seattle indymedia center

September 17th: Taring Padi Radical Art Show

author: FBK
Sep 05, 2008 17:56

Radical Indonesian street artists Taring Padi will showing some of their work FBK house 6272 S. Ellis Ave (in Seattle's Georgetown neighborhood) on Wed. Sept. 17th.

Gallery will open @ 7:00 p.m.
Documentary And Discussion (art. activism and rock&roll) @ 8:30 p.m.
Local bands: Pipsqueak, Future Phones, and Doomhawk will play after the movie.

$5-$15 dollar recomended donation. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Unity in Diversity

Art by Taring Padi collective. When Taring Padi first formed in December 1998, the collective could have been mistaken for the cultural wing of the defunct Indonesian Communist Party. At the time, Taring Padi went by the title Institute of People-Oriented Culture, and released a cultural manifesto that outlined a platform it dubbed `The Five Cultural Evils': a rap on anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, anti-militarism, anti-feudalism and anti-elitism. Taring Padi was planned along the lines of a mock politburo and numerous other bureaus that tackled matters of pedagogy, dissemination, agitation, propaganda, ethical conduct, and housekeeping. They even appointed a Taring Padi `President', who was divested of any real power, and thus performed as a plesetan or parody of the long-standing Indonesian President Suharto who by popular demand had finally relinquished grip of his thirty-two year military reign in May 1998.

Amid the plethora of artistic collectives that emerged in Indonesia after the fall of Suharto, Taring Padi is unique because it is one of few collectives who candidly assert that their cultural praxis is not separate from politics. After years of anti-communist rhetoric and de-politicisation under the Suharto regime, this is a radical position to ascribe to. But in fact Taring Padi cultural credo emerges from a melting-pot of local and imported ideas where budaya kerakyatan (people-oriented culture) - a tradition of radical cultural practice that flourished in Indonesia prior to the rise of Suharto in 1965, fuses comfortably with DIY punk ethos and a bunch of isms --- including anarchism, dadaism, and woman-ism (a local form of feminism).

This distinct cultural blend means that Taring Padi does not limit what they do to any one particular artistic medium. The collective is an eclectic bunch of people including art school drop-outs, former street-food hawkers, buskers, performers, poets, tattooists and dalang (puppeteers) who revel in applying their diverse talents in drawing, printing, chiselling, sculpting, writing, rhyming, performing, singing, and dancing to a myriad of situations. The themes that bind their work are equally diverse and aside from the Five Cultural Evils, Taring Padi often broach issues of societal change, egalitarianism, non-violence, anti-corruption, ecology, and community prosperity. Taring Padi's potency lies in their ethos of practicability --- anything is doable; ideas and enthusiasm take precedence over resource constraints.

More Examples of their art:

 http://www.iisg.nl/collections/taring.php
 http://undergrowth.org/teeth_of_the_rice_plant_taring_padi

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