To art or not to art? Studio Pancaroba, Studio 22nya and Bagasi’s 30% Art, 70% Standing
After gaining virality during the wave of protests in August, Studio Pancaroba has successfully established themselves as a ‘collective voice’ that expresses the peoples’ dissatisfaction and dissent amidst Indonesia’s turbulent sociopolitical landscape. Through Instagram and book fairs, they have positioned themselves as a platform-publication that curse state policies, critique the creative industry and labour practices, question the ‘public remarks’ made by bureaucrats and politicians and reflect on tactics or theory necessary to implement systemic change. Studio Pancaroba relies on paradox – traversing the conceptual and material, public-private, and online-offline – in their design language to manufacture a cryptic and faceless presence that has allowed their message to be reached amongst a mass audience.
Their critique is embodied within their design and visual language, which includes posting statements of solidarity with a black-and-white backdrop, comic sans, emojis, tongue-in-cheek copies written in English, and oftentimes, placeholding (the falsehood of its significance into) random objects. Perhaps it is their rawness, and realism that has made their content resonate vastly amongst the public, as their mystery explicitly counteracts the expectations of visibility demanded in surviving the industry. Together, they have cemented themselves as ‘rebels’ in their output; constantly critiquing themselves, the people around them, and the systems of existence. In 30% Art, 70% Standing, we are able to catch a glimpse of Studio Pancaroba in the flesh, as they bring together their reflections on art fairs, travel, and exhaustion into the gallery space.
As visitors ascend the stairs to Studio22nya, they are welcomed with a table in front of the gallery displaying an array of merchandise: there are caps, wearables, printed publications, car signs, air fresheners and sticker packs accumulated from their catalogue, and collaboration with travel brand Bagasi. Amongst the collectibles, they launch a publication called “Human Story In The In-Human World”, containing a series of their observations and philosophies in their journey across art book fairs in Southeast Asia. There are photographs of bus rides, crowds next to harrowing revelations such as have you ever self-published because therapy was expensive and fully booked? The book boasts their signature style that unified the banal and the existential terrains in the everyday life of a creative worker, which expanded into the gallery space.
A suitcase, a framed rejection letter, a series of posters plastered across the walls, a television playing footage of a mop, a rearview mirror adorned with air fresheners laid bare against the gallery’s wall. Their arrangement reads as a direct critique of the polished “curation” expected in the white-cube format in a gallery space, but together, these objects are read as intentionally placed, and true to the Studio Pancaroba ‘method’. It would be wrong to call them art, as there is a Dadaist sentiment that shines in the treatment of their pieces; further enlivened in their (faux) auction.
The fragility of valuation in art was brought to fore, making visible the processes of economic exchange, and relations that are hidden (or exclusive to a certain elite group) in art spaces. Studio Pancaroba sent a “friend” to pose as the evening’s auctioneer, who held pieces of paper that listed artwork for sale, its prices, a toy gavel and a buzzer as arsenal. “Listen, this is harder than theatre,” the auctioneer said as he began to read the description of the pieces. The exchange mimicked a procedure that one would expect in a conventional auction, with a significant change made in its pricing: rather than having bids increase, the event embraced a constant decrease in value. Attendees were essentially competing to price artworks lower, as its value decreases with every offer, and met with laugh breaks and awkward glances from the auctioneer. Oftentimes, he looked to Studio22nya founder Zarani Risjad for reassurance in pricing, and procession. “Is this ok?” He would ask her, and wait for her to signal a thumbs-up for them to take note of who would be the lucky owner of said piece. The evening proceeded in performance, as the gallery site became a site of immersive satire.
The short-lived auction/exhibition/publication-launch cemented Studio Pancaroba’s consistency of voice, but I cannot help but think of the vulnerability that has cracked the orchestration (in performance) – that they attempt to uphold. At a distance, their work is funny, radical, and refreshing, but upclose, it becomes deeply saddening. The question of “Do we always have to live and work like this?” echoes viscerally, and further enlivened in the physicality of their presence in their auction, exhibition and even merchandise. The gallery site no longer becomes a site of pure critique, but contemplation towards our own realities. Perhaps they prove the fraughtness amidst the language of critique that prevails amongst contemporaries. Beyond the sarcastic and humorous messaging or the awakening of police brutality, there is an underlying truth that haunts Indonesians: can we, even, survive? Perhaps if we were to expand it into their practice, the question transforms into can creativity truly sustain us? And bring us towards change? Their previous successes have set themselves up as “able and worthy” to be able to provide possibilities of imagining creativity or activism otherwise and if not, we can continue to laugh at our realisation of an existential dread.
