The relational aesthetics of Indonesian contemporary art

Lecture by Edwin Jurriëns (Convenor of Asian Studies and Lecturer in Indonesian Studies at the Asia Institute, Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne). Drinks afterwards.

The lecture

In his presentation, Dr Jurriëns will focus on several key artists, works, themes, media, styles, spaces and communities that embody specific forms of relational aesthetics in Indonesian contemporary art. The emergence of this type of aesthetics is related to, but not exclusively determined by, broader developments in Indonesian politics and society since the late 1990s, such as the enhanced freedom of speech after the fall of President Suharto’s totalitarian New Order regime (1967-1998) and the availability of consumer communication technology such as portable video cameras, the Internet and mobile phones.

He will argue that the relational aesthetics of Indonesian contemporary art depends on the potential of this art to incorporate the temporal, spatial and participatory aspects of its immediate environment as part of the creative process. For many Indonesian artists, the relational is not a goal in itself, but a means to critically discuss, and sometimes try and develop alternative ‘micro-utopian’ (Bourriaud 2002: 31) solutions for, key areas of Indonesian contemporary society. After a short conceptual and contextual discussion of the contemporary and the relational, he will address four social and creative focus points in Indonesian relational aesthetics, namely the media, urban infrastructure, education and identity politics. 

Biography

Edwin Jurriëns (PhD, Leiden University) is Convenor of Asian Studies and Lecturer in Indonesian Studies at the Asia Institute, Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne. He is also Adjunct Lecturer with the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, The University of New South Wales, Canberra. His teaching, research and engagement activities focus on contemporary art, the media and popular culture in Asia, especially Indonesia. He is editor of the Asian Visual Cultures book series of Amsterdam University Press, and member of the editorial boards of Antropologi Indonesia (Indonesian Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology) and the International Journal of Indonesian Studies.

Registration: h.m.van.der.minne@iias.nl