or biennale or institution? Do you look to other events or institutions as a model to either emulate or oppose?

RURU: There is always a danger when everything gets really structured and systematic and it becomes big and bureaucratic and less human. But I think that’s the difference. If we work on a biennale, or even when we organize events, we approach it more like an art project. It’s very involved. Our relations with the artists and the works themselves are less industrial and less formal. It becomes our art project as well, rather than just an event.
We also try to resolve the issue of Ruangrupa as a physical space. Recently, we moved from a small house to a huge, 6000-square-meter warehouse. As a business model it is suicidal, actually. But since we were moving to a bigger space, we invited five or six other collectives to join us, so it’s a different approach. We consider it an ecosystem.

ART iT: Are you not interested in establishing a museum or institution?

RURU: No, we are not. Of course we still need some kind of physical space, but we really want Ruangrupa to be more of a freeform thing. If you depend on the physical infrastructure, then what do you do if you lose the infrastructure one day? Could we continue to exist? As an idea, maybe. Or maybe other people would continue it, and then Ruangrupa would spread everywhere – which would be great! So it’s important for us to be freeform. Our tendency right now is to become an ecosystem that supports many people – artists, musicians, filmmakers – anything! It’s like the idea is to keep growing bigger while dissolving at the same time. For example, the other collectives that we work with are also experienced. Many of them have already been around for more than 10 years. So we share our experiences and our own struggles, and it becomes what you might call a “collective of collectives.” We are pushing the idea of collectivism further toward thinking as an ecosystem rather than as an individual. In an ecosystem, you work in a mature way. You think about yourself but at the same time you also think about the others and take care of them as well. That’s the idea. We merge resources from money to equipment and other resources, and it’s like a big cooperative.

ART iT: Do you ever worry about stagnation? Any fear of stopping?

RURU: That’s why we need to do suicidal things sometimes. But there is no fear of stagnation, because every day there is a new challenge. Hey, we are in Jakarta – stagnation is in our nature!
At the same time, most of us do more than one thing. We are not one-dimensional artists. It’s always an artist-slash-DJ-slash-manager and so on. Each person has more than two or three outlets. So if we are stuck in one place, then we just move to the next. For example, Daniella is an artist and teacher in addition to working as a manager in Ruangrupa. Saleh is a musician, artist, karaoke singer, MC, DJ, builder. Barto is a teacher and writer and failed ceramic artist – because he studied ceramics. Because we always work in this multidimensional way, we also attract similar kinds of people, so the combinations can get really complex.


Both: institut ruangrupa (lr.), for the Aichi Triennale 2016. Photo Ito Tetsuo.

ART iT: What about the project here in Aichi? How long have you been here already?

RURU: Saleh has been here for three weeks already, while some of us arrived just two days ago. In 2015 we set up a new educational platform, Institut ruangrupa, through which we run different workshops, so we decided to bring it with us to Aichi. Basically, we wanted to work with 11 new friends from Nagoya, who we envision as a “football team” that balances the endurance, speed and skills required to work in the cultural sector. We don’t want this project to end up as just another event. We want to push it further.
When Saleh came here to do research, he told us there’s only one art space in the center of Nagoya, N-mark, which has been going on its own for the past 20 years. So we wanted to think about how we could collaborate. It’s important for us not to force our own viewpoint and expectations on things but rather to work within the local context. We want to get fresh ideas and the authentic stories that are here. It is not a top-down situation but a horizontal one.

ART iT: I read that after you participated in the Sao Paulo Biennale you invited the curator Charles Esche to come to Jakarta as a way to develop the relationship further. Do you have any ideas for bringing something back from Aichi or Sonsbeek?

RURU: We always try to bring something back. We don’t want to be alienated from our home context, because that is ultimately what inspires us. So we always try to think about how our international projects relate to our local context. For example, at Sonsbeek we are looking at the relations between the Dutch and Indonesia during the colonial era. With Aichi, the project here will provide a new experience that will be developed further at the Institut back home. There will be some important exchanges during the next two-and-a-half months here. So when we are invited to do an international project, we always ask ourselves, why should we do it? And we only do it if we can make the international project relevant to our local practice.

ART iT: To conclude, I’d like to return to your ideas about collectivism. Can you explain further about them?

RURU: For us it’s partly about trying to question how our institutions are built – the state, religion, belief systems, ethical systems. How do we actually live together and agree upon these things? Take democracy, for example. This time we have agreed on democracy as our governmental system, but it can change. So collectivism is a small-scale way for us to constantly challenge institutions and question how we live together. It is a way of speculating about things. It gives us the luxury to speculate. Not many people in society today have that luxury, because they can’t afford it. There are too many risks. In general, we can’t afford to change how we live. No one wants to speculate about it, because it’s too risky. But through collectivism, we have the luxury of being able to think that way.

Ruangrupa: Luxurious Risks

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