Melati Suryodarmo (Studio Plesungan), Moelyono, Armin Septiexan (SkolMUS), and Aprina Murwanti are to discuss the development of radical pedagogical concepts with an artistic approach.
Joseph Beuys said every person is a student, meaning a learner. A key component of his work was his role as an educator. Beuys was one of the artist-educators of post World War II in Europe who sought to bring about social change through education. He explicitly advocated processes for collective learning focused on equality between educators and students, and he urged “the education of all people to intellectual maturity” and “a new perspective for education, teaching and research”.
Inspired by these ideas, the discussion addresses the development of radical pedagogical concepts with an artistic approach in Indonesia through different generations of artists-educators-scholars. Practitioners of non-formal educational concepts present notions, priorities, methods and processes of learning that have already been implemented based on one of their projects.
Moelyono has been a noted influential figure in the art and education discourse since the 1980s. His projects based on the methods of Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) are already established in various places in Indonesia and are presented as art projects in numerous art exhibitions.
Sekolah MUSA (Multimedia for All) or MUSA school, also known as Skolmus, was founded in 2011 in Kupang. The teachers focus on education in the fields of photography and videography and are committed to preserving collective memory through digital editing of public archives and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Studio Plesungan was founded in 2012 in Surakarta by Melati Suryodarmo. It is now a laboratory for artists, especially in the areas of performance art, dance, theater, literature, music and visual art. Foregrounding contemporary art visions closely connected to nature, social environment and history, Studio Plesungan promotes the exchange of criticism and knowledge concerning contextual art.
What context forms the background in each case for the emergence of an idea for the design of a project and the presented educational model? What are the key values conveyed during the learning process? How do they see the educational practice currently developing in Indonesia’s educational system? What potential can we tap and develop in order to expand pedagogical practice in the future?
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Moelyono
studied painting at the Faculty of Design and Fine Arts, Indonesian Institute of Art (ISI) Yogyakarta. Since 2000 he has been a facilitator and consultant for the Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) program in several non-governmental organizations and independent programs in different regions in East Java, West Kalimantan, East Nusa Tenggara, Southeast Sulawesi, Maluku, Papua and Timor-Leste.
His most recent exhibitions include the group exhibition GEMES (RUBANAH Underground Hub, Jakarta, 2020); Biennale Jogja XV 2019: Are we living in the same playground? (Jogja National Museum, Yogyakarta, 2019); Noken (Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh); Para Site (Hong Kong); TSI (Yangon, Myanmar); Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Poland (2018-2020); Bangkok Art Biennale: Beyond Bliss (Thailand, 2018); Europalia Indonesia, collaborative performance: My Life as a Drawing Teacher: On Art and Activism, SMAK (Ghent, Brussels, 2018); Amok Tanah Jawa (Flinders Museum, Adelaide, South Australia, 2018).
Moelyono has received numerous awards, among which are the Lifetime Achievement Award (Biennale IX, Yogyakarta, 2012), Art Award (Governor of East Java, 2001), and Ashoka Fellowship Innovators for the Public (Yayasan Ashoka Indonesia, 1989-1992).
Melati Suryodarmo
is an Indonesian durational performance artist. Her physically demanding performances make use of repetitive motions and often last for many hours, sometimes reaching “a level of factual absurdity”. Suryodarmo has performed and exhibited throughout Europe, Asia and North America. Born in Surakarta, she attended Padjadjaran University in Bandung and graduated with a degree in international relations before moving to Germany. She lived there for 20 years, studying performance art at the Braunschweig University of Art with Butoh choreographer Anzu Furukawa and performance artist Marina Abramović. Melati later returned to Indonesia and founded Undisclosed Territory, an annual festival for performance art. She was the first woman to serve as artistic director for the Jakarta Biennale. Melati also established Studio Plesungan in Surakarta, where she resides, as a space to explore herself and to nurture young artists and choreographers.
Armin Septiexan
is a member of SkolMus and has been its director since 2017. He and his colleagues are currently working on the launch of the Merekam Kota program, a long-term participatory public archiving project that invites city residents to engage with their city in the context of memory, space, and imagination. In addition to his responsibilities at SkolMus, he is primarily occupied as a multimedia artist and filmmaker concerned with historical and cultural issues in the city.
Aprina Murwanti
is a researcher, educator and consultant with practical experience in art education as well as in the organization and implementation of different kinds of social programs. She is a lecturer in the Fine Arts course at the Universitas Negeri Jakarta and guest lecturer at several universities in Germany and abroad. She completed her studies in textile design at Institut Teknologi Bandung and received her PhD in Creative Practice in Contemporary Art from the University of Wollongong, Australia.
Aprina works at a formal institution but is convinced of the power and impact of non-formal and public education. Making art more accessible to the public is a key concern of hers and she often instigates guerrilla programs outside of the university setting. Together with her colleague Fauzy Prasetya, Aprina founded ID/Aptitude, a consulting firm focused on educational curation, capacity building, and far-reaching public policies that bring together a diversity of stakeholders: government, international organizations, museums, and communities in remote rural areas.
From 2018 to 2021 Aprina headed Education and Public Programs at Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara (MACAN). She is presently an international board member of Education Advisory Panel for the National Gallery of Singapore (2020-2022).
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