100-Year Anniversary of Joseph Beuys with Iwan Wijono
As Joseph Beuys said, “Everyone is an artist”. In ancient Nusantara (the Indonesian archipelago), it was assumed that everyone was an artist because art was a daily ritual or a spiritual activity. Body Journey is an effort to explore Beuys’ thoughts.
Nusantara contextual art is defined as a presentation of sincere cultural works of art deriving from the results of an honest and genuine search. It obtains clarity of meaning from staging an art event in the midst of a vortex of socio-political, economic, natural-ecological and spiritual-cultural elements. This idea has its roots in Iwan Wijono’s understanding of the ancient culture of the archipelago, which is drawn and put into a contemporary context.
In Body Journey, 14 selected participants will use the concept of Nusantara contextual art to create a connection to crisis and the post-pandemic period. Our awareness of the balance of human relationships with society and nature is at the heart of the workshop.
The workshop series consists of four sessions with the following program:
- Screening of the films I Like America, America Likes me and Show Me Your Wound to be able to understand the art and life of the artist.
- Presentation of the materials of the workshop accompanied by a dialogue on the connection between the 100-year Beuys discourse and Nusantara contextual art.
- The practice of body art awareness; restructuring the body with various movements, body breathing, meditation, energy practice, stimulation to stimulate sensitivity. The body as creator, the body as medium and the life of the body as space for representation and space for exhibitions.
- Development of ideas and creation of new works by each participant.
- Presentation and discussion of the developed ideas.
At the end of the program, each participant produces a work and exhibits the works from the workshop. As part of the celebration of 100 years of Joseph Beuys, Body Journey was launched by Goethe-Institut Indonesien and is managed together with Cemeti - Institute for Art and Society.
Iwan Wijono (born in Solo, 1971)
is a performance artist who was known in the 1990s as a pro-democracy street artist with (or without) political demonstrations. He is also involved in networking with various pro-democratic (art) movements in various locations. In addition to his political awareness, he created an aesthetic understanding that performance art can take place anywhere and is not restricted by the exhibition space, audience or the duration of the activity. He studied painting at the Indonesian Art Institute Yogyakarta (1992-1998) and graduated from the Islamic University of Indonesia in Yogyakarta in international law (1990-1997). He has recently been working with the Indonesian Upcycle Forum to develop plastic-based artwork and a live art laboratory through several programs in public spaces. During the COVID-19 pandemic he founded Public Kitchen(s) with the artist community and Public Farm to advance independent and sustainable agriculture.
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