1/ What does Indisczinepartij mean?

Indisczinepartij is actually not even a word, but we pronounce it like “indie zine party”. It’s a wordplay from “Indische Partij”, one of the first political organizations in Indonesia during the Dutch colonial era.

I think Doni will explain more about it because he was the founder and the one who brought the name.

2/ Could you tell us about the recent exhibition you just did? Perhaps it could give us more of a general idea.

The exhibition was a final presentation from our residency program. It ran almost the whole year of 2022 in Dieng, Central Java. But this program had no relation with Indisczinepartij. It was just a different project. So, Dieng is a highland and has always been seen as a touristic and agricultural place – lots of mountains, close to nature – even though it is more complicated. So this program encouraged the participants to explore and dig out more, like to be truer to the reality of the Dieng community itself and not be trapped in those two perspectives (the tourism and agriculture issue). It is still important, but we try to be more critical of it and not take it for granted. We also put our concern about oral history, collective memory, local knowledge as well as geopolitical issues.

There were 13 participants involved in this program, both individuals and groups. And during the presentation, we did an exhibition, performance lecture, workshop, dramatic reading, and walking tour. It varied because the participants came from different backgrounds and mostly from outside Dieng. Seeing how people outside Dieng see this place and learn with the local community was interesting. Even some of them managed to have deep social bonding with the community. It was surprising, and we were both impressed with their approaches.

3/ It seems you have been working a lot with zines? Could you tell us about why you are drawn to the format? Or please correct us if we didn’t understand it correctly?

As a collective, Indisczinepartij often uses zines as our medium in presenting ideas because zines are the core of our interests. Before finally disbanding, we consisted of 4 members: Fandy Achmad, Ignatius Suluh, Doni, and me. And from the beginning, we all had an interest in zines both in terms of practice and the discourse within them. We see Indisczinepartij as a study group, a learning space to discuss zines – from a historical standpoint, print exploration, archiving, artistic practice, and other possibilities within the publishing practice itself. But there really isn’t much for the zines we make collectively. Apart from publishing zines, we did reading groups, collected zines, and had internal and external group discussions. The rest were hanging out and gossiping together. Why zines? Of course, each of us has our own reasons, but I personally think of zine at first as a space to learn or practice writing. But over time, I feel that we can look at this medium in a broader sense. I don’t really focus on the form, like the use of paper, printing exploration, color, design, etc. But more on how people use the medium and the practices and discourses accompanying it. There are practices of establishing personal and communal identities when a person or group publishes zines or other independent publications. Or in the artistic realm, self-publishing can also become a habitus for artists that allows them to accumulate certain capital and becomes their strategy to take a position in their field. We can also look at zine as an alternative exhibition space other than a gallery, for instance. So, it’s about how we dig out the possibilities of this medium that got me interested. Because zine is undefined, it is fluid and has boundless meaning.

4/ I understand that you both reside in Dieng. In which ways do you think that your location influences your work?

Yes, I stayed in Dieng during the program, but it’s not where I came from. I used to live between Yogyakarta and Surakarta.

This was the second time I had worked on a project that involved the local community, and accidentally both locations were around the mountains, i.e. Kaliurang and Dieng. During the process, I had lots of encounters and was exposed to so many stories and tales brought by ordinary people about their beliefs, values, and collective history about places, events, and their ancestors, about ghosts and spirits. And it is valuable knowledge. We don’t have to be experts or have an academic degree to share stories. I mean, in school or college, we were taught that if we cannot prove something or do not have a strong argument about it, then it is not true or not valid. Living in those communities makes me slowly wreck that idea.

In short, I realize that we can learn from our neighbors, from ordinary people, and everyone has their own agency — because somehow, arts and academia tend to create a big gap for ordinary people and make their own elitism. I think that is the thing that influences me the most. Maybe it’s not necessarily in terms of work, but it influences the way I perceive things.

5/ We are interested in your text about kindness as activism. How does it exhibit/manifest in your work with zines/publishing?

Kindness as activism emphasizes “softness” and “ordinary life” and the importance of being sincere in seeing the lived reality of people around us. Inspired by an essay by Be Oakley on radical softness and a presentation from a South Korean activist named Gwangdae, about evictions in South Korea. I wrote it during my depression episode three years ago, so it might look emotional or sentimental. I was thinking, “Why are some people so harsh on others or even themselves? Some people are so fragile, please be kind!” (haha), so I wrote about it. Because everyone has their own struggle so we need to try to understand.

Regarding working with zines or publishing, I try to use that stance. For instance, in 2020, I did research and interviewed some individuals or groups that bring women and queer struggle and solidarity into their zines or publications or doing archives about it. It was fascinating to see that it turned out that making zines or independent publications opened up the discourse about it. It brought the lived reality of that person and the community so that we can be more aware and not put reckless judgment on them. And by doing the archive, they try to make their own collective history.

6/ We are also interested in this stance, and we are curious about how it manifests in daily life/work/art?

Few friends know that I’m a highly sensitive person, meaning that it’s so easy for me to feel drained because I can absorb the emotions around me. But being sensitive also helps me to be more empathetic. Many times my friends vented to me even about their darkest feeling, they cried in front of me, said that they had suicidal thoughts, being hopeless about life, and sometimes we cried together (hehe). I mean, that is the thing that I can help. I give them the space to let out their emotions, hug them, practicing care and giving reassurance, sharing jokes and memes to make them laugh and, more importantly, to make them feel less alone.

But I do not really like talking and avoid interactions sometimes, and some people might see it as rude, so yeah, somehow I can be toxic too.

7/ In your ecosystem/circle, how do you relate with others? Who do you consider as your community?

My community is a place that allows me to be vulnerable, I don’t like to be seen as vulnerable though, but it is like a warm hug when your friends give you that space to let those feelings out. It is also a space to learn together, it’s not always about intellectual things or texts books, but learning how each of us perceives the world is also interesting.

8/ Regarding working in and with a collective, how do you maintain these relationships that could be both professional and also personal? And how is it harken back to the question of kindness as activism?

Indisczinepartij was like a gang, a group of friends trying to do something together, and i never meant to “work” there. Each of us in the group had our own work and activities, and we didn’t try to earn money from the collective, though sometimes we did. Often, we voluntarily exploit ourselves into unpaid labor, but then we know that it’s unhealthy.

For me, being in a collective is like doing a personal relationship in general. We spent our time together, sharing things, hanging out, we try to understand our thoughts and feelings. And when it came to working together on a project, we worked according to our capacities, there was no boss, so we could choose the role and take parts as we could. We respect our schedule, our boundaries, our mistakes, and let us do things according to our pace but make sure that we still have commitments. So that’s why when we decided to stop the group last year, it felt like a breakup haha but for real.

9/ Now that Indisczinepartij is already separated and no longer exists as a group, how do you all individually or as a duo continue to work in pursuit of your activism/art?

At that time, Doni and I were working together. We were running a residency program in Dieng. I admitted that it felt awkward for a while during our early separation from indisczinepartij. Still, we managed it well and carried on the project as usual. Working with Doni is like a wild ride. He always has that burst of enthusiasm and spontaneousness, and we balance each other because I tend to be more considerate and careful in doing things. It is like polarization, but somehow and so far it works well for us. It doesn’t mean that there’s no drama. Arguing is inevitable. Before I joined indisczinepartij we had been working together as a duo, and we continued until now, even when the group no longer exists.

It is already the end of the project. I will go back to my hometown soon. For now, I plan on developing my own project. It is like a sum of everything that happened during my stay in Dieng, all the encounters, all the walkings, and the conversations. Just realized that turns out I always live near the mountains for the past 11 years, so maybe I need to put this idea into something. Probably in the printed form or zines, I don’t know, we’ll see.