graphic novel

setelah harvey pekar,
epileptik,
embroidery,
persepolis,
laika,

sekarang giliran

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fantagraphics/sets/72157608428931184/show/

curhat

menanggapi [link] dan [link]

menjalani hidup merupakan sebuah pilihan, dan juga sebuah proses pendewasaan. sempat terbersit pertanyaan yang meragukan tentang jerih payah berkuliah selama 4 tahun. apakah saya harus pergi tanpa sebuah tanggung jawab, atau saya harus bertahan walaupun ada gelisah di hati (ssah). tentu saya tidak boleh hanya diam, berserah diri pada waktu menunggu jawaban.

akhirnya saya menemukan titik agak terang, ketika saya bertanya kepada seorang teman ;si kurcil (kurator cilik, hehe);
"jadi sebenarnya kita semua hanya pemuas kebutuhan tersier orang2 kaya itu ya?"
(walaupun saya merasa seperti anak remaja yang mempertanyakan tentang agamanya (maafkan pengandaian yang terlalu berlebihan)

Karena memang, saya merasa bahwa dunia seni ini merupakan sebuah lembaga, di mana orang-orang elitis berkumpul.
tapi, ketika kita berbicara tentang efektifitas, mungkin kita bisa melihat Tisna Sanjaya. Menurut saya, ia seperti Robin hood, hmm atau si pitung. Metode ia berkontribusi adalah metode making amends. Karena selain ia memamerkan karya nya di galeri yang juga dicari-cari oleh kolektor-kolektor, ia juga memberikan sebuah kontribusi terhadap masyarakat di luar seni. Seperti, mural cigondewa, berbagai workshop, dan lain lain.

Selain itu saya melihat adanya kecenderungan berkarya yang merespon ruang. (contohnya jakarta 32 derajat, ok video, dan lain2) sempat terpikir untuk keluar dari berkarya konvensional untuk melakukan hal itu dengan argumen ingin jarak yang lebih dekat dan lebih mencangkup luas. tapi jujur, tidak mudah. karena saya terkadang miris melihat karya-karya seperti ini, yang jatuhnya 'tanggung'. (Ketika ia memaksakan sebuah karya untuk keluar galeri, namun ternyata masyarakat belum bisa menerima, dan pada akhirnya hanya menjadi sebuah objek aneh di tempat umum. jadilah sia-sia, karena tidak ada yang berhasil disampaikan).

keduanya sebuah pilihan. making amends, atau mendobrak garis batas. keduanya mempunyai resiko masing-masing. tapi satu yang yang saya pilih, saya tetap harus bertanggung jawab kepada pilihan yang telah saya buat 4 tahun lalu.

how to fake an art gallery conversation

Teman dan surat berantai

"Malaikat tu mmg ad, tp kdng2 ktika mrk ga mmpunyai sayap,qt mnyebut mrka "TEMAN".Forward k 10 shbt,tmn,bahkn psngn mu.Sesuatu yg baik akan trjdi pdmu pkul 7 mlm bsok.Ni bkn sbuah candaan.Se2org akn mnelpon/brbcara tntg sswtu yg km tnggu..Jgn mmtuskan rantai ini di kamu ya"



Tidak hanya sekali saya mendapat pesan yang isinya kurang lebih seperti itu. Dengan intro kalimat2 menggugah biasanya mengambil dr wisdom quotation, lalu di forward ke sekian banyak orang termasuk ke si pengirim, dan pada akhirnya seseorang akan merasa tidak sendirian ketika mendapatkan pesan ini kembali dan bisa juga dari teman-teman lain. Atau juga dijanjikan akan terjadi sesuatu yang sebetulnya sangat umum terjadi.

Tidak hanya persoalan teman, persoalan personal seperti agama juga seringkali diangkat oleh orang pembuat surat berantai ini.

Saya tidak pernah melanjutkan surat berantai seperti di atas karena menurut saya tidak masuk di akal. Teman yang sesungguhnya adalah teman yang memang ada. Bukan teman yang di ada2 kan hanya karena surat berantai dan contact saya kebetulan ada di friendslist nya. Jadi pembuktian sebagai teman tidak harus melalui pesan2 konyol kan

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descriptive writing #3

ehem ya, yang ke3. maaf dulu ah.

You are in a bright white walls room full of elitists. That means you are in an art gallery in an opening night. You remember queuing before. Waiting for your turn to fill the guestbook with you names and emails so that they can spam your inbox with event calendars. If you’re lucky you can get yourself a catalogue that usually end up in your toilet as a thing that you could read while taking a dump.
You realized that this very crowded situation is not helping you in understanding and appreciating the artworks, so you go out of the room heading to the open bar. With a glass of bintang on your left hand and a small paper plate full of peanuts on your right, you go to the amphitheatre where you can find some of your friends, teachers, and acquaintances, watching a performance. it usually is an emerging popular band.
Have no idea about what is the performer trying to show, you’re talking to your friends about the juiciest gossips on art world, or asking for some suggestion from lecturers.
Yet, you still feel lonely. Alienated by people around you, and drown with random thoughts. A breeze of Dago Pakar wind suddenly wakes you up from your contemplating mood. You put on your hood, and button up your shabby jeans jacket. With hands in your pockets, you’re walking pass the open bar, the guestbook, your friends, your teachers, the snobs, the mediocre, the butt kissers, and finally you reach the darkest area of the gallery.
The parking area.
There you don’t feel like before. This is where you feel most convenient. The sincere smile of the parking guy and his loyal and dedicated service for looking after your motorbike is indeed the most real contribution to society in this gallery area.

descriptive writing #2

baiklah tulisan deskriptif yang ke2. haha tidak bisa berhenti. stoop stooooop kania. tulisan ini terinspirasi dari banyak hal, dari high fidelity, how i met your mother, taxi driver, sampai seno gumira

“… We are all sensitive people sugar...”
Marvin Gaye’s passionate soulful voice gives company on the lonely nights.
Glares of city lights are reflecting on the front mirror of the car looks like rivers of colors, just exactly like Martin Scorsese had drawn in his taxi driver movie.* No wonder most of the taxi driver can be considered wise because they usually contemplate a lot.
He’s a Muslim, you can pick it up from the tasbih hanging on the rearview mirror. No, wait, or a Chinese Muslim if you see his photo on his ID in the front. Well, It’s common in the end of 90s to leave a clue to the people that you’re a Muslim to avoid misjudging that could lead to unpleasant acts.
There’s a thick book peeking from the sun visor. Seems like a novel to you. He’s quite educated you think, not many people in Indonesia reads. Also the Jakarta Post, Kompas and Pos Kota behind the driver seat, says it all. He tells you it’s one of his services to the passenger.
A bare whiff of vomit from previous passenger gives him nausea. After says sorry politely and gets permission from you, he turns off the ac, opens the window, and lights his halfway cigarette from after dinner smoking time.
The digital clock below the ac window tells you it’s 2 am. Mom always said that there’s no good things happen after 2 am. But here you are in a backseat of taxi, having a very nice conversation about your problems, politics, society, and other popular issues with a very nice guy. It’s actually true that taxi driver is bartender on the road. Well, without the alcohol of course.

*from SGA seni dan air seni nya supir taksi

descriptive writing #1

dibawah adalah tugas menulis deskriptif yang sangat saya benci. jujur saja, saya tidak begitu suka membaca sesuatu yang sangat detail mendeskripsikan sesuatu. membuat imajinasi saya 'terkungkung' dalam tulisan itu. hehe, mungkin terlalu berlebihan. mungkin saya hanya malas. tapi pada akhirnya tugas ini selesai juga karena sebenarnya detail ruangan yang dideskripsikan dibawah adalah studio impian saya. walau tokoh 'she' disini sama sekali bukan saya.

There is a very significant imaginary gap between the house where she and her parents live in and the attic where she’s actually nesting. It is a typical contemporary family home with the cold, modern and minimalistic style. Just like the people in it.
While just by going upstairs carried by an indistinct sound of rock music, we are actually escaping a depressing and impersonal place to another different dimension. It’s a place where you would feel so vibrant and also a distinctive form of tranquility.
Just after you open the door and smell a bare whiff of nicotine as a result of combination from bad air circulation and of course the lack of health risk awareness, the first thing that would caught your attention beside of the loud noise from Joe Strummers’ strumming skills is the cluttered corner that she always calls as ‘the body’ section of the room.
Yes, she always told her friends that the attic is parted in three sections, just like human: the head, the heart, and the body.
‘The head’ is where she gets all the inspiration from her reference books, movies, music, and the Internet. Surprisingly, the books, the DVDs, and the CDs are arranged neatly and in order. Even the CDs are organized autobiographically. That means if she’s looking for Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dreams CD, she has to trace back her memory to 1993 when her ex gave it as breakup compensation.*
‘The heart’ is where she’s processing all of the information she gets from ‘the head’, so it would someday turn into an idea or maybe if she’s lucky, a work of art. Most of the times, her friends are having some deep discussions or just hang out in this corner. It’s where you can find a coffee table, an old shabby beanbag, and a brilliant multifunction piece of furniture called sofa bed, facing the TV and the ant farm next to it.
Behind the TV as its background, there is a big handcrafted Ganesh tapestry that she got from her backpacking to India. She thinks it Gives a very whimsical semiotic feels, while Ganesh is believed as the deva of intellect and wisdom, and yet TV just kills most of your brain cells.
‘The body’ is where she does all of her works. Parted in two sections by a waist-high cabinet full of art supplies from oil to watercolor paint, brushes, varnishes, etc: wet and dry. ‘Dry’ is where she does her drawing, supported with a drawing table and a light box to trace photos, that area is restricted from all liquid things. Even coffee. On the ‘wet’ section across the drawing table you can see an easel and a very big sink next to it. The sink was forcedly made to fit in the room just for cleaning all the art supplies after she’s done doing her painting.
All of those three parts are knitted together by a bunch of previous artworks hung on the wall. They unintentionally decorated the attic just in an inspiring eclectic way. Each things, each objects in the attic, is telling a story about her.
Indeed, her art studio is a self-portrait.

*high fidelity